Cambodia Continued

We're falling farther and farther behind, so I want to quickly catch you up on the rest of our stay in Cambodia. Hopefully, Corina will add her thoughts as well.


On Sunday, after an excellent breakfast of omelets and a baguette from our old friends at the Shanghai Restaurant, we drove from Anlong Veng back to Siem Reap, where we checked into our lovely hotel. We were surprised to run into 6 of the group of Americans we had camped with in Koh Ker. It turns out that the story about the government not letting the trucks up the mountain was not quite true. Actually, the group had been in a car accident. One of their cars had flipped and two people had to be medevaced to Bangkok. They are going to be okay, but it sounds like it was very scary. They were out of cellphone range, and there were no ambulances anyway, but they were lucky to have a doctor in their group who jury-rigged some spinal immobilization boards so that they could be driven back to Siem Reap. It was pretty upsetting to hear about, but we were happy to be able to see them again and hear what had happened to them.


One of the nice things about our hotel is that they had some arrangement with the nearby Sofitel so that we could use their spa, pool, and gym. We both took advantage of this to get (much-needed) pedicures and I used the gym.


Our guide had told us that we should plan to get to the temples early to avoid the rush. We thought we were doing this by leaving at 7:30 the next morning. But it turns out that wasn't early enough. After finding a tuk tuk driver and getting our tickets, our first stop was Ta Prohm, also known as the Jungle Temple. Apparently, this temple was featured in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," which you may be surprised to learn I have never seen. You could sort of see how it might be cool because it had not been restored, so it was fallen down in parts, and there were trees growing all over it. The only problem was the 8 billion other people who were also there. And the kids aggressively trying to sell us bracelets (3 for a dollar on the way in;6 for a dollar on the way out).






The next stop was Angkor Wat. It is massive, with a huge moat around it. It was by far the most intact temple we had seen up to that point. And it had really impressive bas reliefs. But we were a little underwhelmed, I think because there were just so many other people and we were used to having temples pretty much to ourselves.




The next morning we did manage to get up before sunrise and made it to Angkor Thom before the crowds. We both really like Bayon, which has dozens of the faces shown here:

















The rest of our time in Siem Reap was spent shopping, eating, getting more spa treatments, watching the premiere of the Amazing Race Allstars, and having tea at the very posh Raffles Hotel.


We left early on Wednesday morning to head to Sihanoukville. This involved a 5-hour boat ride down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Phnom Penh, following by a 4-hour bus ride to Sihanoukville on the coast. The boat ride was not the peaceful journey we had experienced in Burma, mostly because the boat was a lot faster, hotter, and more crowded. But I had a nice talk with my seat mate, who was from Chicago but was living in Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar. The bus ride was interesting because it featured a stewardess who handed out water and all sorts of mysterious snacks. She also served as a tour guide telling us little stories about the things we were passing. Unfortunately, about an hour into the trip, I got an email from the hotel at which we had reserved rooms saying that the hotel was full and they could not confirm our reservation (which they had already confirmed the day before). But Blackie (my blackberry) came to the rescue and after a few frantic phone calls, they offered us rooms in the low rent district of the hotel.


When we got to Sihanoukville, we didn't see any taxis or tuk tuks, so we had to go to the hotel on the backs of motorcycles, with our bags precariously perched in front of the driver. This worked out okay except for the accident that Corina's driver only narrowly averted. The beach was lovely, exactly what had been hoping for in Thailand, white sand beach, clear blue water and not a 7-11 in sight. The hotel was quite nice too, except that we were staying in the "small hotel" across a grass field from the main one. We were sort of wondering what the field was for, but learned the next morning that they land helicopters there. Peaceful!


On Saturday, we headed back to Phnom Penh. We visited the National Museum, and walked around looking at shops. Our hotel was right on the riverfront, and when we walked out to get dinner we were pleasantly surprised to see dozens of people picnicking in the park, catered to by street vendors. (Not so pleasantly surprised to read in Corina's guidebook the next morning that the street vendors are a hotbed of bacteria and Hepatitis A. But we survived.)


The striking thing about Phnom Penh was the tuk tuk drivers cheerfully asking us if wanted to go to the Killing Fields, and when we declined, asking if we wanted to got the Torture Museum instead. We didn't do either.


The next morning was incredibly hot. I went to the Royal Palace and to see the Silver Pagoda. Corina went to drink tea and find an ATM. It was so hot that we both got blisters from shoes we had been wearing every other day for a month. We were pretty relieved to head to Vietnam, where we heard it would be cooler.