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I was a bit sad that I didn't have more time in Laos because I really enjoyed it, but I figured that no trip to southeast Asia was complete without a visit to Angkor Wat. I've seen lots of Mayan ruins, plus the Aztec pyramids of Teotihuacan, the Incan Machu Picchu and a few other Incan sites. Some people I'd met in Latin America who had seen a similar amount of ruins were duly impressed by the ruins they saw there, but over and over, I heard that the ruins at Angkor Wat were the most impressive they'd seen.
So off I went. Since my time was starting to run short, and I wanted to allow myself enough time to truly see Angkor Wat, I hopped on a plane from Pakse to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
I'd gotten the idea from Dan & Julie, who I'd been more or less following/playing leapfrog with for my entire time in Laos. They were also taking the same flight on the same day. We arrived to the tiny airport and checked in, then we headed to the waiting room, which probably had about 20 people in it. They eventually announced our flight after our pretty Angkor Wat plane arrived, and it turned out that there were only FIVE of us flying! The plane probably had capacity for about 100-150 passengers, but only we five were on the flight that day. It was a relatively uneventful flight, other than the flight attendants giving my vegetarian meal to one of the other 5, even asking me at the beginning of the flight if I was the vegetarian or not. Oh well.
Upon arrival to the airport, we filled out the necessary paperwork for our Cambodia visas and picked up our bags and set off for our first Cambodian tuk tuk experience.
Dan, Julie and I squeezed first our bags, then ourselves into the back of the tuk tuk with me perched on top of a bag and facing backwards for the 20 minute ride into town. We'd picked out a random Lonely Planet hotel to check out first, and the driver sounded more or less suitably aware of where it was. We reached town, but then my directional alarm bells starting going off, as the driver didn't seem to be following the best way to get to the hotel, according to my map. He'd crossed a river, and we were supposed to stay on the other side of the river. Well, it seems that he had other ideas for our accommodations. When we realized what he was doing, we ordered him to turn around immediately, but he didn't. Eventually, he pulled up to a couple of places with us refusing to get out and look at them, and he ended up in front of yet another hotel. Then a Westerner came out and asked us what the problem was. He was sympathetic and just happened to have a hotel if we wanted to take a look. We refused and ordered our tuk tuk driver to take us to our originally requested hotel or we were going to get out and not pay him.
He finally obliged and lo and behold, he did indeed know exactly where the hotel we requested was located. We'd actually requested a separate hotel from where we wanted to go - we were going to be dropped off and one and hoof it next door to a nicer hotel. Well, after we arrived, the driver started to try to carry our bags into the hotel we'd requested, and we refused and said goodbye. But he waited. We started to talk, and he followed. We stopped at a shop, and he was still outside when we came back. We think he wanted a commission from wherever we ended up. We eventually lost the guy and started out hotel search.
Both of us were nearing the end of our stays in Asia and willing to splurge a little bit. They were sharing costs on a room, and I was willing to pay a bit more for a nicer room. (By this poing in time, I had agreed to fly to Toronto, Canada for my job... and my start date was about 10 days out.) Julie and I deposited Dan and the bags at an ice cream store, and we set off. Eventually, we found beautiful rooms at the Red Piano. In this town, where the most budget of travellers can find rooms for $3 a night, our splurge was $15 on air-conditioned rooms with TV, mini-fridges and a beautiful included breakfast. We settled in and set off for lunch to come up with our Angkor Wat plan.
