Post-cruise Angkor Wat from Bangkok

We are booked on the Southeast Asia cruise ending in Bangkok. Please recommend a tour company for private post cruise tour to Seam Reap (Angkor Wat) from Bangkok. Anyone had a good experience with an Angkor Wat tour on their own?

We are booked on the Southeast Asia cruise ending in Bangkok. Please recommend a tour company for private post cruise tour to Seam Reap (Angkor Wat) from Bangkok. Anyone had a good experience with an Angkor Wat tour on their own?

Hi

We did a pre cruise tour from Singapore last year. We arranged our own flights to Seam Reap & booked a tour called "Angkor's Secrets" through "Travel Cambodia". We were met by their reps at Seam Reap airport & had 4 brilliant days touring the area with a guide & driver. E mail address is "sales@travelcambodia.com".

VERY easy to book your own flights. And ANY hotel that caters to Westerners can arrange tours to the ruins, elephant rides, hot air balloon rides, dinner cruises on the Tonle Sap and most anything else you want.

I spent 3 years in and out of Cambodia turning a run down apt building into a boutique hotel in Phnom Penh. So have been to Siem Reap quite a few times.

My preference for hotels is the FCC. http://fcccambodia.com/ Old governors mansion away from the hustle and bustle of some of the larger resorts. But close enough to the markets and city center that you can walk if you choose. They have their own drivers and tour guides to hire or they will send you out with a pedi cab and you can do your own tour. The food is EXCELLENT at the hotel, their package rates are some of the best in Siem Reap and their poolside rooms are very, very nice.

VERY, VERY easy to do this on your own. And you will save a lot of money and know that you are truly getting what you wanted and a hotel that YOU chose, not that a tour operator chose because they get a commission. Enjoy!!!

Thanks for your suggestions. I think we'll make our own arrangements. I'll check Travel Cambodia for their tour service.

We're currently back in Thailand after side trip to Siem Reap/Angkor Wat.

Some of our travel notes that you may find handy:

There are a number of different options to go from Bangkok to Siem Reap but we chose to fly because just for the convenience. We flew on Air Asia for about $100 each way but there are a couple of different options (Angkor Air and Bangkok Airways) with multiple flights per day. We booked our flight a couple of days in advance and there seemed to be a lot of space but our flight was 80% full. Not sure if a lot of of travellers book very last minute.

Hotels are really cheap in Siem Reap. We ended up paying about $50 off of Agoda.com for a junior suite (including breakfast) in a new hotel (a few months old) about 5 blocks away from pub street.

As for Angkor Wat, we hired a tuk tuk driver to drive us around the different sites for about $15 for the day. A couple of thoughts around this:

We went during hot season so we were dying of humidity in ruins but it was quite pleasing with the breeze while riding in the tuk tuk.

Our driver didn't accompany us into the ruins. While he did give us a quick explanation before we entered each site, I think it would have been nice to have had a driver/guide combo that accompanied us into the sites. Some of the sites do have official guides that you can hire on the spot for about $10-15 per site but you can hire a guide all day for about $15-30 (on top of transportation costs).

We could have booked a number of things through our hotel but their pricing seemed about 30-50% higher than what we could find off recommended vendors off of TripAdvisor, WikiTravel, etc.

We found a lot of English being spoken by a lot of folks in the service/tourism industry and in general. But I suppose that's to be expected with Siem Reap being somewhat overrun by tourists nowadays.

We are booked on the Southeast Asia cruise ending in Bangkok. Please recommend a tour company for private post cruise tour to Seam Reap (Angkor Wat) from Bangkok. Anyone had a good experience with an Angkor Wat tour on their own?

We begin our Asia Cruise in October. The cruise ends in Singapore. We venture out from there to visit Siem Reap and a few other cities. This would be my 2nd time to Siem Reap. We book our own flight into Siem Reap. As for the hotel, the way this hotel setup is a package like. If you book a room with them, you get a lot more such as Pick up & drop off at the airport, day tour with your own tuk tuk, laundry service, unlimited minibar, 1 complementary meal, late check out, etc... We found it to be really worth it so we decide to book it. It's about $83. Let me know if you need to know the name. of the hotel.

Thanks everyone! Please share the name of hotels you had a good experience with. Also, how far out the best to book the flights online.

We stayed at the Bayon Boutique Hotel. The photos on Trip Advisor and its website do a pretty good representation of it (save for maybe the bar area which seems to look way nicer in the pictures).

The staff were friendly but so were everyone we interacted with in Siem Reap.

My minor complaints would be:

- Not really a lot in the immediate vicinity (save for a $1/kg laundry joint). But you just have to walk a (long) block in the direction of pub street to see a couple of local sidewalk restaurants.

