Cambodia

Posted June 26, 2016

June 17th 2016

I arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia happy with my new beautiful piece of bright pink luggage. The hostel I was staying at “Onederz” was kind to send someone to pick me up free of charge. The hostel was beautiful and I was impressed with the common space and large windows, which let in a lot of light. I spent a day in the hostel doing nothing but catching up some Netflix shows and relaxing. Even though the hostel had a great common space I found it difficult to make friends here. Everyone seemed to be in groups or in a couple. Sometimes you just get tired of introducing yourself to a new group during travels and I was feeling a little bit like that in the moment. My first meal in Cambodia was amazing. I had an Angkor beer with a roasted eggplant with ground chicken on top. It was delightful! The next day I was lounging around when my roommate Scottie walked into the room and introduced himself. We became instant friends. When Scottie spoke I was in disbelief that he was from China because his accent sounded more North American. That’s the great thing about travelling, you can’t always guess where someone is from and you’re always learning new things about people. People had warned me to be very careful in Cambodia with using my cell phone as they get stolen all the time by guys on motorbikes. Another guy from China came into the hostel room looking a bit upset and he told us his iPhone 6 plus just got swiped out of his hands by a guy on a motorbike.

Siem Reap is the home of Angkor Wat, the biggest temple in the world and from the pictures it looked stunning. I decided to book a sunrise tour of this temple and a few others the following day. I woke up at 3am, showered, and waited downstairs for my tuk tuk driver. Something seemed a bit off because I was ready to go but the hostel kept telling me to hold on and that we were waiting for more people. I was getting irritated because sunrise was at 5:30am and we should be there for 5am to see the beautiful pinks and purples in the sky as the sun rises but the time was already 4:45am and we hadn’t left yet. Angkor Wat was about 45 minutes away and I wasn’t sure if we’d make it in time. Finally a girl name Danielle appears at 4:50am, looking for coffee and breakfast, and a bit confused on timing. She got into the tuk tuk and I asked her why she was so late. She told me she wasn’t late and the hostel told her to be ready by 5am. Then she realized, as all of us waited that the hostel misinformed her and that she was 20 minutes late to the party. We rushed to the UNESCO area to buy tickets to enter the temple areas but as we drove there we saw the sun rising. I was furious but there was nothing that could be done. The tuk tuk driver switched some people into our tuk tuk. A lovely brother and sister from the U.S. joined us named Daniel and Michelle. I called them team Egypt because that’s where their family was from. As we got closer to Angkor Wat, we ran out of the tuk tuk to try to catch some of the sunrise but it was too late. The sun had rose and that stunning photo of Angkor Wat that I was pining for was lost. Oh well, next time. We explored that temple, the Bayon temple, and a few others that day including the temple from the movie, “Tomb Raider” I didn’t purchase the 3-day pass to see more temples because I felt like one day was good enough. Temples all start looking the same after a while. The Bayon temple was something different though. The temple had faces carved out in stone like the one in the feature picture. Just beautiful. When I got back to the hostel, Scottie and I jumped into the roof top swimming pool with another girl named Taru from Holland. It was so hot in Cambodia these few days and a pool was perfect to lounge around in. Scottie and I went to dinner with Taru to the same place I went the day before. We ordered some other things like chicken curry but the eggplant was hands down, the winner.

The next day Scottie and I thought it would be great to travel together so we headed to Phom Penh. He had a flexible travel schedule and never heard of the killing fields so he wanted to come along to see it all. I had done a project on the Khmer Rouge in high school so I was a bit more prepared for what we were going to see. We got to our hostel in Phnom Penh and I realized that the luggage was maybe not the best choice for travelling around like this. The hostel was on a road currently being constructed by the city so there was a lot of mud and debree. We checked into the hostel and thought about what we should do. We did some brief site seeing in the city but the temperatures were so hot that no one wanted to go out. Scottie and I preferred to eat all of our meals at the street vendor stalls sitting on tiny chairs. When it wasn’t scorching hot outside, it was pouring rain which gave us limited options on what to do in the city. We spent one full day with this lovely Italian girl Francesca touring the Killing fields and S-21 museum in the city. What a heart breaking moment to read and see where the genocide happened. It was a somber day for all of us to hear all the stories but I was happy to hear that there were some survivors. A good lesson to learn from history on how easy a genocide can occur anywhere. I had also been in contact with Cami during this time. She is he girl I had met and travelled with in Laos. She was in Cambodia for a few days in Phom Penh and I was very happy to see her. She stayed at the same hostel and we were able to spend a few days together before I left for Vietnam. I’m looking forward to seeing her again in the future. The hostel was also really great for arranging my visa to Vietnam. It was quick and I didn’t have to visit the Vietnam Embassy, which would have cost a lot of money in tuk tuk rides and time. I said good-bye to her, Scottie, and Francesca. The next day I jumped onto a bus and was excited to see Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon.