During the week of Dec. 24th - 31st, 5 friends and I explored the beautiful Kingdom of Cambodia. We flew into Phnom Penh (the capital), spent 3 nights in Siem Reap (where the world famous Angkor Wat is located), 2 nights in Sihanoukville (a gorgeous beach town), and back to Phnom Penh to head home (see the map below). This trip was pretty close to perfect! Everything went smoothly and harmoniously, and although things didn't go exactly as planned, everything that we did do was fantastic.
We arrived in Phnom Penh the night of Dec. 24th, and only spent that one night there before heading to Siem Reap. When we walked out of the airport, a man directed us to two taxis that would take us to our hostel. Now since we were in a foreign and very poor country, we were all wary of potential crimes against us. So when our two cab drivers were being extremely friendly to us, we all feared there was some catch involved. We told them we needed to buy bus tickets to Siem Reap for the next morning, so they drove us all around the city finding a bus station that was still open to sell us tickets. They were being incredible helpful, but we were still fearful it was too good to be true. We finally found a place to buy tickets, and then our drivers took us to our hostel. Once we realized they were merely being helpful and nice, I think we all felt terrible for fearing the worst, and thanked them profusely. Their generosity would be a continuous theme for every Cambodian we encountered!
Sunday Dec. 25th
On Christmas morning, we boarded an 8am bus to Siem Reap. I brought a book with me ("The Tao of Pooh"), but I didn't open it once. Instead, I was enthralled by the view out the window. We drove a one-lane road for the entire 6 hour ride through the Cambodian country side. We drove through many small communities of very modest homes made of palm leaves. Most homes had chickens and a waterbuffalo out front, along with a man-made square pond. I'm not sure what the ponds are for, though I did notice a lot of water buffalos wading in the water, probably to cool off. I sure hope the water wasn't for drinking, because it was usually green. The ponds also had several lilly pads decorated with beautiful magenta flowers. Since this was my first trip to a third-world country, I had never seen a community like this. That was the quickest 6 hour bus ride of my life.
We arrived at the bus station in Siem Reap and were greeted by a swarm of tuk-tuk drivers (tuk-tuks are small 4-person carriages pulled by motorcycles, our main mode of transportation on this trip). Two very nice drivers took us to our hostel. They asked us what our plan was for the next day. When we told them we would be visiting Angkor Wat, they offered to take us and be our personal chauffeurs for the whole day, for the very low price of $5/person (that's the price of a 10 minute cab ride in Korea). We of course jumped on that opportunity!
That evening, we walked 5 minutes from our guesthouse into a central part of Siem Reap to do some shopping and dining. We all went a little crazy with the shopping since everything was dirt cheap! Outside the shops were several water tanks with fish swimming inside. Normally, fish in tanks are eaten by people. Instead, these fish would be eating the people! Now before you freak out, let me explain. These tanks are foot baths. For $3, you dip your feet into the water and let the fish eat all the dead skin off your feet. Many of you may think, Why would anyone do this?! But I say, Why wouldn't anyone do it?! What a unique experience! So we all paid our $3 and spent about 45 minutes getting our feet tickled by fish teeth. During this time, we met a nice American fellow who was traveling solo, so after talking with him a bit, he ended up joining us for the rest of the evening, as well as the next.
To continue the theme of new experiences, we decided to have a very unique Christmas dinner. I ordered a meat platter which consisted of BBQed kangaroo, crocodile, and snake. I will say the kangaroo was tasty, the crocodile wasn't bad, but a little chewy, and the snake tasted good, but took about 2 minutes to chew each bite, which made it no fun to eat. It was worth the experience though.
Monday Dec. 26th
Our tuk-tuk drivers picked us up from our guesthose at 8am to take us to Angkor Wat. It is just outside the city, so the drive was only about 20 minutes. Angkor Wat is Cambodia's main attraction, and is referred to by many as the 8th Wonder of the World. If you're not familiar with Angkor Wat, it is a collection of temples and palaces all located in a park. The first buildings were built in the 11th Century when the Khmer Empire began to flourish. The region back then was Hindu, so most of the temples originated as Hindu temples. Construction continued for the next two hundred years and became the hub of the civilization. In the 1500s, the Khmer culture became Buddhist. Instead of tearing down the Hindu temples, the Buddhist rulers just adapted them into Buddhist temples.
The buildings are farely well in-tact still, though they are only now used as a tourist destination and require plenty of upkeep and renovation. Though I have never been to Rome or Greece to see the Colloseum and Parthenon, I would argue that the architecture and engineering feats required to contrust Angkor Wat rival those of the Romans and Greeks. Of course, Angkor Wat was built about 1000 - 1500 years later than many of the Roman and Greek relics. Then again, when Angkor Wat was built, the UK still only consisted of local, primitive clans.
