David and Maureen Thiessen: we made it!!!!

January 6, 2006

we made it!!!!

Wow, it has been the marathon that we predicted, but alas we have arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia: home of the famous Angkor Wat temples/ruins.

Once across the border from Laos to Thailand, we took the first bus out to Korat, where we planned to spend the night and then get to the Camobian border the next day. The bus ride was supposed to take approx. 6 hours, and it probably would have if we hadn't got caught in a grid-lock traffic jam about 50km outside the city. We still don't know what the cause was, but it took us about 3 hours to go a little over 30km. Thankfully we were kept quite entertained with the Thai movies that were playing. Even though we couldn't understand what they were saying, we were definitely able to catch the jist. One was a romantic comedy where at one point they were totally mocking Western tourists, portraying them as completely clueless picture takers...so funny! Another was an action film where a tribal kid turned himself into a superstar kung fu fighter in order to go save his elephant which was stolen by some gangsters. It was all an interesting little window into Thai pop culture; what they think is cool, and the types of people that they look up to. Ok enough about that. So we ended up getting into Korat at about 11:30pm and decided not to go to bed but to catch the next bus to the border. The next bus left at 3am so we got to the border at about 7am and found the first hotel and crashed til about 1pm.

The next leg of the journey....

...the Thai border to Siem Reap, is famous for being one of the worst roads ever. We heard that it could take anywhere from 4-12 hours depending on the season, etc. We've learned by now to not really believe anything we're told about when we'll leave, what type of bus we'll have, when we'll arrive, etc...it's much easier on the whole sanity end of things not to have much for expectations. I think because we were all expecting the bus ride to Siem Reap be so awful, it wasn't actually so bad. The road was terrible...extremely bumpy and falling apart in places, and the bridges were pretty sketchy...BUT...air-con worked the whole way for the first time (they had to fix it once....but they actually fixed it!!!), the villages and country side were really pretty and surprisingly reminded us alot of Saskatchewan, and it only took us 5 1/2 hours...not too bad. I think we'll spend a few days in Siem Reap, one of those exploring Angkor Wat and the rest of our time in our air-conditioned hotel room:o) JJ, but it's definitely getting hotter and more humid the further south we get.

We'll post pictures of our trip and of Cambodia soon.

Posted by Maureen at January 6, 2006 1:44 PM

Comments

Looks like fun guys and the videos work just fine! Happy New Year!

Posted by: royalchinook at January 6, 2006 10:08 PM