Alarm set for 4:15 this morning, for our 5AM pick up. 4:15 arrives and we decide that showers are a total waste of time this morning, they will be needed badly when we get back to the hotel, snooze for another 20 minutes or so.

5AM in the lobby, wake up what I will call the night auditor and he asks if we are in room 103, he has 2 box breakfasts for us.

Our guide Bun and driver are outside waiting. Someone on TripAdvisor recommended the guide and we decided best to get tours sorted out before we got here, so we booked the guide for 2 days, starting with sunrise at Angkor Wat this morning.

We hadn't purchased passes to the temples online like was suggested so that is our first stop. It did not take longer than 5 minutes, pre-covid our guide told us at least 30 minutes line up would be the norm. He also tells us that about 20% of the visitors have returned, great for us, not so great for the economy here. I can see that our hotel definitely does not have many people in it, we were the only ones in the dining room last night, I saw one person in the pool so far, and one other guest in the lobby.

Passes purchased and we are off. Angkor Wat is the only temple that opens at this time of morning for sunrise. Having a guide has paid off already. Most people are heading down to the water for the picture that we have all seen of sunrise, our guide says no, wait here and you will see the best sunrise before it arrives over the water, we will then have time to go to the water and see the sunrise there.

First sunrise pictures taken with very few people around, then off to the lake that is busier. This will be the only time all day where I can say there is really any type of crowd at all, and you could still manage to see the reflection in the water of the sun.

After visiting Angkor Wat it is time for breakfast now that it is 8:30AM. Our guide Bun takes us to a little restaurant that if we buy a drink it is OK to eat our boxed breakfast. We have 2 boxed breakfasts with us, Andres looks fine, mine is full of ants. My suspicion is that when we left the box breakfasts in the tuk-tuk the invasion happened. There is so much food in the box it is plenty for 2 of us anyway. Bun asks if he can have the one we would have thrown out, he says he knows some people that could really use the food. Oh, now I feel like I totally privileged westerner. Should I have just picked the ants off my breakfast? No, instead we take whatever we are not going to eat out of Andres breakfast and add it to the "ant" breakfast, someone is getting a much nicer breakfast now.

I ordered a lemon iced tea for my drink, Andre some fancy coffee thing. I know now that iced tea here has a lot of sugar added, will have to say no sugar next time I order this, it was way sweeter than anything we had in Vietnam.

Time to leave the breakfast spot, I notice that the extra box breakfast has disappeared, I wonder who it went to, and I hope it filled someone's belly for a little bit. This is when the first mess up of the day happens. I trip over nothing, fall over on my knees and then take the rest of it on my head. Yep, I caused quite a commotion. Bun would not let me get up, he said I need to relax for a couple of minutes, man comes running over with an umbrella to have me in the shade, and breakfast place fills a bag of ice for me to put on the little bump coming out on my head. Urgh... all I can think of is I only saw one temple! Everyone finally agrees to let me up, no broken bones, missing a layer of skin off one knee but no blood, my head is just scratched, but my $6.00 elephant pants that I bought in Vietnam somewhere specifically because they are so light and wanted to have my knees covered for the temple visits here have a hole in the knee. Bun does not like the look of my knee and wants a Band-Aid, off he runs and comes back with Tiger Balm? I have no idea what that is but it is quickly being applied to my knee. Still no band aid so we start moving along and I can tell Bun and the driver are looking for somewhere that may have a Band-Aid. Then I remember, I have Band-Aids in my little purse! Prone to blisters I usually always carry Band-Aids now just in case. Band-Aid found and Bun takes the Band-Aid from me and has no idea how to open it. Andre shows him, he said we don't have Band-Aids like that in Cambodia. He had never seen the little white strip in the middle of a Band-Aid and didn't know how to take off the 2 ends to make it stick to your skin. Anyway a lesson for Bun, now he knows what a Canadian Band-Aid looks like.

Next stop is the South Gate to enter Angkor Thom. I decide it may be best for me to just ride through this gate and keep some ice on my head while Andre and Bun walk through and take pictures. I am a little disappointed, but I really want to make it through the rest of the day so I'll suck it up and just miss this stop.

We then visit 5 more temples on the small circuit, I was able to do all of these! Well kind of able, one was a lot of climbing up uneven steps in the blazing hot sun, decided to do a pass on that one, but I did manage all the walking fine between the 5 temples. It really was a spectacular morning. Our itinerary showed lunch break and one more temple today. We are all very hot at this point, including Bun, he said the 6th temple for today is really easy to add on for tomorrow and we could go back to the hotel now. Did not take us long to agree to that. We are back at the hotel just after noon.

We switched up tomorrows start time as well, it was supposed to be 9AM, we are morning people and are more than happy to start at 7AM and beat some of the heat. We have also cancelled sunset for tomorrow night, Bun really did a poor sales pitch on sunset, not sure if he didn't want to work tomorrow night as well, but we will take a miss on that. The temple where people used to climb to watch the sunset is now closed as it just got too busy and was not safe, there are now only 2 spots for sunset and Bun said neither are very good.

So showers and a load of laundry done. A little relaxing and we better do something about lunch. I had read about a place called "Spoons" that is not too far from our hotel. No way were we walking more than 150 feet, so grab Tuk-tuk it is, $2.00 including a tip that he said thank you for. Spoons is a great place that finds underprivileged kids and brings them here for training in the food and beverage industry. There was only 1 other table there with us, but we were told it gets busy at dinner time when it is cooler. We ordered a cocktail and they brought us roasted peanuts and garlic to start. Then the waitress arrives and says here is your Amuse Bouche. Amuse Bouche, well we haven't heard that phrase in a long while. A delicious one bite of Mango Salad. I had a good view of the kitchen from my seat, 6 young aspiring chefs were in there, when our order went into the kitchen they all went into action, it really was fun to see. The presentation of our meals was beautiful, I'm so glad that we made an effort to go and visit Spoons.

Back to the hotel to rest up, it has been a long day already. Laundry is dry, nothing is going to be worn more than once here. Checked out the pool but the water is so warm I don't think it would be refreshing at all.

Time to venture out again. We start walking to Pub Street and first excitement is the garbage truck, it is all lit up, very funny. A Tuc-tuc driver stopped to see if I wanted a ride, Andre was off following the garbage truck. He said it is very hot, for $2 I will drive you to Pub Street, so in we go and he gives us a little tour around town. Super cheap but I know he is looking for more business from us the next couple of days.

It is so hot, time for a drink on Pub Street. At this time of night it is really a family restaurant place, or if you want to get your feet cleaned by fish you have plenty of opportunities to do that as well. Not very hungry so settled on a place with cheap cocktails and pizza.

Decided to walk back to the hotel along the river. Lots of street food available. It is so hot, less than 2km walk and we are soaking wet when we get back to the hotel. We actually took a 5 minute break along the water on a bench, and I wish we had continued on, we would have been home sooner. Had a look at a place that we would like to go for dinner one night just down the street from our hotel.

Another early night after a very early morning and a hot humid night.

Todays pictures:

At Angkor Wat

Waiting at the back to watch the first glimpse of the sunrise while most people are at the pond right in front of the temple