Airline Flight Review: Vietnam Airlines - Siem Reap to Hanoi

The bridges into Hanoi 

We flew from Siem Reap (at the at time, the old airport , nice, small and neat, and close by from the city) to Hanoi in the evening flight of Vietnam Airlines ( 1950 hours) It was on time, and we landed Hanoi about 2 hours later in a coldish evening ( 2145 hours). 

The aircraft was clean and neat, with the airline coloured seats. Good enough flight. And the timing is such that you get almost the whole day in Siem Reap for sightseeing before you need to head to the airport around 430pm.  While this particular flight was fine, later on in Vietnam, we did have some delays, but nothing that disrupted the plans too much.

Hotel Review: Amber Angkor Hotel & Spa, Siem Reap, Cambodia

We were recommended The Amber Angkor Hotel and Spa by our long-time travel consultant Club7 Holidays. There were plenty of other options, across the city, but we finally settled on this one. It turned out to be a good choice. It was right in the centre of town, a little set back from the road and just near the Wat Bo (temple), and near to the night market, a short tuk tuk ride away.

The hotel itself is quite large, which isn’t immediately visible when seen from the road. Spacious ground floor and a simple enough lift. We had a triple room, which was quite roomy, though the bathroom was a little on the cramped side, but quite ok. The single room we saw was neat but small. You may be hard pressed to put too many bags. 

The one thing I always dislike in hotels is that one needs to climb into and out of bathtubs for bath. That’s not a good idea for older people, or for that matter, any people in wet areas. Fundamentally, I don’t even know how many people really use bathtubs in hotels! But presumably, a lot do, as I have seen bathtubs in hotel bathrooms across the world. Would this be considered a water wastage?

The restaurant was simple and roomy, but the breakfast quality left much to be desired. It simply wasn’t good enough quality, and variety. It gave the impression that a majority of the guests were usually SE Asian or locals- and even the few locals we saw didn’t look very pleased either. This is one area this otherwise nice hotel needs to drastically improve. The quality of breakfast we had in Helsinki, for example, was top notch- prices were more or less the same ( Cambodia is not a cheap destination contrary to beliefs that Asia is cheap).  

Water dispensers are on the ground floor, and you need to go fill bottles yourself. Nothing unusual in this. The rear area that backs onto the Wat Bo road has the swimming pool, quite nice and well frequented. 

The best part was Daniel, the manager of this hotel. Quick, efficient and polite, he arranged all the taxis and tuk tuk that we hired during the stay. His replies on email before we arrived were also comprehensive enough ( he in fact told us in detail of the small circle and grand circle tours, and arranged the taxi and guide as well). Eased any concerns we had quite bit and other wise made the trip far more enjoyable. On the last day in fact, we had to check out by 11am but our flight to Hanoi was around 7pm- Daniel was kind enough to arrange a single room for us to rest in.

All in all, a good stay- recommended as on December 2022. Readers need to go thru the latest reviews and take their own decision.

Itinerary of Cambodia- Vietnam travel

Closing off the Cambodia leg of the Cambodia-Vietnam tour in Dec 2022- Jan 2023, this was our itinerary. 

Our origin and destination was of course, Mumbai; but Singapore is the key hub for many trips to Siem Reap ( Angkor temples) and its quite likely people will end up taking Singapore airlines flights in the morning or evening to Siem Reap (we took the morning one- the one where one of our bags got left behind in Singapore and Singapore Airlines compensated with US$ 100 for the day).

This is the itinerary - the flights may vary but the visit plan per day can still be used by anyone.

 

Travel App Review: " Indian Heritage" - iOS and Android (from The Archaeological Survey of India, Government of India)

App landing page

While reviewing Easemytrip’s analyst call, I came across mention that the company had adopted 4 heritage sites for maintenance under an Archaeological Survey of India program; intrigued, I checked the ASI site, and while going thru it, found that ASI actually had launched an app on iOS and Android called “Indian Heritage” which lists details and photos of the monuments under their charge.

I downloaded it, and this is my review. The app is promoted by the ministry of culture, and at the time of this review, it has 3.5 rating on Play Store. C
ould have changed since this writeup.

First, it’s a great idea to have such an app. There are so many monuments in India dating from a thousand years old! It’s a rich tapestry of great interest to many tourists, if they know about them and can reach them, that is. See how European destinations really go to town with marketing the destinations leveraging apps.  India has a long way to go.

It may not be well known, but the ASI (https://asi.nic.in/) handles a massive number of monuments and continues to handle newer ones found. ASI handles over 3,700 monuments in India, as per September 2023 data, and undertakes overseas work, as was done in Siem Reap, Cambodia on some of the Angkor temples.

