Hello Cambodia!

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As it turns out that my next adventure was going to be a 19 day excursion around Cambodia. Less than a week after being home from America a handful of my friends and I were headed across the border to explore one of our closest neighbors, Cambodia. I was excited, besides America this was the first trip out of the country I was taking.I hadn’t done any research and outside of the 10k that we were running I had no idea what was going to go down, luckily my friend Erica is on top of things like that and had a basic plan as to where and what we would be doing.



We left Bangkok via train bright and early on a Friday. The train is magical simply because it cost just 40baht. Exhausted most of us crashed for the first half of the train ride, but we perked up the longer we were on it and really the scenery outside was quite beautiful. Boarder crossing went relatively smoothly although the ques were quite long and our bags were getting quite heavy. From the boarder we hopped on another bus, one that didn’t seem to go fast enough for any of us, and after 12+ hours of travel we had made it to Siem Reap and our hotel. Only to find out that there was some issue with our booking and that we had to hop on over to another hotel for the evening.



Smelly, exhausted and starving we headed out to the little restaurant across the street where we were to get our eating on. Despite my fear of rice I ordered up the traditional dish, fish amok. I wanted to try all things Cambodian and this famous dish was the start of it. It was nearly the end of it because after eating it I felt awful. I was the only one to have this reaction and to be fair the dish was actually really really tasty, I just think between traveling, lack of sleep, and the absurd amount of cream it (something my body is no longer use to) I had a nasty time after eating it. I tried it several times later and never had such a reaction after that first one so I don’t really blame the amok, but I never ate a whole bowl again for fear of what may happen.



The second day in Cambodia was spent relaxing because tomorrow we were running! We moved over to our original guesthouse, Happy Guesthouse, and spent most of our time hanging out in the restaurant eating, got to carbo load! Ok we were just lazy and we’re all always hungry so we were ordering up cheese omelets, muesli and yogurt, spring rolls, and pumpkin soup all of it very tasty.



I have to give a shout out to Happy Guesthouse which was our all-time favorite place to stay while we were in Cambodia. For a three person room we were paying just $7. If that wasn’t grand enough the restaurant attached to the place had delicious food which we can all attest to considering we didn’t leave it for an entire day. If cheap rooms and good food wasn’t enough, the staff was the most amazing staff ever. Everyone was extremely friendly and would chit chat with us as we relaxed all day long. On top of that the main women who works there is the sweetest lady ever and always trying to help us out. We booked all tours through them and whenever we needed a tuk tuk driver it was easy to grab one of the guys that work there. They have computers, free for your first hour, and free WiFi. Really this place couldn’t be any better!



Finally we pried ourselves from our table and walked over to register for our race and pick up our cool new shirts. When we returned to Happy we plopped ourselves down in our table and hung out there until dinner.



We changes sceneries for dinner and headed towards Pub Street which is the happening place in Siem Reap. Before actually walking into Pub Street we found ourselves a Khmer restaurant that we thought sounded tasty. Here I ordered a Khmer dish that sounded and ended up tasting just like a Thai dish without spices. It was a cashew and chicken dish filled with tasty veggies and I split a set of spring rolls that I hate to admit were tastier than Happy’s spring rolls. The food was great and for a nice cheap price which is always good for poor folk such as ourselves. I was starting to realize that Cambodian food wasn’t much different than Thai, it just had a lot less spice in it (i.e. not nearly as tasty as Thai food!)



When dinner was done we called it an early night. That is after we ordered banana pancakes and banana crepes, you know for the carbo loading of course.



The race was the following day and that sucker gets its very own page!



Siem Reap



The rest of our time spent in Siem Reap is spent exploring and eating. It is really the two things we do best.



After our race we headed over to the Angkor National Museum were we walk from exhibit to exhibit learning the ancient history of Cambodia. It is interesting to see all the statues on display but keeping the gods straight isn’t easy. There are a lot of deities and even the three main ones Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are easy to confuse when one moment Shiva has four arms and the next moment so does Vishnu. Then add in Ganesh, Garuda, and Nagga, not to mention a handful of others it is fair to say that despite my best efforts I left a bit confused.



The following day we headed to the Butterfly Garden Restaurant where Meechee and I had read that young children raise butterflies and then come here to release them. I thought it sounded like a splendid little place so after an early breakfast we walked on over there. As we entered we wondered where exactly the butterflies where. We expressed an interest in seeing the butterflies released and were told to wait. Ordering up a few drinks we did indeed wait, and when the time came nobody let us know. One of us just happened to look over to see one of the staff workers not so gingerly throw butterflies out of a little cage she had them in. It was disturbing for all of us to watch, especially when one plummeted to the ground. This place, although it sounds nice, is not recommended by me. Plus the coconut we ordered wasn’t even tasty!



