A day of recovery and repairs after a night in Siem Reap turns bad

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As the title of this blob indicates, our previous night out on the town in Siem Reap turned bad. The story of the night is one we considered for a long time whether to gloss over or omit completely from this blog series. However, just as traveler's tips are generally better and more truthful than some guidebooks and travel brochures, so too are traveler's warnings. So here it goes...

Our night had been going well. We went out to dinner with a group of friends we had met over the last couple of days and followed this up with a return to Angkor Wat? Bar. A place we enjoyed the night before with cheap buckets of cocktails.

Sometime when you travel as a guy, especially with a mate, you relax with some aspects of travel and can be caught off your guard. While the rest of our group was dancing and sharing a giant cocktial bucket, Adam went off mingling with other travelers at the bar. From the course of the night that was to follow, he either shared a spiked drink with someone, had his drink spiked or was bought a spiked drink.

When we emerged from the bar, Adam appeared somewhat drunker than everyone else so we decided to catch a TukTuk 5 minutes back to the hostel. It was then that Adam started acting weird as if trapped in a dream and on the ride to the hostel he tried to get out of the moving TukTuk. Ash's attempts to hold Adam lasted only long enough for the TukTuk to come to a stop and Adam faceplanted into the ground.

With the aid of our driver and a nearby local we pulled Adam back into the TukTuk and drove to an emergency hopital, where we were refused treatment as Adam's dream state was worsening. A further TukTuk ride to another emergency hospital and, after some initial difficulties, Adam's cut cheek and knee were patched up. Hours after we first sought to go back to our hostel we finally arrived, although the drugs that were used to spike Adam's drink made the next several hours sleepless and difficult. Luckily, a couple of our good friends we met in Siem Reap were doctors and didn't mind being woken up at 6am.

Finally Adam fell asleep at around 7:30am. A couple of hours later he awoke, shaken by whatever the drugs were in his system and the shock of discovering the wounds to his face with no recollection of any of the events that unfolded the night before.

The lesson is a common one, that I have heard countless times back home but is rarely mentioned or considered when traveling; don't leave your drink unattended and don't accept drinks from people you don't know.

Needless to say, the day was spent recovering and repairing. In his fall, Adam also managed to chip his two front teeth, so it was a trip to a nearby dentist and another hospital to get his cuts looked at again and a couple of shots of antibiotics to prevent infection.

The Scrubba wash bag also had a work out that day as the clothes from the previous night were filthy. Unfortunately, Ash's T-shirt from the night before was a further victim, being irrepairably torn and therefore had to be replaced.

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