We left Phnom Penh at 8am on the 31st of March and arrived in Siem Reap at around 4pm. Once again, our VIP Aircon bus didn't have the aircon on, so it was another very sweaty bus ride. Why?! This one ranked well up there with the sleeper bus from Hoi An to Nha Trang. Anyways, we had arranged for a pick up from the bus station to a hotel, but our tuk tuk driver had also arranged a pick up on the sly, so when we got off there were two dudes holding signs that said "Mr Alex + Mr Chris." We went with the hotel dude, cos we told Bora (the tuk tuk driver from Phnom Penh) that we didn't need one. Cheeky darky.
The hotel was pretty nice. Big room, a/c, pool, free brekky. $25 per night tho... we started to walk out and our tuk tuk driver arraged with the hotel to drop the price a bit, so we stayed there. Thom (our tuk tuk driver in Siem Reap) was a good dude, and offered to take us on a tour of the city. Swt deal for us, saved us a walk into town and gave us an idea of the layout of Siem Reap. Only downfall was that when we decided to go, it rained. I mean it RAINED! We were swt in the back, cos the Thom rolled down the sides on the tuk tuk, but he got drenched sitting out front! wasn't much of a tour, cos we couldn't see much thru the rain, but he dropped us off at a buffet dinner place that also puts on a show during dinner. Not bad for $12. too bad our stomachs have shrunk since starting our trip... could not do the buffet justice... gave it a good crack tho. Thom suggested that after our torturous bus trip that day we should go get massages done. This guy must have been reading our minds or something. Traditional Khmer Massage. Very nice 60mins. We got to put on these classice pjs for it, i'm guessing they were supposed to be loose and full length - I felt a little like Bruce Banner as he changes into the incredible hulk (the buttons were almost popping off the shirt). Anyways, Ray Mysterio (me) and John Cena (Alex) gave the masseurs a pretty good workout. Feeling pretty relaxed after that, we called it a night and tried to get some sleep before hitting up the first of our two days of temple runs.
The next morning round 8:30am we left on the first temple run. Thom didn't turn up to take us, as his daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital, so his brother Cobra (don't know how they come up with these names) drove us instead. We hopped in Cobra's Starship and headed north about 35 km to the first temple. I'm not going to describe each temple we went to, because you will end up like us at the end of it - temple out. I'll just list them off in order of visit: Banteay Srei, East Mebon, Ta Som, and Preah Khan. These were some of the smaller temples (barring Preak Khan). We wanted to leave the big hitters for the last day. The temples are cool, the inscriptions and carvings are awesome. I like the crumbling, fragility of them all as well, although you crap urself a little when you think that the massive stones over your head could fall down. At each temple, there are kids trying to sell you little knick-knacks and adults trying to sell you clothes, books, food, water... After two temples, I decided to cough up for a guide book, as we were aimlessly wandering through these temples without a clue what they were about. that didn't stop them hassling me to buy more guide books... "You buy guidebook" "No, already have" "how bout you buy another one. Have two. I make you good price". Or with the other hawkers "you buy from me" "no thank you" "maybe later then?" "maybe" "yeah, you buy from me after, i remember your face and your friend, you not buy from someone else, you buy from me". We finished up this batch of temples by around 1:30pm. By then the sun was intense. it's hot enough walking/climbing these temples, but add the Cambodian sun and you're losing a serious amount of fluid. Cobra took us back to town and we decided that we may as well book our bus to Bangkok on the way back to our hotel - get it sorted early. We ended up paying $15 each for the bus, not too unreasonable (we thought, turned out we got sold up the river a little), but we made sure that there was aircon and the aircon actually worked (which it did, thankfully). The rest of the day, we just perched round the hotel and then wandered into the old market and pub street for a feed, etc. Cos we locked in sunrise at Angkor Wat the next morning, we called it in early - 5am start next day!
Alarm goes off at 4:45am. Why did we do this to ourselves... anyway, we got up and went to wait for our tuk tuk. Thom turned up about 15mins late. He'd only got a call from Cobra half our before saying that he was too hung to drive us today... Anyways, Thom drove us, which was sweet. He's a good dude, so we weren't too bummed. He still got us to Angkor for sunrise... only issue was that the low morning cloud meant that the sun didn't appear til around 7-7:30am, bit gutting as we got there at 6am. Still a cool experience. Angkor Wat is HUGE. we couldn't get right to the top, but man, it's awesome. We spent a good couple hours wandering round checking out the inscriptions, carvings, architecture of it all. Massive walls with story carvings. We couldn't get over how they built these places way back in the 1200s. epic work.
