Week 247: Cambodia

We flew to Cambodia from Signapore this week. It’s a beautiful country and I’m really glad we came. The people have been so welcoming and the food has been excellent.

We spent the couple of nights in Phnom Penh. It was fun but quite intense for a first intro to the country. When will I learn that I always prefer the smaller towns and countryside? It was still a lot of fun though.

We met up with Euan and Adam who I haven’t seen for well over a year, bringing our group up to six people. It was still surprisingly easy to organise things.

We visited S-21, now a genocide museum, and it was suitably harrowing. I had a vague knowledge of Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge but the museum did a great job of highlighting the brutality and scale of the regime.

For the journey to Siem Reap (and later for the journey to the coast) we got an overnight “hotel bus” which was quite novel and more comfortable than you’d expect. Both times it arrived super early though so we found ourselves being woken up and waiting in bus stations at 4 in the morning.

Siem Reap was my favourite stop on the trip. It’s beautiful, everyone’s very friendly, and there were lots of opportunities for little day trips to interesting places. We visited Angkor Wat straight from the bus and were the first people there. We watched the sunset and got the same picture as millions of other people.

My favourite temple was Ta Prohm which is still very much part of the surrounding jungle, with parts of the structure being held up by the trees that grew through it.

We filled our days with activities and then spent the evenings in the hotel pool. We visted the Hero Rats who safely help detect land mines and we went zip lining in the jungle.

The last leg of the trip was taking another bus down south then a ferry out to Koh Rong. After all the activity it’s been bliss drinking cocktails on a tropical beach, occasionally walking into the sea.