Noodling Angkor
- Ruth Mcbride
- 3 days ago
- 10 min read
4:30am wake-up call!
Up bright and eagerly full of anticipation for a beautiful sunrise this morning.
Beth and Kara had arranged the Tuk tuk driver for us, so we met them in the lobby at 5am.
We were waiting on one side of the Park Hyatt, Siem Reap and the driver with the tuk tuk was waiting on the other side of the hotel. The original driver was busy but he sent another driver for us, so it all worked out.
The temperature at 5am was a pleasant 25C and it had rained overnight. It was nice to be up and about in the city without a lot of traffic until we started getting closer to Angkor Watt. That is when we realized a lot of other people had the same idea as us!
The grounds of Angkor Wat were still pitch black as we walked the long road in having our tickets checked by ticket control using flashlights to see our tickets.
Getting into Angkor Wat was a bit tricky as there are uneven wooden steps up to the wet stone walkway and there was absolutely no visibility on where we were placing our feet as we stepped down off the wooden steps.
We were not sure which side of the pond in front of Angkor Wat we should be on, but we were following a couple who had hired an English speaking guide for the morning, so we listened in and followed where he told them to go to wait for sunrise.
We arrived around 5:30am to our spot to stand and wait and the official sunrise time was 5:54am. There were a number of clouds overhead and we could still see the outline of the full moon. Would we see the stunning red sunrise over Angkor?
The crowds started to become more prevalent as we got closer to sunrise. Of course there were always the lack of spatial awareness people who think a selfie with Angkor Wat is appropriate while everyone else is trying to get the perfect sunrise picture with no one in it! Thank goodness for the new editing feature in my IPhone 17 Pro Max to delete people from my photos quickly!
As sunrise came we started to see the reflection of Angkor Watt in the pond, but the beautiful red sunrise was not to be today. The sky did show a slight bit of promise, but not what we had hoped for. At least we came and said we did it or we would have been truly disappointed if we hadn’t tried at sunrise. No one else from our tour group made the effort except for Beth and Kara.
Edited photo of Angkor Wat. Still not the fiery red sunrise we were hoping for.
We headed back around 6:10am to find our replacement #6 tuk tuk driver and we arrived at the Park Hyatt around 6:35am for breakfast. We split the cost of the tuk tuk at $20 US from each couple. A very reasonable expense to enjoy the sunrise over Angkor Wat.
Our second full day in Siem Reap with the group from Avalon started off with an 8am bus ride to visit some more temples. Given there are so many temples in Siem Reap and it is so very hot here, we understand the earlier we start the day, the less crowds and humidity we will experience.
The first temple we went to see called ‘Ta Prohm’ had been used in the Lara Croft Tomb Raider movie.
The temple had been completely engulfed in trees and about 100 years ago while Cambodia was under the French mandate, the locals told the French about this temple which was in the jungle and overgrown with trees. At that point the French with help from India started the restoration work on the temple.
There were a lot of fallen stones overgrown with moss and many sections of the temple had either banyan trees growing out of its walls or strangler fig trees encroaching on the temple.
We spent about an hour wandering around the temple and taking photos. It is truly unbelievable that a temple built in 1186 by Jayavaraman VII as a Buddhist monastery and university could survive for so many years overgrown with trees growing all over it and nobody bothered with it!
There were very aggressive vendors outside the gates of Ta Prohm and I had spoken to one of them before I went into the temple, admiring a shirt. I told the woman I would take the shirt in her largest size once we finished our tour. Of course she was there waiting for me after we visited the temple with my shirt. I also bought the requisite elephant skirt to go with the shirt. All in $25. I suppose I could have negotiated further but when everyone is heading back to the bus it’s not really fair to hold up the bus with trying to negotiate a cheaper price. And to be fair this merchant certainly did a good job “selling” me on her wares and it’s a tough way to make a living following tourists who are there to visit temples, trying to sell them clothing.
Our next stop about 15 minutes away was to a local woman’s home to get a demonstration of how rice noodles were made.
The process of making rice noodles starts with soaking white rice overnight in water to soften up the grain. A rudimentary mill with heavy stones is used to grind the rice and extract a runny liquid which is strained with a cloth to make sure no rice kernels get through it. The rice paste is rolled into a ball and covered overnight to rest. We smelled the paste and it smelled very fermented. The ball of paste is then boiled and after a quick boil is put into a bowl with some water to make the paste more pliable. The paste is kneaded and then a can with holes in the bottom is filled with the rice paste. The can is then placed over top of a pot of boiling water and the woman sat on a lever to force the noodles out of the can, through the holes at the bottom, to form noodles which were then boiled quickly and then scooped up into a basket. The noodles were plunged into cold water in the basket to stop the cooking process. Once the noodles were cooled the woman sorted the noodles into small portion sizes and filled a serving basket for sale. Her customers will ask for so many kilos of noodles and she will give them so may individual servings of rice noodles, once she is paid.
A table was set up for us to try some homemade broth with noodles and accompaniments like sweet peanut sauce, hot green chilis and limes.
We also had some various kinds of leaves we could add to our soup. We have no idea what kind of leaves but we tried them anyway and the soup and noodles were delicious. So flavorful and healthy with tumeric used in the broth along with other spices too. Richard rated it a Michelin star experience!
After our noodle making experience and broth and noodle tasting we drove to our final temple on our temple tour; Banteay Srei. This temple was unique as it was made out of red sandstone instead of limestone.
