The ride to the mountain took about 45 minutes, followed by a hike 1500 meters up. The hike was awesome – a bit tricky because of roots and stones in parts but mostly mild and easy fun to run up. At the top there was a long set of small and big waterfalls around th representations of male and female, namely a pillar (male) surrounded by a small moat (female), called linga. The water flowing the thousand round penises becomes holy.
It was a fun experience, pretty and interesting and as usual underwhelming – just as waterfalls tend to be. :-)
After around an hour hiking along side waterfalls with many a photo taken, we hiked down and had a very underwhelming lunch (preset menu, coconut cost for $2 – normal price is $1-$1.50 and nowhere is it $2, no chopsticks given – how touristy is it!? – and on sheer principle of being ripped off we had tea). After that we drove to Lady Temple, called so for it superior carvings and beauty, and even after all the temples we have seen it really was gorgeous and elegant and wonderfully preserved.
A notably not nice thing – a lot of kids selling trinkets in this area. Angle Wat at least had few – in this small place there were at least 10 who approached us.
After that we floundered. On one hand we we’re exhausted – on the other it was only 2:30, flight was at 8. I’ll skip the number of times we changed our plans and our mind on what we want to do, at some point after we stopped for our guide to buy some sugar, dad realized one of his papers showed departure time as 5:15pm, and not 8pm. And it was 3:15. Uhm, whoops. We changed plans to go straight to airport and discussed the situation. W knew one of our flights changed its schedule after we purchased it, and we both recalled that it was “for the better”, and most recent communications had 8pm as departure time but neither one of us thought to check the departure time in the morning when we still had hotel wifi. Whoops.
After arriving in airport I ran to check departures, and everything is fine – flight is leaving at 8 – and that’s how I’m in a Cambodia airport with no wifi writing this at 5pm, with 3 hours to go. At last I can catch up on the last few days too!