Siem Reap

On Thursday morning we took a bus to Siem Reap. There was a bit of back and forth about how to get there: boat or bus. Either way it's a six hour trip. When I first heard "bus" I imagined a stereotypical developing nation bus: jam-packed with people, folks literally hanging out the window and sitting on the roof. 6 hours? No ha-way. So boat, right? It's supposed to be very scenic and pretty. But the consensus among people we met in Phnom Penh was strongly pro-bus. The bus is more like a Greyhound, individual seats, a bathroom, a TV, air conditioning. The boat is evidently not that scenic and more uncomfortable. Bus it is.

We check out of Feeling Home, get to the bus station at 7:30. We were going to take the 8:30 but we talked our way onto the 7:30 instead since we're so early.

This is one of the boondockiest drives I have ever been on. Most of what we're driving past is just farms. The houses are a mix of styles, but plenty are straight up huts, palm-leaf walls and tin roofs.

Halfway we stop at this little town, I never got the name. There's a hotel, a bunch of vendors and beggars. I sat in the hotel lobby and tried to get online, I could never get it to work. In the meantime I am distracted by this Chinese soap opera on TV. Like all soap operas it is terribly melodramatic: the crying worried lady, her cute son, the mean pretty lady. But what made this entertaining/awful was the dubbing. Clearly all the voices were dubbed, and some were just awful, like someone trying to make fun of the character instead of trying to be the character. Worst was the son. I think it was his voice that made me start watching because he seriously sounded like a cat. I swear some of his lines were "meow". It was a guy's voice, speaking falsetto and as nasal as possible.

Used the bathroom, bonked my head hard on the very very low door into the bathroom. Tried to get back on the bus, wading through a crowd of beggars: no, no, no, BONK, bonked my head again, in front of all the beggars, on the rearview mirror of the bus. And I couldn't even escape into the bus, it was locked. So I got to walk back through all the beggars who just got to enjoy watching me bonk my head.

I hated that town.

About an hour down the road the bus starts to smoke and we pull over and get out. That was a crazy feeling. I start doing my normal "I can get myself out of this" checklist:
* Can I call someone? No. All the numbers I have are for people 4 hours away.
* Can I buy some other form of transportation? No. We are in the middle of a country road, there are no services nearby.
* Can I trust that the bus company will work this out somehow if their bus is broken? Who knows. What can they do? They can't magically make another bus show up. The 8:30 is coming along but it will be full. If they had another bus come now it'd be 4 hours until they get here.
* Can I make myself comfortable here while we wait? Not really. There's like a tree to sit under. That's it.
This was a pretty scary realization. Got me praying for sure. They fixed things up and we got going in like 5 minutes, thank you God.

Got to Siem Reap, a car from the Angkor Miracle (our hotel in town) was waiting for us. Siem Reap seemed to be a series of hotels, gradually getting more and more posh and humungous (like going around a monopoly board). Angkor Miracle has to be on Park Place or Broadway, it is AMAZING. I think the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in (I am scanning memory to see if that's true and I think it is). We were greeted at reception with cool towels and lemongrass juice (never had that before, really good). The place is beautiful, all dark hard wood and high ceilings.

We spent a while just bumming around. I got room service for maybe the first time in my life ($4 bowl of pho, a bit more expensive than I've seen elsewhere here but still cheap compared to US). Greg took a swim in their giant beautiful saltwater pool (which our room overlooks). I tried out the gym, which was kinda disappointing. A bunch of home exercise equipment in an overly hot room. First time I used a weight machine that bent/flexed/vibrated when you use it, not a good sign. Also there was no water fountain. I went out to the pool by the bar to get water. I got a bottle and then the guy said he'd come by the gym later with a beer. I was like "no thanks". Then he said it again. I tried to make it more clear, I don't want a beer after I work out. Finally just left. In a while he comes into the gym with my *bill*. Whoops.

We were tempted to just laze around in the hotel but we decided to go check out the town. We wound up on "Pub street", a short alley full of restaurants and businesses. The whole area was HIGHLY tourist. Just about everyone walking around eating and buying was not Cambodian. It felt almost like Disneyland: all the businesses were very nice, but there was a sameness to the menus and stores and outfits that had me thinking all the "different" restaurants were backed by one large kitchen behind them all. We ate at this place (Le Papier Tigre) which had Khmer, Indian, Italian, and burgers. The "Disney" theory was confirmed when our waitress took Greg's credit card, headed to the back of the restaurant, took forever to come back, and finally came back from across the street.

We bummed around the market area for a while, people were super-agressive selling stuff. Massage, trinkets, etc. One oddity was "fish massage". There were tons of these, all the same (like same setup, same t-shirts). You stick your feet in a fish tank and they nibble at your feet eating away dead skin cells. Mmmm yeah. There was one of these about every 30 feet, no exaggeration.

We got dessert at a place run by a French guy, first time I'd seen a non-Khmer working at a restaurant. All these restaurants, I should say, were beautiful. Reminded me some of New Orleans: old French mansions, balconies and iron grillwork, open air dining, decorated with while Christmas lights.

The signs for businesses here have been awesome (as was the case in India). We found a 6-11 mini mart, a 7-quick mini mart, the Pyongyang Friendship Korean Restaurant (my favorite, it's hard to imagine how that would go down in the states), signs for Girled meat, etc.

The plan for today is to go see some of the temples, and while that sounds interesting, I am feeling tempted to keep that short so I can come back and be lazy in this awesome hotel for a while.