Advertisement
Published: September 18th 2013
Tuk tuk in Phnom Penh
Our first one of the holiday!And onto our adventures in Cambodia....
The Cambodian border was slightly crazy, with loads of people in one small room and a man randomly shouting people’s names. We seemed to jump the queue because we were on a bus so weren’t expecting our names to be called so soon and didn’t hear them for ages (also because they were pronouncing them completely wrong!) However, we made it through and entered Cambodia, soon getting dropped off at the side of the road and transferred into a tuk tuk. We then hired the tuk tuk driver for an extra 3 hours (after booking our bus tickets to Sihanoukville for 3 hours later) and went for lunch. We had chicken amoch (a kind of local curry) and spring rolls J Katharine and I then went to the genocide museum. Rachel had been before, and understandably, didn’t feel the urge to go again. It was an incredibly sad experience and afterwards I couldn’t help but marvel at how happy the Cambodian people are when that happened so recently in their history. I didn’t take any photos, and I’m not really going to write anything about it but I think it’s an important place to
visit if you find yourself in Cambodia.
We then went back to the bus station and got on the bus to Sihanoukville. When we arrived we found a guesthouse, I grabbed some Mexican food for dinner, and then we had another early night (the theme of the holiday!) It was on this evening that I found out the currency in Cambodia is a bit mad. They use American dollars but not cents. Instead of cents they use reel, their local currency, with 1000 reel being 25 cents. There is nothing smaller than 1000 reel so everything has to be priced in multiples of 25cents, and when you get change for the first time you don’t have a clue what’s going on. Some dollars, some reel (in thousands) and much confusion! I eventually got my head around it and the other girls just let me deal with it!
On Tuesday we got up and I had a full English breakfast! We headed to the beach in Sihanoukville even though it was overcast and a little bit drizzly. I can’t say it was a particularly nice atmosphere as we were constantly ‘flyered’ by young English people who were on their
The saloon doors to the bathroom
Katharine is keeping her hairdryer plugged in by holding it with her foot) gap year, and had stopped there to earn money. Being told how ‘great’ and ‘sick’ bars are all day is not my idea of resting! The ‘booze cruise’ sellers were an ultimate favourite of mine and Katharine’s as we heard them telling people how ‘ the first girl to get her boobs out gets beer thrown at her’ and ‘all the boys get naked and jump off cliffs’. We pretended to be asleep so they didn’t talk to us…… Then there were the Cambodian ladies trying to sell friendship bracelets and trying to ‘thread’ every hair off your body. I was told I had very smooth legs, as they were stroked to see if she could thread them for me, but was then told I had hairy armpits – nice! (I didn’t!) It was all just a bit much and not so relaxing as we had hoped! Katharine moaned all day that it was overcast and then got a little bit sunburnt, which was hilarious, and then we went back to the guesthouse for dinner before getting ready to go out in the evening.
The evening was ‘interesting’. Basically the same girls who had been telling us all about
the ‘sick’ bars were then dancing on the bar pouring shots into guys mouths in the ‘sick’ bars. It was all just a bit cheap and nasty and Katharine and I ended up drinking quite a large amount in order to cope with just how awful it was. We then ended up running away from some guys who were being a little too friendly - and I mean we actually ran away, back to our hostel! It was a fun night, but also incredibly random and weird.
The next day involved a rather large hangover for both Katharine and I. It was an effort to get out of bed, it was an effort to pack our bags, it was an effort to sit at a table for breakfast, and it was certainly an effort to walk to the beach. However we did all of those things and were basically lying on the beach for the entire day! I managed a cheese and ham toastie at some point, Katharine could barely move for the feeling of being sick. She didn’t even care that her ‘fetal position’ on the sunbed would cause horrendous tan lines (very unlike her!) She also really
hated the sellers, more so than the day before! We went back to our hostel for dinner later on, and each used the toilet in the restaurant to change and have a ‘wet wipe’ wash ready for the overnight bus to Siem Reap (classy!) We got on the bus only to realise that we had these really weird beds, on which we really weren’t very likely to sleep! I was sharing with Katharine and Rachel got the single. We settled in for the night with Katharine breathing very deeply as her travel sickness mixed with hangover really set in!
