Our speeddate with Cambodia

Long time no post….:) Let’s recap but first thank you for reading our blog, hugs and high fives. We promise not to keep you waiting again for so long. Missed us? We know you guys keep hitting that refresh button every five sevonds;) so we apoligize for the delay. Should we tell, no, okay because you asked, spoiler alert, it involves meters, no, miles of toilet paper;) We know, TMI (this means too much information for the oldies;), but you asked for it.

We left Vietnam with warm fuzzy feelings. Bought our very last bahn mi bread from a guy across from our hotel and combed the streets for some ice coffee. Couldn’t find any, had almost given up hope when a very tiny Vietnamese lady ran out of her home/shop yelling “coffee!!! Coffee!!!” Safe two say we got two very delicious cups and walked over to the bus pick up point. We booked a small van for our journey across the border. We’d read so many awfull and sometimes very funny stories about getting across Cabodian border that we opted with the “safest” way to leave Vietnam. 

The ride took a couple of hours and then the weirdness began. The van stopped a couple of meters from the border. Our driver got out, asked for our pasports and the thirty five dollar for the Visa. Every last one in our bus, except us, looked up all wide eyed, “we thought it was twenty dollar!!” Driver shrugged, “no thirty five.” Some digging in purses for extra dollars ensued. Then another guy with a white hat (very important fact because after a while all dudes look alike) came over, took the pasports and money from our driver and headed inside the border patrol to get our Visa’s. Like sheep we followed the guy. Inside the office every tourist was looking around like what the fudge is the deal here, it clearly states thirty bucks for the Visa (the other five probably go to the border patrols retirement fund in the Bahama’s;) Our names were called out by the guy with the white hat. Got our passports back and once outside white hat guy took them again and left on his freaking scooter towards the Cambodian border. Liz joked, “and this is the moment the dutchies get sold into white slavery,” some of the other tourist couldn’t see the humor and were almost freaking out. The dazed and confused looks on their faces, hilarious. 

Got back into the van and were dropped off again at the Cambodian border office, white hat guy was sitting inside the office filling out our pasport forms. After the guy was done the dutchies and fellow van travelers got the passports back, after some gruff and highly bored passports checking crossed the border. Hoooooraaayyyyy for the dutchies made it to Cambodia land of Angkor Wat and The Killing Fields. 

The many faces of Pnomh Penh

First stop Phnom Penh. The van dropped us off in the middle of the city. So weird, you’re not even out of the damn van when about ten tuk tuk drivers flock towards the bus and try to see whose inside the van. And just like you’re one of the members from One Direction yell at ya, but in this case don’t want your autograph but your money. “MISSSSS LADDDYYY TUK TUKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!! VERYYY CHEAAPPP WANT?” No we don’t, thank you very much, we got this amazing app to guide us, so if you would please move without getting Liz’s army boot up your ass we could continue on our merry way thank you very much, hihi. 

  
Made it to our hostel, Aura (what a name) located just behind the palace, we were in the “bubble” room, together with three other girls. It was cheap, looked awesome on the internet, you know why it was so cheap?? The place was still under CONSTRUCTION!!!! Smelled like paint and after being in the room for five minutes not yet having peed, the electricity was cut off. NOOOOOOOO!!! We had to wait in the lobby without wifi 😦 After a while things got old so we pulled out the big guns aka a flashlight app on our phone and lighted that room right up, perfect with a capital P, and went out to explore the city. 

We saw some of the highlights and had dinner in the backpackers district. After a night filled with bedbugs and climbing out of the top bunk to get to the loo we woke up early and after some determined negotiation from Suus we got ourselves a discount tuk tuk and headed over to The Killing Fields. Intense and interesting morning. Later that day we saw the palace and planned our roadtrip to Siem Raap.  

   
     Angkor Wat: check

The road to Siem Raep was yet again awful. 4 hours of sitting on top of each other. There were only 2 other tourists in the van and we got pushed in the back. After 6 hours of sweating and bumping next to each other because of the lack of asfalt on the road we finally arrived. The outskirts of Siem Raep is bonkers, saw a scooter crash and saw the equivalent of a construction site turned pre inner city. Hired a tuk tuk driver to get us to our hotel/hostel for one dollar, ONE! 

Everyone has a bucket list of some kind, we think, we hope:) Not like the buckets you get at the Home Depot but the buckets you get to cross of your life list. Shit sounds out there, but you get the jist. Angkor Wat has been on our list for as long as we can remember. Awesomeness altogether when we hired a tuk tuk driver for ten dollars to drive us around for the day. Angkor Wat, words can’t even begin to describe…okay they can, it was amazeballs!!! We walked around for hours took hundreds of pictures moved on to Angkor Thom and Tra Phrom (where they filmed Tomb Raider for the major cinephiles amongst us;) and acted as if we were in an indiana jones movie. History and heritage all wrapped into one, epic stuff. After this we were exhausted but found the energy to explore the city itself and the night market and made plans to rent a bike the next morning to explore the sites on our own. Yes you read it people the dutchies rented a bike in freaking Cambodia. 

   
       Pictures on the internet aren’t entirely a real representation of what you are going to see. When you type in sunrise Angkor Wat in google the pictures that come up man o man, incredible. Keep that in mind. Okay it’s three thirty in the morning Susan’s alarm goes off, “Do I Wanna Know” by Arctic Monkeys btw.;) Dutchies get there sorry asses out of the bed. Brekky is handed to us by the nightwatch, we get the bike and in the dark take the streets of Siem Raap. This is where our epic tale of riding and diverting falling trees begins. 

When you go bicycling in the night make sure you have some kind of flashlight to guide you, we hadn’t so had to pray and bike to a: not crash and b: make it at Angkor Wat save and sound. After some screaming and sprinting after tuk tuks to follow the lights, made it. High five!!! Walked like a bat out of hell towards the pond on the left side of Angkor and together with threehundred of our closest friends watched the sun rise over Angkor. Are you still picturing the purple and orange colours you saw on Google? Now picture this: darkness, semi-darkness, not so semi dark, then a glimps of the sun, sun comes up and then there was light. And that’s all folks. No purple, no orange, where was our Hallmark card, huh???? Wasn’t there, but what we saw was something we are going to keep locked inside our hearts forever.

   
      Walked back to our bicycles around six in the morning and heard someone saying over the loudspeaker, “put your legs behind your head.” Your legs??? What? Apparently it was world yoga day and about two hundred people were doing yoga in front of Angkor Wat!!!!! Picture time:) Our adventure continued, in all we biked around almost twentyfive kilometers, aren’t you guys proud. Applause!!!!  

   
         That night had some delicious meatballs that would haunt us for the rest of our upcoming days. Stay tuned for a Dutch horror story that involves a lot of running to a specific room, an oriental city for those who know Murray Head and some hookers. Intrigued yet???

Blog to ya later;)