Day 2: Pottery Making & Tonle Sap Lake

 

Car Ride to Angkor Wat for Sunrise 

We woke up at 4.30 am and was seated at the receptionist area by 4.45am. A short while later the hotel main gate was slided open  and a few tuk-tuks came in to pick up other hotel customers for their sunrise view at Angkor Wat. We waited but our taxis did not arrive. I told the hotel receptionist about our missing taxis so he checked the hotel record to find out the details. Unfortunately he could not find any recorded instruction about our taxis request. I made my request the day before when we checked in, but it seemed that the request was not acted on or recorded. 

I was very disappointed as I thought it would be too late to get a taxis at such ungodly hour and we would surely miss the sunrise. The hotel staff was very helpful, he offered to send us to the sunrise site using the hotel van once another staff arrived to take over his shift. He assured us that we would not be late for the sunrise. 

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

When we reached the west entrance (main entrance) of Angkor Wat compound it was still dark. There were already many people all walking towards the temple. It was amazing that with so many tourists crowding into the entrance the security guards still managed to stop everyone of us and validated our tickets. By the time we reached the two ponds on the west front of the temple it was already packed with people. The best position to take photograph would be the first line at the banks of the two ponds.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat Temple

The sunrise was not as spectacular as we expected, it could be the wrong time of the year or there was too much clouds in the sky. 

Once the sky brightened the sunrise was considered over and all the tourists started moving away. Most of the tourists left and went back to their hotels. Very soon the place became deserted and the ambience of the temple ground became tranquil and silent.

Angkor Wat Temple at 6am

It was about 6.30am and we still had about an hour to wait before our hotel driver would return to pick us up at the west entrance. So we strolled leisurely around the ground. There were two structures, one infront of each of the two ponds. These structures were called libraries. I guessed they must be places for keeping records in the past.

Angkor Wat Temple - Library

Breakfast at the hotel

We were back at the hotel by around 8am and were too energetic to go back to bed so we headed straight to the dining room for our breakfast. We had two hours before our next activity so we decided to have a slow breakfast. The waiter came over to give us the breakfast menu and informed us that we could order anything on the menu and as many times as we wished.

Our Breakfast

My children ate eggs, poached and scrambled, I ate Khmer porridge and noodle. In most hotels where breakfast was included in the room charges, breakfast was normally served buffet style which meant they were precooked. In this hotel, besides the bread and pasteries all other foods were cooked only when we placed the order so they tasted fresher and nicer.

Khmer Pottery Center

I had booked pottery class for three of us (my son, daughter and me) at Khmer Pottery Center before leaving for Siem Reap. The fee was US$20 per person inclusive of transport to and from hotel. At 9.50am our transport arrived, 10 minutes early, it was a tuk tuk for four.

Tuk-tuk transport provided by Khmer Pottery Center 

On the way to the center, my hat got blew off. Before I could yell out the tuk tuk had already advance so much ahead. When the driver heard me talking about my flown away hat he surprised us by turning the tuk tuk around. He had to drive some 300 metres back before we found my flattened hat in the middle of the road. Before my son could get down the tuk tuk the driver already jumped of his scooter and picked up my hat.  

We were the  only three trainees in the class, our trainer was a lady and she demonstrated how to go about shaping a lump of clay into a small bowl. She could not speak English so another staff explained the process stage by stage. After one demonstration we were given our first piece of clay to work on.

Shaping the clay

Each of us had a personal tutor who would help us whenever we encountered a problem. After the first practice we were given two more lumps of clay to practice a second and third times under the watchful eyes of our personal tutors. After completing three practices we were ready to work on our own. We were given another three lumps of clay to create three items.  I had quite a lot of fun shaping the clay.

After we were done with our "bowls" we were given some pattern stamps, toothpicks, sticks and pencils and our tutor told us to put some design on our creations. We could carve anything we like and be as creative as we wanted. Since we were not in a rush to go anywhere we spent the rest of the morning "putting" design on our creations. When all were done, each of us selected one "master piece" for "firing". 

The "firing" would take about 10 hours and when completed these "masterpieces" would be sent to our hotel. 

Pottery was so fun! It was fun for me and my two grown up children and I could not wait to see the final products.

