Angkor Wat
in the late afternoon sun
1/28/06
tomorrow I'll go inside.....




It's the Chinese New Year and I'm here in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  I had planned to go to Hong Kong but decided to come here instead - after Chiang Mai and Pai, I really didn't feel like dealing with the big crowds.  But now I'm not so sure. When I came here 3 years ago,  I was travelling during the SARS fiasco. There was nobody here. All the hotels and  guesthouses were empty. Nobody was travelling. After I got here today, I hired a guy to take on a motorbike to take me to get my pass for the temples. The traffic was unbelievable! Tour bus after tour bus after tour bus full of  tourists. When they all pull in at once it's an absolute nightmare! It's the high season now - that's when everybody comes here. Wow! What a difference this time around. The last time I was here in April which is the low season - it's summertime and the heat is absolutely brutal. It's not bad no

I got here this afternoon got a room in a guesthouse - large very clean room w/AC and fan, TV, Private bath w/hot shower and little back porch for $15 USD.  There are cheaper places but I really didn't feel like looking around. This place looked just fine. This place is an old building. The ceiling in this room is about 16 feet high and in the hall it's about 25 -30 feet high.  The place stays fairly cool. It's about 85 degrees (that's about 28 - 29 for my European friends) out there right now.

After getting checked  in, I walked around, had some lunch and then met up with my motorcycle driver who took me over to get my pass/ticket to see the temples. 

 The last time I was here, foreigners were allowed to rent motorbikes but that has since been stopped. They claim that there were too many accidents. So - now you have to hire a guy with a car, motorcylce, or a tuk-tuk or rent a bicycle. Now anybody that owns a motorbike can make a couple of bucks riding the tourists around. Sounds like the perfect scam to me. It's acually not bad and very cheap.

Tomorrow I'll get up early to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat - hopefully it won't be a cloudy.......