Angkor Wat - Fabulous Tour Guide John Teng
 

We have just returned from Siem Reap and want to recommend a fabulous tour guide we used for 4 days. His name is Kim San,

Mobiles: + 855 11 44 84 56

[email protected]

www.angkor-guides.com

He is honest, courteous, reliable, knowledgable and kind.

I hope this helps anyone looking for a comfortable and stress free way to see all the sights of Ankor.

We have spent 4 weeks travelling Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia and Kim is the only tour guide we strongly recommend.

Hi...we are planning a trip to Angkor Wat at end of January. Did you plan your trip with this guide as well?

Why do you refer to a web site for Kimsan when recommending John Teng? I have lined up John directly to be our guide for 5 days next March when we visit Siem Riep. He was to be our guide when we originally planned to go there last November but never made it due to the BKK closure.
Here is John's web site:

http://www.angkorservice.com/testimonials.html

Another accolade for John Teng. He is a wonderful and kind man who deeply cares about Siem Reap and Cambodia. He is also a knowledgeable and interesting guide and a pleasure to be with.
Have a great trip.

JerryS-when did you tour with John Teng? He was very understanding about our inability to get to Cambodia last November as we were stranded in Phuket for 6 days. each day I'd email him to say we were trying to get there, hopefully tomorrow. But tomorrow never came. We had to return the the US.
I felt bad that he lost our booking/business so I wanted to be sure to hire him for our second attempt to visit Siem Riep. I hope we will make it this time, in March 2010.

susiesan, We toured with him in April, 2006. Have a great trip.

The weather in Cambodia is good now.

How nice to have good weather in Cambodia while it's rainning cats and dogs in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

For those who don't know what good weather is here's the report from Accuweather for the next 3 days:

Monday, Oct 5 More Details/AccuPop™ A couple of thunderstorms Low: 25 °CHigh: 31 °C.
Tuesday, Oct 6 More Details A couple of thunderstorms Low: 25 °CHigh: 31 °C
Wednesday, Oct 7 More Details A couple of t-storms Low: 25 °CHigh: 31 °C

The above forecast is for Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.

beachisland,

What part of Cambodia are you from?

A friend of mine in Cambodia told me about the weather in Cambodia at the moment that it is raining quite heavy but this will not bother the tour in the temple because it is raining for a short time only, so if you plan to visit Cambodia please bring raincoat or umbrella with you. Have a nice trip in Cambodia. I love Cambodia.

Santa (UK)

We got to finally meet and tour with the real John Teng in late Feb. 2010. Upon arrival in SR John came to our hotel to go over the planned itinerary for the next three days, to make any changes needed based on current conditions.

Each day John picked us up at 7:00 and we headed off for 3-4 hours of temple touring. We'd return to the hotel at midday for lunch and a rest then go off again at 3:00pm for another 3 hours of touring until dusk.

John is currently in night school at the local university studying travel and tourism with the goal of opening his own agency. His English is excellent. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable about Cambodia and the temples, he's very tuned into the travel needs of his mostly Western clients. He seemed to know when we'd had enough or couldn't take the heat anymore, when we needed a break. He had a cooler with water and cold towels in the car at all times. His suggested restaurants were right on. He was quite flexible in changing the order of the temple visits according to our needs.

When I return to SR, not if, I will definitely engage the services of John Teng again.

www.angkorservice.com
[email protected]

susiesan, or others, I'm a little confused. I don't see a mention of a driver, but I do see where you mention a car. When you tour with John Teng, does he drive or is there a separate driver? How much roughly are the charges for a full day of touring?

I'm still confused why the title says, "Fabulous Tour Guide John Teng", but the body of the post is talking about Kim San. With which one did you tour?

Ironically enough, beachisland appears to have been a spammer whose account with Fodors has been terminated. But the post has been left because it attracted other guide recommendations from real people! (jerryS, susiean and salady).

Patrick, generally guides and drivers are two separate people.

Yes, I'm very aware of that, but this sounded different, so I was curious if it was. But I didn't realize we were being spammed.

neopatrick:
John Teng provided a car and driver. John did all the talking as the driver did not speak English.The driver had a small SUV for us instead of the usual Camry and we were not charged extra which is usually the case for the larger car. As we approached the car after visiting a temple the driver would jump up and hand us each a fresh bottle of cold water and a towel.The AC in the car was refreshingly cold and helped deal with the extreme heat. The cost for John and the driver was $60 a day for two of us. On the days we went further out there was an extra charge of $20-30 to cover gas.

OK, thanks, susiesan. Being a single traveler, I'm trying to decide just how much I want to spend every day for a guide or guide and driver.

NeoPatrick - We used John Teng as a driver and would recommend highly him to anyone. Even as a driver, he worked so hard to impart knowledge, even though we prefer to tour the ruins quietly, just us. One of the nicest individuals I've met and polite to a fault. When he acts as the guide, he brings someone else to drive (essentially most of the time is spent watching and having the car ready).

Mr John bent over backwards to work out show tickets, an onward driver to another city and was always looking for what else he could do. He also did a bang up job of meeting our request to try to circumvent the crowds. He knew that everyone sort of does the same thing at the same time (AW for the sunrise photo, the hill for the sunset, etc) and was able to put us in a different timing order that made everything seem so much more peaceful and contemplative.

Just a sample of how he thinks - the evening dance show was at a hotel we weren't staying at. After being seated several rows back, I thought he'd left, and we were all settled and fine. Then I saw him dart over to someone who was working there. Next thing we knew, we were being escorted to the front table and Mr. John flashes me the A-ok sign as he goes out the door.

Then the other driver that was going to take us on a 4 hour drive to another city. He shows up the night before and of course, Mr John does as well, so he can introduce us. He inspects the guy's car and says something to him and the guy nods, shakes our hand and leaves cordially. Mr John assures us that he asked the new driver to have his car washed before he comes to get us in the morning. Totally out of the blue, we hadn't even noticed. So, you get the idea...