The bus ride was supposedly 6 hours long, although we had heard that it was really about 5. We made many stops along the way, mostly for buying snacks and sitting around. Once we asked if there was a bathroom and they pointed us to a field. At some places the Cambodian passengers went to buy some sort of ugly fried bug snack, which we didn't try. After a solid seven hours, we finally arrived in Siem Reap. A mob of tuk-tuk drivers was already waiting to pounce on our bus as we pulled in. Fortunately, we had actually booked a place to stay in Siem Reap, so their driver was waiting with a sign reading "REBEKAH PORKER." Good enough. We escaped the madness and tuk-tukked into town. We did a little shopping but mostly just chilled and went to bed early, because the next day is...
Waking up to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat! In a special turn of events, Vicky's phone was still on Taiwan time, and we accidentally woke up at 3 instead of 4 (ugh), and managed to get all ready to go before realizing the error. An hour after our false start, we were off in the tuk-tuk, eating sandwiches and grooving off to Angkor Wat.
It seems that all of the tourists have heard about the sunrise thing, because Angkor Wat at 5:30 am is a surprisingly happening place. We actually managed to run into Nell, a Fulbright ETA from Yilan, who we didn't even know was in Cambodia!
Sunrise over the pool in front of Angkor Wat:
Even after thoroughly Angkoring our Wat, there were many temples left to be seen. Our next stop was the Angkor Thom complex.
Easily the most arresting place in Angkor Thom was Bayon, which is populated by scores of huge carved faces:
Our map told us that we would find the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King right next to each other. Oddly enough, this is the Terrace of the Leper King:
Doesn't look too leprous to me!
Another favorite was Ta Prohm, now famous for being featured in the film Tomb Raider. Restoring and preserving the Angkor temples has required beating back a lot of forest and vegetation, but at Ta Prohm, the forest still encroaches. Roots of giant trees push between the bricks, jeopardizing the structure, but at the same time making the temple that much more amazing.
These were some serious trees
At every temple, there were copious amounts of locals, particularly adorable children, trying to sell us things. ("hello, lady!") We rebuffed most of their efforts, but one time Vicky was actually considering a purchase, so we started discussing it in Chinese to not be too obvious. It didn't work too well though, because the saleslady just switched into Chinese! The linguistic abilities of the Cambodian vendors were truly impressive.
After so much templing in the morning, we were barely managing to maintain consciousness through lunch. Sometimes, even the most intrepid of travelers need to go back to the hostel and take a sweet, sweet nap. Later in the afternoon, our adorable tuk-tuk driver Chaa came to take us to Tonle Sap, the Great Lake of Cambodia. It was a long ride there, and we arrived to find that the boat tickets were $20 per person, which is straight up outrageous for Cambodia. (although interestingly, Cambodia uses US dollars for just about everything, and Cambodian riel are only used as small change) We left the ticket booth unhappily and without having purchased tickets, at which point the ticket guy followed us and tried to wheedle us into buying them. In the end, we got to $25 for the two of us together, still more than we were paying for our hotel room!
Although I'm sure our driver was well-intentioned, the lake trip turned out to be a bit of a scam. We were taken to a (floating) store, where we could purchase school supplies for the local children...at ridiculous rates like $5 for 10 pencils. Seriously, Cambodia? We were also taken to a crocodile farm, where a man decided that it would be a good idea to hand us a giant snake for a while! I was not expecting this.
Crocodiles!
Snake aside, I think I am pretty scary myself here
On the whole, the trip was still a ripoff, but we squeezed a decent amount of fun out of it, I think. However, unbeknownst to us, our evening was about to get AWESOME. We had a nice pizza dinner in town, and went for ice cream afterwards (there was a lot of ice cream on this trip) at a place called Swenson's. As we sat eating our sundaes, a huge group of people came in and sat at practically every other table in the place. They looked to be all Cambodian, except for one young white dude in an American flag t-shirt. It occurred to us that it was the 4th of July. The white guy got up and gave a little speech about the 4th of July, and then an older man in their party got up and gave a speech in Khmer. The first guy handed around American flags, and Vicky and I started to have the same thought: somebody ought to sing the national anthem right about now, and that somebody should be us. I can do the alto harmony, I volunteered. We practiced quietly at our table.
Finally, we got up and went to introduce ourselves. I gave the one guy a high five, and he explained that they were all on a mission trip, and in fact everyone in the group was Cambodian-American except him. They gave us little flags, and we mentioned that we would like to sing the national anthem. Once we launched into it, it didn't take long before everyone was singing. We didn't stick around for too long after that, but we generated enough goodwill that the older man even went to pay for our ice cream. This was not how I had envisioned my 4th of July in Cambodia...it was sooo much better.
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