Cambodia, Cambodia, Cambodia

So Cambodia! After landing and waiting for our Cambodian visas to be put in our passports we waited to be picked up by our hostel…and waited…and waited. There was another girl waiting to go to the same hostel, and they did eventually come. We went to our hostel, the Lovely Jubbly Place (it was pretty lovely, haha), figured things out for the next day, and walked around trying to find something to eat. The next day we had two tuktuks booked for us for the day, and we started off by going to the Thai embassy to get new Thai visas. Our next stop was the Killing Fields, then to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which had been a high school that Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime used as a prison. It was a humbling experience, and definitely eye opening. I had had no idea of the genocide that had happened in Cambodia in the 70’s, killing anywhere between 1.5 - 3 million people. Not really a feel-good day, but it was still a good experience I guess. 

After lunch at the hostel we caught a van up to Siem Reap for the next couple days. Not the best ride, but by this time I should’ve been used to it. It was dirt roads the whole 6 ½ hour drive. Rough. 

And then we arrived in heaven. Haha. Well, the van dropped us off on the side of the road, cuz that’s apparently what they do, and we took a tuktuk to heaven, aka-our hotel. We had found a deal online for the Tara Angkor Hotel, a 4 star hotel for $20 per person each night, and man was it worth it. They gave us tea to welcome us, and the whole lobby smelled like lemongrass, it was great. We checked out the breakfast buffet area and freaked out, then we checked out the pool and freaked out, and finally saw our rooms and freaked out. It was really nice. We changed and went for a swim as soon as we could. 

The next day the same tuktuk drivers who took us to our hotel picked us up at 4:30am and drove us to Angkor Wat. We watched the sunrise, although, it was overcast, so it wasn’t as spectacular as some pictures I’ve seen, but it was still pretty cool. We also ran into some missionaries there and chatted with them for a few minutes.

Angkor Wat is huge, so we had looked online to see which temples we wanted to see, and so we also went to Bayon and Ta Prohm, which was used in the Tomb Raider movie. 

After seeing those temples we had our tuktuk drivers take us back to our hotel for the best breakfast buffet in all of Asia. This picture isn't even everything I ate that morning. The bread was amazing. There was an omelette bar. And cheese! And bacon! It was definitely a change from our usual breakfast of white bread and strawberry jam.

We ate for like 45 minutes straight or something, then went back to bed feeling very full, haha. We chilled for the rest of the day, layed out by the pool and swam for a few hours, then headed out to find something to eat for supper. We went to Pub Street and did some shopping too. We ended up finding a random lady-boy show in the back of a market there…kinda ghetto. It had an area of chairs in front with people giving massages, so me and a couple girls got foot massages and umm…enjoyed the show? hahaha. My favourite part was when they lip-synced to "If I were a boy" by Beyonce, just because it was so ironic.

The next day we had booked a tour to Kulen Mountain. We were picked up late because the guy had thought we were staying at a different hotel, but that rough start was quickly forgotten. Kulen Mountain was fantastic. Rattha was our tour guide, and his boss Richard came with us for the day too. We picked up some food on our way up the mountain, went to a Buddhist temple area and climbed up to the Buddha carving there, then walked to the river. 

We explored a bit and played around in the water a little then had lunch. It was all very delicious. They had bought chicken, fish, baguettes, vegetables, spring rolls, red bananas, and pink dragonfruit for us. We sat in our little cabana thing and ate with Rattha, Richard, and the driver, and swung around in the hammocks they brought. 

We swam some more after lunch and went down to the larger waterfall then too. 

We headed back in to Siem Reap after that (the mountain was about 2 hours outside of the city). They brought us to get massages once we got back into the city, and they were fantastic massages. I’d say the best all semester. We went back to Pub Street that night, ate, and did a bit more shopping that night. It seriously was just an amazing day. The next day we sadly checked out, rode in a van to the bus station, rode in a bus to Phnom Penh (stopping to change a flat tire in the pouring rain on the way), then took tuktuks to the embassy, picked up our passports, then went straight to the airport and flew to Chiang Mai, then took a taxi to our hostel. So lots of different modes of transportation used in one day!  It was a long day of travelling, and we were glad to get to our hostel in Chiang Mai that night, but missed Cambodia. Best. Vacation. Ever.