- No elevator. Not a major problem it gets a bit repetitive running up three flights of stairs.

Apart from that, everything was good. Wifi strength supported Skype. Breakfast was ok but nothing to write home about. Room and hotel itself looked great because it's new. All staff were very friendly. Nightlife within a five minute walk.

We originally weren't sure where to stay other than we wanted to be within walking distance to pub street and the night markets. There were a lot of places we could have chose that met this criteria, including places across the river. In hindsight, I would have considered staying slightly even further if necessary because transportation is so cheap. You essentially can get a tuk tuk ride within the city for $1. We did see some bigger hotel/resort complexes on the ride in from the airport but those were a bit further out from where we wanted to be.

Thanks for your suggestions. I think we'll make our own arrangements. I'll check Travel Cambodia for their tour service.

Our trip is in October and we have book our hotel stay at

http://www.diamondangkor.com/.

We have already book our flight last month. My suggestion for international flight is 6 to 7 months in advance. Are you flying an Asian carrier or an American carrier? An Asian carrier would have better service.

Hi, and THANKS for all your suggestions. We are going on Celebrity next March, 2015 and wanted to go to Cambodia after the cruise from Singapore. Here's the catch for me - my husband walks with a cane and we know it can get difficult navigating steps/stairs at temples, etc. with the suggestion of Diamond Hotel or other hotels, do they have elevators or first floor rooms? What about booking tours thru the hotel or should we book before we leave? Also, I know it is too far ahead but was it easy to book to Cambodia and then back to US? Lots of questions so thanks in advance for any help.

Evelyn

Hi, and THANKS for all your suggestions. We are going on Celebrity next March, 2015 and wanted to go to Cambodia after the cruise from Singapore. Here's the catch for me - my husband walks with a cane and we know it can get difficult navigating steps/stairs at temples, etc. with the suggestion of Diamond Hotel or other hotels, do they have elevators or first floor rooms? What about booking tours thru the hotel or should we book before we leave? Also, I know it is too far ahead but was it easy to book to Cambodia and then back to US? Lots of questions so thanks in advance for any help.

 

Evelyn

The Bopha Ankor hotel has groundfloor rooms around the pool and I don't recall any steps so may be worth considering. Excellent central position overlooking the river and just across the bridge to market, shops etc.

Check out tripadvisor reviews for up-to-date info as it's a few years since I was there.

Hotels in Siem Reap will arrange tours or you can make your own arrangements with a tuk-tuk driver. Your husband will see more from a tuk-tuk than a taxi and he won't need to climb in and out quite so much.

Perhaps wait until you arrive and you can both better see what he is able to cope with.

The Bopha Ankor hotel has groundfloor rooms around the pool and I don't recall any steps so may be worth considering. Excellent central position overlooking the river and just across the bridge to market, shops etc.

Check out tripadvisor reviews for up-to-date info as it's a few years since I was there.

 

Hotels in Siem Reap will arrange tours or you can make your own arrangements with a tuk-tuk driver. Your husband will see more from a tuk-tuk than a taxi and he won't need to climb in and out quite so much.

 

Perhaps wait until you arrive and you can both better see what he is able to cope with.

I agree with you on using the tuk tuk.

The hotel that we book, it included a a tuk tuk for your tour to Angkor Wat. The tour guide is not, but it's not expensive to hire one. They make arrangement for us and we don't have to worry about that. I would suggest that you contact the hotel directly. The Diamond D'Angkor is pretty good at answering their email on a timely manner.

FYI, we fly Silk Air from Singapore to Siem Reap. I think Jetstar also fly there too. Not much choice for direct flight into Siem Reap from Singapore.

We last visited Angkor as a between cruise stop - and we did it the expensive way. Our hotel was Amansara which is right opposite the admittedly good but big and packagy Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor. Amansara is small, only about 24 suites, some of them with private pools. You pay a totally inclusive rate which includes all meals, alcoholic beverages and your own in-suite bar set-up. But best of all is that you are allotted your personal guide and remork driver - a remork is a motorcycle-trishaw thing - and they take you out on two sightseeing trips a day, in the very early morning and late afternoon. This meant we got to visit several out-of-the-way temples and had them to ourselves. At Angkor Wat, the Bayon etc you can't avoid the crowds.

Amansara seems expensive but when you consider what they include it's fair value for the incredible quality on offer. We stayed four nights though I could easily do a week there. In fact, it might be the best hotel I have ever stayed in.

Thank you for all the help with staying in Cambodia and with the help with my husband's walking ability. I will be looking up the info and hotels but I am feeling that it is possible to enjoy our stay there and also see the sites we have heard so much about. Again, thank you for your help.

Evelyn