Six days in Siem Reap

My husband, George, and I made a 3-week visit to Southeast Asia, including a 6-day side trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, Jan. 21-26, 2014. Our goal was to really see and photograph Angkor Wat and its environs.

I lucked out and found a wonderful tour company online: ABOUTAsia Travel (ABOUTAsia House, Charming City, Charles de Gaulle Ave., Siem Reap, Cambodia; phone +855 63 760 190, www.aboutasiatravel.com). 

Their travel advisor Tola answered all emailed questions quickly and expertly. Given many choices, we picked the mid-range trip. For the two of us, we paid $2,166 by credit card for six days of touring in a private air-conditioned van with an expert driver and a very knowledgeable English-speaking guide. 

The price included five nights in a hotel with daily breakfast, transfers to and from the airport, cold drinking water each day, a tour by boat with box lunch on Tonle Sap Lake, and a lovely sunset cruise (with gin and tonics) on the moat at Angkor Thom.

This company specializes in guided tours of the ruins that avoid crowds as much as possible. Little did we know how valuable this would be!

Of course, everyone who goes to Siem Reap must see the main temple at Angkor Wat and the Bayon Temple at Angkor Thom with its many huge, carved heads, thus the park is filled daily with tour buses, including some double-decker jobs that disgorge 50 or more tourists each! Their guides use portable speakers and herd the people from temple to temple.

Fortunately, it seemed that all those tourists wanted was to take pictures of themselves posing in front of a few buildings, so our expert Cambodian guide, Mr. Vith, was able to skillfully maneuver us into different vantage points for good photos. He also arranged for us to enter Angkor Wat temple the back way one morning, through the spooky West Gate in the dark, to be in position on the library steps when the sun rose.
As for the Bayon Temple, see it now while you can. It has been so overrun by crowds that part of the flooring has collapsed and there is talk of closing it. (Perhaps timed-entrance tickets would be a better idea, but nobody asked us.)

In addition to the many splendid temples, platforms, moats and decorated gateways of the main Angkor complex, we visited amazing ruins farther afield in an area formerly closed due to land mines.

We spent a full day driving through the countryside to a jungle region to see the Koh Ker temple complex. On another day, we saw the Roluos temple group, after which we walked through a village of homes built on high stilts near Tonle Sap. We climbed up into a home for a peek at daily life.

We saw and photographed 21 separate temple complexes in five days. There were nice little extras, such as a water blessing by a Buddhist monk, a stop at a palm-sugar stand and a leather carver’s stall, plus several pleasant upstairs lunch venues with views.

By special request one evening, we attended the Apsara dances in Siem Reap — very colorful and enjoyable. On our last day, we visited a craft workshop and local market for some shopping.

The hotel we chose was the Shinta Mani Resort (phone +855 63 761 998, shintamani.com/resort), at the junction of Oum Khun and 14th Street in Siem Reap, where we spent five nights. On a quiet street near the river, it was an attractive, comfortable boutique hotel in a convenient location.

ABOUTAsia arranged it all, and it was worth every penny.

ANNE STOLL

Claremont, CA