As the Beatles song goes, “grabbed my, my hat, made the bus in seconds flat…” I like the HK airport, besides having a couple of Popeye’s Chicken restaurants and three or so tiffany’s, its easy to get around. To get to Siem Reap, I ended u p going through Bangkok with the first leg being on Cathay Pacific and then changing to Bangkok Airways (BA). The Cathay check-in person was kind enough to tell me that I would not make my connection since it appears that Cheapoair has confused time zone slightly and was an hour off. Not really the thing you want to hear at 7am on the HK airport when you don’t regularly travel in this part of the world. the attendant attempted to contact BA, but they didn’t open their desks until 9am (their time zone). So I got to fly with the hope I could be placed on the flight which was an hour later. After a 900 meter walk trough the Bangkok airport and through some different security area (not immigration, which would have been bad), they were able to fix me up and sent me on another 200 meter walk to the gate. I did need the exercise, but not so much the stress. At gate I collected the three forms that need to be filled out to apply for a Cambodian VISA arrival. In both Cambodia and Laos, you can get your “VISA in the airport for about $20-30, a passport snapshot, and the correctly filled out forms. So it makes sense to use your home color inkjet printer to make some photos for use. Here is mine:
I spent a little extra on my plane ticket because I wanted to get there before Lisa so I could greet her. Late afternoon and evening seem to be cheaper to me.
On landing in Siem Reap, you enter the airport building and see a long, large curved desk with 17 uniformed men and one uniformed woman seated behind it. You hand your forms, photo, passport and USD to the first one and then walk over and wait by the last one whist your passport et al, went through everyone’s hands.
