Day 3- Cambodia!!

We had a very early start on this day. Woke up at 4:45am I believe, And headed for Angkor Wat at 5am for the sunrise. When we unloaded from the bus I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black outside. Only the tour guide had a flash light. There was lots of tripping going on. I remember climbing up and down steps, and stepping in random pot holes. We finally made it safely to our viewing spot. We sat on the steps (which were falling apart) of an old stone temple that sat in front of the Angkor Wat. I’m not going to lie… I actually did even know what the Angkor Wat looked like before the sunrise. I had no idea what to expect. And when the sky began to turn blue and then purple and then pink and then orange, the site of the Angkor Wat sitting in front of us was gorgeous.  The temple was enormous, and there was a small pond/lake thingy (with flowers floating in it) sitting in front of the temple. And next to the pond was a beautiful white horse that I kept calling a unicorn because I seriously felt like I was dreaming. I didn’t expect the Angkor Wat to be so gorgeous and I especially didn’t expect to see a beautiful unicorn standing in front of it eating grass. Being that early in the morning I was kind of loopy. But it was so worth it waking up at the butt crack of dawn to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. I highly recommend doing that. If you ever go to Cambodia (and you must go sometime in your life!!) to see Angkor Wat, make sure you go for the sunrise.

After the amazing start of my day, we headed back to the hotel so I could get the stink off of me and fill up my belly. Breakfast was a buffet again. I think they were trying to fatten us up. I decided I love Dragon fruit. It’s especially delicious with lemon on top of it. Then it was time for Ta Prohm Temple. When we first got off the bus to go walk to the entrance there were children (many many children) trying to sell us bracelets, and guide books, and instruments of all sorts. This one little girl walked at my side the entire way to the entrance repeating herself trying to sell me bracelets. The way she spoke to me was almost melodic. She repeated herself every 5 seconds it began to sound like a song. Again, being told not to buy anything from the children because we don’t want to support them working, I resisted. It’s so incredibly hard to do, but if I’m going to support the children being educated, I can’t be buying things from them.  I remember when I was little I could attempt to use my puppy dog eyes on my parents to get what I want. These children in Cambodia are constantly using their puppy dog eyes. They are the most beautiful children I think I’ve ever seen. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what the tour guide said about supporting education rather than the children working for their parents. But I feel like if I don’t buy something from these children, their not necessarily going to go get education. In fact they most likely won’t. It could easily mean that these children end up going home with no money to give to their parents and their beaten. I really don’t know. This could be the only way that these children are getting food. Yeah, of course I want these children to be educated, but not buying something from them could be a very bad decision on my part. I didn’t end up buying anything from them. But who knows… maybe those children are making bank off of all the other tourists who haven’t been told by their tour guide to not buy from the children. I kind of hope they are making bank. According to my world population data sheet the life expectancy in Cambodia is 61 years old. I feel like these children selling things on the street are doing what they have to do in order to help support the family. I don’t know their reasoning for not being school. Heck, maybe they do go to school, this is just a side job. Many of them spoke pretty good English. Chance is they learned it in school, not from the tourists that they sell things to.  Alright anyway, after entering the gates to the Ta Prohm Temple, we had to walk along this long dirt road until we actually reached the temple. On the side of the road there was a band of veterans. Each of them was missing a limb (Whether it was an arm or a leg.) The music they played was absolutely amazing, and I totally regret not buying a cd from them. I did tip them, and recorded a short video though.  We finally arrived to the temple where I fell in love. It is the most gorgeous temple in the world! (In my opinion of course!) When I walked into this temple I seriously wanted to cry. I’m sure you have seen pictures of this temple before. A lot of it is in ruins. And the part that is not in ruins has trees growing on it. The roots of the trees look like they are eating the temple. It reminded me of Jumanji a little bit. Trees were growing on the roof of this stone temple, and all around it. These trees are massive too. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The entire walk through the temple’s courtyards was gorgeous. I could spend my entire life walking through and admiring this temple. Just picturing it in my head is making me drool.

