Before skipping straight to Cambodia, my pitstop day exploring Bangkok with a stranger is deserving of a post…
Day 32: Bangkok with Liz
I arrived in Bangkok for an afternoon which I had originally planned on dedicating to a spa day. It had been over a week since my last massage which meant I was doing something wrong. My toes were also in dire need of some new polish. A lazy spa day would be my perfect solution to being solo in Bangkok until Abby arrived the next morning.
I checked in at Once Again hostel which had been recommended to me by some friends I met a couple weeks ago in Koh Phangan. It was a really nice place with a modern lobby filled with the smell of coffee and pastries. I was taken to my 12 bed ladies dorm which had full curtains for each bunk’s privacy and your locker was at the foot of your bed which was very convenient. It was about a 3 minute walk to the front-desk recommended massage place and about 15 minutes to the famous Khao San Rd. I dropped my bags and left to explore. On my way down I happened to be followed by a long-haired blonde who appeared alone and about my age. I asked how long she’d been here and we struck up a conversation. She had arrived a few days prior but was about to map out her sightseeing for the afternoon and welcomed me to join her.
Her name was Liz and she is from Connecticut. She was in town to sightsee before her TEFL course started in a few days. (This is a month long course that would certify her to teach English abroad.) We walked around town in search of temples and tourist attractions. We ended up on Khao San road for a bit before our adventure to find a hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Tony’s. Liz’s brother had studied abroad in Bangkok a couple years ago and gave her a list of places to visit and a very special restaurant that she must find! The directions were hilarious. We hailed a tuk-tuk to take us as close as possible to the address given, but as always, it dropped us in a random spot and said we were close. We then relied on her brother’s instructions that sounded something like this, “near the canal, no sign, 3 tables under a roof.”
Guess what? We found it… and it was delicious! It was Indian food which I’m pretty unfamiliar with so I let Liz do the ordering for us. She tried to explain Roti to me and I was more than happy to find out it was basically a tortilla. Oh how I’ve missed tortillas! We ordered butter chicken, some veggies, and paneer (spicy soup with chunks of cheese). So good!
We headed back to the hostel and I explained to her that I had high hopes on still getting a massage in before bed. She was totally in to join and had never had a full body massage before! We got back to the hostel and took a shower before heading to the nearby massage place. As soon as we got to the showers we heard the rain hit outside. Wow! Partially perfect timing since it held off for us to get back, but not so good for our walk to the massage. We met back downstairs to wait it out but were worried the place would close soon, so we made a run for it in the rain!
Best decision ever. Have you ever had a massage right before bedtime during a thunderstorm? It was a definite success! We said our goodbyes back at the hostel and went our ways to bed.
Day 33: Cambodia, Why Not?
I woke up and found Abby waiting in the lobby just as planned! We hadn’t seen each other in a week and her phone conveniently decided to stop working a day before we were trying to meet back up with each other. Thankfully her laptop and facebook messenger did the trick! After a ferry and night bus from Koh Phi Phi she arrived at my lobby about 6am exhausted.
A few minutes later we came to the conclusion that we both wanted to explore another place for a few days before meeting my Texas friend, Ema, back in Bangkok. After both hearing great things about Cambodia from other travelers we decided it was the perfect destination, so we booked a flight for that afternoon!
We grabbed breakfast at a trendy little place next door to the hostel and had some delicious coffees & breakfast. To kill a bit more time we walked over to Khao San Rd for some shopping. I finally found my nephew-on-the-way the perfect gift! We left for the airport in disbelief that we would be in a new country in a matter of hours and we had both done so little research on it. Our backpacker friends along the way have shared many good stories about Angkor Wat and the Siem Reap area, so we trusted it’d be a good use of time!
A quick 1 hour flight later we landed at the tiniest airport. We walked inside and were surprised to find a very smooth process for obtaining your visa. We handed them our application (given on the plane) as well as $34 and our passport. It took about 5 minutes before our visa and passport were handed back to us at the next checkpoint. Then it was pretty basic as we proceeded through the next counters before exiting. Oh and customs was quite hilarious. It was nonexistent. We followed the signs for the customs counter and ended up outside at the taxi pickup. Apparently there was a drop box just inside the door that you put your customs declaration sheet into… so strange!