It's hard to describe what it's like walking through those structures. I had never been to anything so old, so awe-inspiring. I tried imagining what it would have looked like when first built, what kind of paint would be on the walls, what kinds of people were walking around, what kind of energy it had. I think the best depiction I can offer is from the photos I took, so I will suggest you see for yourself.
I knew there were some monkeys in Cambodia. Having never seen wild monkeys, that was one of the things I most wanted to see. In fact, I told my friends I want a monkey on my head! Well, at Angkor Wat, my wish came true. We found a community of monkeys who looked more or less harmless, so we slowly approached them. They seemed entirely unphased and unthreatened by us, and took an interest in certain objects on our persons that they could snatch and bring into the trees. I saw one monkey carrying a man's hat into a tree! So they climbed all over us, trying to take our glasses and water bottles. One monkey proceeded to climb on my head, though it wasn't the fun, cute experience I had hoped for. I was surprised by having a monkey on my head, so I flinched a bit, and then felt the monkey's fangs dig into my scalp! This was no longer fun, and that monkey was no longer cute. I shook him off me and decided to get the hell out of there!
(In case you're worried, I can assure you that I am fine after the monkey bite. I've only foamed at the mouth a little.)
We spent most of the day at Angkor Wat, stopping at probably 10 different sites. We felt so blessed to have our tuk-tuk drivers, they were very informational, and they stopped at a lot of wonderful sites that the tours did not stop at, so the crowds were much lighter. There were few boundaries or fences that kept us out of certain places. We could even climb the temples if we wanted. It was certainly fun taking advantage of that freedom, yet at the same time, I couldn't help but feel that kind of freedom might speed up the deterioration of the structures. One of the highlights of the day was when we climbed to the top of a palace that had very few tourists. We sat on the top, with our legs dangling over the edge, looking out over the land in silence and serenity.
I think we figured that day would be the best of our trip, but it turns out we were wrong...
Tuesday Dec. 27th
When our tuk-tuk drivers returned us to our guesthouse after Angkor Wat, we didn't have anything planned for the next day. We were thinking of just playing it by ear. Luckily, our drivers suggested we go see the "floating" village, and offered to take us there. We had no idea what the floating village was, but we accepted their offer. They had been so good to us thus far, so we figured why not spend another day with them.
They picked us up around 1pm on Tuesday to take us to the floating village. It was a 40 minute drive through the country side, which was even more interesting and enthralling than the bus ride a couple days back. We got to a very swampy area where our drivers handed us off to a young man (no older than 17) who would drive us around the village by boat. So we boarded the boat, and our tuk-tuk drivers stayed put until our return.
It turns out that the "floating" village is not actually a village of floating homes like we expected, but rather a community of buildings on stilts above a lake/swamp. Talk about culture shock! These were all very poor homes with very minimal electricity and probably no plumbing. Yet the people appeared so happy! They waved at us from their doorways as we floated through their neighborhood. We saw kids as young as 3 years old operating their own wooden row boats, and parents not worried that their children might fall in and drown.
Our boat stopped at one of the two restaurants in the community and we were told that for $5 we can board a smaller paddle boat and take a tour of the lake forest (and by lake forest, I mean trees that are growing out from under the water). For $5, why not?! The 6 of us were separated into two boats. My boat was guided by an older woman who was accompanied by an adorable 4 year old girl who appeared to be her granddaughter. And that's when my heart melted! This little girl sat right in front of me, and I spent the majority of that boat ride learning Khmer words from her (the Cambodian language), making funny faces, showing her my camera, and pretending to eat things on the boat. I'm sure the forest is beautiful, but I'd hardly know since this girl stole my attention.
After our boat ride through the forest ended, we returned to the restaurant and had refreshments. The little girl joined us there, and Sarah taught her how to play a game on her iPod. Sitting on the open-air deck of that restaurant, in the middle of the most foreign neighborhood we'd ever experienced, was when I realized that this was the best day so far, and would be extremely hard to beat. Except it only got better.
Our first boat driver took us out into the open part of the lake to watch the sunset. When we got out there, we had about an hour to kill before sunset. Mike and Alisa swam in the lake while Sarah read, and Pete, Dan and I just sat and took it all in as the sun ever so slowly tucked under the horizon.
When the sun finally set, all the boats in the lake raced back to shore, and I seriously mean raced. It was such a trip riding the boat at full speed and competing with the other boats. It was all done in good fun of course, and very entertaining.
