Cambodia, day 3

The alarm clock in my room didn’t work and I was nervous about relying only on my watch alarm and a wake up call (our wake up calls had been late the morning  before).  I was SO anxious about oversleeping, I woke up about every 45 minutes.  But, I didn’t oversleep!  It was impressive, all but 2 of the 56 showed up at 5am for the sunrise tour.

Angkor Wat is 1 of many temples in Siem Reap from the 12th century and is surprisingly well preserved, despite how many people visit. It’s actually depicted on the Cambodian flag, so you can see what a big deal it is.   It was originally built as a Hindu temple but converted to Buddhism.

We first had to stop and get our temple passes for the day (since we’d be coming back to see a bunch of other temples) and since it was 5am, we all look amazing in our pictures printed on our passes.  We arrived at the West gate of Angkor Wat about 20 minutes before sunrise and walked down the causeway toward the reflection pools.  Unfortunately, it was very cloudy so we didn’t see a sunrise, though the brightening of the sky was still a beautiful way to see Angkor Wat for the first time.

We headed back to the hotel for breakfast and then had to meet up again at 8am for the beginning of our day.  Our first stop was Ta Prohm, the temple most left in the state it was when it was re-discovered/ no longer neglected.  The jungle had started to encroach on Ta Prohm but hadn’t quite reclaimed it.  Trees grow out of the temple, some have bases on the roof of parts of the temple with their roots growing down over and throughout the temple.  Apparently Tomb Raider was filmed there (I’ve never seen it, but our guide kept talking about it…).  Anyway, I loved Ta Prohm.  There were so many rooms to walk through, and a lot of exploration to be done.   It was much more peaceful than any of the other temples we would see.  Except for the other tourists!  I’ve certainly noticed how Americans get their reputation as loud and obnoxious – because we are.  But there are some other groups that can fit right in there too, trust me.  I was so proud of how my group acted in the temples.

After Ta Prohm, we had a bit of a walk back to our bus and that’s when we were attacked by the street vendors.  And I don’t mean regular vendors, I mean adorable school girls (who weren’t in school) who were begging and pleading for you to buy their bracelets or postcards for almost no money.  It was heartbreaking – worse for me than India.  India they invaded your personal space but would leave; here they invade your personal space and walk with you and keep walking with you.  I am really good at saying no in these situations, but not this time.  I now own 25 new bracelets.

 We headed back to Angkor Wat to get a chance to walk through the enormous building.  We came from the East gate this time and were able to walk up into the 3rd level with some very frightening, steep stairs.  Way worse than the flour mill in Ghana.  But it was amazing once I got up there –  being able to look out the window over the complex, I got a feel for how insanely huge Angkor Wat is.  It was beautiful.

I spent more time up on that level than I had planned and had to walk quickly through the rest to make it back to the meeting point on time (very important when you’re trip leader!)  We boarded the buses and went back to the hotel for lunch and checkout.

Lunch was delicious, as always, I think I had some sort of curried stir fry.  I really can’t remember, but it was good.  And I also took advantage of the fresh pineapple and dragon fruit.  We don’t get that on the ship L  I met up with the representative from Destination Asia and gave her all the passports.  The plan was that I would be picked up from Angkor Thom early and be driven to the airport to pre-check in everyone.  Usually they had done it themselves, but this airport needed a representative from the group present so that the departure tax could be paid (unsurprisingly, Cambodia requires a $25 US fee from everyone leaving the airport internationally).

After lunch, we went to the Angkor Thom complex which has about 5 temples in it.  The first, Bayon, has the massive stone faces everywhere you turn.  They didn’t seem to be that much of a presence from the ground level, but once I climbed up to the top level, they were huge and stunning and literally everywhere I looked.  The temple wasn’t as big as Angkor Wat, but it felt like it was because there were so many passageways and small rooms.  I climbed down and headed to the Elephant Terrace, which is where the king would watch elephants be trained for battle.  Maybe.  At that point, I couldn’t tell if our guide was messing with us, or if he was being honest.  Regardless, it was also cool to see, but far less impressive than the 3 other temples of the day.

It was at this point that my guide’s big boss man came to pick me up.  He was actually fascinating and we had a good chat on the way to the airport.  He had lived in Siem Reap his whole life and made tourism his business.  He dropped me off to meet up with Sabrina who had gotten the passports from me earlier.  Nobody is allowed in the terminal without a ticket, but she told a little lie and smiled at the guard and we both entered the airport.  We got in line for the flight and things were going smoothly.   As always, I should’ve known it was going too easily.

The Vietnam Airlines representative told us that the policy of allowing pre-check in for large groups had changed and that every passenger had to be present.  Sabrina explained that she had done this 4 times in the past week.  They didn’t care.  Now, it’s at THIS point that I would’ve become more aggressive in my request and asked to speak with a supervisor.  That would be the American way.  And I could tell that’s what Sabrina wanted to do (she’s French and moved to Cambodia a month earlier to take the position with Destination Asia).  But, she’s learned quite a bit in her month in Cambodia and instead she became nicer, smiled more, complimented the person, and agreed to step aside.  It is only at THIS point that he started assigning seats (but refused to check us in).  I really feel like her approach was going to work on this guy, but then another employee came over and shut it down.  We were calling the group trying to find out where they were, and they were late but we were telling the airline they were parked outside trying to get their luggage together.  It was nuts.  Finally the group gets there, runs in and fills up almost the entire terminal.  THEN they start doing check in for 56 people, which took forever.  Sabrina went to pay the departure tax for a chunk of passports, which angered the airline woman who refused to go any further until she returned…. It was just a nightmare.  Trust me.

About 40 minutes later we got everyone checked in, departure tax paid, and through security and customs/passport control.  Our flight was, naturally, delayed but only 30 minutes this time and we had an uneventful flight back to Saigon.  The landing was frightening though.  I’m really happy to only have 2 more flights in the next couple months.

There was some bus drama waiting for us at the airport in Saigon, but the important thing is that we all got through customs and immigration and ended up back at the ship before 10pm.   And even more importantly, I had finished leading my first and last overnight trip.