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Published: April 12th 2010
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After 5 months of travel hiatus, I am traveling once again! After an unfortunate event that happened to our family last month, I decided to cancel my European trip, which was also supposed to be last month. So now, I'm moving on to my backup plan. I planned my Southeast Asian trip for a month, and well.. it should've been a real SE Asian trip. Thailand should've been on my itinerary, but after hearing about the shitty protest happening in Bangkok, plus the fact that the Thai government declared a state of emergency for travelers, I decided to cancel it; and so, here I am in Cambodia. Better be safe than sorry.
Cambodia, I admit, is one of my dream destination despite its third-world country issue, and I'm so stoked that this will be the first country that I will visit this year & the second time that I will travel alone! It was nearly a 3 hour flight from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh, and gosh, the weather is at a burning 31 degrees! Oh well, its either this or rain! Pochentong Airport is... just a small airport, much like a domestic airport, but, this is just Phnom Penh.
My main destination is actually Siem Reap, and the flight only took about 50 minutes.
After landing in Angkor Airport, it took me a little time to find my name among the tour guides waiting there. I found mine, but in a weird name. Instead of seeing my whole name, guess what's the name on my board? My email address (Altaria Lana)! Seriously, that was a WTF moment, but I didn't ask any further because I was really exhausted from the weather. My tour guide & driver picked me up afterwards to my hotel, The Kool Hotel. If you must know, I found this hotel while searching TripAdvisor, and there's also a package tour that they offer at a reasonable price. I booked the whole package tour anyways, so yeah, now I'm here. This hotel is probably the most unique hotel I've ever been so far. The room was actually great; more like what you'd expect in a 4 star hotel, and this is just a cheap hotel! The TV channels has alot more variety that most of the hotels I've stayed in, and I was able to watch The Amazing Race in AXN, haha! The staff were so
friendly too; we all talked like we were close friends! No wonder this is said to be one of the best hotels in Siem Reap.
Today is my first day here, and today is all about the Tonle Sap Floating Village and Bakheng Mountain. At first, I was really hesitating about going to the floating village, since not only does it cost me an extra 10USD, I might miss the schedule to Bakheng Mountain. Either way, I still went for it when the person who told me about my itinerary was "not obviously" forcing me. And hey, this is my first time here; why not check what Siem Reap has to offer besides from the temples?
The cruise to the Floating Village was very slow, and I'm not pretty sure if this has something to do with the dry season that my tour guide mentioned me. The river looks to shallow, and there were rifts around the river. It really sucked getting splashed by dirty water from the passing boats, leaving stains. After about 15 minutes cruising through the river, we finally reached the center of the floating village. The first thing that came to my mind is
The Amazing Race S13 Cambodia leg. I remember the teams going there, and they did a detour there involving village life. I saw various places that reminded me of that leg: Koh Andeth (detour), the basketball court, a baby with a phython on its neck, the blue... wait, WTF?! Seriously, I saw that; at first, I thought it was a bit strange, but the phython looked harmless. But seriously, an infant was holding that thing on its neck! The floating river cruise continued, and I saw even stranger things, like a floating school, a house made from a boat, a floating church, and ooh, some topless Khmer boys swimming at the dirty lake. Too bad none of them were fit, so yeah.
After the cruise, there were only a few minutes left before 4:30PM, the time of my Bakheng Mountain tour, so we went there directly after the Tonle Sap tour. While on the road, my tour guide asked me if I watch The Amazing Race, so I was like "Of course! I've watched every episode!" He told me about the Siem Reap leg in Season 13 too, and he also told me that he was part of the
assistance of the TAR staffs during the filming of The Amazing Race here. He told me alot of secrets on how TAR works in a certain place, and of course, I won't tell you how they do it, mwahaha! We talked about every places where the teams went to... except for the gas station, LOL. I also told him some of the places that I saw in the floating village where the teams went to, as I mentioned. Wow, I'm liking my tour guide so far; we finally have something in common! :D
Before going up to Bakheng Mountain, I had to buy a One Day Angkor Pass for tomorrow's trip, and also for the Bakheng Mountain tour. I thought my tour guide was going to accompany me to the summit, but no. So yeah, no photographers, lol! There were actually two options on the way up; either an elephant or the hike. I wanted to ride on the elephant, but the price is 30USD, so I went to the hike instead, along with most of the tourists. The hike was.. tiring, but easy, but what isn't easy is the way up to Bakheng Temple. The stairs were so
huge, and your whole foot can't even fit on most of the stairs! I needed to touch the stairs just so I can be safe, but left me dirty. Just as I thought, alot of tourists gathered there for the same reason: the sunset. The temple was just stunning with different intricate carvings, and along the distance, there's the sightseeing balloon, Siem Reap, and Angkor Wat. Since I had no one accompanying me, I had a hard time finding someone to take a picture of me, as alot of them are too busy snapping pictures too. *sigh* I really should find a travel buddy, NOW! On the bright side, I saw alot of cute tourists, and I snapped them like a stalker, LOL! And so, the sun came down, but not all the way down, since the clouds blocked the sun halfway; stupid clouds!
Now, if climbing up to the temple was hard, I guess going down is easy... right? Not a fat chance! Not only did I get acrophobic, I still have to mind those narrow steps, so the safest way to get down? Sit on every stair, while going down one foot at a time. I admit,
it was a hilarious experience, so when I got back down, I took a picture of the other tourists struggling to get down safely, haha!
And so, first day is over, and I'm hella tired! My boots got alot of sand, my clothes still have stains from the Tonle Sap cruise, and I'm still having jetlag! I finished the day with a nice dinner, and a long dip at the bathtub. Now, I need to sleep, because I need to wake up at like, 5AM later for my next tour. D:
... And that includes my first day! Tomorrow... hell yeah, you guessed it. >😊
- Joko
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