Siem Riep, Cambodia

When we arrived in Siem Riep we immediately went to the hotel. From the bus ride there, you could tell that the city of Siem Riep was different from Phnom Penh; it was smaller in terms of the number of people that you saw outside and in the total size of the city (population and area), but also it seemed almost immediately poorer. It was also immediately different that there was a large divide in this city between poor and less poor, educated and not-educated. For one, there were differences in buildings as we went along the roads. The thing that stood out most, though, was that we passed children on the streets wearing barely anything, some of them begging, and then passed school children heading home from school on their bikes and mopeds in nice and clean uniforms. I thought that that was very interesting since we did not witness anything like that in Phnom Penh: everyone seemed to be on the same level.

The hotel that we stayed at was beyond incredible. From the second that we pulled up to it we were amazed by how much it stood out from the rest of the city. There was a nice restaurant, bar, pool and spa inside. We immediately all ran to our rooms, changed into bathing suits and went out to jump in the pool during the hour we had between our arrival and dinner. The pool temperature was warmer than bath water but incredibly refreshing. We stayed in for a while and it was hard to get out back into the sticky heat of Cambodia. The spa was out by the pool and a ton of people were going over to sign up for massages and pedicures, to the point where they ran out of staff and were calling around the city trying to find more people. I signed up for a massage as well.

That night we ate dinner in this huge barn-like restaurant that had a huge buffet and a show following dinner. There were about 100 SASers from two different Cambodia trips. The show ended up being some Japanese dancing, and people were leaving from all different parts of the room pretty early on. About a half hour before we were supposed to leave, our bus leader came over and asked us if we really wanted to stay or if the bus left at that point we would go with it. Everyone left except for two people. It was really not very good. The bus dropped most of us all in the downtown area by some more night markets (I slowly was learning that night markets are huge there). I walked around with some friends and did some shopping, and watched one of my friends giggle hysterically at a fish foot massage. The fish foot massages were EVERYWHERE. Basically, you stick your feet in a tank filled with these little tiny fish that nibble at your dry skin and “massage” your feet. But it seriously tickles- I stuck my hand in to try it out and knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it. It was two dollars for twenty minutes and a beer so if you could handle it it was definitely worth it. Since I had my massage I headed back to the hotel on a tuck tuck (pulled by motorcycle), it was slightly terrifying. To give you some idea about just how nice our hotel was, the tour guide had told me to give no more than a dollar for the ride from the market to the hotel. So, I go up to the group of drivers lined up and said one dollar for the ride. They asked where I was going and I showed the card and they looked at me and said, “you are staying here! You can afford more than that!” However, all that I had on me was one US dollar and real (their currency) that was 50 cents worth, aside from bigger bills that I didn’t want to break unless absolutely necessary. Eventually I got them to accept the dollar and a half for the ride but it was pretty interesting.

My massage was… interesting. Every person that got a massage in the last few countries (which is just about everyone on the ship) had some weird story to tell. They definitely give different massages here. At one point she stuck her fingers in my ear, at another I felt her scratching something on my back which I later saw was a scab. I was also extremely ticklish and kept laughing. They put two people in a room so my friend that was in the room with me said that all he kept hearing was me laughing. Woops. After that weird experience I went to my room, showered and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up at 4:45am to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Everyone on my trip but two people chose to do it, which was surprising. It was a really cool experience. We first got day passes with our pictures on it since we would be spending the rest of the day there. Then, we walked in complete darkness towards the site that we would watch from, pretty much directly in front. The only thing that we could really make out were a few of the structures and the water. As the sun rose, we could make out more and more of Angkor Wat. We first just saw the silhouette, and then slowly the entirety of Angkor Wat. It was very exciting. After about an hour and a half there and a lot of pictures trying to capture the sight, we left to grab breakfast back at the hotel.

Following breakfast we went on a tour of Ta Prohm, also known as the temple with the trees. The trees are extremely large ficus trees that were absolutely beautiful. They stood tall above the temple, with its roots coiling in and out of doorways and the different structures and with the sunlight hitting them shone a silvery glow. They were definitely a sight to see. The pictures that we tried to take to capture the views did not nearly do it justice.

We then went back to Angkor Wat to actually tour inside of it and see it in the full daylight. As we were walking down the long path, these monkeys started appearing out of nowhere, which of course meant that we were stopping to take pictures and play with them. There were older monkeys, baby monkeys, sick monkeys, etc. My favorite thing to see was how smart the monkeys were. One was sitting by a bunch of water bottles and picking it up to drink out of it. If there was a bottle that they couldn’t drink out of, they would pour it upside down and drink the water off the ground. Then, some of them were peeling bananas to eat them which was crazy. There was one monkey that was breastfeeding her baby, and at one point got scared and went to run away- the baby held on underneath her! It was all amazing. Not after long, we needed to go and explore Angkor Wat before our time there ran out. It was very beautiful and incredible that it was created so long ago. We walked around for a while just looking around, and then went to check out the little market along the outside of it. I bought some postcards, and took a bunch of pictures of these adorable little children playing with the pipes by the water. They were all around three or four, and we on opposite sides of the open pipes talking and listening to each other. I thought it was so cute.

When we went to Angkor Wat we went to the hotel for lunch and to check out. We then went on to our last stop in Cambodia, Angkor Prohm or Bayon, the temple with the faces. This was pretty incredible and possibly my favorite stop of the day. All over the temple there were these carved faces made out of stone. There were just tons of them all over the place and I couldn’t get over the fact that it was so old. We got some fun and funny pictures with them and all just really walked around for a little bit. Everyone was incredibly overheated and exhausted and we spent a lot of time just sitting around by the exit trying to cool down. On our walk over the bus we saw one last place that we just quickly walked through. It was called the elephant walk or something along those lines and there were all these stones elephant trunks lining one side. There was a girl sitting on top of one of the wall who at first glance looked like she was talking to herself while eating something out of a little cup. Then I noticed that there was a little boy relaxing and hanging in the tree above her head. Crazy.

When we arrived at the airport we noticed a Dairy Queen that SAS quickly attacked. I don’t think that they had ever had so many customers at once. It was delicious though. We then went through immigration, security, etc. hung around the terminal for a little before boarding the quick one hour flight back to Saigon.

I was really sad to leave Cambodia and hope that I get the opportunity to return one day and experience even more of the country than I did. It is a truly amazing place with some great people and we were so well received by everyone that we interacted with. I had an incredible time there.