Footprint is run by a team of travelers, who love to explore, not just within our beautiful Vietnam but also love very much traveling outside Vietnam, leave more than just footprints to the outside lands - the world is awesome and waiting for our discovery. In this summer 2009, seven of us had an interesting tour 6 days 5 nights in deep of exploration on the Angkor land, the land of temples.
We flew with Vietnam Airlines to Phnom Penh, it was fine but a bit long than 3 hours, we had to make a transit to Vientiane for about 45 mins before, this is to note with you guys for your travels or your clients what to expect, the plane it self is not a big one, it’s a small one and it’s quite noisy, make sure your clients have some music to avoid this loudness of an old crafts.
Every one of us prepared the masks to avoid AH1N1, at the Noi Bai airport, we turned out to be the only group wearing the mask, it was a bit funny to those who were not in it but we felt safe.
As soon as we landed to the airport of Phnom Penh, we were warmly welcome by our local guide, his name is Ponleu, he welcomed us with smiles and quickly introduce us to the life of the Cambodian as this happened on our transfer from the airport to hotel.
One of the interesting things Ponleu said we should avoid saying OK in public as OK has been long for the sign for condoms in South East Asia that’s why to be rude to say so and if we wanted to buy this at the pharmacy, the Cambodian rather says it in a different way, not condom, not OK, “I want to buy some tissue”.
We spent only one night in Phnom Penh, the hotel we stayed was……. this was at first did not give us a good experience of the 3 stars hotel in Cambodia, none of the team made the complaints excepts my room on the fourth floor where the water were more like dripping that I could only deep my fingers in, not was for shower, so we got a change of the room to the 2nd floor which was better.
After visiting the Royal Palace, we were soon transferred to the bus for our bus ride 6 hours to Siem Reap, the bus was fine, not the brand new one but was clean and with the driver and the bus conductors - to whom my wife made some comments on his cold face when delivering his commentary of the journey to Sieam Reap, we got served some cold water and snacks but the aircon of the bus was not working that well in the heat of Cambodia.
We spent the rest of our time in Siem Reap, this is a nice provincial town with very few traffic, we stayed in Angkor Apsara and the Tara hotel, both are 4 star hotels and each has some uniqueness, I like the space of the Apsara which gave us lots of space and great view to the poor but I also felt in love with the meticulous decorations of the Tara.
Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Like in Halong Bay is one of the most important natural sites in the regions. Angkor stretches over some 400 km2, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. They include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations. UNESCO has set up a wide-ranging programme to safeguard this symbolic site and its surroundings.
We also visited the floating village on the river to Tonle Sap lake, most of them here are fisherman and lots of them were from Vietnam, we got the chance to visit a school which was interesting to hear them saying good Vietnamese and singing Ho Chi Minh song.
Hien - our product executive, tried her very best this time to learn for her better swimming, we were having lots of fun by the pool as we were watching Hien swimming and sometimes drinking a draught.
More of text, pictures and even video are coming….