Day 5 – Bangkok to Siem Reap

December 29th 2008

Alarm goes off at 9am to go to the gym in our hotel – do we? Erm, no, back to sleep for a while.

Simple morning of packing up ready for our pickup at 11:45am. Our driver is early and we're away from the hotel into the heavy Bangkok traffic. While this driver actually inspires confidence, he's perhaps the most miserable person we've come across in Bangkok which is a bit of a shame but no complaints as we get to the airport in good time.

The whole checkin experience is incredibly efficient. I don't know if this is due to a lack of people travelling or this is how it always is but we're checked in within 5 minutes and through passport control in 10.

With 2 hours to kill then within the airport – which is also vast, think T1, T2, T3 all put together – we settle into a cafe for lunch and catch up on our journals. After we finish our sandwiches and I'm typing away, with no prompting one of the serving staff walks over and hands me a piece of paper with a wifi username/password – these are really nice people the Thais.

We're flying Bangkok Airlines, “Asia's Boutique Airline” - well not sure what that means but the service is efficient and we leave on time.

It's only a short hop to Siem Reap, no sooner have they handed out the (unexpected) lunchbox than the captain is announcing 25 minutes to landing. On approach we fly over a huge flooded area, is this a delta, I think so but did give up geography in the 3rd year so not sure – it's certainly not an unexpected flood as we can just pick out houses in there, people are living on the flood plain with houses on massive stilts.

Siem Reap airport doesn't get that much traffic, yet. We land, get to the end of the runway, turn round, and taxi back down the same runway to get to the terminal building! Hong Kong used to be like this but at least you taxied alongside the runway not actually on it. There is 1 other active plane on the tarmac with 2 others that look like they're in for a good while.

The e-visa we got at the last minute certainly pays dividends as we avoid a queue comprising of about 2/3rds of the people on the flight who have to buy their visa before passport control, we're through in 5 minutes.

Our driver is waiting for us, another phew moment, and we head for the hotel. This is definitely backwater Asia we've just hit. At least 10 or 20 motorbikes for every car on the road, seemingly no rules of the road other than everyone has right of way, but thankfully nobody is actually going fast enough to cause any problems.

Or hotel, the Somadevi Angkor, is well placed just back from the main street through Siem Reap and is excellent. The air conditioning in our room is powerful stuff so when we do head back out in the evening for a bit of a wander it's like walking round with a bonfire permanently in front of you, the heat hits you in the face and there's a constant smoky aroma in the air. The “hassle” from outside the oasis of our hotel is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. The Cambodians take no for an answer it seems. We get as far as Bar Street, to check out possible New Year's Eve venues – a banner proclaims that the whole street will be the biggest party in town so that's promising but unfortunately I'm not feeling so good so we head back and call it a night.

Top tip, don't even bother with the local currency – while it's of course accepted everywhere, all pricing is in US$ so you find that you're constantly having to multiply all the prices by 4,000 to get to the price in Riel.