Here I am again, with another oddball route! This time, we’ll be flying Air Cambodia (K6) between Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Da Nang, Vietnam. Air Cambodia was known until this year as Cambodia Angkor Air. This is the only nonstop route between the two cities, and due to the difficulty in booking, I almost didn’t take it.
After finding the flight, I went to Air Cambodia’s website and tried to book the ticket directly. The website didn’t want to take any of my credit cards. After trying to call their support line, and considering a more expensive AirAsia flight that backtracked to Bangkok, I booked instead through trip.com. As a rule, I never book plane tickets through third parties, but in this case it turned out fine. Trip.com issued the ticket within minutes and there were zero problems with checking in.
I initially was supposed to fly on one of K6’s Airbus A320s, but it was down gauged a few days before the trip to a brand new ATR-72. Seeing the flight load later on, I can definitely see why they did that.
Getting to Siem Reap’s new airport from the city is a very long drive. After driving through villages on the outskirts of Siem Reap, you will meet a new, modern, and empty expressway that goes to the airport. Conservatively, it takes about an hour, and an SUV driver costs between $20 and $30 USD, or 80k and 120k Riel. You can hail a driver on Grab, the Uber of Southeast Asia, but a tour guide or other driver will inevitably offer to take you to the airport. I did the latter, and cutting out the middleman probably left both of us better off. A tuk-tuk might be cheaper to get to the airport, but spare yourself and the driver the misery and travel in an enclosed vehicle.
Siem Reap Angkor International Airport (SAI) is new, modern, and underutilized. It is very clear that this airport was built with Chinese investment. Curiously, as of this writing, there is only one nonstop to Mainland China: a China Eastern flight to Kunming. Reportedly, Air Cambodia will launch a nonstop to Shenzhen this July as well. There were no lines at the check-in desk, bag drop, exit immigration, or security checkpoint. K6 allows one checked bag for free on this route, so I happily indulged in that luxury.
On passing the final checkpoint, I found that the terminal is centered around a large and intricate display of Khmer and Buddhist culture. Surrounding it are a few duty-free shops and possibly some restaurants. After poking around the airport’s facilities, I took a seat by the gate. Everything was clean, new, and in good working order. The plane was there already, but was so small that I could barely see it from the gate. Boarding was orderly, and we snaked our way up and down the jet bridge, descended a flight of stairs to the tarmac, walked a bit, and boarded the plane directly through the rear door using its built-in ladder. We got one last taste of the Cambodian heat, and fantastic views of the plane. I was happy to see the tail number too, as it was not on FlightRadar24. This was a slight inconvenience, as my seat was in row 2 of the plane.
There weren’t too many people flying with me that day: maybe 60% of the seats in the ATR-72 were occupied. The flight attendants spoke perfect English and were dressed very nicely. The plane literally had a new plane smell. After plugging the tail number into airfleets.net, I found that the plane rolled off the assembly line fewer than two months prior, and was delivered 2 weeks beforehand!
After a short takeoff roll, we were up in the sky, bound for the beaches of Central Vietnam.
There wasn’t any IFE to speak of on this plane: no video screens, wifi, or audio system in the armrest. There was, however, incredible scenery and a thick, glossy in-flight magazine, which had an article about K6 acquiring the airplane that I was on.
On a brand new airplane, Air Cambodia took the time to remind passengers to not use their Game Boy Advances, PDAs, portable CD players, or boomboxes during taxi, takeoff, and landing.
As we flew over Cambodia’s central lowlands, the Mekong and Tonlé San/Sê San rivers, and then over Annamite Mountains into Vietnam, one disappointment was the total lack of catering other than a cup of water. There was no choice of beverages, no snack, and no buy-on-board menu. While the flight was only an hour long, I was getting peckish since I hadn’t had breakfast that morning.
The flight landed into a rainy Da Nang rather uneventfully. We boarded a single bus to take us to immigration control, which had only one desk open and was quickly at its limit by our small crowd. I had a feeling that it would be that way, as everyone rushed to the immigration desk after getting off the bus. Being a US citizen, I had to produce my visa as well as my passport, and both documents were scrutinized. Baggage arrived quickly and, after a short wait, a Grab driver came and took me over to get seafood and kick off my Vietnam experience.
