Today was meant to be a travel day and it mostly was. The 9am bus was as late as I wanted to leave it, after I was told its 6 hours to Siem Reap. The hustle and bustle of the bus station was easily navigated and I boarded the bus and off we went. There were two stops on the way, plus numerous more to pick up and drop off passengers. At one stage we had passengers sitting on small plastic stools in the aisle.
I made it to Siem Reap about an hour later then scheduled. I suspect they never ever do the trip in 6 hours. My guest house had a tuk tuk pick me up for free. Siem Reap has a lot of traffic, rivalling Phnom Penh. On arrival I received all the usual greetings and offers. I was offered a trip to Angkor Wat to see the sunset and also to buy my ticket, which wouldn’t count today. So I took up the offer albeit costing $4 for the tuk tuk and then the ticket to get into the park is a whopping $40 for a 3 day pass. To put that into perspective, my 4 nights accomodation is costing me $36 and is actually pretty new and very nice.
Bridge to Angkor Wat
Then there was the people shock. I’ve never seen so many people before. For every western tourist there were about 10 asian tourists. I wondered where they all stayed and then on the drive back into town noted all the big classy hotels. funny how the guest houses are full of westerners and the big hotels are full of rich asian tourists from Japan and korea mostly.
Anyway I have a personal Tuk-tuk driver for tomorrow. He wants $12 for the whole day to drive me around. Seems very reasonable given the scale of Angkor Wat and the fact its not even the biggest temple, plus the numerous temples in the jungle kilometres away.
Angkor Wat
Happy New years to everyone. I was going to head into the main street tonight but its just crazy there right now. Plus I think an early riser will get the less people at the temples.