Spontaneity meets Crazy Harry

We walked along the River Boulevard in Phnom Penh for the last 1.5 hours and wanted to book a ferry for tomorrow at 7:00 am to cross the Tonle Sep to Siem Reap. But surprise, our search was unsuccessful. According to the boat rental, the water is too low 🧐. We still need one more ferry to complete our transportation and we would have liked to see the floating villages near Siem Reap too...

So now we are sitting at the pier in Phnom Penh in a café at 1:15 pm, contemplating what to do next. In Phnom Penh, we have seen almost everything (except for the Silver Pagoda and Wat Phnom). We are also a bit tired of all the hustle and bustle. Originally, we wanted to use our rooftop pool this afternoon, well... 🤔

Thanks to the internet, we booked a flight for 5 hours from now 😂. So now we will fly to the Angkor Wat City for €100 per person 💪. We also booked our accommodation for €15 per person per night, a lovely little boutique guesthouse - Dream Mango Villa.

Harry, the owner of the guesthouse, also arranged the airport transfer for us in a tuk-tuk (included in the price) after a short email exchange. Now we just need to get to the airport. Since we have plenty of time, we can also tick off the last points with the Silver Pagoda and Wat Phnom 😊.

After we finished that, we quickly dashed to the hotel and packed our backpacks. T-minus 2 hours until takeoff.

The pre-arranged tuk-tuk arrived at the hotel after 67 seconds and drove towards the airport as requested. What we didn't consider in our entire calculation: rush hour 😳🙈

While the journey from the airport to the hotel took about 30 minutes, we had already been standing for 30 minutes, just 3 km away from the hotel. But the clock was ticking! The fact that our tuk-tuk driver seemed to be around 12 years old and apparently just got his driver's license yesterday (if they even have something like that here) was not exactly reassuring in that situation. Hence his very cautious driving style. Normally that's good, but not now...

About an hour after starting the drive, we were suddenly overtaken by a presumably English-speaking moped rider who was smoking and shouted at us while driving if we were also going to the airport. He had to go there himself but had gotten completely lost 😂. So now we were driving in a convoy, together towards doom 🙈. We were leading, he was smoking and following behind.

50 minutes before departure, we finally reached the departure hall, got off the tuk-tuk, and quickly headed towards the baggage drop-off. Suddenly, the lights went out there 😳! But the young lady behind the counter saw our slight rising panic and quickly turned the lights back on 😀. After that, everything went according to plan!

The flight in the small propeller plane only took about 45 minutes and shortly after, we were already welcomed - holding up a sign - by Mr. Sonar. We expected Siem Reap to be a quiet and peaceful place, as it is located in the middle of the Cambodian inland and jungle, near the temples of Angkor. However, we quickly realized on the main road from the airport to the guesthouse that we were completely wrong. Siem Reap is a tourist town through and through. The main road alone was about 5 km long and there were huge hotels lined up one after the other. At least they all looked very appealing, Grand Angkor Hotel, Angkor Palace, etc...😎.