On the day we arrived, we bought an afternoon Floating Village tour for 12.50 USD1 each. We were told to be at the tour agency at 1.30 PM to wait for the tour bus which arrived at around 1.45 PM. We were the first pick up and the bus then went on to pick up the other passengers from their hotels. Having spent over 16 hours on flights, we were knackered so slept through most of the ride, other than when the guide was giving information. It took about 30 minutes to reach a stop with a view of the rice fields which were dry at the time. It was also a stop for restrooms and snacks. We then continued onwards for another 30 mins towards the Tonle Sap Lake to the floating village of Kampong Phluk.
The month of May is the beginning of the wet season so when we got there it was dry. The houses are high up on stilts since in the wet season the water level rises around 10 meters. We walked through the village and we came across a group of ladies asking for donations for the local school. They followed us throughout which made everyone in the group very uncomfortable. On the walk, we also came across a temple in the middle of the village. When we reached the end of the village, we got on a motor-canoe and headed into Tonle Sap Lake.
It takes about 15 minutes on the motor-canoe to get to a floating restaurant in the middle of the lake where we stayed for the ‘sunset’. We got there at around 4.30 PM and stayed until 5.45 PM. However, the sunset hadn’t actually started yet. We got back to the tour bus at around 6 PM and began making our way back to Siem Reap. It started getting dark at around 6.30 PM and we arrived at Siem Reap at around 7 PM. They offered to drop us off downtown which we agreed to. We walked around the Angkor Night Market area for a bit and got some street food. We then headed to the hotel to rest since we needed to be up at 3.30 AM for our Angkor Wat Sunrise Tour.
