25th January
We arrived in Siem Reap on Saturday after a sweaty bus journey to a very cheap, £2.50 a night party hostel. We checked in and dropped our bags off in our dorm of 18 to go for some dinner at a beautiful vegetarian restaurant. Tired we then went to bed but did not have the most quiet of nights as there was some noise going on in our room, I’ll leave that to your imagination…
Checked out of there pretty quickly to our beloved Mad Monkey hostel that has a pool!! Chilled there all day and decided to go out and hit Pub Street. SO MUCH FUN! Met lots of nice people and didn’t get to bed till 7am… Didn’t do anything the next day either and went out as a three to then getting back at 3am with a 4am start to get to Ankor Wat for sunrise. Gee and I resurrected but Cici’s alter ego said she wasn’t coming so we got our tuk tuk with our driver Hin (amazing guy, we love Hin) to watch the stunning sunrise over Ankor Wat. We got there super early and beat the queues so I had nice nap on the steps while Gee did a few loo visits.
As Gee wasn’t feeling great and with the absence of our dear Ceec we decided it best to go back and go to sleep. Hin found it hillarious!! Went to bed to then being woken up at 12pm to Cici asking us what time were we leaving for sunrise. She had no recollection of turning down the opportunity 8 hours beforehand. After some brunch we met Hin again to do the tour of the 3 main temples and watch sunset (this was part of the plan as recommended by uncle James!). A couple of highlights of our tour was getting a Buddhist blessing with a bracelet and a monkey attacking me before I threw my water bottle at it and the unimpressed guard giving it back to me.. ??
Ceec and I thought it best to go out again but this time we became friends with one of the barman Punloch who gave us a ride on the back of his motorbike to Pub Street instead of walking.
Safe to say Cici and I were very tired the next day but there is no rest for the wicked! We went to the floating village in Tonsap with Hin where, as warned, we got scammed left right and centre. Online tickets were $20 but here they were $25 as I got passed a $2 note with my change (they don’t exist but I was clever enough to realise this and demanded it to be changed ?) to then getting on our own boat with our guide Jon who was a little creepy but meant well. From extra $15 tours to $3 to pay for gas we saw the village, a terrifying crocodile farm and tried to watch the sunset but we were too tired, ill and hot so headed back to a girl trying to sell us little plates. We walked passed and said no but Cici took a closer look to see they had each of our faces printed on them!! We were so shocked and realised they had filmed us as we were going down the pier!! We managed to get the sunset tho on our way back to an average dinner and a shocking nights sleep for no reason other than a very uncomfortable bed.
Our last day of Cambodia was recovering from feeling ill during the night for Ceec and I, getting a well needed haircut and a cuddle with the dog while I got it, and visiting our fave restaurants for brunch and dinner. We finally managed to find some decent masks for the next 24 hours of travelling to Bangkok and then Surat Thani for island hopping in Thailand. We are taking extra precaution against Coronavirus for our 8 hour stop over in Bangkok and two plane journeys!!
