Getting Lost on Purpose: A Night Walkabout Through Siem Reap

Some nights I don't have a plan. I point myself at the busy part of town, camera in hand, and start walking to see what turns up. Siem Reap rewards that kind of aimless wandering, especially around Pub Street and the maze of alleys feeding into it.

It started with the sky. Rainy season has the clouds doing dramatic things right now — big stacked thunderheads catching the last of the light before the blue goes dark. I stood there longer than I'd admit, just watching it build.

A block or two in, this caught my eye: a statue of a woman lost in thought, ferns and greenery sprouting where her hair should be. Half art piece, half planter, tucked under a banana leaf in the dark. The kind of thing you'd walk straight past in daylight but that stops you cold at night.

Then a monk, out later than you usually see them, carrying a bag and heading in the general direction of the bar street. I don't know where he was going and it's none of my business, but there's something about that orange robe against all the neon and traffic that you can't not photograph.

Closer to the action, the lanterns take over. Rows of red and yellow paper lanterns strung up outside the restaurants, a glowing bowl of noodles the size of a tire, and the Western Tribes Bar sign buzzing underneath. Subtle it is not. I love it.

Here's where the wandering pays off. Step off the main drag and you drop into these narrow side alleys — clothing racks, mannequins, half-lit bars, wires strung overhead like spaghetti. It's honestly hard to get genuinely lost here; the whole grid is small. But it's nice to pretend you are, to take a turn you don't recognize and let the place blur a little.

Some of these lanes are packed — pizza joints, French kitchens, gluten-free signs, a stroller weaving between motorbikes. Siem Reap throws everything together and somehow it works.

My favorite is the Umbrella Alleyway, where dozens of open umbrellas hang overhead in a canopy of color. It's a tourist trap and I don't care — it's a good-looking one, and the photos come out better than they have any right to.

And then there's this: the tanks of little fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet. You stick your feet in, the fish go to work, and apparently you come out smooth. I get the appeal. I also get a hard no from my own brain. I don't want fish eating my feet, smooth heels or not — I'll keep my dead skin, thanks.

That's the thing about a walkabout. You don't get to choose what you find. A dramatic sky, a thinking statue, a late-night monk, and a tank of feet-nibbling fish, all in one loop. Not a bad haul for a night with no plan.

What's the weirdest thing you've stumbled on just wandering your own city? Let me know below.