App Home Page

This app has three main parts on the home screen (see screenshots). First is the “browse monuments”, then “monuments near you (based on allowing the app to use your location), and third, “upload a new monument”.

The Browse monuments click brings up a grid of monuments ( 2 per row, and many rows- didn’t count) with picture and name. Clicking any one of them takes you onto the page for that monument. On that page are “About”- which has the content about that monument, and two unclickable links – Gallery and Official Notification. Presumably these will be activated later. There is a carousel of pictures, though, so don’t know what exactly the “gallery link” will hold.  

But the interesting thing here are the two other links at the top of each monuments page -Navigate and Locate on Map. Clicking navigate opens up the device map and delivers a path to reach the monument from your current location, and the locate on map puts pin on where the monument is, on a map. Quite interesting and the correct way to do it.

Browse Monuments page

The Monuments around you page opens a map- not the device map, but its own map (I think it may be BHUVAN map because its language and display is quite techy and certainly not designed for a casual audience). On this map are tiny red dots that are the locations of the monuments around your location. Curiously, it was showing quite a large area. Eg, if your location is south Mumbai, it would show more or less all Mumbai (or Mumbai Suburban as it called). That’s nearly a rectangular area of 100km x 50 km. Still, it does show some monuments. Useful for general interest. Clicking on the red dots leads you back to the page that also opens under “browse monuments” and the links described above. That’s fine.

The third page on the app is upload a new monument, and clicking it opens a form to fill- monument name and description. Interestingly, it picks up the GPS co-ordinates from where you are filling the form, so apparently if ever using this page, fill it at the site of the monument, or if from some where else, then you need to know the GPS co-ordinates to fill in (you could get it from Google maps, but cumbersome). But the idea is good. With such a vast country and chaotic in construction, layout and population density, ASI would love to harness the populace to find monuments.

The fourth aspect I found good was the form at the end of each monuments page, where they ask for feedback on your visit. Good idea, and if it works, will help ASI work a lot.

Monuments around you

We don’t know if this app is known much, or is promoted, and what exactly is its end purpose at this point. If ticketing can be added to each monument, that would be great. Then it becomes a useful tourist app; as it stands now, its serves to fulfil a casual curiosity at the various monuments.

The current version on iOS is 2.7.0.

Clunky Navigation

It certainly is on the right track, as far as content and concept goes. But the overall app is very clunky, and less intuitive to use. For example, under the “monuments near you” page, clicking a red dot does bring up a popup, but the fonts are so small that its no use- you must click on “more information” link which opens up the full page; but then navigating back to the map is funny- no back button?

The bottom line

It’s a great app for monuments details and locations. It’s simple and basic, certainly not slick, - some of the photos on home page seem stretched out, but a good base to build on. It urgently needs links to working transport like train schedules, bus routes, or even Uber (which it tries to do via Uber API on device map). And of course, ticketing. One of India’s bug bears is the lack of marketing and information on where to get and how much is the ticketing.  This app can be so good for incredible India – but a long way to go yet.

Business of Tourism : Indian Travel industry poised to boom!

India's second largest Online Travel Agent (OTA), EaseMytrip ( www.easemytrip.com) put out some interesting data points in its investor presentation May 24 2024.  

Source : Easemytrip investor ppt, slide 21, May 24 2025

Briefly, it shows how India , and Indian travelers are set to be key drivers of domestic and international tourism. 

The INR values themselves for the overall travel market are growing well : from INR 27,700crore in 2023Estimated to INR 40,400 crore Estimated in 2027. Within that number, air travel is estimated at 15% growth, on the back of new airports, planes, and generally better affordability. 

The key is the online market, whose spread, availability and convenience has impacts on many industries, not least travel itself which it will facilitate growing. Its expected to go from INR 18500 crore to INR 29800 crore from 2023 to 2027 E. That's massive growth, underlined by hotels, transport, F&B. It also suggests a strategy marketing - almost every travel player has migrated big time from print ( at one time the primary medium for advertising) to digital, since the chain from idea to execution is seamless and information for the same is easily available real time. 

These numbers also show international players like airlines and tourism boards an early glimpse of the future. 

There were 22.6 million Indian Nationals Departures (IND) as per the ministry of tourism, and 98% went by air. These are good numbers for a tourism destination, and the growth of internet, affordability, smart phones and easier visa regimes can only drive more growth.

Interestingly, Easemytrip said in their analyst call on May 24 2024 that they have adopted 4 heritage  landmarks for maintenance under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Adopt a Heritage 2.0 program: The Qutub Minar,  Delhi; The Konark Sun temple, Agra Fort, and Western group of temples in Khajuraho. Totally, these get over 6 mn visitors annually, not a bad OTS ( Opportunity to see), and may be even get business! 

