We're in Singapore now. Just went for a swim in the pool and sat in the jacuzzi for a bit. Tarik's playing some free XBox while I write. This airport is great for having a 6 hour layover. Here are some wrap-up bests/worsts of the trip:
Favorite Country: Thailand
Favorite Big City: Saigon
Favorite Small City: Chiang Mai
Best Swimming: Ha Long Bay
Best Aquatic Scenery: Koh Tao
Best Land Scenery: Sapa
Worst Touts: Phnom Penh
Most Upset Tarik was: Koh Tao restaurant when it took forever to get our french fries. (Tarik didn't actually order fries but the rest of us did and we had all basically finished our meals before they were brought out. If you know Tarik you know why he got upset about this.)
Most Upset I was: Phnom Penh when a bell hop asked for a tip. We had been on an awful 5 hour bus ride followed by being attacked by tuk-tuk drivers, brought to a crappy hostel in the middle of nowhere and then to a crappy hotel in downtown PP. We had asked to see a room and had left our bags there after deciding we wanted it. We then went back down to check in. The bell hop then "showed us the way" up to our room that we already knew where it was, turned the lights on, pressed power on the air con remote, pressed power on the TV remote and couldn't actually get the TV to work. Then before he left he had the nerve to ask for a dollar tip. I was steaming.
Coolest Temple: Angkor Wat
Best Hostel: Spicy Thai, Chiang Mai
Worst Hostel: Hometown Hotel, Phnom Penh
Best Run: Around the Chiang Mai Park
Worst Run: Lost in Sihanoukville
Wish I Had Seen: Central Vietnam, Laos
Could Have Done Without: Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh
Best Food: Northern Thailand
Best Meal: T House, Bangkok (Tarik will say the Soup Lady in Saigon)
Best Looking Females: South Vietnam
Hardest to Understand Locals: Chiang Mai
First Place I'll Return to: Southern Thailand
Most Underrated: Thai Cooking Course
Most Overrated: Hanoi Temple of Literature
"How the Hell did we get here" Moment: Chumphon at 3:30AM watching the World Cup finals
I'm going to add some more pictures to this blog when I get back and will give a link to all of the pictures that I put up on Picasa.
Also, I hope to continue this blog once I get back to the States as I will be mostly on the road for the next month as well. It will probably become more of a focus on 3 things: Drinking, Running and Traveling; as those are 3 things I love to do and do often. I will try to write once or twice a week. If youare interested in following: Great! If not, I hope you enjoyed it thus far. If you ahve ideas for me to write about or suggestions for me, send them to: peter.sneeringer@gmail.com
Showing posts with label Cambodia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambodia. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Cambodian and a few Vietnamese Brews
First off: I totally forgot to write about the Cambodian kareoke that seems to be on tv's everywhere even sometime when you can't hear the music. It was on in restaurants, loud bars, in stores, even on the bus rides! And the best part was the music videos that go with the songs. Each one went as follows. A man looking lonely sitting on a beach or looking at himself in a mirror. Then he sees the girl he likes. He sneaks up behind her and surprises her. Together they go to look at some statue of something - usually the girl hides behind a dragon and the guy doesn't know where she is, then she jumps out. They laugh. They almost kiss, something interrupts them and then they hug and run down the beach. SCENE. Hilarious. Hours of that on the bus is very entertaining.
Anyway, to more important things like beer:
Cambodia:
Angkor: It's everywhere! Almost every bar has banners for it and sells it for $.50 - $.75 draught. It's very drinkable. Like a Bud Light. Refreshing but not too much taste going on.
Anchor: I'm convinced that this is exactly the same as Angkor. But not in the same way that Coors light and Keystone Light are the same. These two taste exactly the same and sell for the same price. Why would the company do that? Also, sometimes I'd order an Angkor and get an Anchor because they sound the same. ABV: ~4.5%
Klang: Has a white can with a gray elephant on the front. Looks like a terrible beer. Tastes like nothing. Absolutely nothing. I could only tell that I was drinking a carbonated liquid, could haev been any liquid. I wasn't going to get one but Tarik surprised me with one the last night in PP because he wanted me to try it. ABV: 6%
BeerLaos: Surprisingly good. I guess the people of Laos only have 1 beer to drink so they make it good (supposedly Laos governemtn doesn't allow other beers into the country). Dark and foamy. A nice dark lager. ABV: 6.3%
Phnom Penh: Surprisingly good for a can that looked like the label was faded and falling off. A lighter lager that pretty sweet. Went down well when we were watching Bruno. ABV: 5.5%
Vietnam:
333: Liek drinking a warm Chang. Awful. Enough said. ABV: 6.2%
Saigon: Really good drinkable beer. Actually, I think this reaction was just because I drank it right after I drank a 333. But it was drinkable. Like a nice cold PBR. The first one out of the 30. Also it came in a half liter bottle which is always nice. ABV: 4.6%
There's a good selection of beer here including Coors Light, Budweiser (but not Light), Carlsberg, and Heineken. Will have to try them all!
