Cambodia!

Alright, it’s been a little longer than expected for the next blog entry on our trip, so I apologize. I started teaching classes again as well as taking a Chinese class, so it’s been a busy process adjusting back. I am writing at one of Nathan and my favorite coffee shops right now.  It’s called Driftwood and it’s about a five minute walk from our apartment and has a really Chinese-cutesy-attempt-at-Grecian décor. They make pretty good coffee (by the standards we’ve gotten used to here in China) and great milk tea, and the owners are a really friendly couple not too much older than Nathan and me. The best part, however, is that they have a golden retriever dog that hangs out up in the coffee shop. His name is Simba and is a lumbering, attention-devouring pretty boy who is currently sprawled on the floor to my left after a solid twenty minutes of rubs he begged out of us with his big brown eyes and habit of putting his paw on your leg whenever you begin to stop paying attention to him. He isn’t rowdy or dramatic in wanting your attention, though, which is all the more endearing. Instead of barking or whining or running back and forth frantically, Simba simply comes by and places his head on your knee and stands there quietly, occasionally turning his head to look at you as if to say, ‘Don’t stop please. This is great.’ He’s quite irresistible.

So I believe I left off when we were crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia. We arrived at the border nervous about the move since we had read a lot of things about tuk-tuks (taxi motorbikes attached to a cart-like passenger car for 2-4 people) taking you to false border points and trying to scam you into false visas and paying for extra services that are actually unnecessary to get across the border. So when our tuk-tuk dropped us off at a building that said it was the border patrol, we were very suspicious and trying to figure out if we were really where we needed to be.  Turns out we were and actually had a very nice man help us get everything in order to pass through customs and to arrange a taxi to Siem Reap. We finally got everything settled for around the prices we had read online that you are supposed to pay, and so we set off for the long line at customs. Sweaty and tired from our 6am train, we made it through in about an hour and took a shuttle bus to where the taxis were waiting to take tourists to their destination. The taxi ride from the border to Siem Reap was about 2½ hours. When we arrived in Siem Reap our taxi driver dropped us off at this tuk-tuk waiting in the parking lot of a market and he told us the tuk-tuk guys would take us the rest of the way to our hostel. Thinking this was one of the scams we had been warned about we made it clear to them that we had already paid for the full taxi ride so they should take us to our hostel as was agreed. They then explained that the transfer is part of the payment we made—we wouldn’t have to pay extra for the tuk-tuk. Thankful for the misunderstanding we got in the tuk-tuk for what turned out to be a quick ride to our hostel. On the way, our driver even stopped and helped us buy our bus tickets to Phnom Penh for the next day. So far our expectations of what the Cambodian people were going to be like were completely different from reality. Everyone we had dealt with had been incredibly kind and generous.

After dropping our stuff off at the hostel we went out for dinner. Our hostel was conveniently located just a 5-10 minute walk from the main night market and pub street in Siem Reap. We found a delicious Indian restaurant and did a little shopping after dinner in the markets nearby. We were super tired by that point, though, so we soon made it back to the hostel to prepare for another long travel day. The bus ride to Phnom Penh was supposed to only take six hours but because of the recent death of their king resulting in a mass migration of people to Phnom Penh for the funeral, traffic was terrible. It took more like 8 or 9 hours and it was past 6pm by the time we arrived. The bus was also crowded with people way past capacity for the entire ride. Even after the bus was full, we kept stopping to pick up more passengers. They would put small wooden planks in the aisle, resting on the two edges of the bordering seats, creating a makeshift bench. If that bus had crashed it would have been absolute chaos. On top of the unexpected delay in getting to Phnom Penh, the tuk-tuk that agreed to take us to our hostel had no idea where he was going and we ended up driving around in circles for 30 or 40 minutes before we had him stop and we got out to find another tuk-tuk. We finally found the address, but the name on the building was different from our receipt from the booking. Confused and hoping it was a simple mistake we asked the people standing outside of the building if they knew where our hostel was. They stared at the booking receipt for a minute and then told us that that hostel had been closed for a few months now. Stunned but not terribly surprised after what we had seen of how things are handled in SE Asia, we asked if they knew of any other hostels in the area. They told us that they had actually bought the building from the previous owners and were still running a hostel out of it. Thankfully they had rooms available so we decided to just stay there. By this point it was around 8:30pm and we still hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast so we dropped our bags off and hurried to meet some friends from Augustana who were in Cambodia for a foreign term, at a restaurant that just so happened to be down the street from us. After some of the best Indian food I have ever had, we walked around the area a bit and they showed us some of their favorite spots including The Blue Pumpkin, a delicious ice cream shop.

