It's always difficult planning and dividing up time in a trip such as this one. The entire length of my trip is 4 months, and this initially sounds like a long amount of time. However, when you actually get to down to dividing those 4 months into managable parts and balancing what attractions or activities you can't live without, while adjusting plans to travel with new friends (or meet up with old ones), learning to take a day off here and there, and realizing that distances need to be accounted for and that 9 hour bus rides can eat into a lot of time, well, by the end of it, things can certainly get tricky! I constantly find myself talking to other travellers and finding out about amazing places and wanting to see more, while simultaneously falling in love with some of the places that I am already in and just not wanting to leave. This has been the case with the last week or so, as I've finished up with Cambodia and started my travels in Malaysia.
Cambodia is an amazing country, and I would love to go back. The locals are so genuine and so friendly, everything is so cheap, and there are so many things to do and see. I was sad to have only two weeks but really enjoyed them. The last week in Cambodia I spent in Kampot, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. In Phnom Penh I shot a gun for the first time at a shooting range (an AK-47, on my 25th birthday!), met up with friends I had met in Vietnam, rode around in tuk tuks and bartered for everything. I also went to the Killing Fields and S-21, two sobering but very important memorials/museums that remember the horrific genocide that happened in Cambodia. Not a "fun" visit per say, but an important part of understanding a truly abhorrent part of Cambodia's history.
Kampot was a quaint and sleepy riverside town that I spent two nights in. It was a bit rainy, but I enjoyed some delicious food, admired the beautiful French architecture, and reunited with Deneca -a Canadian girl I travelled with during the very start of my trip. I also did a tour that covered the National Park, an abandoned French Hill Station, and included a riverboat ride. I was happy to discover that 6 of the 8 other people doing the tour were all solo travellers as well, so this ended in a fun night of dinner and drinks.
Siem Reap is where Angkor Wat is, an incredible city of ancient ruins from 1100AD. Here, I was fortunate enough to meet up with two very close friends from home who were kind enough to swing by from Thailand so we could see Angkor Wat together. During it's height, Angkor had over one million people who lived within it's gates. Today, it is mostly the temples and palace that remain, but even they are so big that they require a tuk tuk to get around. We had an amazing although very hot and sweaty day exploring the temples of Angkor. The pool at our hotel was definitely appreciated! We also went horseback riding through some small villages on a different day, stuffed ourselves while learning a ton at a Khmer cooking class, and went to get massages. Really, it was just nice to catch up with friends from home. The night after horseback riding, we met up with a couple I had met in Vietnam and they surprised me with a cake with sparklers, and some lovely birthday singing. I felt so blessed being able to celebrate my birthday with such a great group of people!
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| Birthday night silliness |
So, there you have it. Just when I started to get a really good feel of Cambodia and just when I started to hear from other travellers about all the other things I could do there (Irrawaddy dolphin spotting, pepper plantation tours and elephant rehab come to mind...), it was off to Malaysia. Thankfully, that has not been a problem yet, as I am finding it to be very interesting place, much different than the rest of my trip. To be continued....
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