Resources

Resources and Advice

	The official Angkor guides are licensed by the government and undergo specific training to work in this capacity. This is a good thing because otherwise everyone who could speak a few words of English (or French or Japanese) would be offering up their services. The standard fee for a private guide is US$20 per day. This seems to be the standard fee for just about everything - a Cambodia visa is 20 bucks, airport tax is 20 bucks, car and driver….you guessed it, 20 bucks. There is a $20/day fee to enter the Angkor park itself, but you can buy a week's pass for $60, or 3 days for $40. Mr. Kieu Thy was very knowledgeable and spoke excellent English. We overheard other guides and felt very lucky to be with Thy. I'm sure the other guides were adequate, but they seemed less comfortable in English and gave more abbreviated explanations. Thy really enhanced our overall experience and enjoyment of the trip. If you go, it would be a mistake to leave an important component like this to chance (although that's what we did and we got lucky).
	Thy's email address is thyangkor@yahoo.com. Apparently there are not many individual ISP accounts in Cambodia, but many people have a hotmail or yahoo account. They pay a fee of about a dollar to receive each e-mail. That seems like a huge amount of money to me, as did the hotel charges for Internet access ($8 for 15 minutes??!!) We used two guidebooks - the Lonely Planet guide (of course) and Angkor, by Dawn Rooney (both of which our friends Brian and Risa were good enough to loan to us for the trip). We found that it was necessary to have the combination of both books. If you decide to buy this book (on Amazon), please do me a favor and click on the link to the left so that I can get a little commission.
The galleries of bas-reliefs are a lot of fun, especially with a good guide who can explain all the stories and characters. Here, a group of Chinese merchants is depicted. They can be recognized by the shape of their ears.
	Unfortunately most of the statues have been either vandalized, stolen, or removed. These lions were carved of a single piece of sandstone and were thus too heavy to move. In some places replicas have been put in place to give you a better sense for what the structure would have looked like. What you are seeing in Angkor today is mainly the structures and the galleries, so you need to set your expectations accordingly. If it's statues you are after you can see many of the originals in the National Museum in Phnom Penh (or, sadly, in private collections which continue to finance and incent the vandalism that continues at sites that are less protected than Angkor). When the resources become available to upgrade the museum with the proper lighting, it will be spectacular. Today it's a little difficult to appreciate the beauty except in the few rooms where the light comes in at the right angle.