Monday, August 05, 2013

Vacation Cambodia Style! - Presented in Multimedia Format

Even though I hadn't even been teaching a full two months yet, it was time for a long weekend. I'm not actually sure what Thai holiday dictated that I get a four day weekend, but I was truly grateful for it! With four days and limited budget, Kiki and I decided to tackle Cambodia. We got in a taxi at 3am and headed to FuturePark to catch a van to the border. Other than being crammed in the back of the 15 passenger van (a popular form of public transit here) the ride to the border was fairly uneventful. (Little did we know, that would be best transportation all weekend.)

After lots of standing and waiting and shuffling from one building to the next, we successfully left Thailand, got Cambodian tourist visas, and cleared immigration to enter Cambodia.

That blue and yellow sign above us says, "Kingdom of Cambodia".  Yeah baby!!

After lots of "let's screw the foreigners" games, we finally boarded a bus for Phnom Penh, the capital. This bus was certainly the worst. Again, foreigners to the back please. Normally not a big deal, but because this was a huge old diesel guzzling bus, which meant we were sitting directly over the engine, so even though the bus was theoretically air conditioned, we were being blasted with heat. Additionally, this bus decided to make waaay more stops than necessary, oh and let's not forget the part where we got a flat tire, meaning we didn't arrive at our hostel (after being drastically over charged by a tuktuk) until MUCH later than anticipated.

Just waiting for the flat tire on the bus to get changed... no big deal.

Lucky for us though, as we were checking in, two Canadian girls approached us to see if we would be interested in splitting a tuktuk for the following day. As it seemed we had a pretty similar itinerary planned, we jumped on it. The next morning the tuktuk driver picked us up and we headed out of town quite a ways to the shooting range. The story goes that this place has ties to the Cambodian military which is kind of the draw, in reality, I'm pretty sure it's just a place to shoot some big guns... and shoot them we did!



We shot both an AK-47 and an M-4. For the most part the 4 of us were splitting the clips, so the guys set the guns to only fire once per pull so we could split the shots evenly. At the end though, I had several shots left on the M-4 and wanted to try it in the automatic setting.....



After that we shifted the tone of the day pretty dramatically by going to The Killing Fields and S21. I, frankly, didn't really know about this until we started planning our trip, which is quite terrifying considering it occurred in the 1970s. Sadly, I'm rather certain that this was never a part of my education.

I didn't take photos really because it just didn't seem right somehow. I'm not going to detail all of the events that occurred at either location, but if you're not familiar with it, you should definitely look it up. While this didn't happen in my lifetime, it started only a few short years before I was born. It's pretty terrifying to think about. Phnom Pehn itself was not a particularly interesting city to me, but if you find yourself headed to Cambodia, you should make it a point to visit the Killing Fields and S21 for your own education.

In particular, The Killing Fields included an audio tour with the price of admission. I typically skip audio tours as I'm never terribly impressed and like to be free to move along at my own pace. This was by far the best audio tour I've ever experienced. It's narrated by a Cambodian who lived through it and has stories of others as well.

Afterwards we had to rush back to the hostel to grab some lunch and catch our bus to Siem Reap. Once again, foreigners to the back please! Back in a 15 passenger van, we shared the back bench with two German guys who were staying at our hostel. This was by far the bumpiest ride ever and one of the guys was really tall. Besides being crammed into the tiny back seat, I'm sure he hit his head on the roof multiple times!!

At one of the stops on the way, we hopped out to get snacks and go to the bathroom. When I came out of the bathroom, one of the German guys held a bag out in front of me and said, "You want some bugs?" I looked down to discover that he was in fact holding a bag full of fried bugs. I'd seen these in the markets and street stands in Thailand and had planned to give it a shot at some point, so I figured, why not now?



Eventually we arrived in Siem Reap and were kindly picked up by a tuktuk driver sent by our hostel. The next morning the same driver pick us up to take to Angkor Wat in time to catch the sunrise. Apparently this is supposed to be a pretty amazing sunrise that can score you postcardesque photos, but it was pretty cloudy so we didn't get that lucky. Regardless, we explored Angkor Wat throughout the day, getting some pretty sweet pics of the various temples.



Since we got such an early start on the day, we were back at hostel around 1pm, giving us just enough time to catch a quick nap before indulging ourselves in the 3 hour spa treatment that the hostel offered. That's right! A scrub, massage and facial for the outrageous price of .... wait for it.... $35 USD!

That night we headed to the famed "Pub Street" to check a bar that Kiki had read about called Angkor What? They even had a tshirt that we were both super excited to get... until we saw it and it was boring. BOO!! Nonetheless, it was a pretty cool place and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. Even when the electricity on the entire street went out, the party continued via candlelight. (Thank goodness the electricity came back on though, the bar population was starting to get a little antsy with no jams to dance to.)



The next morning it was back to Thailand. Clearly we hadn't had enough bad luck with transportation, so this time we crossed the border and were shuttled to a stop to wait for the second bus (Most bus companies don't take the buses across the border. You get off on one side, cross the border and then get on a new bus in the other country). Upon arriving we sat and waited... and waited... and waited... Four hours after we crossed the border, the bus finally came. The total time from Siem Ream to Bangkok was supposed to 7-8 hours. It was over 10!!

In the end, by Kiki's calculations, we traveled (including waiting for transit) a total of 40 hours in four days and did touristy things a total of 14 hours. Suddenly the overpriced plane tickets we'd considered previously seemed totally reasonable. Regardless, we truly enjoyed ourselves and I honestly hope to be able to visit Siem Reap again.... but I'll probably book a flight next time.

Labels: Angkor Wat, Angkor What, border crossing, Cambodia, Phnom Pehn, S21, Siem Reap, Thailand, The Killing Fields, vacation