After the tour of horror, sadness and reflection Mr Own delivered me to the beautiful Wat Phnom which was a quick stop along our way to the Royal Palace in the center of the city. I found out upon trying to enter the Palace that everyone is required to wear long pants/skirt and long sleeves when visiting so I had to take a quick hike to my hostel where I met two British girls who wound up joining me at the Palace. We wandered around, listened in on other people’s tour guides spiels to get some info. We found out that just like at Buckingham
Palace, there is a flag which is only raised when the king is in. Within the grounds of the Palace there is the Silver Pagoda aka Temple of the Emerald Buddha which has a gorgeous (you guessed it!) emerald Buddha surrounded by a whole crowd of smaller and less notable Buddhas donated to the Emerald Buddha itself. Never really got why a Buddha would need more Buddhas but hey. There is one notable one, though which is a standing Buddha made of solid gold, weighing 90 kg. That was cool. And now the word Buddha looks funny. Buddha Buddha Buddha.
That night I had a late bus to catch to Siem Reap. It was to be my first hotel bus experience and one of the most fateful rides of my trip. I boarded and was just thinking that the beds were rather comfortably sized when I realized that there were supposed to be two people per. Imagine a regulation size long-distance bus
with its tiny aisle down the center. Now imagine that instead of seats there are two-level bunks on either side. Now imagine the sliver of those bunks you are left with after you halve them. That’s what I was dealing with- less than a meter of personal space to be shared with a complete stranger for a night ride through Cambodia. Naturally, I balked but of course I followed the conductor meekly to my ‘bed.’ As we squeezed our way down the aisle, I looked into the eyes of my fellow passengers and prayed for a miracle- that my bed-mate would be a midget or better yet a kitten or just plain nonexistent. We arrived at my bed and for some reason the conductor started laughing. He was looking at me and then at this girl in the bunk across the way and giggling about a joke we never did figure out. Long story short, that girl, a fellow American named Bella, ended up swapping places with my bedmate and being completely awesome. Circumstances forced us together but I think she and I would have been friends even if we hadn’t slept together on our first night, within moments of meeting in fact. We laughed about the conductor laughing and swapped travel stories and started an imaginary band and slept soundly knowing that we were not sharing a tiny slip of mattress with a complete and utter stranger. And in the morning she even had the decency to invite me for breakfast at her hostel.
Funny thing to keep in mind for the rest of this segment of my tale- the power was out in Siem Reap until just before I left. It was 35+ degrees the entire time and the pump in the pool was not working. We had no A/C, no fans, no pool, no lights in the bathroom, no outlets for charging, no nothing. We did have candles all over the common area which was romantic but the charm wore off as the sweat puddles on the chairs beneath us grew. Definitely adds to the story, though. I think we should have tee-shirts: “I survived the Great Power Outage of ’15 and all I got was a dollar off my dorm room. Siem Reap, Cambodia”
Anyways. That first day, I had a room at another hostel and after breakfast with Bella I checked in and had a feverish nap, then I rented a bicycle and rode up to Angkor Archeological Park. The ride is super easy and I highly recommend it to anyone! It’s really flat and shady and gorgeous. I raced some tuktuks on the way in but if you’re not being goaded on by school children or just a really competitive person like I was and am, you won’t even break a sweat. Well… More than is normal in that part of the world. As I was racing aforementioned child-laden tuktuk, I got halted by a gatekeeper and asked for my ticket. Which I didn’t have. So I lost the race, spun around and got in line. The line I chose was entirely comprised of people in neon green tee-shirts which I thought nothing of until more of them showed up and lined up behind me. Actually, that wasn’t even what called my attention to it. I only thought about it when the tour guide came up to me and asked me to please get out of the middle of his tour group by switching to another line. I had already been waiting for a few minutes and was not about to lose my now middle place in the long queue just because he asked nicely so I told him no way, Jose. I joked that he could just put me in the front of his group so they’d all still be together, a joke which ended up being genius because I wound up being the first person to get my ticket that afternoon. Win! Great hack about tickets in Angkor Wat- if you buy one for tomorrow you can enter the park at four-ish today! So I rode my happy self in.
