Thailand With Angkor Wat
February 13-27, 2005
By Tom Harrison

Posted 4/20/05 Operator: GATE 1

* The tour overall was great in terms of the itinerary. We really did get to see much of Thailand and our guide "Penny" was excellent and extremely well informed. If anything there were almost too many buddhas! I loved Ayuttaya-the ancient capital. I bought a watercolor from Vinit: www.vinit-art.com at the floating market west of Bangkok. It didn't hurt that he was a cutie! I was thrilled to see his artist's perspective of Ayuttaya when we got there on the tour. Other highlights beside the Grand Palace and other temples in Bangkok: were the Monkey Temple at Lop Buri; the ride on the Mekong River viewing Burma and Laos on either side; the boat ride to the Akha Village on the Kok River at Chiang Rai; the Elephant Camp near Chiang Mai, where we got to ride an elephant; the Chiang Mai night market. Angkor Wat and environs was great. Siem Riep was a third rate city in a third world country that is not prepared for all the tourism. The trip from Siem Riep to Tonle Lake was a real eye-opener to see abject poverty of Cambodia, compared to the more prosperous Thailand.
* We did not learn until we got to the Montien Hotel at the orientation on the first morning that there were three additional tours, all of which we wanted to do and did. They required U.S. cash payment on the spot. This disrupted our budgeting and made us dollar-short by the time we got to Cambodia, which accepted only U.S. $. We would have preferred to have booked and paid for these at the time we got the other tours.
* The hotels at every stop (except Chiang Mai) were very remote from town, which forced us to eat at the hotel restaurants or limited options nearby. This was especially true of Bangkok. The Montien Riverside was at least a mile (south we finally figured out) of any map. There is a Montien downtown Bangkok where all the action is, and would have preferred to have stayed there if we could have. All of the hotels were excellent except The Amarin Lagoon in Pitsanuloke, which had inadequate elevators and no hot water! In all cases the breakfasts that were included were quite good.
* The tour was very large-over 100-but it worked out fairly well as we had three separate buses of about 32 each with our own guide. They staggered our departures so that we did not congest the various sites. It would have been nice to have had a smaller (maybe gay) tour guide in a van like we did in Cape Town and Melbourne. But I understand the large tour is what makes it affordable.
* It would have been nice to have had one more day and night in Bangkok, but this probably cannot be avoided due to the great travel distance and the loss of a day traveling west. We really enjoyed our promised 15 minutes at leisure on the airport bus to our hotel on our arrival day!
* The lunch meals, while generally very inexpensive, were fair to poor as they were mostly buffets and we tended to be herded through like cattle. An exception was the day we ate outdoors in a garden-like setting while on the road north.
* There was a bit of confusion on the hand off from Bangkok to Angkor Wat. Although it appeared both were Diethelm Travel, the two local tour companies apparently did not talk to each other. We had re-arranged our flight from Bangkok to Siem Riep to earlier in the day. No one picked up on that and we had to call from the airport in Siem Riep for transportation to our hotel. The Princess Angkor was a very good hotel, although still on the edge of town. It had the cutest bell hop! Actually, though Siem Riep was not much of a town, so it was ok to be on the edge of it!
* For my first trip to Asia, this was a good choice. We saw a variety of people and cultures, with decidedly more Chinese influence the further north we went. I did not find the men particularly attractive, but I generally liked the Thai people's personality: they were almost always very pleasant and respectful of visitors and each other. This was the first place I have traveled where Buddhism is the predominant religion, and I believe is a significant factor in defining the culture of the country. Cambodia, at least the part we saw was quite different, and the men somewhat cuter than we saw especially in northern Thailand. But, as I said, it is definitely more a third world society struggling to make it. While I enjoyed the trip, I probably would not want to return.