The next day we were supposed to be flying on to Siem Reap in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat.  (We would love to return and see more, but there just wasn’t time on this trip and Angkor has always been a dream of ours).  There was supposed to be a flight from Hue direct to Siem Reap. Not so much. When we got there, they told us that flight had been cancelled weeks ago (funny since we’d only recently reserved it). They put us on a flight back to Hanoi, where we had to kill most of the day waiting for a flight to Siem Reap. In possibly, the most boring airport, ever. No shopping, the place was empty for most of the day and a Coke cost $3 US !!!

We finally arrived in Siem Reap in the evening. Although we’d warned our hotel we would be late, the message didn’t quite get to our Tuk Tuk driver, so he’d been sitting waiting for 6 hours.  Somehow, he was still happy to see us.  The hotel Popular Guest House was great – cheap, good restaurant, extremely central location, great shower, and A/C. We arranged to hire the guy who had picked us up at the airport to take us around Angkor Wat. It cost $15 US per day to rent a Tuk Tuk and driver.

The next day we started out at 5am, so we could see the sun rise over Angkor Wat (it’s the thing to do). We had to get a 3 day pass with photo-ID made at the gate, but it was extremely fast. (Although very expensive).  Although the sunrise wasn’t that pretty (apparently it rarely is during the summer months), Angkor Wat is beautiful, and huge. Our driver had left us after dropping us off, so he could go to his English class in town, but promised he’d be back by the time we were done, and true to his word, he was waiting for us when we got out. He drove us around all the Wats we wanted to see, and then some more he felt we should see too! The jungle wats were fabulous. In fact, we ended up seeing a lot more than we’d planned to! He kept on suggesting we  see other things, and we ended up out until 3PM.  Well, in all our years of traveling this marked the first time someone had tried to do way MORE for us than we’d asked them to without expecting anything in return.  So, we gave him $20 when we got back to the hotel.  At first he told us it was too much, but we convinced him to take it.  He was really happy, and even offered to drive us to dinner or to a show if we wanted to.

The second day with him, we went back to Angkor Wat to hopefully get a better sunrise, but no luck again. We climbed another Wat for a view of Angkor itself. We drove on to Banteay Srei (the women’s temple), which is 35 km away. There is supposed to be a surcharge to see this, but when we asked our driver about it, he wouldn’t tell us how much, telling us that we’d already tipped him so well so not to worry about it…! We asked some other tourists while we were there, and paid him anyways, of course!

On the way back from day 2 of wat seeing, we actually had to ask him to take us to some shopping (that was a first for us – actually asking to be taken to shop!), to see a factory where they were making stone and wood carvings. He told us he thought it was too expensive! He was right, they were a little too expensive (and delicate looking) for us.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience in Siem Reap. The authorities are managing the attraction very well. It was well taken care of. Even the postcard sellers and book sellers were kept in check – at every wat, they’d be there and desperately trying to make a sale, but there was a line on the sand that they weren’t allowed to cross. Guards made sure everyone respected the “tourist line”. They had a great sense of humor about the whole thing. When we wanted to buy a book, the seller told us “You have to come to my side of the line, or my enemies will get me!” 🙂 The drink sellers threaten to cry if you don’t buy from them, and everyone reminds you that your driver is hot! The Cambodians have a real sense of humour about the tourists, and also a lot of respect. Even though it was obvious to us they were very, very poor, they were still friendly, even when there was no need for them to be. While many people tried to sell us things, there was no one begging.

Our flight back to Vietnam proved a little more exciting than we’d hoped. We were waiting in the airport departures lounge, when I saw through the window the Vietnam Airlines plane arrive, that was to take us back to Saigon. Suddenly, emergency vehicles screamed up the runway after it, and all the airport personnel ran outside, panicked. After some time they came back in “The plane’s ok. The plane’s ok” … What about the people??? Turns out the pilot had overshot the runway by 60m and got the Airbus stuck in the mud. No one was hurt. They blamed it on weather, but it was only raining lightly.

It took them a couple of hours to sort the mess out. They put us up in a 5 star hotel for the night, and planned to bus us to Phnom Penh the next day, from where we’d fly to Saigon. (We had to change hotels. The first 5 star hotel had a dead cockroach right in the middle of the room. Funny, we didn’t have any roaches in our budget hotel!!)

Anyways, it was an interesting sightseeing trip to Phnomh Penh, on surpringly good roads. The short hop back to Saigon was a pretty scary one for us, after we’d seen the quality of the Vietnam Airlines pilots in Siem Reap.