Craving Pattern on our creations

Tonle Sap Lake  

I had booked a sunset Tonle Sap Lake tour with Tara Riverboat at US$36 per person that included aircon van transfer to and fro our hotel and the lake, boat trip on the lake, dinner on Tara Riverboat anchored in the middle of the lake and an English speaking guide. 

Our guide and aircon van arrived at 3.00pm. Though they were early by 30 minutes we were ready and waiting for them as they had called earlier to inform us about their early arrival. The driver drove a short distance to another hotel to pick up another family. Unfortunately that family was nowhere to be found and finally after waiting for more than half an hour they appeared. We would have been less upset if the latecomers expressed some sort of apologies unfortunately they did not seem to care about causing inconvenience to others. The family had three adults and one child and spoke mainland Mandarin, so I guessed they must be China Chinese. 

The Tonle Sap Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. It has an attached river, Tonle Sap River, which is 120km long that connects the lake to the Mekong. The lake is smallest in size (about 3000 square Km)  during the dry season (March/April) and expands  five folds to about 16000 square Km by November. 

From our guide we understood that the raining season had started but the lake was still not at its largest. As our van travelled on the road, we notice that the houses on one side (down slope) of the road were built on 10 feet high stilts. Our guide told us that all these stilts would be covered by water in November when the water from the Tonle Sap Lake flowed onto the flood plain.

The journey  took about 20 minutes before we reached the jetty (Port of Chong Khneas). Our guide went off to get the tickets and gave us one each, I was not sure if the ticket was for the boat ride or for entrance to the lake.  We did not have to wait for long, a boat arrived and all the people from my van and another group went on to the boat, there were about 20 of tourists.

Port of Chong Khneas

The boat chugged up the river and we saw floating houses, big, small, very run down ones and some nice ones along the river. The river were full of activities, kids were paddling by on small sampan, some boats were speeding up and down the "road" water way, men were casting nets etc.

Floating village occupations: farmer, fisherman, shopkeeper

Most of the houseboats were "opened" and we could see into the interior of the houses as our boat passed by. Hammocks seemed to be a favourite "furniture" and we saw many boathouses had one strung across two vertical columns on their  "pouchs". It was amusing to see one occupant of a hammock forcefully swinging the hammock from side to side on a boathouse that was bouncing up and down with the water motion.

Boat houses

We passed a floating school with classrooms and children running about, another floating school with a basket ball court on its upper deck, a floating church, a floating farm, a floating market. This was no doubt a real live-in floating village!

Church and School

The boat stopped at a crocodile farm, there were just a few crocodiles lying in an enclosure quite lifelessly, there was not much to see. The only interesting part was walking up to the 3rd level of the farm which was an open deck. From the high point I could see a huge body of muddy water ahead. That was the lake.

Siem Reap River

Our guide told us that the depth of the lake was still quite shallow at this moment so the water looked muddy. By October-November the water depth would have been much higher and at that time the lake water would be clear.  After about 40 minutes at the crocodile farm we moved back on to the boat and headed toward the lake.

From a distance we could already see Tara Riverboat, it was huge and was anchored on the lake a short distance from the where the river joined the lake.

Tara RiverBoat

From the Tara Riverboat website, the photos of the boat looked much newer than the actual one. I guessed those pictures must have been taken many years ago. We went up the riverboat and were guided up to its 2nd deck. 

The 2nd deck was sort of "half open", there were no walls just simple railing all round. At the front was a drink bar serving hot and cold drinks and beer. Dinner had been prepared and our guide invited us to start our meal. It was a buffet meal, food taste was pretty decent, it would have been better if the food had not already cooled down. 

Dinner on board Tara RiverBoat

After dinner we stay on the deck to enjoy the view. The view was not fantastic but because the lake was so huge and calm that it gave me a sense of peacefulness. I did not mind sitting low in my chair, propping my legs on the railing and staring into the great big body of water.Many others had also finished their dinner and we were already lying on the hammocks that were strung near back of the deck.

