The flight from Pakse to Siem Reap is
only an hour and seems to be one of the few flights out of Pakse for
the day. Our flight left at 9am and we were joined by a few
passengers who were transiting through from Ho Chi Minh City who
looked a lot more frazzled than us. We have now taken three Lao Airlines flights and all in a mid-sized prop aircraft. Must be a good twenty years since I'd been in anything other than a jet.
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| ATR 72 aircraft |
The countryside looked totally flooded
as we approached our destination and we we were later told that this
was probably associated with a massive lake located on the outskirts
of Siem Reap. Strangest lake I'd ever seen.
Customs and passport control proceeded
smoothly in Cambodia though why it took some 12 or 13 male uniformed
passport officers all sitting behind a long bench to process our
arrival applications escapes me. I tried to keep a straight face as the passports were tossed from one officer to the next, some looking at them, some not.
The hotel proved to be a beauty, though
the surrounding streets did not augur well for the location. We
checked in, realised we would be staying put for five nights in a row
and proceeded to empty our suitcases into the wardrobe and shelving.
Jumping from one hotel to another each night was starting to take its
toll.
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| Hotel facade |
A short walk around the hotel
neighbourhood and then over to the Old Market area totally finished
me for the day. Robyn went off on a tuk-tuk tour a one-hour tour
while I had a snooze in the room, relishing the idea of a quiet
afternoon to myself.
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| Tuk-tuks everywhere |
I have acquired a reputation for
choosing bad restaurants while on holiday: a reputation that I fear
may well be justified. So I made use of the hotel's internet and the
Tripadvisor website to plan our evening meal excursion. I found
something that looked good and which turned out to be exceptional. My
reputation might have improved slightly but it had a lot of ground to
make up.
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