Sorry for the late posting, but I seem to have gotten a cold and haven’t felt like putting out the effort to write these blog posts. They seem to take forever but Mom said she was bummed I hadn’t put up any pictures in a while, so I figured I could do it now. It’s Friday evening and work and I can’t focus anymore so I’m conspicuously writing this post on a Word doc to make it look like I’m working.
Since I last wrote, I haven’t done much work wise, I’m still working on some long term projects that I’m hoping to finish before my last day, next Friday. On Wednesday, I finally got a new boss, he’s from Ireland and his name is Pat. It’s nice to finally have someone to help me out, I was in a little too deep with my work, I think.
In more exciting news, Kendra and I went to Siem Reap last weekend. Siem Reap is the #2 place in the world on TripAdvisor. Siem Reap is home to the largest religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat, and is a must-see in Cambodia. Throughout SE Asia, religious temples (either Buddhist or Hindu) are EVERYWHERE you go. But these were built around 1200 and are very famous.
I took Friday off and we took an overnight bus to Siem Reap last Thursday. The overnight bus was quite the experience. I had heard the highway from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was really bad, but I had no idea it was that bad. Kendra and I had bunks on the bottom of the bus that had a soft cushion to sleep on. The soft cushion was no match for the potholes of Cambodian highways. I’m not sure if the bus ride was that bad, or if I was just kind of out of it because I was half asleep, but there were moments when I would wake up and think “This is where I die..right here on a bad highway at night in Cambodia..”
Don’t worry Mom and Grandmas, I made it just fine and I’m attributing my fear to my sleepy state. We arrived in Siem Reap around 5:30 in the morning, even though we weren’t supposed to get there until 7. Our bus driver was driving so fast that it took him 5.5 hours instead of the 7 hours it’s supposed to take. Our hostel sent us a tuk tuk for pick up because the tuk tuks in Siem Reap are notoriously corrupt. Sukhet, our tuk tuk driver, turned out to be one of the best we have had and was with us the whole weekend.
Because we got to Siem Reap so early, we couldn’t check into our hostel until 2pm so we had A LOT of time to kill. We decided to change and brush our teeth and then head out to the temples.
The first day Sukhet took us to the “outer loop” temples. To be honest, I cant remember the name of a single one, but I’m sure you can look it up if you’re curious. It was nice being out so early because there were way less people and the weather was significantly cooler. Kendra and I, being the tourists that we are, finished the temples in record time and so Sukhet suggested we got to the “Lady Temple” which is a bit farther away. We decided we might as well and Suhket led us there. The ride took about 30 minutes and Kendra slept the whole way...lucky
When we got to the Lady Temple, it turned out to be much more touristy than the others and even had a coffee shop. Because I probably got four hours MAX of sleep that night, a coffee shop gave me a feeling that I assume will be similar to the feeling I will have when I fly into Denver. I got an iced latte and started drinking it when I realized it probably wasn’t made with clean ice. I tried to drink as much as I could before the ice melted, but well, this is Cambodia and my brain was convinced I was going to get sick so I threw it away. I would rather be tired than sick by infected Cambodian water.
We also did a little shopping at the Lady Temple, which perked us up a little as well. We toured around the Lady Temple, I hurt my toe again, and then we found Sukhet to take us back to the hostel before we dropped dead of exhaustion. We went back to the hostel and ate some lunch, checked into our room and then took a four hour nap. I’m not kidding…a four hour nap.
We woke up and took a shower and our roommate told us about a pub crawl that night. Apparently it’s really famous. We decided we might as well and headed down to Pub Street (famous street with lots of bars) for the pub crawl. It didn’t take much convincing for us, we got a free shirt and that will convince me to do just about anything. We met a lot of people that night and had a USA vs. the World game of flip cup, which of course, we killed everyone in. Over my time traveling I’ve realized no one is better at drinking games than Americans. You can’t beat our competitiveness.
We got in pretty late but made it back safely to our hostel. We slept in the next day and got a massage before heading out to the temples again with a friend we met the night before. This time we did the “inner loop” which included the temple made famous by Tomb Raider as well as the most famous temple of all, Angkor Wat. We ended the tour at Angkor Wat in hopes of catching the sunset, but it was too cloudy out to get a good sunset. Not to mention I thought I was literally going to melt away…it was that hot and humid.
We got back to the hostel and hung out with some girls in our room for a few hours before showering and meeting back up with Ashely (the girl who toured with us). We met for some kabobs and headed to the night market in Siem Reap. Unfortunatley it started to rain and my feet hurt really bad so this wasn’t the most enjoyable experience. We headed back pretty early because we wanted to wake up early for the sunrise.
We woke up around 4 am to head out to Angkor Wat again with Sukhet. This is one of the most popular activiites to do at Angkor Wat, but unfortunately it was so cloudy we didn’t get to see a sunrise. Nevertheless, it got us out of bed so we could have a look around Angkor Wat and head back into town before our bus left at 8:45 to head back to Phnom Penh. We made it to the bus in time and took the long 7 hour journey back to Phnom Penh. We got back and Kendra literally fell asleep from 4 until the next morning. I spent most of the day reading.
Today is Kendra’s last day of work (my last day is next Friday) so we have been trying to jam-pack all of the stuff we’ve been meaning to do into this week and weekend. We finally went to a few restarautns we’ve been wanting to try and finally tried Fish Amok and Beef Lok Lak, the two most famous dishes in Cambodia. I loved the Lok Lak, I didn’t enjoy Fish Amok very much.
We met some nice women while out to dinner on Wednesday night who we talked to for a bit and they ended up paying for our entire meal! I felt especially bad because I had a pretty expensive meal by Cambodian standards (6 dollars) plus a piece of cheesecake (4 dollars) that Kendra and I split. Oh and Brenda – I’m not sure if mom has told you, but I told her I wanted a “Welcome Home Cheesecake.” I’ll bring you back any souvenir you like, as long as it fits in my bag and is lightweight. I’m working on a tight limit.
For now, that’s all I can think of to write. I can’t believe I only have one week left in Cambodia! I’m heading to Hanoi, Vietnam on July 31st and I”ll be around there until August 7th when we head to Hong Kong, where I’ll be for 3 days. And then home on the 10th! It’s getting close everyone! I am prepared to eat any American treats anyone is willing to prepare for me.
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