Today, we said goodbye to our Laos and our tour guide, Joy, and made our way to Cambodia. We took a very small plane from Luang Prabang to Siem Reap, with the TLC Temples filling most of the plane! We flew for a bit over an hour and then stopped in Pakse, a small city in Southern Laos, before continuing on to Siem Reap. From the plane, we could see many big hills and mountain, rich with jungles and lots of valleys dotted with farms and rice paddies. These seemed to have carved a quilt-like pattern on the landscape.
When we arrived in Cambodia, the climate was noticeably different; both the temperature and humidity were a lot higher than that in Laos and Thailand.
We were greeted at the airport by our tour guide, Yousa. He was extremely friendly and made us all laugh on our bus ride from the airport. When we arrived in our hotel, Somadevi Angkor Hotel, most people hopped into the large pool. It was extremely relaxing to swim in the pool as the weather was very hot. While most of us were in the pool it started to rain quite heavily, causing everyone to have to head back indoors.
We then made our made to dinner later on in the night, in the pink party bus assigned to our group. We had dinner at The Soup Dragon, on the Infamous “Pub Street”; however, we weren’t actually given any soup. Our dinner tonight was quite different to the cuisines we experiences in the previous two countries. There was a variety of different westernised meat dishes with unique sides of pineapple and eggplant.
We finished off the night by attending the famous Siem Reap night market. We shopped around the night market with everyone on the lookout for shoes, wallets, etc as the style of product here was very different to what could be found at the market in Luang Prabang. Many people were very eager to sell us their goods. One store in particular, Project Y, offered us all free samples of frozen yoghurt. Project Y was run by students who were raising money for scholarships and education. Delicious dessert and donations combined!
Today has been a big day, with lots of traveling; however, we are excited for what is to come here in Siem Reap.
By Georgia and Tom.