Headed to the Mekong River Delta tomorrow morning for an overnight trip to see the countryside, floating villages and markets, and who knows what else. Will blog about that and Saigon when I get back.
Anyway, to more important things like beer:
Cambodia:
Angkor: It's everywhere! Almost every bar has banners for it and sells it for $.50 - $.75 draught. It's very drinkable. Like a Bud Light. Refreshing but not too much taste going on.
Anchor: I'm convinced that this is exactly the same as Angkor. But not in the same way that Coors light and Keystone Light are the same. These two taste exactly the same and sell for the same price. Why would the company do that? Also, sometimes I'd order an Angkor and get an Anchor because they sound the same. ABV: ~4.5%
Klang: Has a white can with a gray elephant on the front. Looks like a terrible beer. Tastes like nothing. Absolutely nothing. I could only tell that I was drinking a carbonated liquid, could haev been any liquid. I wasn't going to get one but Tarik surprised me with one the last night in PP because he wanted me to try it. ABV: 6%
BeerLaos: Surprisingly good. I guess the people of Laos only have 1 beer to drink so they make it good (supposedly Laos governemtn doesn't allow other beers into the country). Dark and foamy. A nice dark lager. ABV: 6.3%
Phnom Penh: Surprisingly good for a can that looked like the label was faded and falling off. A lighter lager that pretty sweet. Went down well when we were watching Bruno. ABV: 5.5%
Vietnam:
333: Liek drinking a warm Chang. Awful. Enough said. ABV: 6.2%
Saigon: Really good drinkable beer. Actually, I think this reaction was just because I drank it right after I drank a 333. But it was drinkable. Like a nice cold PBR. The first one out of the 30. Also it came in a half liter bottle which is always nice. ABV: 4.6%
There's a good selection of beer here including Coors Light, Budweiser (but not Light), Carlsberg, and Heineken. Will have to try them all!
Headed to the Mekong River Delta tomorrow morning for an overnight trip to see the countryside, floating villages and markets, and who knows what else. Will blog about that and Saigon when I get back.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Cambodia is a strange place
Not even including my ridiculous run, Cambodia is a strange place. It's hard to feel comfortable there and almost one an hour Tarik and I would be absolutely completely confused as to what was happening. It is dirtier than Thailand, less busy but more chaotic and although it's not that big, everything seems difficult to get to and it's very noisy. In Phnom Penh at least.
We arrived back in PP last night after taking a bus from the coast. The bus was excellent - they gave us water and a snack and a cold towel to wipe our faces with. However, when we got off the bus, we were thrown back into the deep end of the busy city full of pesky tuk-tuk drivers. It felt like we were the chum that attracts sharks. As we got off the bus there was a gate around the area to allow the passengers to gather their bags that were stored underneath. As soon as I grabbed my bag (I was the last person off the bus) the tuk-tuk drivers were allowed in. They had been shouting and pushing to get our attention the moment the bus turned onto this street. Now they swarmed all the foreigners. I did my best to ignore them and the 4 men around me mostly gave up on me. Tarik was talking with some Germans to find out where we were and the men were shoving maps in their faces and pointing to pictures of hotels saying they'll take them their for "real cheap." Once we found out we were a block from the riverfront we booked it out of there, much to the dismay of the drivers. One actually followed us in his tuk-tuk for 2 blocks until he finally gave up on us. It was over-whelming, clostrophobic and annoying.
The rest of Phnom Penh isn't nearly this bad but I still didn't love the city. The market just as crowded as Thailand but the owners are less aggressive and the smell of fish is everywhere. There were chickens laying around waiting for their heads to be chopped off when a customers purchased one, live crabs being put in bags for people to take home, and fish everywhere. Live fish, dead fish, dried fish, fish paste. It smelled awful!
