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| Ta Prohm |
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| Some ladies doing... Something at Angkor Wat
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| Angkor Tom |
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| Angkor Wat at Sunrise
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| First Night in Cambodia- so cozy. |
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| Angkor Tom |
We packed up and began to head off to Cambodia. We were sad to leave our little paradise of islands but also ready for a change of pace from laying on a different beach each day and partying at night. I had to admit that I was happy to get some historical value to our trip. We traveled all day long- a ferry, a bus, 2 airplanes, and a taxi to get to Siem Reap. We finally arrived at about 9pm at night and were sad to find out that the 2 triple rooms we had reserved for 2 nights had been given away. With broken English, the man at the desk struggled to find us each a bed for the night in the "dorms". The dorms were, in fact, a bunch of mattresses on the ground, two by two of a converted barn. Makeshift clotheslines at about neck height zigzagged across the room to have mosquito netting around each mattress. Sadly, there were 5 beds for 6 people. The man ran off to find another bed in a different dorm for me. I volunteered to be the one to split up from the group as I was in the highest spirit at that time. He came back and had me follow him around the massive hostel looking for a bed. Finally, we found one... outside. Suffice to say, I slept on a nice double bed, beside a family of Cambodians with a bug net on a broken bamboo porch. I didn't mind especially because I knew we would be waking up at 4:30am to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Also, I only had to pay $1US for my bed that night! Success!
So, we woke up very very early. We had hired a taxi driver for the whole day for $45. He was going to take us around to all the temples and sites from 5am to 7pm- pretty sweet deal if you ask me! We got to Angkor Wat and all shuffled down the dark path with our cellphones as flashlights. We were really surprised to see how many people were coming to do the same thing... I mean it was SO early! And yet, the sun rose behind the temple and it was fantastic. We snapped a few pictures and took the opportunity to wander about the temple before everyone was finished taking their sunrise pictures- the temple was pratically empty. We then ate some food at a really, really terrible restaurant and went to the next stop- Angkor Tom and the Elephant Wall. Jenny and I started feeling pretty ill at this point so we found some rocks and slept on them for about half an hour to be awoken to a little kid standing over us asking to buy postcards. I was starting to feel a bit better and were brought to the last stop- Ta Prohm which is the tree temple that you probably know from Tomb Raider. Jenny at that point got violently ill and we had to cut our day short and go back to the hostel. She had a pretty serious bout of food poisoning and the rest of us were pretty queezy from the food too. We had been in the temples for about 7 hours at that point anyway. We then relaxed until supper time when we met up with two of our friends from Gwangju. We had a meal at one of Angelina Jolie's favourite local restaurants and went to a live music bar. 3 of us started feeling a bit queezy again so we went home marginally early (midnight). The next day we took an 8 hour bus to Phnom Penh. I slept most of the way, took gravol and ate a baguette in fear of upsetting my stomach. By the time we arrived in Phnom Penh though I was quite healed.
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