Our first day in Siem Reap and the hellish ride

Slightly hungover, we started at 10:00 am (as we apparently agreed the night before) with Mr. Sonar on the big Tuk Tuk tour through Angkor Wat. Before entering the Angkor area, you have to buy a ticket at a station about 5 km away. This ticket is personalized with a photo and costs $65 US dollars for 3 days. Unfortunately, the photos on the passes seem to be edited and stretched before printing. We can't explain the scary image otherwise 😂.

The first day of the big Angkor tour took us to four 'smaller' and lesser-known temples. These temples, like their big brother Angkor Wat, are about 1,200 years old and are hidden in the middle of the jungle. When entering the temples, you feel like Indiana Jones 🤠. You have the sublime feeling of discovering the temples for humanity. In general, it is incredible to see what an incredible feat of construction it must have been back then. The particularly beautiful thing is seeing how the jungle is reclaiming everything today. Since we had some time left until sunset after the temple program, Mr. Sonar suggested that we also visit the Floating Villages. And so we drove about 1 hour with the Tuk Tuk on the local highway. We felt a bit small next to the road-unworthy trucks with our vehicle. But when bicycles came towards us, we didn't worry anymore. The Floating Villages are absolutely worth seeing. But if you have a sensitive soul, you should be prepared. It is by far the poorest place in Cambodia that we have seen so far. A much larger number of huts on stilts than expected can be found along the Siem Reap River. Many little playing children sit on the riverbank and greet us with excitement. And probably the 100 other boats that had passed by or will pass by afterwards. Arriving at the Tonle Sap Lake, we were able to enjoy the sunset, as you can enjoy it after a previous ride through misery. If you are familiar with the movie 'Final Destination,' you can imagine our return trip to some extent. But first of all - we survived 🥳. Our boat driver initially rammed a small local boat with a woman and child, and only narrowly avoided hitting a tourist boat due to stumbling. Back on the shore, we looked for Mr. Sonar and set off in the dark towards the guesthouse. Mr. Sonar drove most of the time without lights on the unpaved road covered in red dust, passing by other Tuk Tuks. The road was incredibly dusty. As soon as we were overtaken by one of the dozens of SUVs, the dust was so thick that we couldn't see or breathe. The visibility was at most 3 meters. In a small village on the roadside, a cow stood in our way, and this time we managed to pass it only just without it welcoming us inside the Tuk Tuk. At the 'highway entrance,' we feared that we would never be able to get on. But a very friendly policeman stopped the oncoming traffic for us (in Germany, he would first have reprimanded us for the lack of lights and made us pay a fine) to get to the other side. What Mr. Sonar did not consider was the traffic on the other side. Two loudly honking trucks raced towards us. Only when the policeman loudly drew Mr. Sonar's attention to it did he stop driving. As I said, we survived. Arriving at the guesthouse, Harry greeted us with the words 'I have a problem.' However, he only meant his thirst for beer and that he didn't want to drink alone. After this ride, Christian had certainly earned his beer. Nathalie wanted to 'freshen up briefly' and then realized that 'freshening up briefly' was not possible at all, considering how dusty we looked. Even the eyelashes were covered with a brownish-red layer of dust. Finally, after taking a shower, we made it past Harry and went into town to end the evening there.