David Kilpatrick wrote:Angkor Wat is helium balloon - expensive and rare! Must be the air temperature there prevents hot air ballooning at the right times of day.
Yes, it is clearly not a hot air balloon, but until you mentioned it I hadn't thought about it. I don't know why they are not using a hot air balloon. It is hot and humid during the day, but early in the morning it wasn't bad. Actually, the morning I took this photo I got up about 4:00 AM in Siem Reap and had a cyclo driver I met the day before come pick me up at 5:00 to take me to Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Keo, etc. It was still very dark and half an hour later when we got to Angkor Wat it was still so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. I had a tiny flashlight (single AA battery) and I walked around for an hour or so until the sun started coming up. I was hoping for a spectacular sunrise like I have seen in some photos, but the sky just went from black to dark gray to middle gray to light gray to almost white. Almost no color at all. As I wrote in the other thread, timing and luck are so important! Here is what it looked like at sunrise:
I had him take me around to other temples until about 1:00 PM. By then it was
very hot and humid. I had the cyclo driver pick me up the next morning too and he drove me around to some of the other temple complexes. There are so many in that area although outside Cambodia many people lump them all into the name Angkor Wat.
We're hoping a balloon trip may be affordable in Mexico in March (Mayan riviera) but the way exchange rates are going, we'll be lucky to afford to eat. Car rental has turned out to be amazingly cheap at only £105 for the week, about half the price of some European countries.
I don't know how much the balloon ride in San Miguel de Allende costs. The Mexican peso has dropped in value since we were there last spring. At that time it was US$1 = 10P, but now it is US$1 = 14.4P. We are hoping to get back to Mexico sometime in the next few months. Even at 10P travel was inexpensive in Mexico.