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Published: March 2nd 2009
So after waking up at 5am to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat, you'd think we wouldn't be able to hold our heads up by midday, but nonetheless, Cameron and I decided to start downing coffee shakes and these little cold coffee drinks from 7-11, like the Frappucinos you can buy at the store, and by 6pm we were ready for dinner and drinks! We grabbed some cheap Angkor Beers from 7-11, ate a nice meal, then headed to the Angkor Night Market. Here, Maren and I shopped around, while Cameron sat with his feet in a pool of fish for a 'fish massage.' He paid something super cheap, like $1, if that, for 15 minutes, but at the end of those minutes, he was the only one left in the pool, so either they wanted him to draw business or the guy working there had a crush on him, because when Maren and I finished shopping about 45 minutes later, Cameron was right where we left him! We dragged him out of there with the cleanest feet of his life and headed to a bar called Angkor What?, where we met up with some Canadian friends we'd met in Vientiane, Laos. The Thailand-Laos-Vietnam-Cambodia loop is a common one for travelers over here, so it's a lot of fun always running into people again a few cities later. We ended up spending most of the evening catching up and partying with our friends. Once they took off, Cameron and I headed to another bar where we both found our favorite Australian beers (mine is Cooper's Pale Ale and his is Victoria Bitter). We were so excited!! I ordered my Cooper's and he ordered his VB, only to find out they were out of it. Insane! It was quite the downer. So we headed off and split one more large Angkor Beer, then headed back to the dorm around 3am. We'd been awake for close to 24 hours and had our bus trip back to Bangkok to look forward to the next morning, beginning at 7am!
7am rolled around pretty quickly! We got picked up by a guy who didn't speak any English. We were trying to figure out if he was the one picking us up or not and he just started to drive away, so we stopped him, jumped aboard and hoped we were on the right bus. We picked up a few more people, then headed to the Cambodia-Thailand border. It was a bumpy, unpaved 4 1/2 hour drive, of which I slept the majority of the way. Except, every time there was a short bit of paved road, they would turn the air-conditioning off and it took about half a second to be dripping with sweat, so I'd awake to open my window, but by the time I started to drift off again, someone would be yelling at me to close my window, because we were back on the dirt roads. I was happy to get off that bus at the border...or so I thought.
We went step by step through immigration and obtaining our visas, only to sit on the Thailand side of the border for the next two hours waiting for everyone else who was dilly-dallying, before we could get back on the road and on our way to Bangkok. For these two hours, I sat on a curb where we were surrounded by little Cambodian children begging. It is part horribly sad and partly seems like a scheme with an adult behind it. All of the children, mostly girls, were under 10 years old and 1/3 of them had a baby on their hip. People would give them water, coke, chips and crackers and the little girls would eat and drink their bit, give the remaining to the babies and drop the trash on the ground (sometimes kicking it, before walking away). But, every 15-20 minutes one of the little girls carrying a baby would disappear and a different girl with a different baby would appear. It was as if they were in shifts. I had one little girl, one of the older ones of them all, who sat at my feet for a good half hour or 45 minutes pointing to my watch and trying to take it off every 5 minutes or so. I think she wanted it because it's pink. If I had any other form of time telling and alarm clock, I probably would've given it to her. It was so sad to watch. And actually, the worst part was seeing how some travelers treated these children like filth. How can they not understand that they are just children? When they weren't begging, they were playing dodge ball (with a roll of toilet paper) against a brick wall.
Eventually, everyone made it through and we were motioned to get on a bus. We were all so grateful and relieved! We loaded our luggage and boarded the bus, we got comfy in our seats, and about 5 minutes down the road we stopped at a restaurant. This was our first and only stop, they told us. We were shocked and totally bummed. We'd had so much hope of getting on the road, the bus was moving and it seemed so promising! So, we shoved some food down, though we weren't even hungry at this point, and another hour later got back on the bus and finally made our way to Bangkok! We finally got in around 9pm, only 14-hours after being picked up from our hostel in Cambodia.
We found a hostel nearby the oh-so-familiar Koh San Road of Bangkok, then went out for some Pad Thai with our American friend Michael, who we'd met the first week of our trip on the island Koh Chang, but is now living and working in Bangkok...ohh to be back in Thailand! The sing-songy language and street pad thai and the friendly people. I was so happy! We were in for a much needed good nights sleep and were looking forward to one last day of shopping on the streets of Bangkok before heading south to the islands.
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Mom
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Hey Baby! I have to tell you that I am so impressed with your observational skills. In the midst of being tired and impatient you don't lose the ability to see past the surface of the situation. I love that! Keep blogging, you are doing a good job of allowing quite a few of us to travel along with you. Love you and missing you...........xoxoxo