We made it through the night on the weird ‘bus beds’ to find ourselves in Siem Reap. Feeling incredibly tired and slightly disorientated, we got into a tuk tuk that would ‘take us anywhere’ for a dollar each! Of course this meant we got taken to where they wanted us to stay (twice!) We refused the first scummy place, with bugs on the floor and the cleaners asleep in the bed when we arrived, and were then taken to another place that they wanted us to stay in. Eventually we got taken where we wanted to go and I made
the driver go away by giving him a dollar tip! We ended up in a 2 bed room, with a mattress on the floor for me, but it was a really nice place so we decided to stay. We then had a very relaxing day as it was raining, so we sat down, ate food and planned the rest of our trip (well, as much as we were planning anything!) We ate dinner on the famous ‘Pub Street’ – my spring rolls and fish were both delicious – and I tried both of the local beers – Anchor (pronounced An – chore) and Angkor (pronounced An-cor). We then had an early night as Katharine and I were getting up early to go to the temples…..
The alarm went off at 4am, and I really didn’t want to get up, but ‘Angkor Wat at sunrise’ was calling me! We had arranged for a tuk tuk to be waiting for us, and our driver was great! We got our little passes, with the horrendous ‘4.30am photos’ on, then headed to Angkor Wat. We hadn’t taken torches so we kept tripping over and standing in puddles, but we made it in plenty
of time and joined the 100 or so other people in taking about 50 photos of the same thing about 10 seconds apart. It was addicitive as the light changed, you thought you might just get a better photo the next time! It was quite spectacular when the sun rose, and I did get some lovely pictures. We then went for breakfast at the ‘Lady Gaga’ stall (if you’ve been you will know that there are about 40 stalls selling the same breakfast and they all have a weird name to try to entice you – James Bond was another!) We had a baguette with laughing cow cheese and a pancake with lemon and sugar between the pair of us. The pancake was more like a madeira cake mind and took some eating!
We then went inside Angkor Wat and looked at what Katharine called ‘the relics’ for a bit. We liked to ‘peek’ from behind bits of stone and take photos to keep ourselves entertained. After Angkor Wat we headed for Angkor Thom. Our driver stopped outside the gate so we could take photos with the statues of guards, then picked us up again inside to take us
onto the temple with all of the faces (Bayon temple). He told us he would meet us over by the ‘Terrace of the Leper King’ a few hours later and left us to look at the temples inside that area. Of course we got completely lost! We finished at the face temple, then managed to find the next one (I can’t remember the name of it) and climbed up to the top of it. That was good, but by this time it was a bout 40 degrees and we were absolutely roasting! The climb was also really steep and a bit scary – I’m glad I’m not particularly scared of heights. So we decided to follow the ‘way of visit’ signs, thinking that they would lead us to the ‘Terrace of the Elephants’, which we were both really keen to see. It actually took us on a huge detour around the back of said terrace, and we had to walk completely back on ourselves, to see it. Only to find that it was quite a disappointment - I don’t know what I had imagined in my head, but I think I was expecting more elephants. Anyway, by this time we
were absolutely dripping with sweat, Katharine needed a wee and I felt dehydrated due to the water running out. So we found our tuk tuk guy, sorted out all of our problems (except the sweating one!) and headed for Ta Phrom - the ‘tomb raider’ temple. I really wanted to see this one because it looked cool on the photos, with all the trees growing through the middle of the temples. It was very cool and we took lots of our own photos! We then headed back to the tuk tuk and decided to go back to the hotel room. Although it was only midday, we had been at the temples since about 5am so had done a full day. Plus, it was just too hot to be out in the sun for much longer! I think my favourite temple was Bayon, even though I had expected it to be Ta Phrom.
We decided to go to the pool when we got back and treat ourselves to lunch, a nice drink, and a nap. Being cultural all morning was really hard work and I really cannot express how hot it was! I had to get in the pool again
about 2 minutes after I got out each time as I could feel my skin just burning! We then headed back into the town area and had a foot massage for $3, with a free beer included – winners! A nice dinner and another early night were then in order, as yet again, we had an early start (the consequence of doing 3 countries in 3 weeks!)
So on Saturday we were up at 5.30am as breakfast was booked for 6am and a taxi at 7am. The taxi took us to Poipet, the border with Thailand, and we crossed without any trouble and quite speedily (we had got up so early to avoid all of the people traffic across the border!) We then got seats on a minibus to Bangkok, which was AWFUL - as in way more awful than the train in Vietnam. We were packed into the van with all of the luggage pretty much on top of us and absolutely no leg room. But we were on our way back into Thailand so I tried to ignore the situation and look forward to our last week….
Advertisement
Tot: 0.05s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0282s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
