Wednesday's Anchovies

Refer to Part 1 of our cycling tour around Angkor Wat HERE . After lunch, we are fully charged again and continued our cycling tour again :) Next, we are passing through Victory Gate. Victory Gate looked similar to South Gate, but here is very much less crowded compared to South Gate. Thus, a good place for photo shooting :) Cycling towards Victory Gate. Our bikes in front of Victory Gate :) After awhile passing through Victory Gate, we reached Ta Keo :)  Ta Keo, this temple gained its popularity because of its bare stone. Structure of this temple was completed but not cravings. Unlike other temples, cravings on Ta Keo was not was not being conducted or not completed. We reached Ta Keo in the afternoon, hottest period! The stones. Ta Keo, a temple-mountain. After leaving Ta Keo, we continued our way to Ta Prohm. There is rock block along the road indicating distance to the next temple. This is a good way for us to know that we are on ...

We decided to rent a bicyle and tour around Angkor Wat after having a short chat with a pair of couples from Germany we met at Phnom Bakheng the day before. They told us "it is manageable to cover certain temples of small circuit as well as grand circuit in a day by bike!". This really motivated us and thus, here we are on our bikes :P We rented 2 city bike at 3 USD each from our hotel, you can get it cheaper out there but they might want to hold your passport until you returned the bike. For mountain bike, rental is around 5 USD. We had 3-day pass and our leisure plan was: i) Day 1 - cycling around temples in small circuit. ii) Day 2 - Kbal Spean, Banteay Srei and Banteay Samre by tuk-tuk. iii) Day 3 - cycling to Angkor Wat for sunrise On day 1, we started our cycling tour around 7 in the morning. We would like to make it more leisure and less tiring, thus we skipped sunrise at Angkor Wat first. We straight away headed to South Gate and our first destina...

After our Tonle Sap Lake tour, we top-up 3 USD to “extend” our tuk-tuk service.  We reached ticket counter of Angkor Archaeological Park around 5pm and start queuing to get our 3-day pass. By the way, we would like to share about 8 things that you need to know before entering Angkor Archaeological Park :) (1) Day pass There are 3 types of pass being offered: 1-day pass – 20 USD Validity: 1 day 3-day pass – 40 USD Validity: 3 days visit in one week time (any 3 days in a week and maximum 3 holes punched at the checkpoint). 7-day pass – 60 USD Validity: 7 days visit in one month time (any 7 days in a month and maximum 7 holes punched at the checkpoint). At the ticket counter. (2) 31 numbers behind the day pass There are 31 numbers printed behind the ticket, from 1 to 31, so every time when you entered the park, officer at the checkpoint would punch a hole on your ticket. Let’s say you enter on 5 th of December, the officer would punch a ...

This is our 2nd day at Siem Reap, yet, another leisure day for us :P After brunch, we decided to go to Tonle Sap Lake. We took day tour package offered by our hotel, hopped onto the tuk-tuk and here we go! On the tuk-tuk. It is actually quite nice to sit behind a tuk-tuk, enjoy the view with wind blowing on your face. The only thing not-so-good thing is DUST. Recommended to bring along face mask or any scarf. Stop to refill gasoline. Simple store operated by the locals. Gasoline sell in bottles. Journey to Tonle Sap Lake from Siem Reap town is around half an hour by tuk-tuk. If you are on bike, it would be a great experience since you would pass by villages, rivers, lotus farm and etc which make you closer to local’s life. The route is flat, easy for cycling. Tonle Sap Lake is the largest fresh water lake in South East Asia. There are more than thousand families staying at the lake, where they live on floating houses which can be move everywhere and ear...