Siem Reap - Kbal Spean, Banteay Srei, Ta Som, Neak Pean

For our second day at Angkor, we rose a little less early and took a tuk-tuk tour booked the night before to the 4 temples we still wanted to see, which were much further a field. We departed at 6 AM and got to our first temple around 8 AM, after stopping for some colorful petrol, which our tuk-tuk driver said he needed to borrow money from us to buy. As we saw in Mexico, for measurement the gas is first loaded into defined-sized reused bottles (like bottled water bottles) before going into the tank. In fact, two times today as we were finishing a 1.5 liter bottle of water and looking for a receptacle, we had someone walk up to us and ask to have them.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

Our first sight, Kbal Spean, was something of an animist water temple. Basically they carved an array of holy symbols and pictures right into the riverbed, blessing the water as it passed over before it got to town. The effect (and especially the photos) were somewhat diminished on account of it being the dry season and there being almost no water. But still, it was pretty neat.

From Angkor Wat

Yes, those bumps are phalluses. And the one that appears to be a face is a female symbol, if we remember correctly.

From Angkor Wat

We also saw a young pineapple tree.

From Angkor Wat

This waterfall is supposed to be very nice for bathing in the wet season.

From Angkor Wat

Next up was Banteay Srei, a small temple with some of the best carvings in Angkor.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

These guardians are replicas, the originals having been removed to a museum.

From Angkor Wat

Next stop was Ta Som, which also had a nice tree, but fewer visitors than the similar temple yesterday. We exchanged photo favors with a Japanese (?) tourist, who seems to actually know how to take good photos! You might just see this one on the wall at our house someday.

From Angkor Wat

Most of the rest of Ta Som wasn't that interesting, but note the support holding up the wall on the right!

From Angkor Wat

Our final Angkor temple was Neak Pean, which is situated in the middle of a square man-made lake, surrounded by 4 other square man-made lakes. Unfortunately, they didn't have water in them, but on the bright side, that did mean we got to walk out to the temple, which otherwise would have required a boat to reach.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

After this, we ate 3 pineapples between us. They are really cute the way they prepare them.

From Angkor Wat

By the time we got back to Siem Reap it was around 3 PM, and we were feeling like we'd seen everything at Angkor we wanted to see. We felt a little lame for only spending like a day and a half at Angkor after all the work to get here, and with the way everyone else says you need at least 3 days to do it right, but when you look at the hours, it was around 21, which actually is like 3 days of sightseeing. We just packed it into 2 days. No wonder we were so exhausted!

We took a taxi back to the border, and then hopped a bus to Bangkok that was leaving right as we arrived on the Thai side. We'd hoped to catch a night bus straightaway down to Phuket, but it seemed to be too late to get one, at least from the North Bus Terminal where we found ourselves. After much hemming and hawing, we finally decided to take the city bus down to the Khao San, the area where we stayed before, and knew our way around such that we'd feel safe walking there even very late at night. For a miracle, the bus was even still running at quarter to midnight, though it was a long wait.

Siem Reap - Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm

Got up at 4:30 AM for an early start on Angkor Wat. After breakfast in our room (baguettes, bananas, and Khmer cake from the market, plus apple-cranberry juice and some surprisingly good Cheddar cheese from a minimart), we set out on bicycles for the Angkor complex ticket booth. Took a wrong turn, and when we asked for directions to Angkor Wat, got directed to the complex rather than the ticket booth, as we figured out when we got to a ticket checkpoint where they were not selling tickets. After 2-3 km of backtracking, we picked up our 3-day passes and got back to Angkor Wat a little late to catch the sunrise. Oh well.

From Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat reminded us a lot of other places we've visited this trip. It had a nice symmetric approach through an impressive gate and up a long pavilion, much like the Taj Mahal. Inside, the carvings reminded us of those at Khajuraho, but they were not as nice (both not erotic and also not as well carved). The overall design was basically the same as the Khmer-style wat we visited in Ayutthaya. Otherwise, the architecture reminded us of the many palaces we visited throughout India. The depictions from the Ramayana in bass relief, for all that they were 500 years older, just weren't engaging the way the murals in the Grand Palace in Bangkok were. Also, it turned out there was a dress code (for women) for the inner part, which we hadn't known about and weren't prepared for. And unlike everywhere else we've been that had a dress code, there were no loner articles available. Lucky for Mary, the woman ahead of her in line had a spare sarong in her bag and let Mary borrow it. All in all, Angkor Wat was really nice, but left us wondering a little bit why we'd come so far and at such great expense to see it.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

Fortunately, when people talk about going to Angkor Wat, they are actually referring to the whole collection of temples and such in the Angkor complex, all included in our $40 3-day pass. So after a 10 AM second breakfast of most excellent fried rice and lok lak (marked down about 50% from the prices on the menus!), we continued on to Phnom Bakheng.

