My bus arrived earlier than it should.. I didn’t want to walk with my big backpack, so I went by tuktuk. And then I sat in front of the hostel door – it’s closed overnight. Eventually, some people leaving let me in, and I waited next to the pool for reception to open. Just down the road, I found the muslim quarter! And then went for noodle soup.
The hostel has a blackboard where people can enter what tour they want to take, and others can join to make it cheaper. A Pauline wanted a Angkor Wat tour for the next day, great! I was told she insisted on it being french,.. oh well.. I guess french it is, then. The next morning, 2 more people had signed up for the tour. The tuktuk arrived on time – at 4:30 or so, but the guide was nowhere to be seen. He had to be called by the tuktuk driver,.. Then we went to pick up Pauline who stayed somewhere else. But the guide didn’t know where. It took two tries, but then we found her. When we arrived at the ticket counter, we were late, and the guide wasn’t able to answer – or even understand – any questions about tickets/the tour. Until the end of ‘last year’ the site had an offer that whoever bought a one-day-ticket got access for two days. Internet still said that, however it was not the case anymore. A guy had tried and didn’t get in the second day. Damn. I should have come here first, and gone to Koh Rong Sanloem afterwards! 😉
We still made it for sunrise, and then got to visit all the planned temples and maybe even one more. But our guide was really hard to understand – even the french people said they really had to pay attention! And he didn’t understand me either 🙂 The others wanted to stop for some breakfast/lunch, and we went to one of the tourist restaurants just next to the temples. There was one restaurant next to the other, all looking exactly the same. Prices reflected the location. I didn’t eat – I had been to the bakery the day before and had brought some food 😉
Our tour ended in the afternoon, and around 5pm, I met Pauline again, to go back to Angkor Wat for those sunset photos (better light!) from the spot we found in the morning. Getting a tuktuk to go there via passapp was as easy as always. I guess we could have done the whole tour that way!
The next day we did a Floating Village Tour, however booked from the Onederz hostel and not ours – it was quite a bit cheaper and exactly the same thing 🙂 The tour was.. very relaxed – just sitting in different places all the time.. and also extremely touristy. Another girl in the group did the little 15-minute canoe tour through the mangrove forest with a local lady.. and later confirmed that they indeed stopped somewhere and she was told to buy drinks/snacks for the lady for extreme prices 😀 She didn’t even try to refuse. But I guess Internet was right about it being a scam.
I had dinner with Pauline at a tiny Indian restaurant, and at Tevy’s place, and managed to get a nice photo of myself eating a cricket – or whatever it was. Then there was a lot more iced coffee, noodles – both in soup and fried, and fruit shakes. And a few temples, to do something and not just hang out next to the pool.
To go back to Phnom Penh, I booked a ticket on a big bus to have my legroom 😉 The bus company had some bad reviews for stopping at a shitty restaurant in nowhere, forcing people to eat there. So I went to the little Indian restaurant and asked them what I could keep till the next day without a fridge. I ended up with some garlic naan and spent the lunch break on the stairs in front of the restaurant!