Home » Thailand Cambodia » Thailand and Cambodia 2000 - Part One - Bangkok & Siem Reap

The first thing I do when I move into a new hotel room is to check out the view.

Thailand and Cambodia 2000 - Part One - Bangkok & Siem Reap

Dougburnett
2003-11-22 17:55:13

Displayed times (last time: )

I got a visa. We had been given the application to fill out on the plane. In the terminal I turned it in along with my passport, one passport photo and $20. In less than 2 minutes I got my passport back stamped with a Cambodia visa.

Next, I went to the taxi desk and arranged for a ride to my hotel - I already had a reservation. The fee is $5. As the ruins at Angkor are spread over a very large area, most visitors hire either a taxi or a moto (a small motor bike with a driver) to take them around each day. Unless you have made other arrangements, in all likelihood the fellow who drives you to your hotel will also be driving you around Angkor. This is not mandatory, of course, but it is customary, so there was a little getting-to-know-each-other that went on during the ride in.

My driver, Lin, wanted to know the standard stuff: where was I staying and how long would I be here. I wanted to know how well he spoke English and what he wanted to charge me. By the time I got to my hotel, The Bayon, I was satisfied with his command of English but we were still haggling over price. He wanted $20 a day - the standard rate - for the nearby sites but wanted an additional $20 if he took me to Banteay Srei, which was only about 20 km father. I thought this excessive, so I just agreed to have him drive me for one day - we would wait and see what happened after that. At the hotel, I checked in and put on my shorts: it was getting hot. Then we took off to see Angkor.

Angkor is a collection of 100 or so temples built between the 7th and 11th century. You could spend weeks and weeks seeing them all, but with only a short time I needed to focus my attention. On the way Lin and I discussed what I wanted to see and then he suggested the best order.

At his recommendation we stopped at the Bayon first. It's a huge temple that sits in the middle of the largest complex at Angkor ...