Also, there are beggars everywhere. The beggars here are different from Bangkok because many of these people have be injured by mines and have lost limbs. Some are just begging and others are selling sunglasses or books that nobody would ever want to read.
The Tonle Sap river is pretty to look at - much cleaner than the rivers in Thailand and the riverfront is frequently occupied by games of soccer. We met up with a friend's sister, Jui, who has been working for an NGO in PP for 18 months. She took us out to dinner and then to a bar for her friend's birthday. We then went to the casino. This was a very strange site. It was just like any casino in the states, but when placed in the poor struggling city of PP it felt very out of place.
The following day we took a history lesson at S21 prison and the "killing fields" were victims of the Khmer Rouge were first held captive and tortured and then executed. It was a very sobering day learning about the thousands of prisoners killed during the civil war that nearly destroyed the country. It was similar to going to Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich, except that I knew much more about what happened there than I did about the Khmer Rouge reign.
We are now in Vietnam. The trip here was much easier than getting into Cambodia. The bus company took care of almost everything. I nearly had to kneel when they wanted to take my picture at the border because the camera was set to the height of Cambodians.
I'll blog about Cambodian beer soon.
We arrived back in PP last night after taking a bus from the coast. The bus was excellent - they gave us water and a snack and a cold towel to wipe our faces with. However, when we got off the bus, we were thrown back into the deep end of the busy city full of pesky tuk-tuk drivers. It felt like we were the chum that attracts sharks. As we got off the bus there was a gate around the area to allow the passengers to gather their bags that were stored underneath. As soon as I grabbed my bag (I was the last person off the bus) the tuk-tuk drivers were allowed in. They had been shouting and pushing to get our attention the moment the bus turned onto this street. Now they swarmed all the foreigners. I did my best to ignore them and the 4 men around me mostly gave up on me. Tarik was talking with some Germans to find out where we were and the men were shoving maps in their faces and pointing to pictures of hotels saying they'll take them their for "real cheap." Once we found out we were a block from the riverfront we booked it out of there, much to the dismay of the drivers. One actually followed us in his tuk-tuk for 2 blocks until he finally gave up on us. It was over-whelming, clostrophobic and annoying.
The rest of Phnom Penh isn't nearly this bad but I still didn't love the city. The market just as crowded as Thailand but the owners are less aggressive and the smell of fish is everywhere. There were chickens laying around waiting for their heads to be chopped off when a customers purchased one, live crabs being put in bags for people to take home, and fish everywhere. Live fish, dead fish, dried fish, fish paste. It smelled awful!
Also, there are beggars everywhere. The beggars here are different from Bangkok because many of these people have be injured by mines and have lost limbs. Some are just begging and others are selling sunglasses or books that nobody would ever want to read.
The Tonle Sap river is pretty to look at - much cleaner than the rivers in Thailand and the riverfront is frequently occupied by games of soccer. We met up with a friend's sister, Jui, who has been working for an NGO in PP for 18 months. She took us out to dinner and then to a bar for her friend's birthday. We then went to the casino. This was a very strange site. It was just like any casino in the states, but when placed in the poor struggling city of PP it felt very out of place.
The following day we took a history lesson at S21 prison and the "killing fields" were victims of the Khmer Rouge were first held captive and tortured and then executed. It was a very sobering day learning about the thousands of prisoners killed during the civil war that nearly destroyed the country. It was similar to going to Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich, except that I knew much more about what happened there than I did about the Khmer Rouge reign.
We are now in Vietnam. The trip here was much easier than getting into Cambodia. The bus company took care of almost everything. I nearly had to kneel when they wanted to take my picture at the border because the camera was set to the height of Cambodians.
I'll blog about Cambodian beer soon.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Never Running in Cambodia Ever Again. Ever
So I was gonna write about how miserable the minibus ride from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was - I felt like Shaq on an airplane - and then about the city of PP but instead I've got 12 minutes to write about my ridiculous run today in the little beach town of Sihanoukville.
Let me start by repeating that it's a beach town. And it's barely stopped raining since we got here and is monsooning as I write this. There's nothing to do here except go to the beach. So I decided to run. Bad idea.