After Angkor Wat, we went to visit a smaller temple, Banteay Kdai. It was smaller, but was conveniently on the way to Ta Prohm (tomb raider temple). Ta Prohm was probably my second favourite, even equal top, temple. It was where parts of Tomb Raider were either filmed or based on. It had trees growing through it, almost jungle city. It would have been an epic place for paintball, laser tag, or even hide-and-seek. The sun starting cranking up the heat while we were here - didn't bode well for the next temple, Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom isn't really a temple in itself, but a site of a number of temples. Thom said he'd do a slow drive by of some of the smaller ones, so we could take pictures and check them out from the comfort of the tuk tuk. We did get out and climb up to the top of Baphoun tho. That was an epic climb, especially in the heat. But man, it was wicked at the top. Climbing up was sweet. Going down wasn't. Even with the constructed "steps," you're still clinging to the handrail, would have been a nightmare going up the original stairs! The last temple we went to was Bayon. It had something like 53 Bhudda-head towers, representing the 53 provinces in Cambodia. Was an epic way to finish, but we were definitely getting to the point of templed out at this stage. We snapped Thom having an epic moi-perch in the back of the tuk tuk.
Later that afternoon, Thom took us to see the floating villiage - where people actually lived on floating houses that were all anchored together in a sort of floating community. Was an experience - some good, some not so good. i think the epic lack of sleep and a morning of temple climbing probably added to the lack of enthusiam on my part. I wasn't so stoked with the forced charity out there. We were driven to a shop and when we got off they gave us a spiel about how poor the people are and how the kids are suffering, we were going to give them some money... five dollars... but they wanted us to buy goods for the kids. They suggested a sack of rice or a box of noodles. The sack of rice was $75 US. No chance. The noodles were 50 cents a pack. We offered to buy 10 packets, they said that we had to buy a box of 50 packets. $25 bucks. No chance. In the end, we bought this packet of snacks that we had to hand out to the kids. That was cool, but snacks aren't really gonna help them out in the long run and cos we had to hand them out, we ended up disrupting the class with rice snacks. no gain really. They would have been better to collect donations and eventually they would have enough to buy the sack of rice. those kids must be sick of those rice snacks, cos all the other boats were buying them as well. Anyways, we were pretty knackered after the boat trip, so called it quits. Later that evening we went back to Pub street for a feed and a few beers. We'd heard wonders about a fish massage, where you stick ur feet into this tank of fish and they go nuts on ur feet. Trust me, one of the most crazy awesome things around, especially cos it cost $3, is unlimited time-wise, and you get a free beer out of it. Asty and I were the first ones in and when you hovered ur feet over this tank, all the fish congregate below ur feet, as if they can sense them coming. Can't really describe the feeling tho, it's weird, funny and tickles, but once you get over that, it's just awesome. Apparently they eat off all the dead skin on your feet. We must have had a good amount of dead skin, cos they were going nuts on ours. Even when new people got in, the fish still were going crazy on our feet!The next morning, we started what would be the most epic travelling journey i've done so far. Easily beating the 25 hour bus from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur for years ago. We got picked up from our hotel at 7:30am and got to the border at around lunch time. Erika (from Canada that we hung out in Luang Prabang with) was on our bus. She only paid $9 for her ticket... Anywas, we didn't factor in that we had to carry our gear across the border, but eventually got into Thailand. We had a short amount of time for lunch and then jumped into our minivan to Bangkok. Our driver was nuts man. We boosted to Bangkok, and finally got dropped off at the southern bus station round 6pm. Now the issue was trying to get a bus ticket down to Koh Phangan. We had accom booked there from the 4th, so and overnight bus would have been ideal. It was madness at the station - most busses were full and there were locals and foreigners everywhere scrambling to find a bus. After about 5 or 6 counters turned us away, we finally got a ticket. The bus left at 10pm and we'd travel to Chumporn for the ferry at 7am. We arrived at the station in Chumport at 4am, and had to sit round til 7... The ferry had to stop at Koh Tao on the way through to Koh Phangan. We got to Koh Tao round 10:30am, dropped some people off and picked up a whole lot more. The cabin didn't have any aircon or windows, so was a pretty unbearable trip. We finally arrived in Koh Phangan round 12:30pm and got in a taxi bus to Haad Rin, where the full moon is. Our "resort" ended up being up a fairly decent walk, but it's pretty legit. Awesome views, and far enough away that the noise from the parties is tolerable.
Anyway, enough already. You're probably getting blogged-out. I am.
Time to go scooter round the island. Catch ya on Koh Tao!
Eeeeaaannn!
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