Deliverygirlnz's travelogues

Day 24 – leaving Siem Reap to fly to Singapore

Up early this morning, we were all packed and ready to go, down for a quick bit of breakfast and onto the bus by 7 am. It's good to be in a package where the transfers are mostly included. We drove about an hour easy drive to the new airport, which was only built 2 or 3 years ago. The Chinese have built the road into the airport as well – starting to see a lot of their ownership in Cambodia's resources. The road down to the airport was probably 10 km in a straight line!

We have been to A LOT of airports and have to say this was most definitely the quietest, emptiest one we have ever seen! It was like a ghost town.

Apparently before covid, there used to be 5 million tourists annually through here, but after, it has been 500,000–1 million a year. With what they offer at the

Angkor Wat, and the other temple complexes hopefully that will continue to build, as the UNESCO world heritage sites are something to see that you will never forget. 🙂

Had a couple hours to kill while we were waiting for the plane, so talked to our group, mostly Aussies and suddenly remembered we had to fill in our Singapore arrival information online, so got that done.

Got onto a very full plane, and it was by far the sickest plane we have ever boarded, crammed in like sardines. The row one behind us, were an Indian family who were all sick – the older Indian lady had the wettest deepest, most gross cough I have ever heard in my medical career – I wouldn't be surprised if she had TB.

She had a mask on but kept taking it off when she was having coughing fits, which was regularly! And the woman in front of us was coughing really bad as well.

We had one mask in our carry-on and I asked the flight attendant for another, so we got those on pretty quick. Already fighting our groups cold, and most definitely do not want what that lady behind us, had. She should not have been travelling at all and could not have in all honesty, told the truth on her in incoming Singapore card, about her current state of health.

I also had a 40 something Karen sitting beside me, who was just nasty and quite sarcastic, later she wouldn't let us out to get my bag so we could put our stuff away. Hate those kind of people, as courtesy cost nothing and she had bad karma👿.

Some of our group went into the toilets in the Singapore landing area and could hear the Indian lady having the most terrible coughing fit in there. Sounded like she needed hospital.

Anyway, we got outta dodge as fast as possible! as the imagine cruising rep was there to take us to the bus and straight to our hotel – Momentous Alexandra. It's way, way away from town and the F1 circuit. We've never stayed out this way because of its distance and this is the first hotel imagine cruising have slipped on. No one's air-conditioning worked properly and were all stuck on 23°C, but in the hallways it was nice and cool. They sent an engineer up, then said we had to move to another room which was 22°C and would decrease, but it never did. Others have said they have had the same problem, but the staff seem overwhelmed as the place is full with the Grand Prix guests I guess and we were all told different reasons.

Can only give feedback to the cruising package people when they ask.

We mooched around for the rest of the afternoon and then we looked out of our window and saw a lot of our group out by the pool bar, so we went down and joined them. We all decided to walk down the road to like a food hall – my goodness it was hot and oppressive down under the roofing there, as they had all the little stalls cooking, but we found a big table on the outside edge with a big fan so it was bearable, and we all shared a couple of buckets of beer and got some nice curry and naan breads. The air haze is really bad with Indonesian fires – it's been blocking out the sun for the most part and they are advising people to wear a mask when you're outside.

Wandered back to our room – thank goodness I take a portable fan with me! Into bed for the night! Want to get rid of this bug?🐛

Stu, Graeme, Me, Sandra, Dave & Alison

Day 25, 9 October – practice and sprint qualifying races F1 day

It's nice to have a sleep in today and then up to breakfast. Hardly anything left at 9am and they weren't really replacing food even though breakfast isn't closing until 10:30 am. This hotel is nothing like the others we have been in and the staff are not engaged at all with guests.

We just mooched around afterwards and then I cut Graeme's hair – did a pretty good job with just a beard trimmer and a pair of scissors actually! A couple of the other aussie guys commented on it too ha ha! His hair grows so fast especially in the heat.

We got ready and packed for every weather condition – ponchos for the rain, hat and sunscreen for the heat, my twisty electric portable fan and a hand fan…. needed everything except the ponchos, as there was no rain tonight!

Got the hotels shuttle as it was a much better time than our group shuttle, (which meant you had to be there for 10 hours if you used it). Enjoyed the vibe of getting in and the huge crowds – everything is sold out and we actually couldn't have got tickets on our own anyway – the travel agents must buy bulk lots way before through wholesalers.