Phnom Bakheng was atop big hill, and when we got to the top, we felt a little bit like we were on top of a Mayan temple, except it was miserably hot, and didn't afford us the views of the surrounding wats that we were hoping for.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

Next up was Angkor Thom. To get in, first we passed over a moat on a bridge flanked by guys who looked like they were playing tug-a-war with a giant naga. Then we passed through an impressive gate.

From Angkor Wat

Finally, the temple in the center (Bayon) was phenomenal and felt very different than anything else we've seen. It was made up of these wonderful huge stone faces.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

Also within the same enclosure, we explored a temple (Baphuon?) that our 2002 guidebook said was due for restoration completion in 2004. Let's just say they are only 6 years late so far. But we really liked the raised walkway leading up to it.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

There was also a reasonably nice elephant plinth, though Akshardham has kind of spoiled us for elephant plinths.

From Angkor Wat

After an amazing lunch of chicken curry and fried noodles (don't pay the prices on the menu--negotiate for a meal and a drink for between $2.00 to $2.50), we continued on bike around the "mini-tour" and saw a few lackluster temples before stopping at Ta Prohm, which was quite a magical place in an almost sickeningly romantic state of decay, with trees growing all through what is left. The pictures don't really do it justice.

From Angkor Wat

From Angkor Wat

We got back to our hotel a bit after 5 PM, making it a full and rewarding 12-hour day of sightseeing. We were soaked through with sweat and so very happy to take cold showers and bask in our AC.

Speaking of AC, when we got back to our hotel, we found our whole room without power. This surprised us slightly, but since we'd thoughtlessly left our AC on before going out all day, we should have expected it. Lots of hotels in Southeast Asia have an electric box near the door with a place to insert your key ring in order for the room to have power, thus preventing you from leaving anything on while out of the room. (In India this was lower tech, with a light switch outside your room, which you could expect to find in the off position upon return if you left anything on.) In our hotel here, the room-by-room switches seemed to be at the front desk. The weird thing was that when we'd left in the morning (looking very obviously like we were headed out for the whole day), the front desk clerk had asked us our room number (which we gave without thinking about it), and then when we asked why he wanted to know, he gave us this clearly BS answer about his wife being curious how many of the people staying at the hotel went out to the temples each day. This made us think he wanted to know what rooms would be abandoned all day for a fine combing through of luggage for valuables, and thus we suddenly "remembered" that we "forgot" to pack a few of the heavier valuable things we'd hoped to leave in the hotel all day. It all made sense when we returned and found the power off, and no evidence of our room having been entered, but when Josh went down stairs to have the power turned back on, they gave him another clearly BS reason for the power having been off. It was really strange, and more than a little annoying, having them lie to us about this.

For dinner we went to a pretty expensive restaurant for this trip (around $10 for the two of us), and got served watered down orange juice. Fortunately there's no need to fear water in restaurants in Cambodia--they don't drink the tap water without boiling it either--but it was certainly frustrating. I guess that's the trouble with going to restaurants that cater to tourists... but there is little else in Siem Reap.

Laos to Cambodia - Long Transit Double-Day With Little Sleep and Lots of Scams

11:30 AM finish breakfast, check out of hotel, hunt for old bus station.
12:00 AM told this is where the old bus station used to be, not bus station anymore, but the bus to Vietane will stop here for us. Wonder at the central planners who shut down a bus station in the middle of town, right next door to the decommissioned airstrip from the war (thus plenty of space), and replaced it with a new bus station 2-3 km ($1 pp by tuk-tuk) out of town. Tuk-tuk drivers lobby is really strong perhaps?
12:30 PM get on fan bus.
4:30 PM arrive north bus station of Vietane.
6:00 PM get on bus to town in Thailand across the border, 22 km away.
7:30 PM arrive in Thailand.
8:00 PM get hassled by a bunch of private bus company employees to take their buses, then depart on public overnight air-con bus toward Bangkok, which we are only on until Khorat. Exclaim over how nice the Thailand public buses are. Air-con, included cold(!!) water and snack when you board.
12:15-12:45 AM bus lets us off for free (included) dinner. The soup looks a little disgusting (as do the other choices), but it is the most popular choice with the other riders and smells good, so we get it. Turns out to be excellent!
2:00 AM dropped off at Khorat, which is like Thailand's second biggest city, but gets approximately no tourism. There are no signs in our alphabet, but there are 3 women working what looks like an information counter. We tell them where we want to go and they write down some times for us and point to where the bus will be. Next bus is at 5:30 AM. Fortunately nice well-lit, but not air-con, bus station is open all night. We play Canasta at one of the tables in the food court. Disappointingly, the food vendors are shutting down and not selling food by the time we get hungry again.
6:00 AM depart on bus to Cambodia border.
7:30 AM driver turns on the loud rock music, making further sleep impossible.
11ish arrive at border, find street vendor for Pad Thai and Cow Kai Gatium (fried garlic and pepper over rice).
12ish cross the border.

