Guest Reviews

It was interesting to see a different way of life. However the treatment of animals at many of the stops (all as gimmicks for tourists) was pretty horrific. Mammals in cages so small that they were all turning in 360s as fast as possible (literally driven mad) alligators and birds living in terrible conditions too (garbage filled cages , unable to move etc). Surely there are other ways to make a buck off of tourists that don’t equate to torturing mammals. The tour itself was basically a boat ride through the village, where you stop to see some of those animals, then you turn around and return back. Even without the torture it’s not worth it. If you want to give back to those communities, there are probably better ways to do so.

Expected a Boat Tour of the Fishing Village ... but we were exposed by our Tour Guide (Mr Nak), to many variations of swindling money from us, in disguised ways. Enroute we were offered a Canoe Ride for 35 mins through the mangrove forest, $5 extra each, as well as being primed about a school we would see that needs support, and tourists to speak English to the students. Then when arriving to get on the boat, we were accosted by locals pressing us to purchase souvenirs, AND then photos were taken of each of us on the tour. Part way we were ushered off the boat to view a monastery for about 2 mins, then walked for 20mins through the village, being told about a School we could “assist”. Once arriving at floating platform for Canoe Ride, which lasted barely 20 mins, after which the Canoes were diverted to take the tour group to a Floating Restaurant on Tonle Sap Lake. Our guide wanted us all to rest, relax and have lunch at the floating restaurant. None of this matched with the description of the tour. On returning to shore from the boat, we were then accosted by the locals, who had printed each of our photos on to a board, laminated and pushed at us to purchase. ALL IN ALL, everyone on the tour considered it a BIG SCAM, endeavouring to make money out of us tourists! It didn’t work. DON’T BOOK YOUR TOUR WITH Green Era Travel. Grossly appalling!

It’s very disappointing that I have to write these words down. I am of Chinese decent. I was discriminated during the tour. The tour guide, whose name is Chet, kept dissing Chinese people to entertain the rest the group, who are from Europe. He blamed everything on Chinese people, but I doubt he can even tell Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Japanese, South Korean and etc. He “apologized” after I said I would communicate with the travel agent. But I’m not sure he was really sorry or just wanted to keep his job. He even said that most of his colleagues did the same thing for fun as an excuse. I was astonished by what he said. Discrimination seems to be such a normal thing in this travel agent. I don’t want to stereotype, but I believe Cambodian people can do a lot better than this. I regretted to book this tour, paying money to get discriminated, let alone Chet’s limited English and knowledge. To be honest, I did not expect he or the travel agent would do anything for this, since they probably only care about westerners. But as a “chicken-traveller” (Chet’s original words), I still have the right to tell my true experience.

Rickety van on bumpy roads made for an uncomfortable ride there and back. Shanty boat with uncomfortable seats and a driver who used the horn so much that I got a headache. This tour takes you through a river village where you see people bathing, swimming, pooping, peeing, fishing and washing clothes in dirty river water. This is heartbreaking and the tour companies are making a killing taking people to see this. At no point during this tour were we given information on how we could help these people and we were not educated on how these people were being helped by their government. This tour is advertised as a lake tour but we spent the entire time going up and down the over crowded (full of other boats) river. Once at the mouth of the lake we stopped at a tourist trap where they have caged crocodiles, rabbits, and guinea pigs. There is a sign urging people to purchase over priced drinks but the tour states that water is provided with the ticket price - we were not offered any water. The other tourist trap the tour stopped at was the mangrove where you can pay 5 USD to have a lady paddle you around the mangrove in a canoe. This could have been lovely but there were so many people that is was utter chaos. It was interesting to see this river village but I would not recommend this tour at all!