We are in the Padang stand section 6 row 30 seats 5 & 6, so pretty good and not far from a screen, as well as where the cars slow down to go round the corner so you actually get to see them. One couple in our group had upgraded to the pit lane area as they had an option for that, but it cost them $1800 extra for the upgrade!

Was quite good as most of us were sitting altogether. The temperature on the track below us was 52°C! and my goodness it felt it. Wasn't too bad for quite a while as a lot of people didn't come to the early races and we are all on small plastic seats which are built for asian size bodies, not Kiwis and Aussies ha ha! The lady beside me came and sat down and she shared her hips with my seat 😳, But luckily a couple of our group had left later on, so we were able to space out a little bit.

Qualifying was good and Graeme was rapt we were at the 1st sprint qualifying races, as these are not run every grand prix. I'm there to support him, so just had to ask him how it was all going as there's a lot of changing dynamics up on the screen!

After the 1st races we went for a wander around, got some drinks. You can only buy Heineken here – that must've cost them millions to pay the sponsorship that would block out any other beer companies – $17SGD for a beer😳. The food was similarly priced, about $20 SGD each, for a burger and chips or fish and chips, which were very nice, but you could only really get fried food. Pity our NZ dollar has such a low value atm, but what can you do?!

Sat on the grass to eat, then a K-pop group came out. I think they were called Corsica or something like that, lots of pretty boys who said how hot they were – don't blame them as it was like a high impact aerobics workout, and singing at the same time lol.

We saw an amex stand which didn't really have anything written on it but people are lining up and since we have one we did too, and they were giving out gifts - you had the option of really cool little ring earplugs, or hand sanitiser. We got the earplugs as the bands were really, really loud and bassy (don't know how you spell that!)

I didn't have my amex card with me and you needed to tap it to get the gifts, but luckily I had the number on my phone so the girl put it through manually for me – score! My tinnitus thanked her later on ha ha! 🙂

Watched the rest of the races with Dave and Sandra from Adelaide – lovely couple, who we didn't really get to know on the cruise ship.

Max Verstappen qualified in pole position for tomorrow, in a very exciting lap, where he made up a lot of time from previous laps. We decided not to wait another 2 hours for the group shuttle at the end to get back so, Dave and Sandra came with us. Getting out was like herding 100,000 sheep into a gate, but it moved really well I thought, albeit very hot with all those bodies and Dave was really feeling it, as were we. You are just drenched and sticky.

We got out no problems though and Graeme did really well working out where we had to go to get on which train, the green line going, east/west - EW. We followed that through to the Queenstown stop and then it was a 15 min walk. Sandra tried to order a Grab ride a couple of times, and even though it was deserted where we were, no one picked it up so we went back up the stairs across the walkover, which was right there and over to the bus station on the other side of the road – you can't cross the road here as they have big barriers.

Graeme worked out the bus we needed to get and a Singaporean lady heard us talking and said we were getting on the right bus – 195 and she told us where to get off which was only a 5 min walk to the hotel. I told her she was our hero for the night and she laughed!

Gray did really well, given we could've gone completely the wrong direction with all those people and ended up god knows where and he was doing it all offline. But he had found you can download ‘maps’ on your iphone!

We had cold showers that were heaven, as everybody had got so sticky and then we fell into bed, once we had wound down. Day 2 tomorrow 😊. Gray actually has a white salt line across his dark t-shirt today from being so drenched!

the veins on my hands havent been that prominent for a while :)

Day 23–7 October Lara Croft Tomb Raider day!

Our guy picked us up at 9 am today, after an amazing spread had breakfast at this resort. He took us in a minivan – again – it was pimped out! Mirrors and gold everywhere and the most important thing, great air-conditioning 🙂.

Today we were in for 32°C, no wind and 95% humidity, which meant we were in for a hell of a hot sweaty day! But given we were going to see these UNESCO world heritage sites, it is definitely worth it. It took about half an hour to get to the ticket office, which was massive and looked exactly like an airport with tons and tons of counters - you go and pick up your ticket to the temples US$37 which was included for us already in our package price. Everybody had to go and have their photo taken and that is then placed into the ticket like a passport and then you carry that with you for the day.

It’s hard to believe that today, you are able to actually walk through all of the temples, which have a lot of up-and-down up and down in the corridors. I expect in time maybe it will get roped off and you will only be able to look at the outside, but we were lucky to walk in their footsteps. Anyway, we headed to the first temple – the biggest one Angkor Wat.