We were reconnected with our tuk-tuk drivers, who took us back to town. They asked if we would like to go out for a drink with them. Since this was our last night with them, we of course accepted their offer. They took us to a non-touristy place where we were able to talk with them a bit and get to know them a little better. Like I said, they had been incredibly nice the entire time, but it's usually assumed that people in the service industry are just nice for the money. But when we needed to leave, one of the drivers paid for everyone's drinks! Now we really knew they were just genuinely nice guys.
Wednesday Dec. 28th
We took an overnight bus to Sihanoukville because we discovered it would take a long time to get there. We knew we had to go through Phnom Penh, but thought the bus ride would be one straight shot. Unfortunately, we had to get off the bus at Phnom Penh at around 5am and wait over 2 hours for the next bus to take us to Sihanoukville. This was not a fun experience, especially since I hardly slept on the first bus. The bus station was also an absolute dump with very little food options and one of the most disgusting bathrooms I've ever seen.
That being said, when we finally made it to Sihanoukville (13 hours after leaving Siem Reap), the long bus travel no longer mattered. We reserved a hostel in a small beach community outside of the city called Otres Beach. The community was hardly developed with just a small strip of hostels, beach restaurants and bars. Our hostel was 50 feet from the beach, and had a very laid back atmosphere. It was brand new, and looked like a gigantic beach hut. A handful of ex-pats, mostly British, ran the place and were extremely friendly.
This was the part of our trip where we got lazy and relaxed on the beach. The water was warm and not too salty, with absolutely no waves. Although it would have been nice to surf, it was also nice relaxing in very calm water. When we first jumped in the water, we loudly and excitedly exclaimed, "We're swimming in the Gulf of Thailand!!!" There was a floating dock in the water where we sat and watched the sunset over the sea. We ate all our meals on the beach, and some of the members of our party got massages and manicures/pedicures on the beach. During our first night there, we ran into a man who offered to take us on a 6 hour boat tour of three islands off the coast. We accepted his offer, and arranged to meet up the next morning at 8am. They included breakfast and lunch with the boat tour, along with snorkeling, all for $15 per person.
Thursday Dec. 29th
As planned, we met up with the boat tour at 8am for breakfast. It turned out that the 6 of us would be the only passengers on the trip! And we were guided by two men who operated the boat and cooked our lunch. Our first stop was right off the coast of one island where we snorkeled. There was coral on the ocean floor, but unfortunately it was all brown (possibly dead or dying). The fish weren't too colorful either, so I only spent about 10 minutes snorkeling. My friends really enjoyed it though, especially the ones who had never been before. I enjoyed just laying out on the boat, feeling the sun on my skin in the dead of winter.
Our next stop was on an island where we spent a few hours swimming, eating lunch, and exploring. There was a path through the island that led to another beautiful and less populated beach. Walking through the jungle of the forest, I couldn't help but think about all the Vietnam War movies I had seen. Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" played in my head.
Our last stop was off the coast of another island for more snorkeling. I decided to just stay on the boat under the sun, enjoying the scenery. I had absolutely no problem being lazy. After all, it's a vacation, it's perfectly acceptable to do as little as possible!
We returned to Otres Beach around 3:30pm, where we just hung out on the beach relaxing and playing in the water (and inevitably getting sunburned!). I set up my camera and tripod on the beach and took some shots of the sunset.
Friday Dec. 31
We spent the morning enjoying the beach while we still could, because we had to take a 1pm bus back to Phnom Penh. We really did not want to leave, it was a little too nice there. And we realized that this really concluded our trip.
Had we known what our bus ride would be like, we probably wouldn't have left. But there was no predicting that our 6 hour bus ride would be on a karaoke bus! That's right, a karaoke bus, where you can sing karaoke on the bus. And despite the fact that no one on our bus sang a single song, they had Cambodian karaoke music blasting on the speakers. We asked them to please turn the volume down, or off, but instead they played an equally loud and annoying Chinese movie overdubbed in Khmer. Even with my headphones in on full volume, it could not drown out the volume of the bus speakers. It was a nightmare! If I had to pick a low-point on the trip, this was it. But to be honest, given what can go wrong on trips like this, a nightmarish karaoke bus is really not a bad low-point.
We arrived in Phnom Penh that evening, checked into our guesthouse, ate some dinner, and went to bed. We had an early plane to catch, so there was no staying out late for us. It was a sad night, and a sad morning.
I mentioned in the beginning that this was a very harmonious trip. I credit that mostly to the dynamic of our group. With 6 people, there is usually conflicts of interest. However, over the entire week, there was not one single argument or disagreement about what to do, where to go, or what to eat. We got along swimmingly the entire time, and never got bored with each other. Even during our last night, we still had things to talk about over dinner. I am so grateful to have gone with this group of quality individuals! This trip only made our friendships stronger, and I will forever cherish these memories with them.
