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).

Siem Reap (day 2 con't)

After Angkor Wat, we headed to Ta Prohm. While Angkor Wat was the big, main temple, Ta Prohm was completely different. It was a lot less crowded and in a much worse state of disrepair, but the most important thing was the trees. They had taken over the temple and it was absolutely amazing to see.

Next we had lunch, saw some monkeys digging through trash bins, saw a woman throwing coconuts at them and saw them fleeing. It was kind of awesome.

Then we went to Bayon, which is different from the first two temples. It is covered in faces; 216 to be exact. It's up for debate whether they are all the face of a single king, or the faces of many deities. Like Ta Prohm, Bayon was also much less crowded than Angkor Wat and still vastly different.

We finished Bayon just as the temples were closing for the day. Throughout the day we had passed many other cool temples and things, but those three were the ones where we spent our time and did serious exploring.

That evening, we met up with a friend of mine from the States, that I was planning to travel with after my Songyuan friend left, for dinner, drinks and a hookah bar. My States' friend had actually found our hostel and left me a note with the front desk to let us know when he'd meet us which was pretty exciting; that was I think the fourth piece of "mail" I've received in Asia, haha!

Siem Reap (days 1-2)

Between taxi rides, flights, layovers and whatnot, it took me about 12 hours to get from Changchun, China to Siem Reap, Cambodia. When I arrived, I got my visa at the airport, it took literally about three minutes. The airport itself was incredibly small and tropical looking and kind of adorable. My hostel picked me up there and we took a 20 to 30 minute tuk tuk ride back so I could drop off my stuff and meet my friend from Songyuan.

This is a tuk tuk (and kind of a nice one).

I was slightly exhausted from all the traveling, so we didn't do too much the first night. We grabbed dinner and a few beers, checked out the night market and that was about it. We wanted to rest up in preparation for a temple filled day the following day!

The next day we hired a tuk tuk for the day for 12 riel and set out to see some temples. My friend had already spent three days at the temples with her boyfriend and his mom but was happy to repeat some of them. She picked the best few and we ended up hitting three of them. To see the temples, you have to purchase a ticket for 20 USD, but it's good all day for all of the temples; for 40 USD you can purchase a three day pass.

I absolutely fell in love with the temples in Cambodia. In China, I kind of feel like if you've seen one temple, you've seen them all. They're really similar. They're all either new or newly restored. Sure they're cool, but they can't even compare as far as I'm concerned. In Cambodia, each seemed to have its own "personality" if you will. Even the ones that were being restored still felt old, like a part of ancient culture. They kind of feel like you're in a movie, like Tomb Raider or Jurassic Park, or a video game. A lot of the pagodas and such are newer, like in China, but still distinctly different. Stay tuned for photographic proof.

First we went to Angkor Wat. Someone had said it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, which then brought up a big conversation about what they were (apparently it's not so set in stone). Either way, Angor Wat was amazing. It's the most popular temple in Cambodia and the largest Khmer temple in the world.

My friend had been with a tour guide when she had gone the first time, so she had some great history and trivia for me that I had wanted to include here, but that information has long since left my brain. You'll have to be content with pictures.

 

After exploring the inside of Angkor Wat and all of the surrounding buildings (mostly libraries), we saw a little road wandering off to the side. Nobody was going down it, so naturally we decided to explore (plus, as usual, I had to pee, and we hadn't encountered a WC yet).

As we were walking down the road a monk came up behind us. He didn't speak English of course, but he motioned for us to follow him. We didn't know where the road was going anyway, so we did. He ended up taking us to a small, hidden side temple on a lake. There was absolutely nobody there, it was very cool!

playing catchup, staaaarting with Changchun

I am finally back in Songyuan. And now I have two and a half weeks' worth of incredible experiences to recount and hundreds upon hundreds of pictures to sort through. It's a little overwhelming, so I'm just starting at the beginning and trying to finish at least one major post a day. We'll see how that goes... hopefully the internet cooperates...

I started my trip right after Dragon Boat Festival; I was supposed to fly out of Changchun on the following Monday. Midday on the Friday of Dragon Boat, my school told me the rest of my classes for the weekend were cancelled. Because I teach adults, when there are holidays class is usually cancelled. Everyone else has to work because holidays mean kids have more free time. Had I known about the cancellation ahead of time (my school certainly should have), I could have left for my trip three days earlier, but oh well.

