Alright so here's the back story, when we booked the bus originally (2 days in advance) we were told that it was a hotel bus. This meant that everyone had there own private little 'room' that had a bed, tv, headphones, wifi, power outlet, and air conditioning. They also said there was a bathroom on the bus. This sounded awesome and the pictures looked really nice too so we figured we might as well give it a shot. Our only other option was to take a bus back to Phnom Penh, stay the night, then take a bus the next day to Siem reap. Since we didn't really want to stay in the city another day we figured the overnight bus would be a perfect option! We even checked at our nice hotel and asked them if the bus would be comfortable for us since we're so tall and they assured us that it would be. Boy were they wrong...
The bus that came to pick us up was 30 minutes late which was off to a bad start, but since everything in Cambodia is late we figured it was normal. We couldn't prepare ourselves for the bus though. When we got on the bus we could immediately tell this was not the bus we had signed up for that was in the pictures. Not only was there no tv, no wifi, no charger, and no bathroom but the seats were literally made for midgets! I was okay without having most of the frills but the fact that there was no power outlet REALLY PISSED ME OFF! I obviously didn't charge my phone before hand because I figured there would be no point to since I could do it on the bus. My phone had less than 20% battery and was gunna die in an hour or so and that if I hardly used it. I was planning to write my blogs on the bus to waste some time but there was no way I had enough battery to do that. That's also the reason why I didn't take any pictures of the bus since I didn't want to waste any battery. Anyway my dad and I crammed ourselves into the "beds" (they were more like seats). The bus of course was full, they actually overbooked it I think because someone had a ticket with the same seat number as us. It was miserable
There was a light at the end of the tunnel though, we had heard that the bus was stopping in Phnom Penh, which meant we go get off and stay the night or that the bus might not be full and we could have our own two seats! After a grueling 4 hour ride to Phnom Penh we made it and tons of people got off the bus! My dad moved to his own two seats and I stayed. However, less than a minute later a bunch of more people got on the bus. It was after 1 in the morning! Who the hell books a bus that leaves at 1am?!! There are TONS of busses that leave during the day from Phnom Penh at reasonable hours! Anyway everyone loaded on and I Managed to keep my two seats! Maybe this trip wouldn't be so bad after all!
I couldn't have been more wrong. No more than 20 minutes later the bus stopped again (I guess just outside of the city), they picked up more people! I knew the seats on the bus were running low and I wanted to make sure I kept my double seat so I spread out and faked like I was sleeping. I could tell they were trying to wake me up since they were tapping on the seat. I thought that if I just kept pretending to sleep that maybe just maybe they would pass me and find somewhere else to go. Unfortunately that plan failed, a few minutes later this little Asian guy was shaking me and asked me to move over. I told him to find another seat but he said there weren't any left. I looked around and saw he was telling the truth, Damn! Oh well a tiny Asian guy would be so bad I thought, better than my dad at least. Well here's the thing the little Asian dude was actually asking for some Asian lady who was huge! And apparently didn't speak English! Not only was she ginormous but I swear she smelled like dead fish rotting in seaweed. I nearly gagged when she got into the seat. I spent almost the whole rest of the way (more than 6 hours!) curled in the corner.
Thankfully about an hour away from Siem reap some people got off and I was able to switch but it was only for the last hour of the trip. When we finally arrived we were picked up by tuktuk and brought to our hotel. It was a miserable experience! Later I looked up the bus company and found that people had reported that they were scamming customers, it was the exact same thing that happened to us! Thank god that's the lat bus ride we have to take for the rest of the trip!
Hopefully I didn't bore you too much with my rant! We got to the hostel around 8am and I finally was able to charge my phone and eat some breakfast. Our room wasn't ready yet so we decided to hire a tuk tuk driver to take us to Angkor Wat.
For those of you who don't know Angkor Wat is a huge famous temple in Cambodia. Apparently it's one of the largest Hindu and Buddhist temples (it was originally Hindu then changed to Buddhist), a picture of Angkor Wat is even on the Cambodian flag! Needless to say it's kind of a big deal here. We decided to do the 'mini tour' which was getting driven around to around 8 temples or so and ending at Angkor Wat. The whole area with all the temples is HUGE! Our tuk tuk driver drove us to the area which was about 5 miles away. Our first stop was a gate to get in.
Once I we got dropped off at Angkor Thom. I really have no idea what it was, all of the temples all look basically the same to me but I think Angkor Thom was the capital city or something like that.
After exploring the area a bit we walked down to the next temple, which was called Baupon (I'll admit I had no idea I had to look that up). To get up the temple there was one staircase which sucked. The whole place was incredibly crowded in general and this temple was no exception. It probably took 25 minutes just to get up to the top of the temple (which wasn't very high) since there were a bunch of old people who could hardly walk, let alone climb up stairs, going painfully slow which was making the line take forever! Nevertheless it was a cool view.
After climbing back down we walked to the terrace of elephants which was right next door. It was basically this really long wall with a bunch if elephants carved into haha it was kinda cool.
Afterwards we met up with our tuk tuk driver who was hard to find since there were literally hundreds of other tuk tuks there and they all look exactly the same!
Next our driver took us to a few more small temples and one large temple that was under construction and still being restored. It's actually pretty amazing how they restore the temples it's basically a huge puzzle rebuilding them piece by piece. Anyway after those few temples our driver finally took us to one of the ones I really wanted to see called Ta Prohm.
Ta Prohm is another large temple in the area and is also where they shot some of the scenes from Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. It was a really cool temple that had huge trees growing over some of the ruins, it was really incredible!
The temple was really cool and after a half hour or so of exploring it we went back to the tuk tuk and he drove us to a place to eat lunch. The food was alright but nothing amazing. Afterwards our driver took us to two more small temples and then finally to the main attraction, Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat is huge!! It has a moat around it that is over 2 miles long. On our way over the bridge to get to the temple we saw a Popsicle vendor and decided to get some. When we asked what flavors the lady mentioned they had durian flavored. Durian is a spikey fruit that I've heard smells bad, like really bad, like so bad that they actually have laws that make it illegal to bring on public transportation bad. Haha anyway I've been wanting to taste it ever since coming to Southeast Asia and this was the first time someone even mentioned it. So of course I decided it was worth a try, the Popsicles were onlyl 50 cents anyway. Well you know what they say "you win some and you lose some" and this was a time I definitely lost! The Popsicle didn't smell bad since it was just the flavor, but the flavor was awful! Haha it had the worst after taste I have no idea how to describe it besides bad. I ate about half of it and then threw it in the garbage.
The temple itself was pretty incredible. The onlyl thing I didn't like was that there were so many tourists!
After walking around the temple for an hour or so we made our way back to our tuk tuk and got driven back to our hotel. The whole area was really cool but I don't know how some people can spend a week looking at temples, one lady I met said she was going for 4 full days and was upset she didn't have more time! One day was plenty for me! Haha
Once back at the hotel we finally got our room and rested until dinner time. For dinner we went to a nearby restaurant where if had fried rice and chicken that was served to me in a pineapple! It was pretty cool and very delicious!
After dinner we got back to the hotel and got to sleep in a comfy bed!
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