Relaxing after dinner

After a while I went up onto the 3rd deck to explore. It was a open deck and was very windy. From the 3rd deck the view was a slight improvement over that from the 2nd deck.  I would have stayed up there longer unfortunately as I walked on the deck I kept walking into sticky spider webs that criss crossing all over the place. The web kept hitting my face and I had a hard time brushing them off under the strong wind that kept blowing the webs back onto my body.  It was funny how these webs stayed intact under the strong wind till I walked into them. I wondered why the staff of Tara Riverboat  did not bother to keep the 3rd level web free, so as to give customers a better experience. In fact even at the 2nd deck there were many spider webs but just not as much as that on the 3rd level.

We saw the sunset, unfortunately again nothing as spectacular as the ones I saw at Tara Riverboat website, probably wrong time of the year again. It was about 7.00pm when we were transferred back to the little boat and left Tara Riverboat.

Back on the river leading to the jetty, we saw a different scene. There were much less activities on the water as the villagers were settling down into their boathouses. We saw more home based activities like cooking, washing up and eating dinner together. The sky had darkened and each boat house was lighted by one or two dim bulbs 

Soon we reached the jetty and our guide brought us back to our hotel.

Floating Village(Evening Scene)

Night Swimming

Instead of relaxing in our rooms we decided to relax in the swimming pool. It was just so convenient to have a pool a few steps from the doors of our rooms. Again we had the entire pool to ourselves. We swam, floated, somersaulted, dived and we relaxed together.  I tried sleeping on the half submerged incline chair unfortunately my body kept floating up and away from the chair into deeper water. The warm water of pool made me lethargic and how I wished there was a seat belt that could be used to tie me to the chair and allowed me to take a short nap in the pool.  Wishful thought.

Day 1: Temple Visit

Siem Reap International Airport

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap took about 2 hours. After the plane landed we walked down onto the tarmac and walked into the airport building. The building looked like a country resort very unlike the modern building of other international airports.

Tamac of Siem Reap International Airport

On entering the airport we were told to fill up a health declaration form, so there was a mad rush to get the forms, to find pens, to fill it up and to hand it to a female staff who stood blocking our path to the immigration counters.

Queuing at Immigration Counters

After we passed the immigration counter, my husband told us that the immigration officer asked him for 小费  (some money) in Mandarin. By husband replied in English saying that he did not understand and the officer gave up after a few tries. 

What a way to spoilt the image of a country, by greedy corrupted officer!!

Happy Angkor Tour

The instant we walked past the custom we could already see our guide as he was holding a big card with my name printed on it. Our guide's name was Jimmy and  though our conversation I found out that he and the van driver came early to the airport, two hours ahead of our arrival time. I was puzzled as they were fully aware of our expected time of arrival so why the need to come to the airport so early. His reply was that there might be some unforseeable situation that cause us to reach Siem Reap early. I did not understand the rationale of his reasoning because usually it would be a flight delay rather than early arrival. Even if it was an early arrival it would just be 10 to 20 minutes earlier and not two hours earlier. Well, I felt they were being overly considerate but I should not be complaining. 

To make sure that we did not have any misunderstanding on our temple visit, I requested Jimmy to run through the itinerary of the day. In my email to his company I had requested for four temples, they were Angkor Wat, Ta Phrom, Angkor Thom and Bakheng for sunset. Jimmy named the first three and another four place but left our Bakheng so I told him I wanted Bakheng to be included. Though he said there might not be enough time, I insisted he included Bakheng and he agreed. He had also included a after dinner Aspara Dance Performance which I told him I had informed his company that we did not want to attend. So with our destinations for the day settled we were ready to set off.

Temples: Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, Angkor Thom, Phnom Bakheng & Our Hotel: Angkor D'Tresor Resort

Traveller Sim Data Card

I had done my research on getting a traveller sim card in Siem Reap that would give us 24/7 internet access for just three days. After reading many reviews online about various tourists experience with Siem Reap data SIM card I felt that SMART telco traveller sim card would be a good fit for us. It costed US$5 for 1.5GB valid for 40 days on 2G/3G/4G LTE. 1.5GB which was more than sufficient for our usage. The traveller SIM came with free 10min and free 10sms which were not relevant to us as our focus was on the data plan. Best of all SMART had a booth at the airport just outside the main door. 

