A Day of Traveling

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[youtube=QzbQAbvVBIg]

The pounding on our door at 6:30 in the morning was brutal. I woke up soaking wet, because i sweated all night long. Even though without contacts in I couldn't see anything, I still didn't want to open my eyes. I was terrified my mosquito net was going to be covered in bugs! Luckily it was not. We went up for our free breakfast on the boat. Eggs, bread, and tea. I bought a JUMBO sized water and we all headed to the boats. They told us to put our luggage on a pile, they'd put it on the boat for us. Never thinking of it, I added mine to the pile.

We got on our 'fast boat' ( I'm not sure what the slow boat was but i'm so glad we weren't taking it) Leslie and I were separated for the first part of the trip. I'm not exactly sure why. Our guide came around and gave us all the papers to fill out to get our Cambodian visa. I cost me 20 dollars and an hour wait to get a sticker in my passport that is good for TODAY ONLY! What a rip off. I would have rather spent more money in the country, than more money getting in and out of it! When we were waiting for the visas to get added to passports and returned to us we decided to change over money..where we got ROYALLY screwed. I gave them 100,000 won which is like 70 bucks give or take...and they ended up giving me like 50 bucks MAYBE. Leslie and I were reunited on a different boat. We were sitting there for a while until we pulled off to the side. We went through the same ritual that we did every-time the boat pulled over. We all get off the boat, walk up an awkwardly steep and very unstable wooden ramp to the land. As always walking those few meters starts the sweating from the heat. We walked up to a small building, dogs sleeping on the ground all around us on the ground. We had our passport stamped with a big USED stamp over the visa we received only a few minutes before, and then we were back on the boat again, ready to continue on in Cambodia. The other part of that experience that made a few of us giggle to ourselves was the immigration part of the passing through. You filled out a paper that said you have nothing you shouldn't have and they said "ok" gave you a paper that said you cleared immigration, and also a yellow slip of paper that said you passed the health exam (what exam?) and it said if you becoming very ill while in cambodia, take this paper with you to the hospital for a free exam. Should that be comforting or scary?

After a while of sitting in the seats, I saw people walking outside the boat, I definitely wanted to enjoy this ride with the wind blowing through my hair! I walked to the front of the boat. Jay was already there. There wasn't much of a guard-rail or anything, it was more of an at your own risk kind of thing, which is exactly what I'm all about! As I was sitting up there, I was wishing I would have thought to take my suntan lotion out of my bag. I was 100% unprotected and i was in the tropics...about 12 degrees above the equator, this was NOT a place for red-heads. It was hard to get comfortable on the front of the boat, so we moved to the roof. The metal roof was HOOOT! After my butt lost feeling ha i took my shoes off so i could rest my hands on them and lean back a little. Again, i figured sunburn was imminent, but I didn't care. It felt so nice and hot up there. When i closed my eyes, I was back on Uncle Joe's boat...on the ocean, sand nearby...the motors were humming...when I opened them, I was in the middle of a country who was amazed to see this motorized boat wizzing by them. The whole time we had children who were leading water buffalo to the water yelling and waving at us. It was unlike ANYTHING i had every experienced before in my life. It was so great!

We were planning on taking a taxi from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, since we were told we wouldn't make any of the busses. The guide on our trip, said his bus company had one bus left that day that we would be able to make and it was only 8 dollars a person, not 80 for the taxi. We were so excited. Things were working out so well (maybe too well). We got off the boat and there were van's waiting to take us into the city. "..we need the one that gets us to Siem Reap" and they kept pointing to different busses, then changing their minds. It wasn't a hard concept, there's two van's...one gets us to the bus to Siem Reap the other doesn't, how hard could it be? Before we knew it we were sitting on a cramped bus for our 6 hour ride north.

That bus ride was torture to say the least. It took FOREVER! The bus was air-conditioned, which actually was almost too cold with my sunburn. But the roads were so bumpy and I'm surprised the horns on the vehicles still work for as much as they lay on them. They are constantly beeping. Most of the time its at the motorcycles to move over so they can pass them, and then every so often, my favorite ones, is when there is a cow running around the road like a dog and they beep to keep from hitting them. There was one point where I saw a kid on a motorcycle and there was a rope attached to the bike leading a cow across the road...the poor cow was running behind him! All the cows were skinny here, the people were skinny here. They have cow signs like we have deer signs in PA. We were getting to an area in this bus where we were the only white people around. There weren't tourists, and I was loving it! It felt so peaceful here. The bus constantly smelt funny becuase the driver slammed on his brakes so many times, you could smell the rubber burning. There was a flat screen tv in the front of the bus blastin cambodian karaoke. It was an interesting ride for sure.

After dark we arrived at our hotel. It was 3 dollars a night for the cheapest room, but we opted for the 7 a night per person for the air conditioning...that was a MUST, especially with the sunburn, I needed cool air. We didn't get hot water, but I didn't want any, it would have hurt too much. We had already decided on wakeing up and meeting downstairs at 5am to go to Ankor Wat for sunrise....

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Photos

Boatride!
Here we took a nap on the roof of a metal boat..at noon, when it was probably close to 100 degrees out...oddly enough this was NOT when i got sunburnt ha At this point we were somewhere in the middle of Vietnam and Cambodia