First I’ve got to say, we have seen a lot of old castles, churches and ruins – but this day absolutely blew our minds with what we saw. Most of the temples were built near a lake as water was very important for them as it kept the sand damp during construction – if it dried out the foundations would collapse – and it’s still damp now.

This first temple was absolutely massive and went round in a huge square within internal columns and statues everywhere. It is the largest religious complex in the world. Located on a site measuring 401.8 acres, it was constructed between 1113 and 1150 CE during the reign of the Khmer king Suryavarman ll as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu. The king had it constructed to hold his ashes once he had died, but he passed away before it was finished so the next king continued on to finish it in his honour (One temple for one king only, hence why there are so so many of them here, over the ages). It is outrageously huge and hard to believe that something this big, which took 6–7000 elephants to build, was never lived in, simply a place of worship. The ultimate example of man’s vanity to himself!

The heat was building fast - absolutely no wind today, and Graeme got quite overheated and had to take it easy for awhile. We were all sweating buckets at 95% humidity, it was insane – everyone was completely soaked and had rivers running down their bodies! But it was worth it for this amazing place. We got to climb the very steep steps at the temple so we could look out over the whole complex – was pretty out of this world.

Next we went onto the Bayon temple, which has a gateway that had huge statues going across a bridge, on one side with a line of demons and on the other side were the angels.– Built between the late 11th and early 12th century, it is a Buddhist temple. The temple features 37 remaining towers decorated with a total of 216 giant serene faces, often thought to represent the bodhisattva Lokeshvara blended with the features of King Jayavarman VII

Lastly, we visited Ta Prohm temple of Lara Croft tomb raider fame. It had all the massive trees growing over the ruins. I kept waiting for the statues to come to life and chase us! We had watched the movie again just before coming, so we could remember the specifics. Apparently, they closed it for a month while they were filming. It’s amazing she wasn’t dripping in sweat in the movie like all of us were!

Like most Khmer temples, Ta Prohm is oriented to the east, so the temple proper is set back to the west along an elongated east - west axis. The outer wall is 1000 x 650m, encloses an area of 650,000 sq m that at one time would have been the site of a substantial town, but that is now largely forested.

To say today was incredible isn’t really enough. The temples constructed and there are around 500 of them in the area amazingly, mostly intact and you can walk in and out of them at will, so we really were walking the same footsteps as those who did so in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Took so many photos my phone started to get a black ring around the screen as it got so hot, a bit like all of us!! My hands got so wet, it got hard to hold it to take photos and between us we drank over 7L of water and never pee’d all day. So tells you how much we were sweating out, in this incredible heat. There is lots of jungle around though which is probably a lifesaver because they only have hot and hotter seasons, the locals tell us.

The guide and driver took us back to the hotel where we literally fell into the swimming pool, downed a 640ml bottle of beer in about 10 minutes between us. We also got some snacks as we hadn’t eaten all day being out to the temples, then we decided to have a lie down and a bit of a tidy up as we fly out to Singapore tomorrow. Then we got a tuk tuk into town about 15 minutes away, for an incredibly cheap $2usd each way- about 15 mins away. It was lots of fun zooming in all the traffic (there are a lot of scooters and tuk tuks, but everyone is very polite) and we’re headed up to the famous ‘Pub Street’ which is a really long street with lots of lights and is lined with restaurant after restaurant. You can get beers there for 75 cents!

We settled on a lovely outdoor restaurant and had a beer each, then I had a passion dream cocktail which was blue curaçao, vodka, coconut cream and pineapple juice. And Graeme had a Negroni which was very nice, he said. Then we ordered the tradition Khmer amok curry like we had the other day but chose chicken for this one, and we shared a traditional fried rice which was also very nice. All of that with 4 drinks came to $23 usd. It really is cheap!

Was so lovely sitting out looking at the world going by and as the day turned into evening and got darker all the lights in the street came up, it has such a lovely atmosphere.

We walked back up the street and found a driver and zoomed back to the resort. Stopped in the little cafe in the resort and bought a beautifully presented little cake which had long strings of coconut in it.

Back up to the room to pack up our final bits and pieces as we will be up at 5:30 am tomorrow for the last leg, to the Singapore F1 Grand Prix for 3 nights.

Nb/ Pics have loaded in reverse order!