On the eve of the last day of the Uear of the Snake, we departed from Da Nang to Siem Reap. I thought only foreigners would travel on the New Year Eve, but I later found out we were wrong.
The plane is a small four row seating plane with propellers! The first time I ever sat in one and am very amused. Did you know you can see Ling Ung Temple's statue from the sky?
Very interesting and rather efficient! Btw, it's $20 for the visa.
Oh, apparently customs officer was on break:
So the first sign of trouble came when there was no sign of our guesthouse when we exited the airport. Almost every single hotel/guesthouse here provides free pick up/arrival, and I double checked with our guesthouse about our arrival... Luckily, there was wifi (though pretty spotty) at the exit, and I sent them an email as well as a text (through Skype) AND called the owner's cell through Skype. Unfortunately the wifi was too slow for the phone call to make sense, but I believe my text got through. Just as I was looking for other hotels to stay (the hostel looked very tempting), the tuk tuk driver for our guesthouse showed up.
I was already having some reservations about our guesthouse, especially seeing the area where it is located seemed fairly remote at night. I was also worried when the owner made me pay all four nights upfront and won't let me pay just for one night. However, their welcome smoothie was delicious!
Papaya flavored smoothie that was actually better than any I had in Vietnam!
I tried to look through the tours they offered. So the reviews online of their parent tour company, Capitol Tours, were terrible. They were however quite cheap. We would have considered a one day trip, except the hotel people were extremely passive aggressive about wanting us to book something. So instead, we just decided to see the next day after we leave about finding a way to the Angkor.
And also, there were no mosquito nets in our rooms, which prompted some serious research into infectious diseases in the area. Apparently dengue is quite the problem here... And also after spotting 8 geckos on the ceiling on the common balcony, I decided to dose myself off with 30% deet. Never mind the neurotoxic side effects...
The last unpleasant thing was the hot water issue. Later the next morning we found out that the hot water doesn't come on until after the water had been ran for about 30 minutes. On the Wikipedia web page about the preservation of the Angkor Wat, the over usage of underground water basins is threatening the destabilization of the structures, especially during the dry season. This and the fact that I do not support wasting water is the reason for my dislike of this guesthouse.
The free breakfast had the choice between bread with different variations of egg, noodles with soup (basically instant ramen), and fried noodles (stir fried ramen in pad see ew sauce).
Yep, this is instant ramen, in hot water, not even stove top cooked. The veggies must have been cooked separately.
The fried noodles were quite delicious, as I loved pad see ew. But, my friend who had it the next day said it wasn't very good as they didn't put enough sauce in.
The coffee was quite delicious. It wasn't Vietnamese coffee and didn't taste like the watered down instant coffee, but also didn't quite taste like it was from beans either... But, I had it with sweetened condensed milk, which makes everything delicious. :)
Alright, next entry on the ancient Angkor city. And the name of our guesthouse? Ta Som guesthouse. 0/10 would recommend. They do clean our room daily and appear to offer new towels daily and are usually pretty nice, but I still feel that location isn't good, I am having difficulty with help for finding tours, and the hot water issue REALLY bothers me. For $17/day, I would rather go to a hostel where at least I can more help and not scammed on some bad tour.
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