As I came around the last corner of the wide moat surrounding the Angkor Wat compound I almost fell of my bike. There was a rainbow directly over the minarets of the Temple complex. It was like the Universe hung a welcome banner just for me! I even found out later that the bridge there is called Rainbow Bridge. God, I love this world.
I stopped for a quick photo but went on my way to visit Prasat Bayon– the site within Angkor Thom which is famed for the many faces of Buddha looking serenely out into the jungle. As it was nearing sunset, most people had already headed to the scenic West-facing spots so I had the place virtually to myself. It gave me goosebumps to tread on those ancient stones, to stare into the countless granite eyes and feel them staring back at me. It was so peaceful and kinda lonely out there by myself. I love traveling alone and have found that I can keep myself entertained and fairly sane most of the time but sometimes, especially when I’m at an ‘attraction’ I feel the disconcerting solitariness of solo travel.
But then when I join up with some person or group I inevitably reach a moment when I am waiting for them or compromising my desires for theirs and then I am so glad to just be able to walk away and get back to the liberty of my own company.
After wandering around Bayon for some time watching the shadows creep up the temple steps, I turned my bike in the direction of the Sunset Spot. I did so a bit too late, as I found out when I ran into Bella coming down on my way up. Another excellent twist of fate with this girl. We once again joined forces and went back to her hostel where we met two other American women and went out on the town. We stopped by the night market, saw a local metal cover band, went dancing at a ridiculous club and generally turned it up.
I had already signed up for the 5 am sunrise tuktuk tour myself and managed to convince Bella and Sam to come with me so we turned homeways early- around 2. We got a tuktuk driver who introduced himself with his limited, severely accented English as Bruce Lee. This busted us up laughing and we became Jackie Chan, Jet Lee and Chuck Norris, very nice to meet you, too. We piled into his tuktuk and as he roared off he started singing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make be happyyyyy when sky is cray…” and of course we joined in. Seven or eight rounds later, we were back at Siem Reap Hostel. All-in-all one of my favorite nights of my trip. I loaded my rented bike onto a tuktuk and went back to my hostel.
Now, if you know me at all you know that I am not the best at getting up in the morning. In fact, I am among the worst morning people I know. So with that in mind you can assume that I did not get out of bed in time to meet our merry band at the prearranged intersection, especially not on less than 3 hours’ sleep. When I did finally leap out of bed after seeing my phone blandly displaying 5:01 I rushed around packing so I could check out and was praying to all the gods I know for them to be running as late as I when I heard a voice in the hall. It was Bella! She came to rescue me from the uncertainty and defeat of probably missing my ride!
Apparently she had vaguely remembered my hostel’s name- Sweet Dream- as something along the lines of Good Night or Happy Sleep and the tuktuk driver had recognized the association and known the hostel. So awesome. Anyways, I rushed my tooth brushing, grabbed my bag and ran out the door with Bella. The sight of all of my friends loaded up in a tiny tuktuk on a muddy road in the rain with the light of dawn just beginning to saturate the world brought me such joy. As the adrenaline wore off and the hangover kicked in that happiness still did not fade. This was to be a most excellent day. I’ll tell it in pictures-
So as you can see, we had a great time wandering around Angkor Park all morning. In the afternoon, we returned to town, where I figured out that I had lost my phone somewhere along the way. Damn. I decided I wouldn’t get one for a bit since apparently the Gods of the Ocean and Forest had seen fit to deprive me of the luxury not just once but twice. Then I switched over to Siem Reap Hostel where everyone else was and we took it easy for the rest of the day. Sam and I lazed around and chatted in our dorm room until the heat of the day wore off- although I think it was hotter inside the dorm since the electricity was out. So we were basically hanging out in a sauna.