I figured it was cool enough for a 45minute run. I brought my iPod thinking there wasn't much to see anyway and it would help me run well. The first 3 miles were great. I ran along the pretty white sand beaches for a bit all the way up to the secluded Independence Beach that was occupied only by a few pale middle-aged men in Speedos. Then I ran up some steps to a beautiful, ocean view hotel. I decided that was far enough out and I would try to head back but via an inland route. I had brought a map and 5000 riel in case I needed anything.
On the way down the hill from the hotel I noticed some people in the street taking pictures of the jungle. I stopped, pretty confused because I didn't see anything noteworthy in the trees. I soon realized there was a family of monkeys along the fencetop playing and eating bananas. They were really cute. I watched them for a while. Then I continued on. A half mile later, I came across a herd of cattle waltzing down the middle of the street - with no apparent supervision. I navigated my way between the cows and the residue they left behind on the pavement, trying to decide if that would seem strange to a Cambodian or not.
Then I found near the beach I had been running on previously, so I turned left to go more inland. After 10 steps up this road, a struffy looking black dog took interest in me, trotting up swiftly to me and barking. As I increased my pace away from him 2 more smaller dogs filled in the formation behind the bigger one. I picked up my pace to 3 quarters speed as the adrenaline was really pumping and I wondered if this was all really happening. Luckily, as I clenched my fists and turned around I saw the dogs were falling behind and losing interest. I slowed down a bit but kept checking behind me for the next 5 minutes.
From there I ran down the street that was in the middle of nowhere and the only person I saw was a man waist deep in his rice paddie. Then the road starting going uphill. At this point I realized I had definitely made a wrong turn but I wasn't going back towards the dogs so I ran up the hill. It stretched out for a painful 3/4 mile. When I finally got to the top of the hill, lungs and legs burning, I turned right onto the main street and was pissed to see that the road went straight back downhill into the city center. About here is when my run went bad.
I was struggling to breathe at this point - my lungs and back hurt when I took deep breathes so I slowed down my pace. In the city center I thought I had about a mile left and would just run it slowly. I saw a sign that said Sokha Beach turn right and that was the beach right near our hostel. So I turned right. After going down a bunch of sidestreets, in what I thought was the direction of the beach, I was pretty lost. Looking at the map I thought I knew where I was. Then I saw a sign for a hospital and there was only one hospital on the map so I figured I must be near that one which was a block in the wrong direction but very close to the hostel. Turns out the "hospital" was nothing more than a one room doctor's office and the street it is on is a dead end, but isn't a dead end on the map...interesting. I went back to where I thought I could turn onto the main road that our hostel was on, but there's no main road. After walking around for about half an hour (I stopped running because I was tired) I popped back out on the main road in city center a block before I had turned right off the road!
From here I walked down the main street a few blocks further, until I saw a sign for Sokha Beach again. But this time the sign said to go straight! A block later there was a sign for the Golden Lions which is the statue 100 meters from our hostel. I've never been so happy to see a street sign that I recognized! I ran the last mile or so at a good pace as my lungs were recovered at this point. As I ran down the last hill, I had to move to the sidewalk for a parade of monks carrying flags and playing instruments as they marched up the hill. I don't know what it was all about but it was definitely a sight to see.
I got back and Tarik asked if I had been kidnapped. "Yup. Thanks for your concern."
Let me start by repeating that it's a beach town. And it's barely stopped raining since we got here and is monsooning as I write this. There's nothing to do here except go to the beach. So I decided to run. Bad idea.
I figured it was cool enough for a 45minute run. I brought my iPod thinking there wasn't much to see anyway and it would help me run well. The first 3 miles were great. I ran along the pretty white sand beaches for a bit all the way up to the secluded Independence Beach that was occupied only by a few pale middle-aged men in Speedos. Then I ran up some steps to a beautiful, ocean view hotel. I decided that was far enough out and I would try to head back but via an inland route. I had brought a map and 5000 riel in case I needed anything.
On the way down the hill from the hotel I noticed some people in the street taking pictures of the jungle. I stopped, pretty confused because I didn't see anything noteworthy in the trees. I soon realized there was a family of monkeys along the fencetop playing and eating bananas. They were really cute. I watched them for a while. Then I continued on. A half mile later, I came across a herd of cattle waltzing down the middle of the street - with no apparent supervision. I navigated my way between the cows and the residue they left behind on the pavement, trying to decide if that would seem strange to a Cambodian or not.
