Temples of Swoon -- Day 3.5

6:30am We are suppose to be flying to Siem Reap where Angkor Wat and other ancient temples are but when my Tuk Tuk arrives at Greg's hotel there seems to be a crisis. The hotel can't seem to open the safe with all Greg's money in it. We certainly can't leave it behind so we have to wait for the manager to arrive from home, she has the master key….

She's here, it's open, let's go and try to beat the rush hour traffic to the airport. the city is already buzzing with cars but we manage to get there with enough time for coffee. Kidist texts us worried that we didn't make it because she is caught in a horrible traffic jam on her way to work. (Did I mention that Kidist is working with the UN for the summer prosecuting war criminals of the Khmer Rouge?)

When it's time to board I'm shocked at how small the plane is. No wonder I'm in seat 6A--there is no first class on this puddle jumper. Luckily the 45 minute flight only takes 30 minutes. we hear from Kidist again and she still hasn't made it to work--it was faster to fly to another city than drive thru rush hour traffic.

We take a Tuk Tuk to our 'hotel'--The Avatar Hotel. Not exactly what we were expecting. I don't think the term 'avatar' existed when they built this hotel, obviously modern bathrooms didn't exist then either. they changed my room 3 times before they had something almost acceptable. We drop our stuff and head to the temples.

First temple is Ta Prohm, the one everyone knows from ‘The Temple of Doom.’  There are a million people out there trying to sell you stuff. It’s also blazing hot!

Ta Prohn temple

I guess because I’m not a big Indiana Jones fan I wasn’t that excited. It was interesting, especially since it was built in the 1100’s but I can tell I’m not going to want to do this ALL day.
Hot and bored, I insist we skip the middle temple and go straight to the BIG one, Angkor Wat.

OMG! Now that’s a temple. Angkor What!  Angkor Wat is big, beautiful and so impressive!  This I can get into. We were there for hours—doing panorama shots, climbing to the top and taking in the magnificence of it all. It’s so elaborate and to think it was built almost a thousand years ago…

I lost my head

Oh I found it!

As we are leaving it starts to rain and we can’t find Wyn. He was to meet us at 4:30 but he later told us that he fell asleep—easy to do in this heat. No problem, we were already drenched in sweat, from all the climbing in the sun so the rain was refreshing.






We ask Wyn to help us find another hotel (we want a real shower.) The first hotel he takes us to has better hallways but the bathrooms are, well let’s just say the same people that built the temples probably used them. So that would be a “NO” for that h-old-tel.

Ta Prohn Hotel

Lemon Pledge

                           

Finally we arrive at the Ta Prohn Hotel (yes the same name as the 1st temple we saw.) It’s across the street from the Night Market and near Pub Street (think Cambodian Bourban Street.) When we walk in we notice everything is wood carving and Greg says it smells like Lemon Pledge.  Okay I can live with that, but what about the bathrooms? Ding, ding JACKPOT—beautiful marble bathroom with full tub & shower plus another stand alone shower, real cable and a balcony to boot. We’ll take 2 please. Lemon Pledge wins out!

Now to gather our things from the Avatar. We thought we'd have a problem but I think they were surprised we even left our stuff there. Booking.dot.NO!

Ahh, after visiting the Night Market then food and drinks on Pub Street we cap it off with a $3 thirty minute foot massage that includes a free beer and back/shoulder massage---(yes I did say $3!) the Batmobile Tuk Tuk takes us to Lemon Pledge and HBO for a good night’s sleep…

Batmobile Tuk Tuk