The other aspect they seem to be doing is to train over 1.8 cr didis (women) in rural areas to use the app and book tickets. Even if 10% of these start using it regularly, it will open up a flood of travel bookings. 

Hopefully, the company will follow thru on these, and not just see it as PR; should be interesting to see if they declare progress on these in future investor calls. 

Ignore India at your own peril! 

Bakong Temple : one of the earliest in Angkor

Bakong Temple, Rolous Group

The Bakong temple is the Roulos Group, about 13-14 km from Siem Reap, and is generally covered as part of the day trip of Bantaey Srei (about 30 km away) and the group of temples called Rolous. These temples are the Bakong, Lolei,and Preah Ko and Prasat Prei Monti.

The Bakong is actually  one of the earliest temples made by the Khmer empire, about 1600 years ago (apparently the first temple ever made was Preah Ko, which is also visited as part of this tour).

Bakong temple is a “stepped pyramid” (see picture), and was the state temple of the city of Hariharalaya, established by the first king of Angkor, Jayavarman II. But later the capital of the empire moved to Angkor, leaving this site on the sidelines but not entirely abandoned. 

The temple is a nice, quiet place (when we visited, we were the only people there).This temple was also reconstructed using anastylosis method (as was done in The Baphuon as well, in Angkor Thom).  Don’t miss the lions that guard the entry, and the huge trees around the moat. Climb to the first level ( the stairs are a bit steep, as usual), and check out the elephants and lions at the corners.

The key aspect is the top spire looks like the Angkor temples, while the rest of the temple is a different style. The access road goes almost till the moat, making this temple one of the easier ones to visit by car.

The Rolous Group + Bantaey Srei is a very nice day trip from Siem Reap. The temples are clean and cleared, and its worth just wandering around in the silence and ever-advancing jungle, knowing that its ready to reclaim everything given the chance! These temples are also part of the three day ticket for US$67 per head. 

The Baphuon Temple : inspiring story of skill, persistence and passion!

The Baphuon Temple, Angkor Thom

Just close by to The Bayon, is another interesting temple, the Baphuon. This is just behind the terrace of the elephants and the leper king, and is worth a visit, for its sheer size, and its history. This temple is part of the Small Circle circuit.

The Baphuon is a very old temple, dated by some experts to around 1000 CE (nearly 1400 years old at this point). This temple is a three -tiered temple.  The unique part is not just the scale of the temple, but that it was reconstructed entirely by first dismantling the temple, and then reconstructing it, a process called anastylosis. The workers had labelled all the thousands of parts carefully but had to abandon the work in 1970 during the Khmer Rouge era.

The temple reconstruction was revived from 1996 under Pascal Royere and was widely called the “largest 3 D jigsaw puzzle in the world”. It was finally reconstructed fully in April 2011, after 51 years of work!

The temple has tremendously steep stairs, and not for the weak hearted! When we visited it, there weren’t many tourists. We went to the first level, as the stairs are quite hard to climb. But this temple is worth a visit for the efforts to reconstruct it, for the many people who worked so skillfully and tirelessly to bring it back to life!

The Bayon Temple : Enigmatic and dramatic centre piece of a vanished empire

 

The Bayon temple , Angkor 

The Bayon Temple sits at the center of the city of Angkor Thom and is every bit as impressive as Angkor Wat.  This is a must visit site when travel to Angkor. Its part of the Angkor Thom complex, which as I had mentioned in an earlier post, is the fortified city , and holds several of the main temples of the Angkor. This temple is part of the "small circle" tour. 

Do note that Angkor Wat, the main temple of the Khmer empire, is actually outside the walls of Angkor Thom. This city is itself surrouded by a moat, and crossed by five gates ( the gates of the victorious and and the gate of the dead are part of these five). 

This Bayon temple is famous for many reasons. Firstly, there is no clear knowledge as to why it’s called “Bayon”. The French explorers apparently heard this name from the locals in the early 20^th century when the discovery of Angkor was underway. Literature suggests it could mean “pedestal for sacred statues” ( https://smarthistory.org/bayon-temple-angkor-thom/).

The temple is built on three levels, to represent Mt Meru, There certainly are many “faces” in the temple, all show enigmatic smiles. These face-towers are on the inner most, or third level of the temple, and today only 37 out of the original 49 face-towers apparently exist (as heard from the guide). These faces, with eyes open, elaborate head dress, and broad smiles, could well represent The Buddha, or Brahma, and remain the source of much debate and discussion even today. Be that as it may, this is a sight to see. Really massive, and intricate.

