Tour first 3 days or last in Siem Reap with Ponheary? Do you tour all day or come back for lunch?
 

We will be in Siem Reap for 4 nights and touring with Ponheary for 3 days the end of January.

We were going to have her pick us up at the airport when we arrive and tour for the next 3 days having the last day on our own.

We are now thinking that since we need to go all the airport stuff (visa's etc) it may be better to have that first day on our own and tour the last 3 days.

Any opinions on it would be better one way or another or if it really matters?

My thinking is that if it takes time at the airport it would be cutting in on our touring time with Ponheary

and, another question??

do most people tour after breakfast come back for lunch and then go out again in the afternoon....or do you stay out all day???

Most people come back at mid-day for several hours for lunch and to cool off (a swim at lunch-time really helps). That's the traditional way to visit the temples. Cambodians eat their main meal of the day at midday, so they also appreciate having a couple of hours at midday.

We started each day early, near sunrise, spent about 2.5.-3 at our hotel at midday, then went about out to the temples until dusk.

thanks Kathie....

I guess if we start a little late on the first day it won't really matter.

Your days go how you want them. We chose to only go out in the morning most days, but twice we were out without a break..once we had lunch at a school, and another day we spent at Phnom Kulen and had a picnic and swam in the river. Many choose to go out morning and afternoon, with a long lunch in between. Ponheary is flexible, and will suggest what she thinks will be best.

It doesn't really matter really which days you tour...whichever you feel works best for your schedule.

I've emailed Ponheary to see if it matters to her if we change the days. If not I think we'll probably take that first to settle in and tour the next 3 with her.

She hasn't really set an itinerary for us yet. We figured we'd just follow her lead.

Thanks you guys for your replies! (that rhymes!)

When we arrived at the airport, Ponheary picked us up and we went right to Angkor Wat from there. Then, at the hotel, we sat down together and went through our wish list, made an ambitious itinerary, and planned for pick up time the next day. We saw about 20% of what our wish list contained....not because of Ponheary, but because we preferred to end temple touring each day before our 9 year old was sick of it and before they all blended together in our memories. Ponheary will do marathon days if you want, though.

We had Dawn Rooney's book Angkor's Wonderous Temples...or something like that name. It was very good background reading, and the pictures helped us prioritize what we wanted to see.

You'll set up an itinerary with her once you get there. Do buy a copy of Dawn Rooney's book mentioned above by Kim.

thanks for the reminder about the book.
When we first started planning this trip I heard someone mention it in another post.

Do you know where to buy a copy? Can you only get it on line?

If you have a travel bookstore in your town, they should have it. You can also buy it from Amazon.

Thanks for the recommendation of the book. We leave for Thailand and Cambodia in less than 2 weeks and will be touring with Ponheary in Siem Reap so it will be a good book to have.

Study the book before you go (or on the long flight) and you'll have a good idea of which temples you really want to see - you can't see them all!

jacasale! you must be so excited.
have a great time!!
(wanna sell your book when you get back :0)

thanks Kathie....we of course want to see the main temples but it seems there are many off the beaten path.
in 3 days we should be able to see quite a few though right?

heard from Ponheary this morning, (I love her....if you email her one day she always responds by the next)
and she said that it wasn't a problem to start the day after we arrive.
She'll be picking us up at our hotel at 8:00 a.m.
Yea!!!!

In three days you'll be able to see most of the "major" temples. We were there for a week, I think we saw something like 26 temples - not nearly all. Jasper, if you haven't looked already, you might want o look at our photos of Angkor. They may give you more of a sense of ones you really want to see. I recommend going to some of the "minor" temples, where you may well be the only visitor.

www.marlandc.com

Kathie!
your photo page is extraordinary
I looked at it a month or so ago when we first started plannning our trip.
Now that I know at little more about where we are going and what we'd like to do it's even more interesting.

I know everyone is different in their likes and dislikes but what minor temples were your favorites?
If you had to pick 2.

One of the minor temples we loved was Ta Som. The entrance at the back of the temple is stunning in the intertwined trees and carvings. It was unrestored at the time we went, but the last day we were there, there were workers beginning to do some restabilization work, so I don't know what it looks like now. It was one of the temples where we were the only visitors.

The whole Roluos group were very interesting. No one was at any of the three temples when we were there.