Initially, a Chinese friend and I were going to go to Changchun after I finished teaching Sunday afternoon to do some shopping, visit another friend and spend the night before I took off Monday morning. He ended up bailing on me last minute, so I asked a student/friend of mine to help me buy my train ticket there instead. The trains in Songyuan don't run on a set schedule week to week and don't have an English website with times listed (yay, small town in China), so it's always fun trying to buy train tickets, especially day of.

We got to the train station maybe an hour and a half before when I thought there was sometimes a train (1pm). The 1pm train turned out to be sold out; there was also a 2pm and 3pm train, so my student bought me a ticket for the 2pm train.

She was absolutely adorable, she went all mama bear on me and was so worried for me at the train station. She kept going up to teenagers (more likely to speak English) asking them if they would help me find my train, my seat, Changchun, my friend's apartment, etc. After getting me through security, she went up to a security guard to basically ask him to babysit me as well.

After talking to him, it turned out that she had bought me a ticket on the slow train, which takes four hours instead of two (bleh, neither of us had even known there WAS a slow train to Changchun) and that there weren't assigned seats, so it would be a mad dash onto the train. After pestering him for a good 30 or 45 minutes, she convinced him to let me board the train ten minutes early. He would let me through the gate when another train was boarding and then walk me to my train to make sure I had the right one and got a great seat. It seemed like as good a plan as I was likely to get, but then at about ten to 1pm, he found me a ticket with an assigned seat on an air conditioned car for the sold out 1pm fast train! Hooray for amazing friends and people being unjustifiably worried for me. Mine student even called me later in the afternoon to make sure I had found my friend's apartment alright.

When I got to Changchun, I went through the usual hell of getting a taxi to my friend's apartment, it took literally almost an hour just to hail one. Taxis are notoriously hard to in Changchun, especially if you're foreign, it's ridiculous.

We went out with some other foreigners that night, nothing too exciting; good times were had by all and I was off to Siem Reap, Cambodia at 8am the next morning!

This gem was a block down the the train station.

Random fashion show near my friend's apartment.

Yep, THAT trend is international.

boo to the Kindle Fire/Blogger (ps, I'm in Laos)

Naturally, right after I get back into the groove of blogging regularly, I leave for a two week holiday and don't post ANYTHING for a really long time. This is my first holiday here that I haven't brought my laptop on, and while I feel a bit naked, it's been really liberating (and good for my shoulder to boot). I was planning on blogging a bit from my Kindle Fire, but the interface with Blogger doesn't let me add content into a new post for some reason. So boo to that.


In other news, my holiday so far has been phenomenal and completely reinforcing the fact that I cannot go back to live in the States (sorry mom). I met a friend from Songyuan on June 25th, and my plan was to travel with her for about six days, and then meet up with a friend of mine from the States that's on holiday here as well and bounce around with him for another week or so. I started in Siem Reap, Cambodia where my friend from Songyuan and I actually met up with my friend from the States there too.


We spent three days in Siem Reap, two days in Battambang, three days in Phnom Pehn where my Songyuan friend departed and yesterday we crossed into Laos to head to 4,000 Islands. In Battambang we picked up a lone, stray traveler who was actually teaching English in South Korea, and she just left us this morning as well. And then there were two.


I came on this trip with absolutely zero plans or even vague ideas of things I wanted to see. My friend from Songyuan was meeting me coming off a month of traveling southeast Asia with her boyfriend and his mother, so I had no idea what she was going to be up for. My friend from the States is actually an ex and is traveling here for about two months with a pretty specific itinerary and set list of things he wants to do, so I figured I was set. I didn't even have a ticket back to China until a few days ago.


It feels like I've been traveling for so much longer than I actually have, and I've had so many amazing experiences in the past 10 days. When I get home and back to my laptop I'll have tons to post and some ridiculous pictures to share as well.


Even just  living in China, at some point almost every day I look around me and think, "This is my life," and am constantly struck by how happy I am and how coming over here was the best decision I have ever made. On this trip, that feeling is almost constant.