Hi all
You guys have helped us plan most of our trip and I was hoping you could give me some more advice now.
We are 5 people - 3 adults, 2 teenagers. We arrive Siem Reap 26 December and have 4 days and 4 nights there.
On your advice we are planning to stay at Hotel de la Paix, and they offer a guide and driver and 1 day temple pass inside Ankor only in their room rate.
We would like a guide and driver for the other 3 days and also some advice as to what to see - any ideas about the lake? We would also like to go to the hot air tethered balloon. I'm sorry to be so vague at this point.
I have researched this site and the name John Teng keeps coming up - who is he and how would I contact him. Also what type of price would I expect to pay for the 5 of us?
Thank you once again - most grateful

Based on recommendations here and other boards, we have decided on Ponheary Ly for our time in Siem Reap in August. You can e-mail her at ponheary at yahoo dot com. You may also be interested in www.theplf.org, started by a woman who posts here offwego. Do a search for offwego's posts, and also on Ponheary to see how special your time can be with her. We have been quoted a price of $50.00/day for Ponheary and a van/driver. Car was $45.00. These prices were quoted to me last autumn though, so they may have increased. Everyone charges about the same price.

I got my car and driver from:

Ms.Kimny
A.T.S Tours
0040, G.1, Sivutha St. Next to CCB Bank Siem Reap.
Tel: (855) 63 965 965
Fax: (855) 63 963 081
Mobile phone: (855) 12 514 366 / 12 988 599 / 15 855 855
Email: [email protected]

Ms Kimney was wonderful. A/C car, excellent guide (Ree was his name) and driver for $50 a day. The car minus the guide was $25 if I recall. I also used ATS for my onward flt bookings, and had no problems. This was about this time last year. But you are in the high season and at Xmas, so you will probably pay a premium.

My initial discussions with ATS were via email, which they always replied to.

We spent 5 nights in Siem Reap in January - here's a link to our blog which should give you a sense of our itinerary and the temples we visited

http://lizandrichardsa.typepad.com/2...wat/index.html

Dara Ly was our guide (Ponheary's brother - from above post) and he charged $55/day for his services and the car but I think your fees might be higher given the need for a larger vehicle - anybody else know about that?

We visited Tonle Sap lake and had lunch at a fishing village - it was a great trip - lots of photos on our blog.

There are several really good restaurants - here's a link to a recent post where several people posted their favourites

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34937836

thank you everybody for your help - really great - I am working on it this weekend

Another guide recommendation

[email protected]

My Trip report:
fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=27

John Teng is excellent and will go out of his way to arrange things, not only at the temples, but for evening restaurants etc. He is polite, always on time and speaks good english. Has a website is at http://www.angkorservice.com/ and his e-mail address is [email protected].

Also Ree mentioned above is exceptional and his English is excellent. He is a mine of information about the temples and Cambodia.

Further questions/ developments.
We arrive at Soem Reap onthe 26th and the hotel have a deal where they take you around the market and you get to choose what to eat that night. So I thought chilling at the hotel and exploring the market would be a good start
I got an email from Ponheary today and she is availbale for us on 27th and 28th Dec. She suggested her brother for the 30th, but the hotel gives us a 1 day temple pass and guide and driver for a day so we should we use that offer or not take it up and go with Ponheary's brother?
Will the hotel deal maybe cover things we would have done with Ponheary or maybe I should ask them what they cover and tell Ponheary so she can plan something different?

Hi - I think it would be a good idea to develop your own ideas of where you want to go then coordinate it between the guide the hotel offers (which I'm assuming is included in the price?) and Ponheary and/or Dara (her brother).

When we were there in January we were with Dara for 2 days and Ponheary for 2 days - they're both great guides but I realized it's much better to have the same person for the whole time for the temple visits (if possible) as they know what they've told you........we were with Dara for the first 2 days and then Ponheary for 1 day of temple visits (and one day with Ponheary on Tonle Sap) and for the temple day she/we spent time going over "what we already knew".....this is not a big issue...obviously....but I realized in retrospect that if you do change guides mid stream you need to have a good conversation with them so they know what areas to cover.

Thanks Elizabeth , those are really good points about repeating info. I shall work out where we would like to go, put a proposed itinerary on this forum and firm up the ideas then send it to Ponheary to work out what she will do and what Dara will do. Maybe the hotel guide could be used to go up to to the temples on the first day we are ther for a quick overview, and leave the details for our own guides

Since Scotters has already given you the contact information for John Teng, I'll just add that we've used his services for multiple days and he always went out of his way for us and we felt like friends by the end of our stay.

We would choose Mr. John again on a future visit.