Siem Reap (day 3)

Our last day in Siem Reap, my Songyuan friend and I went to check out Preah Prohn Rath Monastery, which was very near to our hostel and the main area of town. The place looked really, really new; everything was brightly colored and there was just so much stuff. In actuality, it is the oldest monastery in Siem Reap (this is where China and Cambodia are sometimes alike with their temples, monestaries, pagodas, etc. restoration). As wrong as it is to say, it almost looked like the Buddhist cemetery version of Disneyland.

This is actually not a garbage pile, it's a building pile.

All of these little tower/statue things have deceased monks' ashes in them.

The one old looking building was blocked off.

After that, we decided to try to check out a small village that is supposedly floating. Lonely Planet said it was about a 30 minute tuk tuk ride to catch a boat that would cost us 13USD and then take us there. We got ourselves a tuk tuk and set off. The tuk tuk headed out of the city and into some of the most gorgeous country scenery I have seen in a really long time. That ride was me falling in love with Cambodia.

When I first arrived, my friend had said that Cambodia was really colorful and the sky was really big. I kind of brushed that off, like, "Ok, what does that even mean..." Once we got out of the city though, I completely understood. The colors ARE amazing, especially in contrast with the dull, dirty, grey everything of Songyuan. The sky looks so vast and is actually blue and visible, no pollution, and no high rises or mountains to infringe on it.

Our tuk tuk ended up driving us maybe an hour out into the country. About 45 minutes into the the ride, my friend looked at me and asked if I thought we were safe. Our driver HAD seemed a bit off, he had these weird random giggles and invited us to his home, which was near where we were trying to go, but the idea of our safety being at risk was something that hadn't even occurred to me. She did have a point though, two American female tourists in the middle of nowhere Cambodia with a strange tuk tuk driver, no one that knows where they went, no way to contact anyone for help and no way to communicate with locals. Eek.

Luckily, shortly after, we arrived at the place to buy the boat tickets... where they proceeded to try to charge us almost double what Lonely Planet had said, for only three hours. We knew that was going to be a total ripoff all things considered, and we were really happy with just the drive itself, so we decided not to go after all. We turned around and then the tuk tuk driver did end up taking us to his home (we had actually driven directly past it on the way there), but it wasn't creepy, just kind of awkward. There were about four or five kids running around, two women and one or two other men (no one that spoke any English) and then a ton of animals.

The animals are common thing in Cambodia. Whereas China has pretty much no wildlife and few kept/domestic animals, in Cambodia, we saw an abundance of cats, dogs, pigs, cows, water buffalo, chickens, ducks and geese both chained or penned up and wandering around freely. The whole country was like a free range farm, my friend and I loved it.

Duck farm!

That night, we met my friend from the States again and did something I have been wanting to do foreeeeeever... Thai fish pedicures! The little fish eat all the dead skin off your feet, or legs, or hands, or whatever. It's awesome. It feels super weird at first; you can feel little scrapes that kind of tickle, but once you get used to it, it's great. And you get a free beer!

Then we had some interesting food for dinner and drinks at a great loungey bar. The three of us laid on a bed-like platform, complete with pillows and such, hanging from the ceiling, like a swing. The rest of the seats were hammocks and the like. Absolutely perfect for holiday.

Raw meats that we barbequed for dinner include (from the left) squid, crocodile, beef, snake and chicken (in the middle).