Siem Reap!! Day 1

Okay, sorry I've been a little out of touch lately with a ton going on here and have gotten really behind. I'll start with the most exciting adventure first: my trip to Siem Reap. Friday morning I left the province of Banteay Meanchey where I had been working for a few days to head to Siem Reap to meet a couple of American law students I met out here for the weekend. My bus was scheduled to leave at 9 am, so I arrived early at the bus stop to make sure I wouldn't miss it. (My ticket did cost me a whopping $3 after all.) 40 minutes later a bus finally pulled up and it was complete chaos with everyone trying to get on the bus first and vendors selling crickets and an assortment of other things.

Don't they look delicious?? People seriously buy these by the bagfuls. There are women everywhere with a huge bowl of them balanced on their heads.

 Turns out this wasn't even the right bus. 20 minutes later another bus pulled up, then another, then ANOTHER. It was complete chaos with bags sprawled everywhere and people trying to figure out which bus to get on to. An hour after my scheduled departure, I was finally on a bus, crossing my fingers that I understood the people correctly and was headed to Siem Reap. A bus ride wouldn't be complete either without BLASTING Cambodian music videos the entire ride, either!

A couple hours later, I arrived in Siem Reap by myself and had no idea what time the people I was meeting up with would be arriving. As soon as the bus pulled up to the stop, all the tuk tuk (a taxi here, kind of like a rick shaw, but with a moped not a bicycle) drivers ran up to my window banging trying to get my attention and holding up signs. Guess I stand out a little bit here being the only white person around...When I got off the bus, I was pounced by the drivers. No one would listen to me when I said I needed an internet cafe not a hotel, because at this point I didn't even know what hotel I was staying at. Then a young guy came to my rescue and said he would take me to an internet cafe and wait there until my friends arrived and then take me to my hotel. What a relief!

About an hour later my new friends arrived, so my driver took me to go meet them. I had no idea how much the internet cafe or my driver were going to cost. But one hour on the internet only cost me $1. When my driver dropped me off at the hotel, i gave him $5 thinking he would take it. He asked me if I had anything smaller because he didn't have change. This completely caught me off guard because the drivers in Phnom Penh are constantly trying to get me give them MORE money than we originally arranged.

The 4 of us left the hotel and headed for a floating village! We took a tuk tuk about 20 km out of the city and it started POURING rain! Luckily all the tuk tuks are prepared for this and have plastic that they zip up all around to keep us dry. And the poor driver put on a poncho and drive us through the rain. When we got to the boat dock, it luckily cleared up and turned out to be a beautiful day. The 4 of us ended up having a huge boat all to ourselves. We took about a 2 hour boat ride down the Tonle Sap River through a floting village, which was super cool! The entire village is literally on the water in the river. Schools, homes, the hospital, and even a basketball court are floating on this river. We went out onto the Tonle Sap Lake, the biggest lake in Southeast Asia, and it was beautiful!! Out in the middle of the lake, this lady rowed up to us with a little baby in a hammock on her little fishing boat and 2 cute little kids holding a snake. They climbed up onto the boat and I gave them $1 to hold the snake and take a picture with them.

I grabbed the snake right away for a picture and everyone else FREAKED out. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Obviously it hadn't killed these kids yet... We stopped in the village for lunch and picked out our catfish which they caught and fried up right there for us.

After we got back to the city, we headed downtown to hit up the night market. There were sooo many shops and a really fun atmosphere. I bought a pair of "ali baba" pants to wear to the temples the next day, and found a couple of other cool souvenirs. We walked around for awhile and ate dinner outside enjoying the beautiful evening. Man, it was great to be around Americans and have people to explore with and be able to act like a tourist for once! Don't get me wrong, I love that I am really experiencing the Cambodian life while I'm here, but it was a nice change for a few days. =) We got back to the hotel pretty late that night and then I still had to skype with my grad chair to work out some problems with my masters project I'm working on here. I finally got to bed, exhausted, but super excited to see the temples and ride an elephant the next day!!