Spare handphone as router

I had brought along a spare phone to be used as a mobile wireless router for us four. The idea was to get it installed with the traveller sim card and turn on its hotspot feature. The four of us would then connect our own mobile devices (phones and tablets) to the spare phone using tethering. 

When we walked out of the Airport main door I could already see a few booths on the right side of the door. I zoomed in to the SMART booth. One of its female staff was super efficient, in less than 5 minutes after I told her I wanted a US$5 traveller SIM card, she took my passport, filled up the registration form, installed the sim card into my spare phone, activated the card, connected to internet and collected the payment from me. Wow that was real quick. 

In the past I had used the same spare phone as a mobile wireless router so all our other mobile devices already had the spare phone hotspot SSID setup in them. So the moment I activated the hotspot feature all our mobile devices were connected to internet. So quick and convenient.

Temple Ticket

Our first destination was Angkor Wat but first we needed to get our tickets. Jimmy explained that we had to carefully keep the ticket which would have a photo of our face as we would have to produce it at all the temple entrances. He said that the security guards were very diligent in their checks, so if the face of the ticket holder did not match the photo on the ticket, entry to the temple would be denied. He cautioned us about the non-waterproof ink that was used to print the photo and emphasized that we had to keep our ticket dry all the time.

Entrance Ticket

At the ticketing booth there were many people but the queue progressed quite fast. One by one we had to be photographed before being issued a ticket.

The tickets came in one-day, three-day and seven-day entry types. Printed on the ticket was my face and the date of entry and date of expiry. We bought the three-day entry ticket as we intended to return the next day for the sun rise scene. On our tickets the date of entry was the date of purchase and the date of expiry was seven days later. Which meant that beside the date of purchase I could have two other days of entry to be done with a week. 

I read somewhere on the internet that if you were to buy the ticket near to the closing time of the day, you would be able to get into the temple on the date of purchase and again the next day. As for the seven day entry ticket the expiry date of the ticket would be a month. The cost of the tickets were US$20, US$40 and US$60 for the three types of tickets.

After getting the tickets, Jimmy directed the driver to drive to the East entrance of Angkor Wat. He told us that East entrance was less crowded. At the entrance there were quite a number of security guards checking the tickets. After validating my face and photo the guard punched a hole on the reverse side of the ticket on the number that represented the day of the month and let me entered the temple gate.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat means Capital Temple, it was built by a Khmer King in the early 12th century as a Hindu temple but gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century.

Angkor Wat Temple Layout

The temple looked very majestic. The structure looked very intricate and very complex. It must have taken a lot of craftmen many years to build the temple. The entire complex is rectanglar in shape. Outside the outer wall is a moat. Within the wall are three rectangular structures stacked one on top of the other, each progressively smaller than the other. On the third level stands five towers.

Angkor Wat

The first two levels looked were like covered walkway with many columns holding up the roof. Between the 1st and 2nd level was a huge ground of green grass.

Grass patch separating the 1st level and 2nd level

We passed the 2nd level and came to the base of the five towers. The towers were massive gigantic structures sitting on layers and layers of steps. It was hard to imagine how one could go up to the towers.

Five Towers of Angkor Wat (as seen from 2nd level)

As we round a corner we saw two sets of steep wooden steps leading up and down to the main entrance of the third level where the five towers sat. There was a long queue of tourists leading right up the base of the steps going upward.

Coming down the stairs from the towers 

Jimmy told us that there was a quota as to the number of people allowed on the third level at any one time. He said that once we were up there to stay for about 20 minutes and then coming down. 

Though the queue was long, it moved very fast. When I reached the start of the queue a guard sitting under a huge umbrella gave me an entry tag before allowing me up the stair. I guessed once all the tags were given out it would mean that the quota was reached. The tags would not be running out soon as the number of people coming down and returning the tags were as many as those going up. 

The view from the third level was spectacular. The sky was so blue it contrasted brilliantly with the white clouds, surrounding the temple was a massive forest and its deep natural green colour emphasized the brown-grey age old structures of the temple beautifully. 

Photo taken from 3rd level of Temple

The third level consisted of four open air square courtyards forming a larger square. At the each corner of the larger square stood a tower and the fifth tower stood at the centre of the larger square. The towers were linked by covered walkway overlooking the open courtyard.

