Angkor What?

 

Hidsight being 20/20, our travel plans could have been a lot more efficient. Instead of flying into Bangkok, staying there for two days and then bussing to Siem Reap, we could have just flown into Siem Reap, Cambodia. We also could have saved a bunch of time and a little money had we done the visa application online for free prior to arriving at the border. Our punishment was two hours of waiting in line, a 25 dollar processing fee, and a first hand experience of a corrupt border patrol. Since the moment we walked into Cambodia, Kassy could have been one of Lemon Snickety's characters from a series of unfortunate events. She was easy prey for the guards who charged her double for her "preprocessing" fee. John and Thomas didn't have a full empty page in their passports and were charged an extra 10 dollars. Once we were across the border, we took a four hour shuttle to Siem Reap.

Siem Reap

 

Once we got into Siem Reap, we took a tuk-tuk* to the hostel a friend was staying in. Fortunately for us the hostel was full, and they sent us a little down the road where we found shelter behind a family owned restaurant. The rent was ten dollars a night split between four people and the family adored us. By the end of our stay the grandmother was bringing local Kmer food to our door. We all asked for restaurant applications before we left.

Our first and second day were spent doing the Lance Armstrong thing (no we were not injecting steriods) around Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. Some of you, like me three months ago, might know it better as the place where the movie "Tomb Raider" was filmed (Angolina Jolie is worshiped in Cambodia) and was the inspiration for the game temple run. Angkor Wat is the largest temple, but there are nearly 30 seperate and huge temples all within a 15 km radius. One of the temples has 2,000 huge faces carved all around it, each one depicting a different emotion. It was truly unbeliable how much freedom tourists are granted at these temples, you could walk anywhere and touch anything.

Siem Reap also had a great night life. 50 cent draft beers and dollar massages made for a couple of great nights. One cool thing we tried was putting our feet in a tank of water and having the fish inside suck off our dead skin off. Due to some misfortunes, we no longer have a video of of me shrieking as 60 fish swarmmed my feet. I might have mentioned before that I have serverely ticklish feet, and for the first 10 minutes of the experience I was thrashing around. I eventually desensitized a bit and by the end I really enjoyed it. My feet were silky smooth coming out.

On the fourth day, we gave a sad goodbye to our host family and caught a bus to Phnom Penh, the Capital of Cambodia.

A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle drawn carriage (for those of you who took my advice and watched Ong-Bak, the Tuk-tuks are what's driven in the chase scene.) The best way to travel, besides a magic carpet ride, is through a tuk-tuk. They are cheap, wonderfully comfortable, and readily available. The down side of tuk-tuks, is there abundant surplus which means anywhere you go there will be constant soliciting. They are like pop-up windows that you can't find the close button in.