This day was always designated as a slow day. We figured that two days wandering around the
temples was probably going to be enough and that doing those days
back-to-back was probably going to wipe us out. So we decided to
separate the temple-going with a day just wandering around. And so it
mostly turned out.
On most of our trips we find that
something doesn't go exactly to plan and requires some last minute
fixing. Last year in Europe it was a hotel booking that fell through,
this year it was a visa problem.
Back earlier in the year when we were
finalising our travel plans we pondered about the idea of getting a
visa issued by the Vietnamese embassy in Canberra or buying the new
e-visa that they had made available. We decided on the e-visa due to
the fact that we could obtain it safely over the internet and then
get approved on entry into the country. I checked over the
documentation and it appeared that the visa was current for a period
of a month. That seemed to cover our entry and exit period. All
seemed good. No mention was made of single or multiple entries so I
figured the validity period would cover us.
But as we progressed on our holiday I
started to get a bit worried that maybe the visa was a single-entry
only. Someone we met in Hanoi told us that an Australian fellow
passenger had run into trouble getting into Vietnam at Ho Chi Minh
City airport and had ended up being billed about $450 for the rushed
visa approval. And no-one seemed to be doing what we were doing.
So I decided to take the opportunity to
check with our tour guide for the Mekong Boat trip, only to find out
that she had been trying to get in touch with us,though she had been
using the wrong email address. She had already checked our visas and
decided they were okay but later had come to the conclusion that they
weren't and that we would require another one to get into Vietnam
from Cambodia. She also told us that an e-visa was not acceptable at
river border crossings. First we knew of that. So a day-long scramble
ensued with backwards and forwards emails until we had set up a
meeting with the cruise operator who was to come to our hotel, take
away our passports, photos and USD150 to get us new visas. Even our
meeting didn't prove easy to arrange as they went to the wrong hotel
at first but we got it figured out and said goodbye to our passports
and cash as we hoped everything would be all right when we arrived in
Phnom Penh in a couple of days.
In the middle of all this messing about
Robyn and I wandered off on a tuk-tuk to the Angkor National Museum. This was
an excellent exhibition of Angkor history and would have been very
useful for us to have visited before we went to the temples. We
wouldn't have taken it all in but it would have given us some sort of
context as we wandered around the temple sites.
That was followed by a visit next door
to a new shopping complex which we finally decided was built
specifically for Chinese tourists. Robyn couldn't buy some
confectionery as we didn't have our passports with us.
The rest of the day was taken up with
our visa problems, swimming in the pool and reading before our one
booked event of the day: dinner and a dance exhibition at the nearby
Apsara Dance theatre. Given that the theatre was only a block away
from our hotel we had decided to walk over. However when we got down
to reception to drop off the key we were asked where we were going,
and, on receiving the reply, the hotel offered to drive us. We tried
to put them off as it was so close until they pointed to the Rolls
Royce at the front step with the door open. And I didn't care how
close the theatre was. If I was going to get a chance to take a ride
in a Roller then that's what I was going to do.
The food was okay without being great
as expected but the dancing was wonderful. The troupe performed five
pieces: two folk dances and three classical items. Even I, who
usually find these things rather incomprehensible, thought the night
was great. It worked out as a wonderful way to end the night.
Then it was straight to bed as we had a
very early wake-up next morning at 4am.
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