AspiringNomad

If I have learnt anything from my weekend in Cambodia other than my now extensive knowledge of Khmer King Suryavarman II and the history of Angkor Wat, it’s to ALWAYS check your luggage at the baggage claim. Fortunately, this story does have a happy ending but it really could have ended badly.

As I hit the tarmac in Cambodia, Siem Reap, I was excited to switch back to my O2 sim card, but to my dismay, I wasn’t having much luck switching it over. It doesn’t sound like should have been high on the priority list, but I rely heavily on my phone for travel. My bank card details are on there (a lot of places ask for it), I use it for booking Grabs to get around so I don’t have to deal with cash so much, I needed it to find out the name of our accomodation as it was booked through my account, just to name a few reasons why my lack of phone data was causing me quite a lot of stress.

As we got to immigration the process took a little longer as we were being charged $30 which we had to go and withdraw from a bureau de change, so by the time I got through the baggage claim, ours were the only ones left! We withdrew some Cambodian Riel and booked a Grab to the Hostel.

We were greeted in the parking lot by Malai, a lovely taxi man who couldn’t have been more friendly if he tried. I agreed a lower fee with him for me to be taken back to the airport in a few days time and after about 40mins, we had arrived at Onederz, our hostel.

We dumped our bags and headed out to the main street in Siem Reap to get some food before arranging to meet with Juan and Ramiro again for a few drinks as they were leaving to go home the following day.

As I sat down for some vegetable noodles, I noticed I had blocked notifications from Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn all from the same girl, Celeste. I opened the message on Instagram to find her asking ‘Have you lost your luagge in Siem Reap?’ To my knowledge, my luggage was safe back at the hostel. However, as the conversation continued, it came to light that she had picked up my bag from baggage claim, and I had taken hers (thinking the last one going round with Tom’s, was mine!) I was in disbelief at my absent mindedness when picking up my bag! Celeste had asked if I could take her bag to where she was staying and even though Tom, Juan and Ramiro were saying that it really should be the other way round, I was not prepared to argue with this girl for the sake of a few pounds for the tuk tuk journey. Juan kindly offered to come with me as back up, so we got Celeste’s bag, booked a tuk tuk and headed to a lovely hotel near the river in Siem Reap to meet with Celeste. The bag swap was complete, and I left there with all of my belongings in the right backpack!

With huge relief, we celebrated the successful bag swap with a few $1 draft beers in the hostel and were up chatting by the bar until the early hours of the morning. Lesson learnt: Always check your baggage at baggage claim!

The following day Tom and I had decided to try and simply stay alive in the heat and that’s as far as it got. I laid by the pool, for most of the morning and at 1pm, Juan and Ramiro set off for their long journeys back to London and Buenos Aires, respectively. 

That afternoon, Tom and I headed off to the Angkor Wat museum in Siem Reap. It was a brilliant museum with all the information you needed to know about the temples and their history. I was very excited to get to see the temples for myself the following day. It was a fairly quiet evening on Saturday as our priority was to get an early night ready for our 4:30am pick up from the hostel on Sunday morning.

The alarm was, well, alarming as it went off at 3:40am! I startled awake wondering if it would be that bad to miss the world’s largest religious monument, or one of the UNESCO heritage sites, often referred to as the 8th wonder of the world. I quite rightly decided that yes, that would be very bad, so I got up and ready as quietly as I could to not wake the others in my dorm. We had breakfast and got onto a very busy bus. As we arrived to Angkor Wat. The sun was still emerging and we had time to find a good spot for taking photos. I sat alone at the edge of the little lake in front of the temple. Despite it being busy, it was fairly peaceful, with everyone being respectful of each other. At 6am, the sun had started to creep up above the spires of the temple. It was really beautiful and I can see why it is such a popular place to visit. It was already well worth the early wake up call and we had only just started the day. Even if you’re not interested in it’s history, the architecture of the temple is very intricate and quite majestic with the backdrop of the jungle, it is hard not to be impressed. Angkor Wat was 37 years in the making, made solely from sandstone from Mt. Kulen, 50km away. We spent some time wondering through Angkor Wat and had time to take photos and learn a little more about who designed it and how they managed to make such a huge building back in the first half of the 12th century.

We got back into the bus and went about 3km to the next temple, Bayon temple, aka, temple of a thousand faces. It was not as striking as Angkor Wat, but it was still so fascinating to see. Especially because this one had some really cheeky monkeys running across the top and around the stone structures. After we spent about one hour here and almost losing one of our group members, we went for lunch nearby and I was sat with Amber and Rob both currently living in London but from Kent and Reading beforehand. They had been travelling since January and had taken a whole 6months off work so we spent our lunch time chatting to them about what they have been getting up to!

After lunch we visited the temple where Tomb Raider was filmed which I thought was pretty cool. The temple was almost undiscoverable in amongst the jungle when it was found and as the seeds had been spread over the last 300+ years, teak trees had made their home there even on top of one of the spires with it’s roots stretching down the walls into the ground below. It was really impressive to see and very on brand for Tomb Raider. The group then headed off to the 4th and final temple and I honestly think we were all too exhausted by this point to concentrate. Although we tried our best to be polite to the guide, we were all drowning in our own sweat, day dreaming of getting back to the air-conditioned dorms to have a nap!

My body collapsed on the bed after I had a shower and I slept for a couple of hours. Tonight marked the last night of Tom and I travelling together. We had planned to go out for a drink but were called over by Amber, Rob and Connor (who was also on our tour) so we had a few beers with them and ordered food from the Hostel instead. It was a nice social evening to end our 2.5weeks together and at around 11pm, we all headed to bed.

I hugged Tom goodbye at the hostel about 3hrs ago. My friendly taxi man, Malai turned up perfectly on time to take me to the airport, and I am now up in the sky on my way back to Ho Chi Minh city for a 3hour lay over before a short flight to Phu Quoc. A little addition made to my trip after it was recommended to me a week or so ago, so I can live the island life for a few days. It’s a shame I couldn’t spend longer in Cambodia as I feel like I only scratched the surface, but I think it’s going to be somewhere that will start to become much more popular over the next few years with more tourists and travellers finding reasons to visit instead of only going for one thing! I certainly would go back to Cambodia to see more of the countryside maybe just after the rainy season when it would be more green and luscious. But having just landed back in Ho Chi Minh, that’s my sign to finish there. I’ll make sure I double check my luggage before my flight to Phu Quoc!