Thailand Day 10/Cambodia Day 3 - Part Seven
Part the last!
I got super distracted, but I'm still determined to get all these photos up, for my own benefit at least.
After we left the lovely overgrown temple we had one last stop.
Okay no, actually we had two. We stopped at Sras Srang Complex, and it was basically the pretty uninteresting foundation of a temple, with a lake by it. I did take a picture, but it wasn't very picturesque. So moving on.
The last stop!
Phnom Bakeng.
It's built on top of a hill, there's three ways to go up. The elephant path, which starts slopey then has a series of switchbacks, the pedestrian path, which just goes around and around the hill until the top, and the "dangerous path" which goes straight up. That one is closed XD
We took the pedestrian path.
It was a gentle easy slope... until...
Stairs ;_______;
Which were, of course, much steeper than they look.
So the point of going to this temple at the end of the day was for the sunset. It's a really good vantage point.
The temple itself is pretty simple and small though.
Even a basic temple there is pretty pretty! (except that one I skipped 8D)
There were only 5 other people there when we got there, so we just looked around a lot.
Angkor Wat! Where we started from!
It was a lovely view, but as you can already see, it was fairly overcast.
We kept hoping it would clear up, but we should have known better.
So we asked someone to take our pic and then went down.
The sunset didn't get any better than that XD
Omg stairs (also, other people bailing).
Parting shot of the temple!
And slightly nicer sunset taken on the walk down.
Then we were driven back to the hotel, I want to say it was around 6 or 7.
So keeping in mind this guy picked us up at 4 in the morning, the cost for being driven around all day?
$18.
We had been told it was $15 per person, so had already set aside $30 for him so we just gave him that. I really had to pee so I left E to convey our thanks (he was a really nice guy) and pay him, so I wasn't there when she did but she said he kept trying to give the money back and didn't really believe it, which makes me so sad. This guy was with us for maybe 15 hours, he was super polite and funny and even bought us ice water when we came back from a larger hot temple and didn't even expect to be paid back.
We were really conflicted on the whole tipping thing, I tried to read up about it but half the internet was like "It's your duty to tip heavily as a tourist in this country where the dollar can go far" and the other half was "Please don't be so patronizing, we/they don't need your money, tipping is not part of the culture here."
Anyway, I really didn't spend as much time researching as I should have, because I didn't realize it was such a polarizing topic. So with the exception of that guy, who we especially loved, we just did what other confused bloggists did, which was to tip $1-2 per tuktuk & meal.
Anyway!
So we freshened up in the hotel a little and then went right back out, since it would be our last night it was our last opportunity to go to "Old Town" which was really more like... DownTown. We told our driver we were super tired, just take us to the food area. And we set a time, I think only 1.5 hours, to meet to go back to the hotel.
I don't know why I took this picture, because that's not what I ordered. Oh! Maybe to show the prices? And the frog legs probably.
I got some sort of garlicky noodle dish that was AMAZING.
And a delicious freshfruit smoothie.
Then we walked around and saw these, I was too full but E makes a point to have icecream in every country she visits.
So cool looking!
And definitely a tourist thing XD
Cute!
This is the downtown/old town area. Quite active at night!
I ended up buying some trousers here, the wrap around type in a navy blue because I kept resisting buying tourist clothes since when would I wear them? But I thought those were quite dressy looking and I actually would.
...
I haven't.
And thus ended the day!
I got super distracted, but I'm still determined to get all these photos up, for my own benefit at least.
After we left the lovely overgrown temple we had one last stop.
Okay no, actually we had two. We stopped at Sras Srang Complex, and it was basically the pretty uninteresting foundation of a temple, with a lake by it. I did take a picture, but it wasn't very picturesque. So moving on.
The last stop!
Phnom Bakeng.
It's built on top of a hill, there's three ways to go up. The elephant path, which starts slopey then has a series of switchbacks, the pedestrian path, which just goes around and around the hill until the top, and the "dangerous path" which goes straight up. That one is closed XD
We took the pedestrian path.
It was a gentle easy slope... until...
Stairs ;_______;
Which were, of course, much steeper than they look.
So the point of going to this temple at the end of the day was for the sunset. It's a really good vantage point.
The temple itself is pretty simple and small though.
Even a basic temple there is pretty pretty! (except that one I skipped 8D)
There were only 5 other people there when we got there, so we just looked around a lot.
Angkor Wat! Where we started from!
It was a lovely view, but as you can already see, it was fairly overcast.
We kept hoping it would clear up, but we should have known better.
So we asked someone to take our pic and then went down.
The sunset didn't get any better than that XD
Omg stairs (also, other people bailing).
Parting shot of the temple!
And slightly nicer sunset taken on the walk down.
Then we were driven back to the hotel, I want to say it was around 6 or 7.
So keeping in mind this guy picked us up at 4 in the morning, the cost for being driven around all day?
$18.
We had been told it was $15 per person, so had already set aside $30 for him so we just gave him that. I really had to pee so I left E to convey our thanks (he was a really nice guy) and pay him, so I wasn't there when she did but she said he kept trying to give the money back and didn't really believe it, which makes me so sad. This guy was with us for maybe 15 hours, he was super polite and funny and even bought us ice water when we came back from a larger hot temple and didn't even expect to be paid back.
We were really conflicted on the whole tipping thing, I tried to read up about it but half the internet was like "It's your duty to tip heavily as a tourist in this country where the dollar can go far" and the other half was "Please don't be so patronizing, we/they don't need your money, tipping is not part of the culture here."
Anyway, I really didn't spend as much time researching as I should have, because I didn't realize it was such a polarizing topic. So with the exception of that guy, who we especially loved, we just did what other confused bloggists did, which was to tip $1-2 per tuktuk & meal.
Anyway!
So we freshened up in the hotel a little and then went right back out, since it would be our last night it was our last opportunity to go to "Old Town" which was really more like... DownTown. We told our driver we were super tired, just take us to the food area. And we set a time, I think only 1.5 hours, to meet to go back to the hotel.
I don't know why I took this picture, because that's not what I ordered. Oh! Maybe to show the prices? And the frog legs probably.
I got some sort of garlicky noodle dish that was AMAZING.
And a delicious freshfruit smoothie.
Then we walked around and saw these, I was too full but E makes a point to have icecream in every country she visits.
So cool looking!
And definitely a tourist thing XD
Cute!
This is the downtown/old town area. Quite active at night!
I ended up buying some trousers here, the wrap around type in a navy blue because I kept resisting buying tourist clothes since when would I wear them? But I thought those were quite dressy looking and I actually would.
...
I haven't.
And thus ended the day!