So after this breath-taking experience, it was time to head back to the Angkor Wat. This time we started at the opposite end of the temple. The back side of Angkor Wat was just as gorgeous as the front. Plus there were crazy little grey monkeys running around behind the temple. Our group stopped and fed them little bananas and gave them some of our water. Some of the monkeys had newborns hanging from their stomachs as they walked around. Other monkeys sat and picked at their neighbor’s head. I have a lot of monkey pictures now. After feeding our little hairy friends we hiked up Angkor Wat. It was midday and again I felt like I was dying in the sun. The climb wasn’t nearly as difficult as say… the climb across The Great Wall of China, but in the sun it was dreadful. I felt like a radish by the time we made it to the entrance of the temple. Oh I have a funny story. My friend Dani (Danielle) and I were sitting at the entrance of the temple and some guy came up to us and was just hanging out like leaning on the wall right next to me. And there I was feeling like a radish, and he just stood there and was like… “I like your teeth.” I began to laugh so hard I was almost crying. I took me a little while to realize he was hitting on me. It was cute though. He was like “yeah smile again!” So I laughed a little more, and then it got really awkward so Dani and I got up and said bye to this guy and he was like “No don’t go! I’m going to cry!” It was really cute. So I just said goodbye to my Cambodian lover and went back to the bus. Hahah It was a good time.

After visiting the Angkor Wat was lunch time. Blah blah blah. And then Angkor Thom. I don’t know if you have seen pictures of this temple. Maybe you have. It’s the temple that is covered in stone faces. The faces aren’t inside the temple. They are outside, surrounding the temple. Basically every 10 feet there is a giant cube pillar thing, and on each side of the pillar there is a giant stone face. The face is made up of a series of small cubes. So each stone cube is a different part of the face. It’s really gorgeous to see. I can’t even imagine that each cube was hand carved and aligned to fit the cube right next to it in order to make up a face. And no joke there are seriously like 50 or more faces carved around this temple. It’s my second favorite temple. This one being right after Ta Prohm of course.

Alrighty, so that’s what I did in Cambodia. From there we went to the airport and jumped on a plane for 50 minutes. I seriously closed my eyes for what felt like 2 minutes and then we landed in Vietnam. I felt like a zombie by the time we got back on the ship. But my night was not over yet. It was time to see the night life in Vietnam. I took 20 minutes to shower and put my face on and then the group headed out. Some of my friends that stayed in Vietnam (instead of going to Cambodia) already knew what was up. My friend Jay had the brilliant idea to jump on the back of some mopeds and have them take us to some Saloon. I was terrified for my life. I paid this lady 2 dollars, and basically put my life in her hands. Thank goodness helmets are required. She was a crazy fast driver. So… before I jumped on the mo-ped we were a group of 5. Thank God the moped jay was on was right next to me, because the rest of the group got split up. The drivers had absolutely no idea where we wanted to go. They took us to random bars, and Jay was just like “yeah this is NOT where we wanted to go.” After riding around for a good 20 minutes (which was the time of my life! Its such a thrill being on the back of a moped going a thousand miles an hour!) and finally Jay and I were just like “screw it. Let us off here.” So we got off the bikes and had absolutely no idea where we were. I especially didn’t know where we were because I had been in Vietnam for about an hour. Jay had been there for a couple days! We didn’t know where the rest of our group had gotten dropped off at. Jay and I just ended up going inside of an Irish pub where there was an awesome live band! I thought they were really good, and then this crazy old man with long white hair, a skin tight hot pink t-shirt, skin tight leather pants, and hot pink military boots went up to sing with the band. He was the most ridiculous guy. It was a good laugh. We enjoyed a cheap Tiger beer, and then decided to jump on some more mopeds and just see where we end up. We found two really nice old men that took us to a place called Apocalypse Now. It was a really cool club that had a pool table inside of it. So we had another beer and watched some guys play pool. There was also a basketball game from the states on tv. So I was mainly watching that. I think it was Florida State University game. I can’t remember who they were playing. After a little while of hanging out, the rest of our group showed up!! It was really funny. They had actually been taken to the right place. So we all went back to the saloon. We weren’t there for long. I felt like I was dead because I was so incredibly tired. It was a really good night though. I had so much getting lost in Ho Chi Minh City. Thank goodness Jay was with me, or I probably would have cried. Haha   So after that we headed back to the ship and passed out. I slept sooooo well. It was glorious to be home.