So it's our last day in Siem Reap, and I think I'm going to try to sum up the last few days all in this one singular blog post. COME ON THIS JOURNEY WITH ME.
First, a little background: Siem Reap is a perfectly nice small tourist town that would be little more than a few huts had not the ruins of the largest religious structure in the world been discovered there in the 19th century. As it is, Siem Reap serves as the touristy jumping off point for visits to Angkor Wat, and that's exactly what my friends and I were going to do.
First, though, we had to get there. Some redheaded guy had the bright idea to make a land crossing from Thailand, so we climbed aboard the 5:55am train to the border a few days ago. Let me tell you: crowded third class is a FAR cry from first class sleeper accommodations. But we lived, and about 6 hours later we arrived in Arantaprathet and hoped in a tuk tuk to the border.
But not before our driver took us to a rando roadside cafe with what amounted to a hand-painted sign reading "BORDER" with backwards R's.
It was a cute try, and he knew it. Once at the real border, he tried to rip me off of an additional 20 baht, and we mostly genially parted ways.
We had no idea that would be the EASY one. Protip: don't ignore the "something here isn't right" feeling. Ever.
Like when we were ushered into a "quarantine" area and told to fill out a "customs form" and given a sales pitch for a cab ride to wherever we were going. After a few highly stressful minutes, we hightailed it out of there and made it to the real Cambodian customs house. The thing about experiences like that is they tend to set you on super high alert, suspicious even of the real Cambodian tourist officials showing you where to hire a cab to your hotel and how to change money. It also makes the ensuing two hour cab ride an intense one, on which you are convinced that you are about to murdered.
Fortunately, we arrived at out hotel safe and sound, albeit very hot, dusty, and in need of a shower. The hotel, however, was amazing - an oasis in the savannah of Western Cambodia. It served as a wonderful place to relax and cool off after a long, hot day of touring the ruins at Angkor.
Which themselves were amazing. It is a particular passion of mine, old ruins. Ancient Rome, ancient Greece, Liza Minelli...so you can imagine how much fun I had traipsing about these thousand-year-old temples in Cambodia. But my favorite memories have to be the people we met, from our driver, Mr. Ya, to the plethora if Canadians, to the General Contractir in charge of the reconstruction of the Baphuon Temple. Simply incredible. What's even better, though, is that to get to Malaysia, we get to take a plane! Hooray for simplicity!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone (but not really, it's an iPod touch)
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