In the evening I finally got a chance to try Happy Pizza! I had been meaning to since Holly had enlightened me to its existence, mostly just to say I did, and now I had a willing partner in crime- Sam. We looked up the Happy Places on Google and saw that they were all packed together in one block right across from the hospital, fittingly enough. It took us a while to find them but when we did we decided to go with Ecstatic Pizza because it had the best name. The way it works is you order a pizza off the menu and request it ‘Happy’ then specify how happy you want it in teaspoons. We found out that one teaspoon is way more than enough for one person and ended up in bed by 10. The pizza was actually quite delicious, at least the ‘Unhappy’ half; the Happiness was really quite fibrous and had that chlorophyll taste of plants meant for animals with more than one stomach. We played some cards and laughed a lot and returned to our candle-lit common room just in time for the real high to kick in. I remember looking across the table at Sam and thinking to myself ‘I just can’t do this’ before buying a water and putting myself to bed. The next night I went back to Ecstatic Pizza with another group and watching them make the same mistake. In conclusion, use caution when consuming Happy Pizza but definitely don’t not try it if you want to, it is quite an experience. Much different from the medical-grade edibles we have back home these days.
My last day and night in Siem Reap will always be remembered as the day of the Bracelet Girl. I was having a margarita at a table on the street with an American girl, Emily (sidebar- said girl is my friend from China’s little sister’s best friend. Small world!) when yet another vendor approached us selling the same crap they all do out of a basket under her arm. She was maybe eleven or twelve and when she asked if we’d like a bracelet all I think about, as usual, is how my dollar would basically support child labor and we refused as politely as possible. This routine happens so often in SE Asia that it becomes instinct to get a little rude because most of these kids will not leave you alone. They say, ‘Would you like a bracelet?’ you say, ‘No, thank you,’ they say, ‘Handmade, very good quality’ you say, ‘No, thanks,’ they say, ‘Good price, I sell cheap for you,’ you say, ‘Still don’t want one,’ they say, ‘How about two?’ you say, ‘That’s clever but no, seriously,’ and on and on until finally one or the other of you walks away. This girl was an exception. We said, ‘No, thank you,’ and she said, ‘Ok have a good day,’ and walked over to the next table. Pretty sure my jaw literally dropped. Emily and I looked at each other in confusion and disbelief. ‘Did that really just happen?’ was the question of the moment. We could not believe it. So when the girl came by again we kinda called her over and started talking a little bit just to find out what her deal was. She had excellent English and spoke with a slight Australian accent which we found out could be attributed to her Aussie English teacher at school. She was really very sweet and after chatting for a second she once again offered bracelets but we still refused. Again, she was very gracious and just sauntered off into the street. I thought that was the end of it but I would in fact end up buying her wares.
That night, Bella and I and a crew of excellent people went out on the town again. There’s not really much town to go out on so we ended up back at the same ridiculous club. We danced inside for a while before exiting for a breather and who should we find dancing out in the street but the Bracelet Girl. She was in the center of a circle of revelers breaking it down with the basket in hand. And I have to say, she had incredible moves. Like Beyoncé. But with a bucket of bracelets. She was holding down the circle with a couple of Cambodian B Boys and not a single foreigner had the gumption to step in. They blew us all away. So, needless to say, we bought her bracelets.
One of the excellent people I met in SR,
a British-Israeli girl named Hany was going to same way I was- to Battambang and then from there back to Bangkok so we joined forces. Battambang is a lot like Kampot just without the giant river. So a lot of locals, a really laid-back attitude and not really too much to do besides some really hardcore chilling. The hostel we stayed at, Here Be Dragons was a great combination of those three plus a Game of Thrones theme which gave it a really nerdy feel which I dug. The staff was really nice and when they ran out of beds for me they gave me a ride to another really cheap place in town, and picked me up the next day when they had space for me.
One activity we found was a cycle tour to some nearby bat caves, which we signed up for with one other girl, Hillary who we met at our hostel. The company, Butterfly Tours, is a student-run organization so our tour guide, Vana was a local college student. He was really fun and informative and the four of us had a great ride out to the mountain, stopping along the way to have friend bananas and sugar cane
juice. We wandered around a Wat on top, met some monkeys, learned some more horrible things about the Khmer Rouge and then watched as hundreds of thousands of bats flew out of the mouth of the cave to hunt for the night. On the way back we raced a thunder storm back to the company headquarters and made it literally just as the sky opened up to soak the thirsty earth.
The next day Hany and I caught an early bus across the border back to Thailand.
And that about sums up Cambodia. I love that country. I love the people I met there and the things I saw and did and one day I know I will return.
Thanks for reading, have a great day! Here’s some monkey pictures for making it to the end-
There Goes Clare 