Today, as part of our package with The Villa, we were accompanied by a guide, Sum, to the temples. Siem Reap has plenty of English speaking guides available, but we were not impressed by the first thing he said – “Sorry, I was out late last night and I probably smell” . He then spoke mostly through his hand for the duration of the tour.
To be honest, his tour was pretty poor. We overheard another guide and they seemed to had a similar lack of information. It seems from reading books about the place, there isn’t much to say… so I would strongly recommend that other visitors simply avoid having a guide. There isn’t much information and it only felt more awkward, and we were unable to explore ourselves – far better to go at your own pace.
However, the presence of the tour guide could not detract from what a truly spectacular place Angkor Wat is. We were both surprised at how huge it was – and how Angkor Wat was merely one temple of hundreds throughout the jungle. On our tour we took in Angkor Thom, Bayon, the Elephant Terrace and many others. Ta Phrom – the ‘Tomb Raider’ temple – was particularly beautiful – huge roots reclaiming the temple into the jungle.
We stopped for lunch provided by the hotel – tasty sandwiches, although we had added a few things from the mini bar to make it a bit more substantial.
We ate in the Villa restaurant that night – I had the all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet which was quit pleasant. At the time I suspected it of giving me food poisoning, but we eventually decided it was just the malaria pills. Laura had a chicken amok, but it was not as good as our food at the Amok restaurant itself.
So up to bed to play Scrabble and even watched a movie before bed – Music And Lyrics an enjoyable enough rom-com.
I’m just dying to go to Angkor Wat. My husband and I (then boyfriend) were supposed to go to Cambodia but caught a bad stomach bug in Thailand and were stuck there for the duration of our Asian mini-backpacking trip in 2002.