Then I found near the beach I had been running on previously, so I turned left to go more inland. After 10 steps up this road, a struffy looking black dog took interest in me, trotting up swiftly to me and barking. As I increased my pace away from him 2 more smaller dogs filled in the formation behind the bigger one. I picked up my pace to 3 quarters speed as the adrenaline was really pumping and I wondered if this was all really happening. Luckily, as I clenched my fists and turned around I saw the dogs were falling behind and losing interest. I slowed down a bit but kept checking behind me for the next 5 minutes.
From there I ran down the street that was in the middle of nowhere and the only person I saw was a man waist deep in his rice paddie. Then the road starting going uphill. At this point I realized I had definitely made a wrong turn but I wasn't going back towards the dogs so I ran up the hill. It stretched out for a painful 3/4 mile. When I finally got to the top of the hill, lungs and legs burning, I turned right onto the main street and was pissed to see that the road went straight back downhill into the city center. About here is when my run went bad.
I was struggling to breathe at this point - my lungs and back hurt when I took deep breathes so I slowed down my pace. In the city center I thought I had about a mile left and would just run it slowly. I saw a sign that said Sokha Beach turn right and that was the beach right near our hostel. So I turned right. After going down a bunch of sidestreets, in what I thought was the direction of the beach, I was pretty lost. Looking at the map I thought I knew where I was. Then I saw a sign for a hospital and there was only one hospital on the map so I figured I must be near that one which was a block in the wrong direction but very close to the hostel. Turns out the "hospital" was nothing more than a one room doctor's office and the street it is on is a dead end, but isn't a dead end on the map...interesting. I went back to where I thought I could turn onto the main road that our hostel was on, but there's no main road. After walking around for about half an hour (I stopped running because I was tired) I popped back out on the main road in city center a block before I had turned right off the road!
From here I walked down the main street a few blocks further, until I saw a sign for Sokha Beach again. But this time the sign said to go straight! A block later there was a sign for the Golden Lions which is the statue 100 meters from our hostel. I've never been so happy to see a street sign that I recognized! I ran the last mile or so at a good pace as my lungs were recovered at this point. As I ran down the last hill, I had to move to the sidewalk for a parade of monks carrying flags and playing instruments as they marched up the hill. I don't know what it was all about but it was definitely a sight to see.
I got back and Tarik asked if I had been kidnapped. "Yup. Thanks for your concern."
Friday, July 23, 2010
Abbot and Costello go to Cambodia
Are we going to see a temple now?
A wat.
A what?
A wat.
What what?
Angkor Wat.
Angkor what?
Yea, it's a big buddhist temple.
What is?
Exactly.
Exactly what?
No, Angkor Wat.
What's the name of the temple.
Angkor Wat's the name of the temple.
That what I asked you. And why are you calling me Angkor.
I'm not calling you Angkor. I'm calling Wat Angkor.
You're calling who Angkor?
No. Wat.
What?
Exactly.
I was going to blog about going to Angkor Wat and watching the sunrise over the temple and seeing its reflection in the pool, but I forgot my notebook so here's the quick synopsis:
We woke up at 4 to be at the temples before sunrise. Angkor Wat is the biggest (just the moat around it is 200m wide!) and best preserved of the dozens of temples in the complex. It was built in the 1100's and is still in great shape. We watched the sunrise over it and then went to 7 other temples that morning.
Angkor Thom: the old city housing many of the temples. At one point 1 million people lives within the wall. Now the walls are pretty crumpled but the gates are still in tact and have monkeys climbing around on them.
Bayon: Really cool temple that you could climb all over. The king who built it ordered the face of one of their gods to be etched into the four sides of all of the 54 spires in the temple, but apparently those faces look more like the king than the god.
Temple of 1000 elephants: I don't know if there were 1000 but there were a lot carved into what was left standing of the front wall of this temple.
Ta Prohm: Where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed! Awesome temple that has been overtaken by the jungle. The trees have their roots all entangled in the walls and our over 100 ft tall. I got lost and way off the path that I was supposed to be on which made this temple way cooler than it might have been otherwise.
Other highlight: A girl selling drinks and painting struck up conversation with me and when I told her I was from the states she began listing all of the states and their capitals! This was impressive. Then she started grilling me about state capitals and their largest cities! Luckily I'm pretty good at geography. I was so impressed I bought a cocunut from her for 2000 riel = $.50.
