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So today we said goodbye to our short visit to Cambodia. Yesterday was both great and tiring.
We started the day at 4:45am, Early right? We met our tuktuk driver that we hired from our hostel at 5am and we started our trip to the temples.
After a 25 min tuk-tuk ride in the dark, our driver drops us off at some ancient gate and tells us he will wait there till we finish. Now Cambodia doesn't have many street lights (only whatever a private owner provides) therefore we had no idea we had entered the temple area besides a lone woman wo punched our access tickets during our tuk-tuk ride. Seth and I put on our headlamps and followed the exodus of people going down the path. It went on for awhile but eventually people turned into a flat park area next to a pond where at 5:45am people were already lined along in order to get the perfect view of Ankgor Wat and the sunrise.
At this point we were both pretty hungry and it was still pitch black outside. We had overheard a local talking to a group of guys ahead of us about getting breakfast in the stalls close by. We headed towards the area and sat down at the Lady Gaga stall and were given menus. We had no time to even look at the menu before 2 kids surrounded me to try to sell us postcards. Its so hard for me to ignore these people. I guess the curiosity in me wants to look and see them and what they have aand because of that curiosity they continue to hang around longer. Silly me.
Eventually we got to order and after we started seeing light come as dawn was coming, we got our breakfast. I got pancakes with pineapple and Seth got pancakes with mixed fruit and we shared a coconut shake. Oh man the fruit here is so good. I promised at the lunch that I would get a fruit shake at every meal. SO GOOD.
Then it was time. We went to a spot but Seth didn't like it so he went to another area to get a better picture. The sunrise came...and was covered by clouds. It wasn't the best sunrise I'd seen. It got better as the clouds passed by and more colors showed up. I guess I've never been a sunrise girl, I am a west coast girl after all. As I waited for Seth I was jumped by a girl selling scarves. I liked the design but for $10 each I decided against it. After Seth rejoined me I told the girl "no" and we proceeded to leave. Naturally she followed and kept following until after about 5 minute when she yeilded to my price of $5. By this time I really didn't want it but I thought it only fair I buy it for the price I offered.
As the sun kept rising we walked over to the less crowded pond on the other side of the path. We took some pictures and then went to explore the temple. On the wall up to the temple there were monkeys! Lots of monkeys. They were running, screeching, wrestling, fighting, feeding, and mating. You could tell they were used to people being around.
Off exploring we went. It was a beautiful place. You could still see the hindu hertiage in the stonework before it was turned into a Buddhist temple. A little bit later they opned the top most tier and we got to see the top of the structure.
After 3 hours at Ankgor Wat our tuk-tuk took us to explore Angkor Thom and it's 3-4 temples on it's huge temple grounds. There they had elephant rides available but we passed on that. After a refreshing fresh coconut juice we stopped at a temple that was under restoration. We didn't stop long there because we were straving.
Our tuk-tuk took us to a place to eat where we ate inside and he ate in a canopy tent outside with other tuk-tuk drivers. Seth and I suspected that he got lunch at a much diferent price than we did. We had another great meal in Cambodia and we got names this time! I had the Morning Glory with chicken (satueed chicken with green onions in something delicious) and Seth had chicken Loklak (chicken and mixed veggies satueed with a fried egg on top, a side of french fries and a side of some kind of lemon salt sauce). Oh my word, that lemon salt sauce was so good. Oh and we also had a mango and pineapple shake of course.
Refreshed and full we proceeded to go to Ta Phroem (pronounced Ta Prom) which is the famous temple where Tomb Rider was filmed. The temple is approximately 900 years old and about 4-500 years ago these trees started growing between the walls, on rooftops. and in the middle of the walkways. So these masssive white tree, with roots that grow on top of the ground and not into it, are covering this temple and all over the courtyards. It was amazing to see nature taking over this man-made structure. Seth and I discussed how baeutiful these temples must have been when they were first built or even shortly afterwards. But man goes away and nature and God will always take over. It was overwhelming and wonderful.
One less popular temple later we had a local guide offer his knowledge. It was interesting and good to have a guide at one of the temples, but again we forgot to ask the price ahead of time and paid $25 when we could've talked him down. We could've paid $25 for a guide for the entire day.
After that last temple at 3 oçlock we went back to the hostel and just took the rest of the day easy. I took a shower and Seth took a nap. For dinner we went to a local coffee shop that helps out local Cambodians build better homes called Common Grounds. We both had a grilled cheese sandwich, yummm cheese.
We went to bed around 8 and had our first full nights of sleep since being on vacation.
Our adventure continued this morning. We woke up and showered, had breakfast, and checked out of our room by 7:30am. A tuk-tuk was supposed to pick us up and take us to our bus going to Bangkok. Apparently a couple of girls were also waiting for a ride to go to a bus leavig for Phoem Phen. We took their tuk-tuk and it wasn't until he took us outside the city for 20 min and arrived at a different bus station that we realized the mistake.
Fortunately we had the phone number for the bus company and buses never leave on time here. We made our bus and then waited for others to arrive, at least we weren't the only late people.
So now we have gotten off that bus and crossed the Cambodian/ Thailand border, which was very easy and free but had lots of lines and begging children. Now we are on our final leg on a diiferent bus towards Bangkok. The driver said that they would drop us off in an area that has a skytrain to the airport and other parts of Bnagkok. This area aviods the protests and demostrations from the Tailand people.
Fun times!
Jessica
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