There were 1, 3 and 5 day passes to the temples of Angkor Wat for $20, $40 and $60 respectively. Proeun told us that the locals got 3% commission if they bought the passes for you – honesty at the extreme – so obviously we took him up on it. For one day, you could “see” all the main temples, but you’d be really rushed, and wouldn’t understand a thing. We found the 3 day pass suited us as it was perfect for seeing everything we wanted to see at a decent pace. It was easy to underestimate the distances between temples – you definitely needed a driver for the day. You could hire motos (scooters and drivers – you ride on the back) for $5 a day, but these were definitely not “guides”. They may have spoken some English, and they could probably tell you the basic facts, but if you wanted to really see the temples, you needed a professional guide (they had to be government registered guides) and if you got a guide, you had to get Lap Tek!
Proeun introduced us to Lap Tek (I kept wanted to call him “lab tech”, Beth went for “lap top”) and we ended up getting him, a driver and two scooters (Lap Tek didn’t own one) for $30 a day for the first two days. Lap Tek was a 50 year old man who worked for a tourist company. He was one of the first professional guides in 1993 when tourism officially opened up. We thought $30 for a guide was a lot at the time (I can’t believe that looking back at it now!), but after a couple of hours of his in depth explanations of history, religion, architecture, legends and lots of great stories about his life, we were convinced that $30 was the bargain of a lifetime. We ended up hiring him for the 2nd day as well.
The central temple area is broken down into two circuits, the small circuit and the big circuit, which is basically a set of roads linking the major temples. Here was our schedule for the three days at
Day 1
Angkor Thom (
Royal Swimming Pool
Prasats Suor Prat
-- Lunch --
Sunset at Phnom Bakheng
Day 2
-- Lunch --
Day 3
Bakong
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