I also went for a run in Siem Reap but barely last 2.5 miles as it was hot at 10AM and the exhaust from motorbikes made my lungs burn. I ran along the river running through the city, which is incredibly dirty: brown, stagnant and filled with trash. I also (accidentally) ran through a markey along the river selling everything from clothes to fish to TVs. The market took plpace in front of the people's homes so they had a storefront and behind that was their 1 room home. This looked very impoverished until I realized many of the houses had TVs and computers in them. Strange.
In Phnom Penh now. It's big and dirty and smelly, but has some cool neighborhoods and a semi-clean river that's pretty. Will detail more later. Headed to the beach tomorrow for the weekend!
A wat.
A what?
A wat.
What what?
Angkor Wat.
Angkor what?
Yea, it's a big buddhist temple.
What is?
Exactly.
Exactly what?
No, Angkor Wat.
What's the name of the temple.
Angkor Wat's the name of the temple.
That what I asked you. And why are you calling me Angkor.
I'm not calling you Angkor. I'm calling Wat Angkor.
You're calling who Angkor?
No. Wat.
What?
Exactly.
I was going to blog about going to Angkor Wat and watching the sunrise over the temple and seeing its reflection in the pool, but I forgot my notebook so here's the quick synopsis:
We woke up at 4 to be at the temples before sunrise. Angkor Wat is the biggest (just the moat around it is 200m wide!) and best preserved of the dozens of temples in the complex. It was built in the 1100's and is still in great shape. We watched the sunrise over it and then went to 7 other temples that morning.
Angkor Thom: the old city housing many of the temples. At one point 1 million people lives within the wall. Now the walls are pretty crumpled but the gates are still in tact and have monkeys climbing around on them.
Bayon: Really cool temple that you could climb all over. The king who built it ordered the face of one of their gods to be etched into the four sides of all of the 54 spires in the temple, but apparently those faces look more like the king than the god.
Temple of 1000 elephants: I don't know if there were 1000 but there were a lot carved into what was left standing of the front wall of this temple.
Ta Prohm: Where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed! Awesome temple that has been overtaken by the jungle. The trees have their roots all entangled in the walls and our over 100 ft tall. I got lost and way off the path that I was supposed to be on which made this temple way cooler than it might have been otherwise.
Other highlight: A girl selling drinks and painting struck up conversation with me and when I told her I was from the states she began listing all of the states and their capitals! This was impressive. Then she started grilling me about state capitals and their largest cities! Luckily I'm pretty good at geography. I was so impressed I bought a cocunut from her for 2000 riel = $.50.
I also went for a run in Siem Reap but barely last 2.5 miles as it was hot at 10AM and the exhaust from motorbikes made my lungs burn. I ran along the river running through the city, which is incredibly dirty: brown, stagnant and filled with trash. I also (accidentally) ran through a markey along the river selling everything from clothes to fish to TVs. The market took plpace in front of the people's homes so they had a storefront and behind that was their 1 room home. This looked very impoverished until I realized many of the houses had TVs and computers in them. Strange.
In Phnom Penh now. It's big and dirty and smelly, but has some cool neighborhoods and a semi-clean river that's pretty. Will detail more later. Headed to the beach tomorrow for the weekend!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
24 hours to Cambodia
We were in Koh Tao. A taxi, a ferry, a bus ride, another taxi, another bus ride, a government bus, another taxi and a tuk-tuk later we are in Siem Reap Cambodia.
The trip here just as crazy as the trip to the islands the first time, but this time we knew (more or less) what we were in for. The ferry dropped us off at the same pier, where we waited for 2.5 hours before boarding a bus - got to skip the minibus with the cough syrup drinking driver this time! That got us into Bangkok at 3 AM. Luckily it dropped us off in an area that we knew because otherwise we would have been totally disoriented and at the mercy of the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers.
From there we hopped a taxi to the bus station, which must not be used by many foreigners because nothing was in English. After a great deal of confusion and some running through the station, we boarded a bus to Aranyaprathet, the town on the Thai side of the border with Cambodia. Our book said we would have to take a tuk-tuk to the border but the bus actually dropped us of right at the border. We didn't recognize this right away though and everyone you ask is trying to scam you so it's very confusing. After ignoring at least 30 men telling us we had to buy a Cambodian Visa before leaving Thailand (and trying to charge us way too much money) we found the Thai immigration office. We filled out the paperwork and crossed a bridge to leave Thailand.
