Highlights of Vietnam and Cambodia

Day Eleven – 27 January 2015

Weather – hot and getting hotter

We have a leisurely morning and head off to the airport for our noon flight. Thom puts on Never Say Goodbye by Elton John and puts on the farewell video from Gavin. He’s not permitted in the airport since he’s not flying and we all give him a hug and a well deserved tip before we all wander into the airport.

We all get checked in and go through security and immigration. At one point, someone left a bag with our Vietnam vet and jokingly said ‘if you move, I’ll kill you’ and as she walked away he turned around and said ‘that’s what they said the last time I was here.’

What a great group.

It’s a short flight to Siem Reap and we’re met by our guide who we call Tran. He gets us aboard and gives us an introduction, noting that we might find the area has a distinctive Indian feel to it. He gives us an outline as to our itinerary for the next two days and notes that we need knees and shoulders covered if we want to climb to the third level of Angkor Wat. Then he gives us suggestions as to what we can do for the rest of the day like visit the museum or shop in the Old Market.

Our hotel is the Tara Angkor which is really nice. As we get sorted out, some complain that they weren’t given an itinerary. It seems Thom spoiled us by giving us a sheet the day before that detailed everything for the next day. I’ve only had that on a couple of tours. The rest, like Tran, write the itinerary up in the lobby for all to check.

I hook up with three others and we walk to the museum but since we want to check out the Old Market, we don’t want to spend the $12 to see it with so little time. Instead we start to walk and I look at the map. My feet say too far, so I suggest we grab a tut-tut which Tran said were okay. Everyone agrees and we flag one down and tell him we want to go to the Old Market. He says Old Market no good. He knows better market and proceeds take us to a tourist trap of high priced jewelry.

I forgot my old trick to prevent this. When the driver suggests a different location, we should have said we were meeting friends at the Old Market and that keeps them from trying to take us somewhere weird.

We walked out of the market and walked by the Raffles hotel and along the river.

At one point I laid my stuff down and didn’t realize my camera had come off my wrist. I walked about 50 m and turned around to take a picture and no camera.

I suddenly have a heart condition!

I skip back along the river and find it among the leaves. Holy cow! Luckily everyone was up on the sidewalk and didn’t notice it.

I catch up to the others and we go back to the street where one of the others is attracted to spring rolls on the street, so we sit down for a feast of 25 cent spring rolls and Coke. It hit the spot.

The kid at the next stall was really interested in my camera and loved pressing the buttons. With his mom’s permission I took a pic of the kid. Great expression.

Another block and we finally get to the Old Market and spend an hour getting some retail therapy. I find a silver dragon pendant for about $20. Tran later said not everything is silver but this looks silver. The vendor pointed out to me the ones that weren’t silver and you could tell the difference. The silver also got weighed and there was little movement in the price. The non-silver didn’t and was negotiable.

I picked up some scarves and as the sun went down, we found a great tut-tut driver and it was all of $4 for the trip back to the Tara hotel. I gave him $5 and he was delighted. Posed for pictures and all.