Day 39, 40 & 41 – Siem Reap, Cambodia

Monday 7th September, 2026

It was a lazy morning today, we needed to finish packing our suitcases for the flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia and only found out last night that the luggage limit on the flight is 20kg. (Told to us at the Bangkok Intrepid meeting) Luckily we had offers from other group members that they were well under and could take some things from us if necessary. It was a bit poor that Intrepid had not informed us earlier of this fact, or give us an opportunity to upgrade allowance if necessary, Intrepid books the flights and we had no idea of flight time or carrier.

As it turned out it was 15:10 flight so that gave us plenty of time to sort things out (weigh our bags at the hotel), but more importantly return to Bakie's Roasters for another superb breakfast with delightful hosts!

Back in the hotel, checking our bags, we were both slightly over the 20kg limit. Belinda helped out by taking a packing cells from us and we also each took a packing cell out and used as carry on.

The AirAsia flight was about 1 hour flying time, and was on time or even a little ahead of time. Siam Reap Airport is immaculate, it was built just prior to COVID, and was meant to be a new satellite city for the area, as new developments in the old are not allowed to exceed the height of the tallest temple in the Angkor Village area. Unfortunately, new developments post COVID did not eventuate, and the whole tourist industry in Cambodia has not recovered since then either.

Our new tour leader Sak was there to meet us and guide us to the minibus for the approximately 1 hour drive to the Siem Reap old city. 10 minutes down the road, we hear a loud whooshing and release of air and the bus pulls over to the side of the road! A quick inspection by the driver reveals the A/C compressor has broken down ! We stay until the tour leader can get clearance of what to do, which was eventually determined to be travel to the next Cafe roadside stop and wait for a replacement bus to come and pick us up. This is exactly what happened, no-one was fussed and we got to our hotel well in time for our welcome dinner at a nice restaurant after a brief orientation walk of Siem Reap. Our hotel is very nice and right near the river, called the City River Hotel.

Tuesday 8th September, 2026

Alarm set for 6:30am, a lovely breakfast, bus left at 8:00am and we are headed to Angkor Wat Village to visit 3 separate temples, Angkor Wat, Ta Prahm (the Tomb Raider temple) and Bayan Temple. Sak, our tour leader was very connected to these temples and they were his home and playground as he was growing up. He was able to give great insight into the various rooms, carvings and history of each temple.

We spent 3 hours at Angkor Wat, the largest and best preserved of the temples, and 1-2 hours at each of the others. After a stop for lunch between temples we arrived back at the hotel at 17:00. The day was very hot and humid and we had done a lot of climbing of steps during the day, so we both jumped in for a badly needed shower to cool off.

As we had a large breakfast and lunch we opted for no dinner tonight, of course we had a coffee at Browns Coffee Lounge next door to the hotel, together with a Portugese Tart. We then went for a walk through the night markets and entertainment streets, topping off the night with an icecream from the super market.

Wednesday 9th September, 2026

We enjoyed our coffee so much, we decided to get up early, have breakfast and leave in time to duck next door to get a coffee before our bus left at 8:30am.

Today we are headed to Tonle Sap Lake, the largest lake in Cambodia where we board a boat and cruise along the waterways to see floating villages and daily life of those living there. There is still a separation between ethnic groups here with the Vietnamese ethnic group's village being completely away from the Cambodian based group, I.e. no integration.

We eventually reached the vast lake itself, we could not see the banks on the other side - our tour leader asked the boat driver to cut the motor so we could take in the peace and tranquility. Big mistake - he couldn't get it started again and we drifted towards the bank and into some trees. Being the low tourist season at present, we were lucky that another tourist boat happened by and after a bit of tinkering, jump started our boat and we could complete the trip back.

After our bus A/C breakdown and this, our group is starting a sweep on what the next breakdown will be !!

Back onto our minibus and we stopped at a lotus farm where we learned about the various uses of all parts of a lotus plant. Along with the flower, the nut, the leaf and the stem for various medicinal and nutritional benefits, the most surprising was that the stem produces a fiber that can be woven into quality fabric that is more expensive than silk!

We arrived back into the city in time for lunch, and then a group of 8 of us opted to visit the Hero Rat facility where we learnt about how rats from Tanzania are trained to sniff out land mines and other unexploded objects from the fields around Cambodia. The rats are able to check a tennis court size area and clear it in 30mins, where as men with metal detectors would take 4 days to complete the same size area.