Open courtyard

We stayed up on the third level for more than 30 minutes before going down the steep steps to meet Jimmy who was sitting under the shades talking to other guides. I noticed that all the guides regardless of which tour agencies they came from wore the same uniform (orange top and black pants).

Jimmy took us back to the first level but this time to the gallery areas where we sawa long wall full of craving. The craving depicted historical victorious war events of the Khmer dynasty. Jimmy tried his best to explain the story that each set carving was telling, I tried by best to be attentive since my hubby and children shown no interest in the stories at all.

Gallery of Angkor Wat

It was already close to noon and we had been in the Angkor Wat for close to three hours. I was worried if we would have enough time in the day to explore the other temples. Jimmy assured me that only at Angkor Wat we needed more time to explore, as for the other temples there were much smaller and could be explored in a short time.

View of Angkor Wat taken from the West Side

In the morning, Jimmy brought us into Angkor Wat compound through the east entrance which was less crowded and was good for photography. By about noon we were done with Angkor Wat and Jimmy walked us toward the west entrance which was the actual main entrance of Angkor Wat. At the west side in front of the temple was two huge ponds, Jimmy told us that the banks of these ponds would be the best locations to take great sunrise photoshots of Angkor Wat in the morning. 

The west entrance was indeed much more grander than the east entrance, it had a long wide walkway that started from temple complex all the way to the moat. As I walked along this walkway, I frequently turned around to look at the temple complex behind me, I could not stop myself from picturing how the scene would look like during the hey days of this empire. How the king and his entourages would approach the temple from this walkway, would the king be walking, or would he be sitting on a sedan chair carried by mascular bearers or would he be riding a horse driven chariot.

This Khmer empire that built such a wonder of a Temple must indeed be a rich, power, advance and great society.

West Entrance (Main Entrance)

AirCon Van Comfort

The driver of our van was already waiting outside the west entrance when we exited the entrance, he handed to each of us an ice-cold face towel and a bottle of ice cold water. I felt so good to wipe away the grim on my face and the chilled towel felt good on my neck and arms. It was about 12.30pm and the place was hot but we  felt so contented and comfortable sitting in the van under the full blast of cold aircon as we drank the ice-cold bottled water. Apparently chilled towels and bottled water were part of the complete package for the rental of an AirCon van.  An expense that was well worth the value!

Ta Prohm Temple

Ta Prohm was the second temple of the day.  This is another 12th century temple which was a a Buddhist Temple dedicated to the mother of King Jayavarman VII.

Its dilapidated state of ruin was also where its beauty shone. It was amazing to see the powerful force of nature encroaching onto man-made structures and would have totally buried the temple if Ta Prohm had not been discovered and preserved for tourists.

Ta Prohm

Many of the corridors in Ta Prohm were impassible, blocked by piles of fallen craved stones. We were not sure how safe and stable the structures were so we followed Jimmy very closely, walking where he walked.

It was pretty amazing to see these gigantic trees growing on top of the roof of the temple and their roots snaking around the temple structure penetrating into cavities gripping onto the temple walls. 

Jimmy told us it was these trees that had made Ta Prohm famous and I definitely agreed. 

Ta Prohm was the movie site of Lara Croft - Tomb Raider.

A root engulfed statue

Lunch at a local Restaurant

We had our lunch at a local restaurant, we ate curry chicken, stirred fried vegetable and rice. The taste was very similar to that of Thai cooking. Our meal costed about US$25 which I felt was a bit on the high side considering that the meal was rather simple and we were eating in a local restaurant with no air-conditioning, but this was expected as these were restaurants serving tourists.

Lunch

Ta Nie Temple

After lunch, Jimmy brought us to a temple called Ta Nie Temple. To get to the temple the van had to drive over a stretch of some unsealed road which made the ride quite bumpy and uncomfortable. We arrived at a deserted clearing and saw a temple ruin in front. Beside us there was no other people around. I had no idea why was Ta Nie Temple being included in our itinerary and what was its significant. In my research for temples of Angor, I did not remembered Ta Nie Temple being mentioned.  Jimmy said something about wanting us to visit an authentic ruin and not one that had been somewhat restored so as to welcome visitors.

