Cambodia: The Solo Venture

Since the three of us all know that we are hilarious we decided to play some April Fools! We fooled everyone hehe but apparently PT office staff managed to find out about Libby “going home”! I also got a wonderful rope burn during rappelling rescue training  After a week on-course the big travelling adventure was upon us. I was going to Cambodia on my own and Alistair to Thailand on his own for a Muay Thai camp, a week later we would both meet up with Libby in Vietnam. Leaving Alistair at the airport was quite daunting, for the next week we would both be in a foreign country alone for a week, knowing no-one and not understanding the culture or speaking the language. Our objectives were simple: Ali was aiming to be beaten up and I was avoiding it at all costs! I had an incredible experience in Cambodia and from what I hear so did Ali in Thailand. Almost immediately in the airport I got talking to people, it carried on from there; I met so many cool people. Although a lot of them were on similar itineries; travelling for a few months in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia; everyone had different experiences and perspectives. The highlight of Cambodia was definitely Angkor Wat temples. They are stunning! When I visited there was a lot of restoration work going on so parts of some temples were out of bounds. I went in at 5pm one night to see the sunset from a hilltop temple, after waiting over an hour it was clear it wouldn’t be very spectacular; the sky was cloudy and the horizon hazy, but at least there was a decent view for miles across the surrounding jungles and plains. I was up at 4:30am the next morning in the hope that sunrise would be more impressive; it was! I sat just outside “the” Angkor Wat with the sun rising behind it and reflecting in the pool in front of the temple. I got some pretty good photos on my phone camera and attempted to take some on my broken compact camera, unfortunately the camera on my phone malfunctioned that night so I only have one photo of my whole week in Cambodia; the one I posted on facebook! Strangely the main currency used is US$ but you get change in Khmer Riel. I hired a motorbike driver for the day to take me round all the temples. He took me to a lot of smaller temples without many tourists. The most spectacular temple in my opinion was Ta Prohm, the set for Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider (which of course I haven’t seen!), it was set in the middle of the jungle with the jungle completely taking over the temple. There were trees growing over the top of walls and fallen rocks everywhere, it felt otherworldly when I left the usual tourist track through the temple to explore other parts. At nearly all of the temples, street corners and many restaurants there are young children selling souvenirs although I'm not sure how much they personally benefit from the money they earn. I got a bus from Siem Reap where the temples are to Phnom Penh the capital and the views from the bus were extraordinary. I wasn’t sure whether I was travelling through SE Asia or the Middle East at some points, the land was so flat and dry and dusty. The sunset over the dusty plains was quite a site too. I’m not joking when I say hammocks are probably more popular than chairs in Cambodia, everywhere you look people are chilling in hammocks; side of the road, their houses, in cafes, in tuk tuks! Most of my time in Phnom Penh was spent visiting the S-21 prison and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, although I’ve already covered that in a separate blog post. The rest of the time I just wandered the streets getting to know the city and how it works. One thing I didn’t understand was the food; normally its quite obvious what the local food is but here it just wasn’t so I ended up eating a lot of western food or expensive restaurant food, which was delicious but it was expensive and not really what Cambodian cuisine is like.