We were caught off guard by the immigration cops insistence on an extra 100 Bhat more per visa than the posted sign said. We paid the extra $3 each because we were confused, then regretted it. Not that it's an amount of money to really worry about, but we don't feel so good about feeding the corruption. The systemic problem of cops skimming off the top like that is something to worry about.

When we got through with all the paperwork, we were pushed to get on the "free government bus to the bus station". How nice. So we did. Not surprisingly, the chatty Cambodian guys riding the bus with us turned out to be taxi drivers. And the bus station? A fake. Well, I think it was really run by the government, and there really were a few buses parked there, but the posted prices were only in English, and there were no posted departure times. The ticket sellers said "2 to 3pm", which seemed pretty odd. I understand some buses tend to run late, but there is normally a single stated time when you are to show up. Also, the price was crazy-high. It should not cost $9 to take the public bus 155 km in southeast Asia. We paid about that much to go 3x as far from the Laos border to Khorat, and that was a really nice air-con bus with meals. The taxi drivers continued to pester us something horrible. Even though we had 2-3 hours to the next bus, they just didn't think it was right of us to neither buy a bus ticket right this instant, or get in one of their taxis right this instant. And needed to stand about two inches away from us explaining it over and over again like we were little children who couldn't figure it out on our own. The taxi was only $12 pp if we waited for two other tourists to share with, but when possible we do not spend our money with people who are so obnoxious, or people who are clearly running a fake bus station racket.

We decided to go walk to an ATM, and from there back to the border crossing. At the ATM (which was in a glorious air-con little glass room), Mary discovered her ATM card was missing. Crap. When Josh tried his, the mechanism for pulling the card in seemed off--it was pulling too slowly. We pulled it back out and tried again a few times in a few orientations before deciding we didn't really need to use it all that badly. As we were leaving, we spotted a guy standing nearby watching us, trying to look casual and basically failing. Sure enough, after we were a little ways away with our backs to him, he went briefly into the ATM, then went and stood around at the business next door watching the ATM. I've read about the scam where they put a hook in the ATM slot to capture cards before, and it's supposed to be big in Southeast Asia, but this was our first time seeing it in action! (We cancelled our missing card upon arrival at our hotel--don't seem to have been any bad charges on it.)

When we got back to the border crossing, we started asking for directions or a taxi to the "old bus station", the "real bus station", and the "public bus station", but no one would give us directions or a taxi ride. There were also none of the shared private mini-buses that our guidebook told us to expect at the border crossing. Our guidebook suggested a small town a little up the road where you can take real public transit to Angkor Wat (or at least could as of publication), but evidently the powers that be have wised up to that suggestion, and it cost almost as much to get there as to get to Angkor. Apparently somewhere this corrupt, you really do want the up to date travel guide.

Anyhow, one taxi driver offered us $30 for the whole taxi, which seemed pretty good to us by then if we could fine two more people. Soon we spotted a pair of English blokes getting mobbed and suggested splitting the taxi with them, which they happily agreed to. On the way, when the driver was out getting cash, they told us about the upcoming scam of being dropped at a hotel outside town where you have to pay another few bucks to the taxi driver's tuk-tuk friends. They were ready with their fake reservation in the part of town they wanted to go to (with the cheap beds), and sure enough our taxi driver tried to drop us somewhere random to take an overpriced commission hotel or overpriced commission tuk-tuk, as he "didn't know" where our hotel was. We refused to get out of the car. The English guys insisted that they'd already paid for the hotel rooms at the other place for all 4 of us, so staying at this hotel was out of the question, and said we'd deduct the cost of the tuk-tuk from the taxi fare if we weren't taken the right place. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we were finally at the hotel.

The hotel seemed like fine value, so we checked right in. In Thailand and Laos, unlike India, shopping around for hotels doesn't help much--prices are pretty flat for similar rooms. And our room isn't too bad, but they say they have free wifi, and 24 hours later it's still not working. Josh made them knock 20% off the price of the room for failing to have it as advertised, and I think if they still don't have it tomorrow (they said they'd get it fixed today), we will move to the similar place next door that does.

As you can no doubt imagine, Mary, who does not sleep so well on buses, even nice Thai public buses, was kind of grumpy by the time we got to the hotel, installed Skype on the ancient computers that were available instead of wifi, and cancelled her ATM card. Actually, she was still pretty grumpy the next morning when Josh woke her up at 7:00 AM all anxious to get out right away and upset that we'd overslept the 5:00 AM opening time for Angkor Wat. Instead, we took a rest day with Josh doing some research on options to get to Singapore, and Mary catching up on sleep. Much better.