Banteay Srei had the most intricate carvings on it. I think I liked this temple the best because I could capture the scale and detail of it better than the other temples we had visited. Built in 967 by xxx the temple was originally built as a Buddhist temple? Etc etc.
After about an hour at Banteay Srei it was time for our 1 hour drive back to the Park Hyatt for lunch in the hotel.
Lunch was delicious and we had Caesar salad! We have not had much western food on this trip and a Caesar salad was a really nice treat, followed by chicken and vegetables with sweet potato fries and finally 3 different kinds of gelato with fruit. We have noticed that in Vietnam and Cambodia desserts don’t really exist like we have in North America. You won’t find pies, crisps, cakes or cookies for dessert. Dessert instead will be gelato and fruit or fresh fruit alone. It’s probably much healthier frankly with the only dessert type items we have seen being moon cakes or French pastries at breakfast.
We had free time for the rest of the day and since we had been up at 4:30am, Richard had a long 2 hour nap while I finished yesterday’s blog. I had to wake Richard up at 4:30pm to go and get our laundry from the laundromat as we were supposed to pick it up after 3pm today.
A full bag of 5 kilos of laundry washed , dried and folded for $10US! Not a bad deal! We leave Siem Reap tomorrow and head to the Avalon Saigon cruise ship docked in Phnom Penh for our 7 night river cruise on the Mekong Delta and we have 2 suitcases of clean clothes to start the next part of our journey.
We were planning to head out for dinner and to explore Siem Reao on foot some more, but as we looked out the window of our hotel room we saw the skies were looking pretty ominous! The flashes of lightening started and then torrential rains started.
I needed to pack up our suitcases but first I had to have a quick nap. Not normally a napper, I was hitting a wall and knew if I didn’t nap I would be able to get the packing done.
We ended up eating chips and popcorn for dinner. Not the healthiest but we were tired and didn’t feel like any more “real” food.
As I packed I put on the new Taylor Swift album “Life of a Showgirl” and danced along to the catchy album as I packed all of our recently cleaned clothes back I to their respective packing cubes in each of our suitcases making sure to roll everything as I went.
Today was very special to be able to try to capture the iconic shot of Angkor Wat at sunrise. I’m glad we made the effort to try for the sunrise shot and while the skies did not cooperate, the experience of doing it with live in our memories forever.
Tomorrow is going to be the day from hell, but first some backstory.
When I was researching this trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and the Mekong Delta I looked at other tour companies such as Adventures by Disney which do adult only trips at certain times of the year, Viking of course because we have travelled them frequently, Avalon and a few others too.
One of the most important considerations for me in my trip research was to make sure we would be spending the least amount of time possible on buses. When we arrived in by flight from Hà Nội into Siem Real Ha our Tour Director advised us that we would spend 3 nights in Siem Reap at the Park Hyatt and then we would spend 6 hours on a bus the following day transferring to the 36 passenger river cruise ship: Avalon Saigon for a 7 night cruise.
When I booked this Avalon tour we were supposed to fly from Hà Nội to Siem Reap and then fly from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh where we would pick up the cruise to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon). When we received our confirmation on September 3,2025 from our travel agent from Avalon the Itinetary showed we would be flying from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, so what changed in the month since we got our confirmation?
We asked to speak to our Tour Director Ha about what happened and why were we going by bus for 6 hours instead of flying. He was surprised we were even questioning the bus travel to Phnom Penh because Cambodian airlines has stopped all morning flights out of Siem Reap a long time ago and since Cambodian airlines only flies two flights at day at 15:00 and 16:30 there is no way those flights could have got us to the cruise ship by embarkation time on the day we were to embark on the Avalon Saigon.
Something is not jiving for us with why Avalon is selling this tour with a flight to Phnom Pen and yet if we were to have flown from Siem Reap we would have needed to leave today instead of tomorrow, overnight in a hotel in a Phnom Pen and have a transfer to the Avalon Saigon cruise ship tomorrow. Something smells here and we feel there has been a ‘bait and switch’ with Avalon from a short plane ride to Phnom Penh, to a more than 6 hour bus ride on country roads through Cambodia.
I am NOT happy about this major switch as we would NEVER have signed up for a full day bus ride through the backwoods of Cambodia vs the promised flight to Phnom Penh. I have reached out to our travel agent in Canada for her to take up our cause with Avalon. We realize Avalon has the right to change the itinerary at any time, my point is if on September 3, 2025 when there were no available flight flying on tomorrows date to Phnom Penh then Avalon should have let us know and should not be advertising this tour with internal flights between our various stops when they knew we would be taking a bus. We will evaluate at the end of this trip whether we ever do another Avalon tour, but I am NOT impressed with this major change to the itinerary and have been dreading the 6+ hour bus trip since we arrived in Siem Reap.
I did I investigate leaving today to go to Phnom Penh on our own with flights but that would have cost probably $1,000USD extra for transfers, flights and a hotel in Phnom Penh and while we are seasoned travellers and could have managed it on our own, it’s $1,000USD we would not see again as I’m sure if we receive any consideration from Avalon for the ‘bait and switch’ move they have pulled on us it would only be in the former of a future cruise or land credit and not cash.
Time will tell how this situation plays out but for now I’ve got to finish packing for the unscheduled bus trip from hell. One thing we did tell our Tour Director was we needed to have frequent and scheduled bathroom breaks because no one needs to get dehydrated because they don’t want to drink water without knowing when the next bathroom break would be available to us. We were guaranteed by Ha that there would be lots of bathroom breaks as our bus does not have a toilet onboard. Wish me well….god knows I will need it!
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