Ta Nei

Ta Nei was small temple and its state of ruin was very bad. There were wooden props everywhere holding up the doorways. Jimmy lead us through into the temple for a quick round. I guessed the best time to visit Ta Nie would be either very early in the morning or late in the evening as I felt that the dim light would gave this isolated temple a mysterious and eerily atmosphere.

Fallen walls

Ta Nie Temple

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom was the last capital of the Khmer Empire and was built in the late nineteenth century. It was a fortified city enclosing residences of priest, officials of the palace and military as well as buildings for administering the kingdom. There were no evidence of these residences as they were made of wood and had perished long ago. At the center of Angkor Thom was the temple of Bayon and it is still standing there today.

Angkor Thom

From far Bayon Temple looked like a structure with many towers of intricated carving. It was only when I got near that I realised that the craving were huge gigantic faces.

Faces of Bayon Temple

There was a center tower which was also the highest one, near the top it had  four faces each facing a direction (north, south, east and west). Immediately below were more faces facing outward in a circle.  Around the tall central tower were shorter towers about 37 of them as according to Jimmy and each had four faces. 

Interesting each gigantic face looked like it was mediating. The eyes looked shut and there was a slight upward curve to the mouth. The faces were all similar with no distinction to each of them.


Phnom Bakheng

I had seen a lot of beautiful pictures of sunset over Phnom Bakheng and was looking forward to go there just before sunset. Unfortunately it began to rain heavily and we had to abandon our plan to visit Phnom Bakheng. I could see that the rain had turned the roads into one muddy mass and when Jimmy explained that it would be very difficult to walk up the steep path to Phnom Bakheng we could only agree to end our temple visit tour for the day without Phnom Bakheng.

Our Hotel Angkor D'Tresor Resort

The resort was located in the outskirt of Siem Reap and was off the main road. The van had to drive over some narrow bumpy mud roads to get to our hotel. The hotel had a tall concrete wall surrounding it which served two purposes, it provided privacy and security as the only way to get into the hotel was through the main gate. 

Tresor d' Angkor

Once we got past the main gate we could already see the "resortness" of the hotel. Beautiful and exactly the way I had seen it on the internet. 

Inside Angkor D' Tresor

I picked this hotel for our 3 night stay because it was a small hotel in term of number of rooms but large in terms of space. I had also read many good reviews regarding this hotel and since the prices were reasonable I booked this place.

Our Rooms (Double and Twin with connecting door)

We were guided to a bungalow with two rooms and a private roof top. The rooms had separate entrances but internally they were interconnected by a communicating door.

The rooms were huge and lovely. They were fully aircon and the floors were wood finished. Cosy, modern looking, clean and cool were the adjectives I would use to describe our rooms.

Our rooms

Toilets in rooms

 Relaxing swim

The pool was just outside and we could not resist changing into our swimming costumes and jumping into the pool. Wow, it was a salt water pool and the water was warm! It felt so nice as instead of feeling a chill when I jumped into the water I was enveloped by warm soothing water. I felt so relax lying on the half submerged incline pool seat as I let the warm water loosen my stiff muscles. The four of us had not been swimming together for a long time. It was so fun to fool around in the water especially when we got the whole pool to ourselves.

Roof Top Dinner Birthday Dinner

Dinner was a private family affair on the roof top of our bungalow unit.

Private dinner on the roof top of our Units 

The roof top was lighted with candle lights around a dining table set for four. Tola, our personal waiter for the evening breezed to and fro between the kitchen and the roof top to serve us the dishes. We had two western meals and two Khmer meals. Each meal was a six course dinner.

As Tola served us our food he would explain how each Khmer dish was prepared, his explanation help us to appreciate the food as we savoured the various the herbs and ingredients that went into them.

Our Dinner

The finale of the dinner was a surprise birthday cake for my hubby. Tola and two other staff brought the cake to our table singing Happy Birthday song to my hubby. 

This was the first time I managed to spring a surprise on my husband. He knew that we were having a birthday dinner but he did not expect a cake as we were out of town and it would not be easy for me to get a cake for him. He had no idea that before we left for Siem Reap I had preplanned with Keo, the hotel manager, to get him a birthday cake. 

Yat Thong's  Birthday Cake