Once entering Cambodia and going through a quarantine checkpoint, a very helpful Cambodian government worker showed us step by step how to enter the country and get a visa and everything. We got our visas, took a government bus to the bus station where we met an Aussie man who had been scammed 3 times at the border but was still in good enough spirits to split a taxi to Siem Reap with us. We each paid $10 US. (They use US dollars here for whatever reason, though everything below $1 is in Riel notes which exchange at about 4200 riel to the dollar. It's way confusing to get and give change.) The 2 hour drive was a good introduction to Cambodia. The rural towns are clearly very poor and impoverished. More so than in Thailand. The houses were mostly one room shacks, often on stilts to protect against floods, and often with uncovered windows or even whole walls. There were irrigation ditched in front of each house that protect against flooding, water the crops and probably serve as drinking water too. the countryside was lush with green bushes, palm trees and crops. It was pretty and like nothing I've ever seen but very poor.
We made it to our hostel finally and collapsed as it took us nearly 24 hours of traveling to get here. We had man tuk-tuk drivers approach us wanting to take us to the temples and after choosing the one that Lindsay and Leah (Tufts friends) used I felt bad telling the others we didn't need them. Everybody here is very friendly and has good English so it makes it seem more rude and harsh when I ignore them.
We met up with Lindsay and Leah for dinner that night. It was great to see some familiar faces in a strange new land. I ran yesterday and we went to Angkor Wat today which I'll write more about tomorrow but here's a few pictures:
The trip here just as crazy as the trip to the islands the first time, but this time we knew (more or less) what we were in for. The ferry dropped us off at the same pier, where we waited for 2.5 hours before boarding a bus - got to skip the minibus with the cough syrup drinking driver this time! That got us into Bangkok at 3 AM. Luckily it dropped us off in an area that we knew because otherwise we would have been totally disoriented and at the mercy of the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers.
From there we hopped a taxi to the bus station, which must not be used by many foreigners because nothing was in English. After a great deal of confusion and some running through the station, we boarded a bus to Aranyaprathet, the town on the Thai side of the border with Cambodia. Our book said we would have to take a tuk-tuk to the border but the bus actually dropped us of right at the border. We didn't recognize this right away though and everyone you ask is trying to scam you so it's very confusing. After ignoring at least 30 men telling us we had to buy a Cambodian Visa before leaving Thailand (and trying to charge us way too much money) we found the Thai immigration office. We filled out the paperwork and crossed a bridge to leave Thailand.
Once entering Cambodia and going through a quarantine checkpoint, a very helpful Cambodian government worker showed us step by step how to enter the country and get a visa and everything. We got our visas, took a government bus to the bus station where we met an Aussie man who had been scammed 3 times at the border but was still in good enough spirits to split a taxi to Siem Reap with us. We each paid $10 US. (They use US dollars here for whatever reason, though everything below $1 is in Riel notes which exchange at about 4200 riel to the dollar. It's way confusing to get and give change.) The 2 hour drive was a good introduction to Cambodia. The rural towns are clearly very poor and impoverished. More so than in Thailand. The houses were mostly one room shacks, often on stilts to protect against floods, and often with uncovered windows or even whole walls. There were irrigation ditched in front of each house that protect against flooding, water the crops and probably serve as drinking water too. the countryside was lush with green bushes, palm trees and crops. It was pretty and like nothing I've ever seen but very poor.
We made it to our hostel finally and collapsed as it took us nearly 24 hours of traveling to get here. We had man tuk-tuk drivers approach us wanting to take us to the temples and after choosing the one that Lindsay and Leah (Tufts friends) used I felt bad telling the others we didn't need them. Everybody here is very friendly and has good English so it makes it seem more rude and harsh when I ignore them.
We met up with Lindsay and Leah for dinner that night. It was great to see some familiar faces in a strange new land. I ran yesterday and we went to Angkor Wat today which I'll write more about tomorrow but here's a few pictures:
Angkor Wat at sunrise.
Tarik's famous half-opened eye.
The front of the temple.
Ta Prohm. The temple where Tomb Raider was filmed. It's over taken by the jungle!
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