Thailand and day 1 Cambodia

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I was with Thai airways from Stockholm to Bangkok, they are one of the best airlines I’ve flown with, the meals were fantastic and the crew were excellent. I had an exit row so I had plenty of leg room, which was fantastic. I arrived at about 5:40am, I slept till about 6pm that day, as I hadn’t had much sleep over the past 48 hours. I was going to explore the city at night but it was bucketing down, so I just went to an indoor market.

The people here are very welcoming whenever you walk into a store they bow at you. Things are much chapter here than they were in in Scandinavia, here I can get a good meal at a good restaurant for 1/3 of the price I could get a take away meal in Scandinavia.

On day two I planned to take a tour of the floating markets and the Grand Palace. There was a mix up with the translation of which tour I booked, so I only got to see the Grand Palace. However as I was still very jet lagged this may have been a good thing. The Palace was just spectacular, it’s one of the most impressive Palaces I’ve ever seen. Rather than me trying to describe it just look at the pictures.

It was home to five generations of royalty. The palace also some magnificent Buddhist temples. That night I got in a taxi and asked him to take me on a tour of the city by night. The day after I left it was the queen’s birthday weekend the city had been specially decorated for the occasion. In particular many of the streets were cover in fairy lights, so it was well worth seeing the city at night. An hour long taxi ride was cheaper than a 5 min one in Scandinavia!

The following morning I headed to Cambodia, as it was a holiday weekend there were very long lines so I had to sprint to get to the gate on time. When I got there I found out the plane had been delayed by 30 mins!

I arrived safely, in Siem Reap, at the boarder you need to buy a Visa, the border guards were very friendly. I was met by my guide and taken to my hotel. I always wanted someone to meet me at the airport with my name on a sign and I finally got it. My impressions of Cambodia are that it is an amazing county, I’m very excited to be here, the people are very friendly and always smile at you. The streets are a tangled mess of bikes tuk tuks and dogs and cows.

In the afternoon I did a tour of Kampong Pluk, a floating village. We had to take a boat to get there as now there is no access by land. The village was built after the civil war, it is home to about 700 fishing families. For the most part they live very simple lives, most of the houses don’t have power and as you can see from the photos the boats are very simple. Although we did see one house with a satellite dish! Everyone seems happy there, there were lots of children playing in the water, which was heavily polluted. Everyone seemed to talk to everyone and smile whenever someone went by, so that’s what the world was like before Facebook. The have a school and a medical centre there. Most of the houses had pet dogs we ever saw one with a rabbit running free. The houses are all on stilts in the dry season the water is 1 meter, in the rainy season (which we’re now in) it can get as high as 13 meters! They can do a lot of fishing in the dry season but during the rainy season I think they mostly rely on tourism for their income. Most of us did an optional boat ride through the flooded forest, this was so tranquil and just amazing. The boats didn’t feel very stable so we kept very still. I asked our guide later if people ever fall in and he said one or two did.

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