We awoke to a bus to be an hour late. This was no problem as we simply read our books until its arrival. Upon boarding we were immediately asked to fill in some paper work. After the paper work was filled, we were asked to relinquish our passports to a shady man in a hat. When asked why, he simply said "Heh heh heh heh, do not worry." And then we were off. Driving through Vietnam was mostly just slightly urbanized areas and mopeds and was unremarkable. The bus was moving around 45 km an hour on average because of the mopeds. It took 4 hours to get to the border. The shady man in the hat had since then disappeared. Another man entered the bus and retrieved the passports of a few passengers who had yet to relinquish them, and ushered us into a small room that was the Vietnamese border. Here we stood in a hot mass of people idly standing as the border guards worked behind the desks. No one moved through on their own. All 100ish people in the room had no passports and were just hoping that the people they relinquished their passports too would soon direct them. After 30 minutes, we saw our first ray of hope. Names are called by bus and the entire bus is called at once. Another 15 minute wait saw us walking past the guards with our passports thankfully in our hands. We then made our way to the bus again to be driven to the Cambodia side. Here things were different. Passports and visas in hand, we simply walked up to the passport control like in an airport, took fingerprints on a digital scanner, and made our way through no problem. And back on the bus we climbed.
The Cambodia side was all rice paddies and bulls.
After about an hour we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant with nothing nearby. Here we learned the exchange rate of 1 dollar to 4000 riel. Basically they use US dollars in Cambodia, and people use the riel as change. ATM's give you US dollars exclusively however. At the lunch place we had some fried noodles and I had an incredibly over sweetened coffee with condensed milk. The stop was about 30 minutes long, allowing the busmen to transfer what turned out to be about 10 huge bags from the back of the bus. Somewhere along the ride we learned they were bags with about 500-1000 pink Lacoste polos. These bags were taken, along with our stuff, onto another bus, where we soon boarded. From then on, the bus ride was all rice paddies and bulls. There were also some houses on stilts. And at one point the bus rode on a ferry to cross a river. Eventually, about 6 hours later, we arrived at Phenom Penh. Here we dismounted the bus, bought some water and nuts, and hopped on a bus bound for Siem Riep. Phenom Penh itself was very nice and large, but we didn't see much of it before we were off to Siem Riep.
This bus ride was different. The bus was more comfortable, but people brought food on the bus. By food I mean garlic fried chicken feet and durians. Which means the smell was terrible. The sun also quickly set and there were no street lights. So for 5 hours our bus traveled on pitch black, mostly paved roads. It was a pretty scary ride in general. We did stop once, but only got off to stretch our legs. Finally, however, we arrived at Siem Riep. It was a cute little town, dimly lit and with no buildings over 3 stories. It was a ghost town. There was no one on the street at all. This was very unnerving. It was only 12 but everything, even bars, were closed for the night. There were no cars or mopeds, and only 1 or 2 pedestrians on the 10 minute walk to our hostel. We later found out it was Cambodian New Years, which is why no one was in site. Our Hostel looked nice. It was big on the inside. The front desk was disorganized however, and stuffed us in a room for the night, to deal with us tomorrow. We filled a 6 person room, where the other people were out still. This did not bode well, but we were very tired and immediately showered and went to bed. Here I came face to face with my first bed bug. I killed it in a burst of red blood, no doubt belonging to the last sleeper, and quickly checked the bed for more. I then put on my swimsuit and spare shirt and slept above the sheets.
We were awoken that night by 2 drunk Australian men and 2 drunk american girls being exceptionally loud and turning the lights on. Then in the morning, we were woken by an alarm, twice. The owner of the alarm did not wake. He missed his flight the next morning, and announced this by yelling and storming out of the room while leaving the lights on. 2 hours later me and Shreyas awoke and went downstairs. Here we payed and booked a tuk-tuk to take us around Angkor. First we got breakfast, which was the best American breakfast I have had in Asia. We learned that the food here is 2-5 USD, making it the most expensive country so far.
After breakfast we got our 40 USD to pay for 2 day passes to Angkor.
From this point on I will describe our 2 full days in Angkor because they are the same.
For two days we crawled in the hottest sun we have experienced. It was incredibly dry and dusty and left us with head aches and dry sun. We did in 2 days what other travellers do in twice as long. We saw, crawled all over, ascended, analyzed, gazed at, and surmounted in all about 10 temples I believe. These were all huge and old and all unique. For convenience sake I will put them in 3 categories: there were flat ones that included a temple with trees growing in the walls everywhere, and one with doors that got progressively smaller so you had to duck your head before the king's ashes, there were temples that were built tall and like the wats in bangkok, these included Angkor Wat and our favorite Bayo, which were fun to crawl around and see all the intricate carvings everywhere, and finally there were the ones of almost all hematite, which were build tall but had no shade and were really hot but lots of fun to explore because no one else was there. Angkor Wat wasn't even our favorite. It was too overrun by tourists. It had the best preserved carvings, but our favorites were the untouched ones that you could simply crawl all over and explore to your hearts content. There will be pictures on facebook sometime, but it will take too long to explain all the temples in detail. Just know they are beautiful and large and old. 2 of them are almost all a rusty stone that I assume has Hematite, and the others were a mix of that and sandstone. They were all impressive in their own ways.
We ate lunch once, and had ginger beef, one of the few actual cambodian dishes. It was shaved ginger and beef fried over rice. It was good.
Besides that we had lots of water and 2 coconuts for a dollar.
There were lots of venders here, especially children. They all spoke in the same comic way we soon imitated and conversed back to them. They were nice and talked to us.
Both days we did this for about 8-10 hours until sun-down when they kick you out. After we went to the Hostel and Shreyas napped while I rehydrated. Then we would go down in time for happy hour and have food. We had both nights beef lak lak - ginger beef without the ginger apparently, and then a delicious burger with homemade patties. We also enjoyed Anchor on draught for 50 cents each, they were quite refreshing and a decent cheap lager. Other beers we tried in these days were Angkor (very different from Anchor) which was like a lesser version of Tiger, Black Panther which was an 8% extra stout that was pretty unexceptionally like Guinness extra stout, Cambodia which was another cheap lager and my least favorite of the light lagers, and finally a random beer no one local or foreign had heard of that came in a camo-can, it was supposed to be a full flavored wheat beer, but tasted like a cheap lager with some wheat dryness.
Both nights we were awoken by the same people. We soon came to realize that the Hostel was pretty much just for muscled Australian men and American woman who would stay at the pool and bar all night then sleep during the day and not go see Angkor at all.
I was not bit by a bed bug while I was there.
On the last day, we had a half day. Thus we used it to go see the National Museum. Which turned out to be one of my favorite Museums ever, because all it did was teach me about Hinduism, which is comically interesting. They had statues of Hindu gods from the temples, and some of the Buddhist ones too and simply explained them in detail. We spent 3 or so hours there, then made our way back and got a tuk-tuk to the airport. The airport was really nice and small. Here we tried some palm wine at the duty free store. It tasted like slightly rotting plums and dried out our tongues and throats for hours. The bathrooms at the airport were cleaner than any in Singapore. There were 4 "gates", which were just waiting areas, because when a plane arrived you just walked outside and up some stairs into the plane. On the plane we met a really nice guy living in Singapore for about the same times as us, though he will be here for 2 years. We talked to him all 4 hours until we got home.
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