We hung out with the Augie kids again the next day, again seeing some of their favorite spots, including the Russian Market. The Russian Market is no longer very Russian but used to be the major congregation area for Russian immigrants years ago. The Market itself was jam-packed with shops selling all sorts of Buddhist artwork and carvings, traditional Cambodian scarfs called kromas, and the typical tourist fare of brightly colored shirts and elephant-patterned pants. We saw a few other markets that day and enjoyed a delicious meal at a Mexican restaurant for dinner. We felt a little badly having Mexican food while in Cambodia but we had had Cambodian food already and it wasn’t really anything special—kind of like a blander version of Thai food. Also, there are no Mexican restaurants in Wuhan, so Nathan and I had been hankering for a good burrito for quite a while now. The next day we basically wandered all around the city. We had intended to visit the Royal Palace and a few major temples, but it was the Chinese New Year that day and so almost everything was closed down. It was a great way to see Phnom Penh, though, for we walked through the larger city-like parts, smaller temple areas, and poorer residential areas. It was an exhausting day walking for almost 12 hours under the beating sun, but definitely one of my favorite days from the trip. Here are some pictures from around Phnom Penh:

The Independence Monument by day...

...and by night.

We cut our time in Phnom Penh short though, after talking with the Augie kids and hearing from them that it is better to spend more time in Siem Reap than Phnom Penh. So we stayed only two days instead of the original five. In a way it was a great thing that our hostel had shut down without letting us know, because otherwise we would have had to pay extra to cancel our booking, or would have been stuck in Phnom Penh longer than we wanted to be. The bus ride back to Phnom Penh was much shorter and more comfortable without the makeshift benches in the aisles. We had some more Mexican food that night and hung out at Angkor What?, a bar on Pub Street that had come highly recommended from our friends from Augustana.

The next morning we woke up at 3:30am to meet our tuk-tuk driver outside the hostel to take us to the Angkor Wat temples. We arrived at Angkor Wat before the sun was up and found ourselves a grassy spot by a reflecting pool to watch the sun rise over the temple peaks.  Angkor Wat was first built as a Hindu temple and later became home to Buddhists. It is the largest and oldest religious monument in the world. After watching the sunrise we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon walking around various temples in the area, all of which had their own character and stunning architecture. Angkor Wat was surrounded by beautiful reflecting ponds and was constructed of these large, cone peaks which are shaped like lotus buds.

Angkor Wat at sunrise

Inside Angkor Wat

Katie and I

On of the lotus bud-shaped peaks

Nathan with one of the guardian cat/lions

The second complex we went to was Angkor Thom. As we drove in on our tuk-tuk we passed elephants giving rides to other tourists, kicking up clouds of dirt with their wide feet. Angkor Thom was very much different from Angkor Wat in that it was much smaller and mostly consisted of huge statues and walls with stone Buddha faces engraved on almost all surfaces. It was originally the last royal capital city of the Khmer empire in Cambodia. 

Angkor Thom

These guys guarded the entrance and exit to Angkor Thom

A shrine just outside Angkor Thom

After Angkor Thom we went to Ta Prohm, the temple I had been most excited about visiting ever since I had seen pictures of it around Siem Reap. It is near Angkor Thom and was originally built as a Buddhist monastery and university centuries ago. Its charm and beauty lies in the huge, ancient trees whose enormous roots have grown in and around the temple itself, wrapping themselves through windows and arching over roof tiles to hug the stone walls. A random trivia fact that isn’t particularly meaningful to me but that is interesting nonetheless: Angelina Jolie’s major film, Tomb Raider, was filmed at Ta Prohm. After Ta Prohm, we visited several other smaller temples, all of which were beautiful and serene works of art. I would have loved to have been able to see them when they were active monasteries.

Nathan with his coconut milk next to one of the trees at Ta Prohm

After our day at the temples we spent our last day in Siem Reap visiting different markets and exploring different areas around our hostel. We then embarked on the long trip back to Bankok, retracing our steps back to the border, spending a grueling two hours in the intense heat waiting in lines at customs, and taking the six hour train from the border to Bankok. And that is where I will pick up my last vacation blog next time!