It’s also generally considered one of the only Buddhist temples in Angkor, which was a Hindu site, and one the largest and last temples to be made. It was the centre piece of the royalty, the state temple as it were.  By the 12^th century, the prevailing religious belief was Buddhism ( King Javavarman VII), around which time this temple could have been completed.

Its walls depict many of the daily lives of Cambodia/ Khmer in the 12^th and 13^th centuries as well as depictions of the Angkor wars with the Chams.

Overall, this site inspires awe and reverence for the scale, and skill of the builders. A glimpse into the distant past. This temple is over 1000 years old. We must appreciate the time frame. Much of what we see, experience and use today did not exist when this monumental temple was already at its peak!

Business of Tourism : Travel apps need to better their game ! ( Deceptive Patterns research by Conscious Patterns , August 2024)

ASCI Academy (Advertising and Standards Council of India) and Parallel (a product design studio in Bengaluru) came up with some very interesting research on apps and their trade practices in August 2024. 

They studied 9 industries, 12000 screens and 53 apps. One of the industries, of our interest here, is also travel. They defined and studied 12 “deceptive patterns” – practices designed to get users to undertake actions or data processing that they did not intend. 

Travel apps used 9 out of 12 "deceptive patterns" . This is important to understand , because these apps are actually very useful and have become defacto go-to gateways for travel, tourism, holidays and transport. 

Even more crucial to note as ASCI -Parallel do in their research paper -  over 751 million users are online in India, and quite unknowingly, share massive data with anyone who asks!

What are these Deceptive Patterns? Very interesting definitions, and in many cases, are very intuitive too. We have all experienced these at one time or another, on apps and websites.

Deceptive patterns defined:

• 1.     Privacy deception:  getting you to share more info that is needed or intended.  (79% use this)
• 2.      Interface interference: highlighting some interface only, misdirection. (45%)
• 3.      Drip pricing: revealing additional fees slowly thru the process (43%)
• 4.      False urgency: creating artificial pressure of FOMO (32%)
• 5.      Nagging: constant pop ups (15%)
• 6.      Bait and switch – advertise something, serve something else. (13%)
• 7.      Basket Sneaking – add unwanted costs (donations etc)  (13%)
• 8.      Forced action – force users to do an action (make accounts etc) (11%)
• 9.      Confirm sharing – use social pressure to complete an action ( 8%)
• 10  Subscription trap -make cancellation difficult of a subscription (2% )
• 11. Trick question – vague language (2%)
• 12 .Disguised ads – blend with editorial (0%).

They surveyed 53 apps. This is the summary:

• 1.      52 out of 53 apps exhibited at least one deceptive patterns (“DP”).
• 2.      90% of apps showed between 1-4 DP.
• 3.      On an average, there were 2.7 DP per app.
• 4.      One app, had as many as 23 DP instances!
• 5.      Privacy deception accounted for 24% of total occurrences
• 6.      79% of all apps showed privacy deception. They really want your data!
• 7.      The travel apps use 9 out of 12 deceptive patterns – that’s a lot !
• 8.      Delivery and logistics used 8- very close behind.
• 9.      All 9 ecommerce apps made it very difficult to delete your account.

Travel apps use many deceptive patterns

One of the many industries they surveyed was travel and tourism. In this, they checked the apps of the leading players – EasemyTrip, Agoda, goibibo, yatra, makemytrip, cleartrip, redbus, and booking.com.

The list of DP that the travel trade uses, is not surprising, when you sit back and think- almost every DP is used in some manner or intensity. Eg- just a few that we all can relate to:

1.      Drip pricing (33% of all apps studied) – add on costs till final cost is something else !

2.      Confirm sharing – pressurize to get advantage of some deal at a point in the booking.

3.      Nagging – pop ups keep pressurizing you to take an action .

 These practices essentially underline the importance of data- the new black gold! Data like this allows targeted marketing and selling, reduces marketing and sales costs, and potentially provides a database for cross selling. Its inevitable that some data needs to shared to use services- just be aware of what exactly needs to be shared! 

After all, caveat emptor! 

Read the research on : https://www.consciouspatterns.in/research-findings

Cambodia has had a dark history in the 1970s-1980s, with the Khmer Rouge running amok in the country. 

The Killing well, Wat Thmey

One of the sites of their outrages is near Siem Reap , now an active Pagoda site, called Wat Thmey. This is a small museum just on the outskirts of Siem Reap, which one may visit for an understanding of this dark era. 

This place is also sometimes referred to as " the killing fields" in literature. The skulls and bones of the people who died here are displayed. Its a somber site, and we hope such atrocities never happen again anywhere. 

The larger Cambodia Landmine museum with the war materials and all is a bit further away and we didn't visit that.