Day 1:
We flew into Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Saturday, February 18th. A friend of a friend’s mom (who is a missionary in Cambodia) picked us up from the airport, and it was really wonderful not having to worry about finding transportation in such a big city. She dropped me off at our hotel and I spent the evening sleeping in the room, still really sick from food poisoning in Thailand. She took Luke on a quick tour of Phnom Penh and drove past “Happy Pizza”, a restaurant that apparently serves pizza with weed as a topping?? Diners can even request “extra happy” if they so desire! Needless to say, they went elsewhere for dinner J
Day 2 in Cambodia:
7 ½ hours of bus driving from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap gives a person ample time to observe. I learned a few things driving across Cambodia:
· *Many people support the Cambodian People’s Party
· *Drivers love their vehicle horns
· *There are 4 major modes of transportation in the country:
o Lexus
o Toyota
o Motorcycle
o Tuk-tuk: This is a motorcycle with a small covered trailer/carriage attached behind and they are MUCH more widely used than taxis
· *When driving, there are no rules EXCEPT that the biggest vehicle always wins … and pedestrians are the smallest vehicle of all!
Upon our arrival in Siem Reap, we dropped our bags at the Guest House and hailed a tuk-tuk who dropped us off at Viva, a Mexican restaurant in the little downtown area. They had great tacos, enchiladas and fresh fruit smoothies and it was nice to eat something familiar. A trip to a night market was cut short because of my misbehaving stomach, but we vowed to explore the city more when I was feeling better.
Day 3:
We spent the day temple exploring. Tom, our hired tuk-tuk driver for the day brought us first to Angkor Wat, the most well-known temple in Cambodia. The detail and precision with which people used to construct and hand carve each piece was incredible…and the temples are all over 1000 years old!! Next, we toured around the larger complex of Angkor Thom to see Bayon, the large stone Buddha heads, and elephant terrace. Elephant terrace is an area filled with elephant carvings and statues. After just a few hours of touring, we were sad to realize that a lot was missing from the temples. Almost all statues were beheaded, without torsos or gone completely, simply a pair of feet left on a pedestal. Apparently there is a black market for temple artifacts that is still at large. Despite this, there were still some incredible carvings to photograph and examine. It was also fun to tour the temples along with monks from around the world who were doing some exploring of their own.
Souvenir shopping led to lunch and we decided to head to our last stop of the day, Ta Phrom, the site of Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider movie- we’re excited to watch the movie now to see if we recognize anything! Trees had grown intermingled with the temple walls and doorways so it’s a very unique looking temple. A random observation: the temples all smelled very fresh, some even like very fragrant flowers. I felt much better so it was a good day of walking and exploring.
We ate pizza for dinner and bought souvenirs at the old and new outdoor markets. We walked around the small city that reminded us strongly of Latin America and the Cambodian Batmobile tuk-tuk drove us back to our Guest House for the night.
Day 4:
At 8:00 am, Paul picked us up and pointed his tuk-tuk to Banteay Srei, a temple about an hour outside of Siem Reap. It’s a sandstone temple that is incredibly well-preserved and the details were truly astonishing. We could even make out shallow writings on the temple walls. From there, we moved onto Banteay Samre, Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Prean and Prea Khan. They started to blur together a bit, but all were unique in their own ways. We must have liked what we saw because we took over 400 temple photos ... We ended back at Angkor Wat where we had hoped to watch the sunset fall behind the temple, but it wasn’t very colorful, so we left, showered up, had some dinner and took one last walk around the small city and its night markets. Cambodians are incredibly persistent sales people and even we couldn’t resist. We bought some cool things and went on to Malaysia a few pounds heavier with art, t-shirts and a lot of trinkets that I’m sure we’ll regret when we try to pack for home in December, but oh well!
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