A Quick Hello to Cambodia

Cambodia was a quick visit but we're very glad we stopped on our way to Vietnam.  After a less than restful overnight night train trip from Chiang Mai and a four hour bus ride, we finally made it to the Cambodian border. (Just imagine a dusty Mexican border town in the late 1800's)  We had read a lot about this and how to handle the Visa purchase and other procedures because of a LARGE number of people in the area trying to scam you.  We successfully got off the bus and away from the bus station and made it through the Thailand exit.  From there we had to purchase our Cambodia visa. Everything we read said this was easiest to do on arrival so that's what we did.  We waited in line for about 30 minutes, and remember its about 95 degrees with no air conditioning and hundreds of people surrounding you, until we got to the front of the line and were told this wasn't the line for visas but it was the line for after you had your visa.  So back we went looking for the visa office.  We asked a group of police officers on the street and they quickly looked at each other and told us they could do it for us.  We soon realized this was a scam and continued on our way to the official office.  This was quite a quick and easy process once we found the right place.  We were really hoping not to have to wait in that long line again since by the time we got back it had grown much longer.  We went to the front and kindly asked an officer and he got our passports stamped and off we went.  Well, sort of.  We then waited for a bus from the border area to the local bus station.  While waiting we had tons of little kids pulling on our clothes and begging. It was quite a sad sight but we were also warned not to pull out our wallets because they could easily snatch them.  We arrived at the local bus station and switched to another bus for a three hour drive to Siem Reap.  The bus pulled in to a dark, sketchy parking lot beside a dirt road and we quickly grabbed our bags and jumped on a tuk tuk to our hotel.  Somewhere in this process Wes lost his sneakers that were attached to be outside of his bag.  He now has a running list of lost items...pack towel, luggage lock, sneakers. We'll just call this donating to the local communities.

Once we checked into our hotel we walked to a neighborhood street restaurant for dinner.  We had an amazing meal that surprised us both.  Then it was early to bed and an even earlier wake up to watch the sunrise at the Angkor Wat temple complex.  This was an absolutely spectacular site to see.  Since seeing sunrise there is pretty much what every traveler that comes to Cambodia does, it was a bit crowded.  Even so, there was something very special about it and that we'll certainly never forget.  Our tuk tuk driver that we hired for the day then proceeded to drive us to various temple sites for the next six hours.  In those hours we have probably never sweat so much in our entire lives.  We finally cried uncle and told our driver it was time to go back to the hotel for showers and a nap.

 

Some VERY steep stairs!

Trees taking over on top of some of the ruins

All the tuk tuks waiting for their customers at Angkor Wat.

In a small grocery...An aisle made for Christine!

When we woke up Wes really wasn't feeling well.  Our tuk tuk driver took us out into the country to see some beautiful scenery and how the locals live.  We returned to the same place we had eaten the night before for some dinner and were going to hit the night market but Wes was really under the weather so we just went back to the hotel.  Good thing we did because Wes lost his cookies quickly after we arrived back.  We now know that this was a reaction to the malaria medication we had started taking a few days earlier.  This is the first sickness either of us have experienced since we have been away and hope that maybe it will be the only one!  That said, we keep hearing others warn us about our tender westernized bellies in India so we'll just have to wait and see...

We had an early bedtime for another early morning to catch yet another bus from Cambodia through Phnom Penh and across the Vietnamese border into Ho Chi Minh city.  This was a 14 hour bus ride and we arrived in need of a serious massage!!  After this day we arrived in Ho Chi Minh and bought a few flights for our upcoming travel, haha!  We're done with buses for a little while.

More from Vietnam shortly!