My second day at Angkor Wat started badly. Again I was woken up at 4 AM by the dogs and had to wait until 7AM for the driver.
After stewing for a while, I decided I didn't like the plan that my driver had
come up with. From the pictures and descriptions in my guide book I had learned
that I
a. definitely need to see Angkor Wat at sunrise
b. have to visit
Bantey Srei, a spectacular small temple 30 km away from town in the early morning.
We were
planning on doing these on my last day, but I was worried about getting to
Bantey Srei and back in time for my flight.
So I decided I wanted to go
to Bantey Srei, then come back to see Preah Khan and a few other temples today,
and then for my last day see sunrise at Angkor Wat and some other nearbye
temple.
My driver, of course managed to veto this (why does he have veto
authority?) and insisted we had plenty of time to see Bantey Srei the next day.
And besides, we were going to be plenty busy today seeing "lots of
temples".
I gave in. We started at Preah Khan, which is another fascinating temple, with some similarities to Ta Prohm, but also has lots of
pillars and rocks lying around like the remains of the temples in greece. I
spent 2 hours walking around there, in part because I had run into this women
from India (originally from Australia) that I had run into a few times the day
before, and in part because it just was a fascinating place. My driver came in
looking for me "worried that something had happened to me". I didn't work out,
until later what this was about. Anyway, we visited only 5 temples on the big
route with "lots of temples." So we were done with these 5 by 2 PM (again I was
not told any of this - I would have spent more time in each temple if I knew we
were only going to 5 temples). I asked to see more temples. He wanted to charge
me $20 or more, depending on which additional temple I wanted to see (I was
paying him $15 for the day for the "big route" so this was unreasonable
additional charges. Petrol for a tuk tuk might have cost an additional $1-$2 to
see an extra far away temple, and probably it costs much less that that (I am
not sure about the gas mileage). Well now I knew why he came in looking for me
at the first temple. So I called it a day at 2 and we went back to town. At this point he told me that since Bantey Srei was so far away, we needed to go by motorbike which is much faster (and its illegal in siem reap to use motorbikes as taxi's...). Shit. The motorbike for an hour ride is going to be uncomfortable. While trying to figure out to do, and being exhausted from lack of sleep, I forgot to negotiate a price. I really was an idiot my entire time in Siem Reap.
Additionally, I felt like getting back at 2PM was a
waste of a half a day. Although it turned out that I needed the time in town
because....
The bad day continued, when trying to book a room in Luang
Prabang both my credit cards were declined, and the internet cafe I was in had
such a bad connection that it took me 2.5 hours of repeatedly calling my credit
card companies, and repeatedly getting disconnected, while having to answer very
loudly (so they could hear) the credit card companies security questions, while
an entire internet cafe can hear the answers as well as my card number (this is actually the 3rd time this trip that holds were put on my cards, often at the exact same time). In
general, my cards security has only been compromised a few times this trip, and
all of them were BY the credit card company itself, with its inane fraud
detection policies. At this point, totally exhausted, I finally managed to book a
room in Luang Prabang and then went off to get some dinner, thoroughly exhausted.
At dinner, I was invited to join this american couple from Santa Monica. It
turns out that the guy was a business professor who had gone to sloan (MIT's
business school). I had a nice chat with them and then went off looking through
the night market. There were 100 or show stalls there but only one of them was
doing business. It was the fish doctor. There was a tub filled with small fish,
and they charged people $3 for a 15 minute fish foot massage (you put your feet
in with the fish and they swim around and brush against it). I didn't do it, so
I have no idea if it feels good, but I do know the gimmick was great and there
were lots of people doing it. Finally, I went and saw a short video on Pol Pot,
went back to the guest house to go to sleep completely exhausted, since I had
been up since 4 AM for 2 straight days.