The group split up for the afternoon and half of us had planned to go off to a conservation site. When we got back to Happy Guesthouse to plan this out we learned that the place was quite far away and he kept referring to it as a zoo which turned the three of us off. Instead of going there we decided to head to the Floating Village. We were dropping some major baht on this excursion and we were all questioning if it was worth it until our Irish friend Arlene came on down and told us to go for it. So we hopped in a tuk tuk and headed out. At our destination we boarded our own private boat and headed out. The village, in Tole Sap, was interesting all the houses were on stilts and people traveling from one spot to another in long boats. Even the farm animals were on floating contraptions which I must say was quite impressive. We were taken to an ecological sanctuary where for a small fee we could board smaller long boats and head into the floating forest but we chose to pass on this. Instead we were taken farther out into a huge lake were we hung out for a while before turning around. Returning we ran into Arlene and explained what we had done and she informed us that our tour guide had left out a whole other village we were supposed to hit up. Maybe with the rest of the tour it would have been worth it, but the small area we had seen wasn’t worth the $20 we dropped on it.



Even though we had ran around it, Angkor Wat was our last destination while in Siem Reap. Despite having been there at sunrise a few days ago, we decided to venture out bright and early once more this time to appreciate it without butterflies in our stomach. Unfortunately this time around the sunrise wasn’t even close to as beautiful as it was the day before. We watched the sunrise and then headed into the temple which was stunning. The art in the walls was absolutely amazing, it is hard to imagine someone slowly chiseling away at it all. I have no idea how long it must have taken, but it had to have been years. We wandered around taking it all in. Apsaras were found everywhere and when there were sculptures a lot of them were headless due to the time of the Khmer Rouge where people would chop off the heads and then sell them on the black market.



From here we moved on to Angkor Thom which was smaller than Angkor Wat but just as impressive. Here faces had been carved all over the place and we aren’t talking little faces, we’re talking gigantic faces everywhere. Impressive is an understatement.



Lunch preceded more ancient temples where were becoming a bit repetitive for the likes of us. It isn’t that they weren’t grand by any means. Some had trees coming out of them and others had beautiful carvings, but after two years in Thailand we were all pretty templed out. Still we explored the area finishing up with the temple that Tomb Raider was filmed at. It was my personal favorite temple, I’m sure it has a better title than “The one Tomb Raider was filmed” but that’s all I knew. There were massive trees that were growing out of every part of the temple with their roots over hanging in the most fascinating fashion. Spectacular!



To top of hours of learning about Cambodia and sight seeing around the area we headed out to Pub Street to get our dance on. There are two clubs in the area, in fact they are right across the street from each other. There is Temple and Angkor What? If you sit outside and drink some $.50 beers you can enjoy music from both places. Once inside you can really get your dance on and if you aren’t feeling the music from one place then you can just hop on over to the other.



When you are done dancing your fanny off and drinking your weight in cheap beer there is an AMAZING pizza place right next door. I wish I remember the name of it, but at 3am that pizza was so good. And coming from a country that doesn’t know how to make pizza, this little nugget of joy was a slice of heaven for us after a long night of dancing. We were just carbo loading for the next night of dancing that is all.



Food:



We eat, a lot. We can pretend it is because we were carbo loading or because we wanted to try out new foods but mostly I just think my crew and I enjoy eating. Living in Thailand for two years has really brought it out of us, we go a few hours and we’re craving at least some fruit. So while we were in Cambodia we were going to eat and eat and eat.



I must say that Cambodia definitely has a better grasp on the whole Western food concept. Maybe it is that whole colonization thing that has happened in their past or perhaps they are just more adept at making Western food, whatever the reason we were blessed with many tasty meals.



We tried to stay traditional as much as possible. Our first meal was as Khmer as you can get. Fish Amok was tasty even if it left me rather sick. I tried it on numerous occasions after that though and it was never the same. Depending on where we were and what restaurant we went to it was either very peanuty, very creamy, a bit like curry or nothing like curry and in one case it was closer to a paste than anything else. Each was interesting and tasty in its own way.



Luc Lac was another traditional meal that I tried while I was there. Being a chicken or beef dish, I myself tried the chicken dish. I really only tried Dress’ meal and enjoyed it a lot more than the fish amok.

My favorite evening ended up being the night we went in search of Street Food. Four of us headed out and each of us put in a dollar. Our first stop was a noodle cart that gave us a delicious noodle dish with lots of veggies and an egg. While we ate that we also grabbed a sandwich, half of us getting the vegetarian version the other half getting mystery meat on baguettes that were delicious and with a spicy sauce. Still hungry of course we continued on and grabbed more noodles, these ones skinny yellow noodles with more veggies and another egg. Corn on the cob was the next addition to the meal and we topped it off with some desserts. First we grabbed banana and nutella crepes followed by strange traditional canomes (desserts) that I don’t even know how to describe except as an attempt for bread pudding and weird jelly stuff. Street food was delicious and cheap, just the way we like it!




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