Well, this is a little late, and I hope I don’t forget things, but here is the last instalment for spring break. Cambodia and Ankor Wat ( the largest religious complex in the world). I have been real busy here in Singapore doing all kinds of things, and a little bit of school work too. That’s why I am a little late. But without further ado… Cambodia!
We flew into Penom Phen, the capital ( not sure on the spelling) early in the morning and spent the day walking around the capital but gound out that most of the places were closed for lunch and we wanted to get to Ciem Reaf ( that is where Angkor Wat is). So we jumped onto the funnest bus ride of my life. I got a lot of reading done seeing that the bus driver kept honking his horn to avoid accidents on the highway. And when I say highway, I mean a two lane road with not marking on it. There was only one close call, that was when the bus driver was dodgeing some natives on bicycles and then had to swerve back into our lane to avoid oncoming traffic. We stoped at a little food place where we saw the coolest kid in the world. Screaming at the top of his lungs, “Sir, pineapple mango sir!!” I went over and bought one. It was good. The only other thing to mention is the baby across the issue that peed on me. It was pretty funny. But the real fun came when we got off the bus at Ciem Reap. As soon as we got off the bus we were surrounded by seven tuk tuk drivers. And I don’t mean they were around us, I mean they were touching us. Right up against you, trying to get you to take theirs. After a few minutes of this we picked a random tuk tuk and headed to our hostel.
Now the reason why they want to take you to your hostel so badly is because they know you are there to see Angkor Wat and that you will want someone to take you around for the day or two. So once we were at our hostel Kiam (our driver) told us his price which was very good (15 USD for the day) and we said we’ed see him tomorrow morning. That night we ate at a street vendor that was very good.
The next morning started at 5 am. We got up, got into the tuk tuk and got to Angkor in time for the sunset. It was very beautiful. After that we spent the rest of the day seeing the temples with the rest of the tourists, mostly Japanesse tourist groups. And at every temple there were sure to be cute poor kids waiting to sell you things. You grow used to it eventually. By the end of the trip, one exchange with the kids went like this. “Sir, flute for a dollar,” “ I don’t play the flute.” “sir, postcards one dollar.” “I don’t like postcards.”
Many of the kids are very smart and speak multiple languages from talking with tourists. The girl I bought a scarf from could speak almost five languages and could sell in about ten. At the end of the day we went to a good temple and watched the sunset. We were there nice and early and got the best seats. We were those people that you wonder how long they have been and how they can still be having fun and joking with each other after two hours of sitting in the sun. People were taking pictures of us, that is how popular we became at sunsets.
The next day was pretty much the same, only different temples. They are all very steep steped and by now we seemed pretty used to them. But once you see pictures, you’ll be like, “wow, that is steep.” For one of the temples further away, the girls went ahead and me and Julio stayed behind at a food stall to enjoy the hammocks and take much needed naps. While there we got to know the kids pretty well. Even translated a text message one girl about twenty years old got from a friend. Yeah they have cell phones, but who doesn’t, honestly. We wraped up the day with another sunset (which we completely rocked) and it was back to Ciem Reap to enjoy most street food. The girls went and got another massage and me and Julio made callie mocho (red wine and coca cola), it is a weird Mexican drink that Julio likes. We toasted to a great spring break and then headed to bed because it was another sunrise the next morning.
After the sinrise we headed back to the hostel, checked out and then were flying back to Singapore in no time. We got back completely beat. What a trip, but the next morning all I wanted to do was go back to Cambodia and Thailand. It was really great and everyone I went with was great, wouldn’t have changed a thing. I guess there are more little stories here and there still to be told, but you will have to by me lunch to get those.
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