We got a tuk-tuk for $6 to our hostel. (We are realizing that everything is in USD here. So odd! All menus and prices are in USD but they will give you back their currency, Riel, as change back.) 20 minutes later we arrived at Central Hostel. A newly constructed hostel that seemed nice enough. Our 6 bed ladies dorm was about $5 a night.
Next stop Pub Street! When you search what to do in Siem Reap the most common mentions are Angkor Wat and Pub St. Our hostel was a short 5 minute walk to the street and we were pleased to find it had a huge neon light that read, “Happy Halloween.” Good to know we would possibly be celebrating tomorrow night! We walked along the road lined with fun little bars, live music, and awesome prices! Beers for 50 cents were everywhere, but we managed to find a place for 25 cents if we ordered an appetizer. We sat here for about 2 hours talking to a friendly English couple, drinking, and eating garlic bread… final combined tab $4.00. Hahaha, I love this place!
We left in search of a Mexican food restaurant we had passed earlier on the tuk tuk to our hostel. Success! This place looked so good. We hadn’t tried Mexican food abroad yet, but this place looked great and had lots of people eating here. A beef burrito later and some sangria made me one happy girl!
Day 34: Angkor Wat
Alarm clock rang at 4:30am as we pulled ourselves out of bed to meet our tuk tuk pickup. We had arranged a tour the day before with our airport driver to see Angkor Wat today ($20) and wanted to be there for sunrise.
It was a peaceful and cool ride about 20 minutes to the Angkor Wat ticket booth where we purchased $20 one-day passes. He then dropped us off at the temple to go explore for a couple hours and gave us a meeting time to find him for the next destination. We were surprised at the amount of people already here. Apparently the sunrise tours are quite common, but it was still extra nice to be there before it was too hot and it was very quiet as everyone found their spot to watch the sunrise.
An hour or so later we were finished walking the temple and sat down for some breakfast at a booth outside the temple. 007 to be exact. “Licensed to Coffee” the man told us as he begged us to come to his booth and not the others. We ate and walked out to meet our tuk tuk only to be stood up for almost an hour. Rookie Mistake – we paid the guy upfront and were now pretty sure he just wasn’t coming back. Sure enough though he finally showed and was super apologetic that an emergency had come up.
Next stop was Bayon Temple or the temple of many faces. It was really pretty! Everywhere you looked were neat face carvings coming out of the walls. This one took us about 30 minutes to walk through. We met our tuk tuk at the exit and we enjoyed a cool drive through the tree-lined streets to our next destination.
We arrived at Ta Prohm Temple (or the one from Tomb Raider) after a 10 minute or so ride. The tree roots are absolutely wild as they have grown around the walls of this temple. A very cool sight to see!
This concluded what our tuk tuk had planned for us and we could either request more areas or head back to the hostel. The heat was becoming quite stifling in our temple clothing (pants and shaw) so we decided to head back. Exhausted from our sunrise wake up call we laid down for a quick nap before tackling the rest of the afternoon.
We walked down to the hostel lobby for a late lunch of stir fried veggies and chicken over rice, spring rolls, and some .50 cent drinks… how do you avoid these? Dropped off some laundry and went exploring the markets for halloween costume ideas. Absolutely nothing. Guess we’d just be backpackers!
Back at the hostel we got ready for the night. We heard there’d be face painting on Pub St so that helped with the costumes! I had an all black outfit so I went with being a cat… duh. And Abby had me braid her hair as a fun change of pace and planned to get tiger face paint. Just before we left a huge rainstorm hit, so we waited it out on our hostel balcony having deep talks and pondering life. And soaking up travel wisdom from our newest hostel roommate, a 62 year old lady that was on her last 4 months of traveling the world in 1 year. Mad respect.
We walked over to Pub St and the music was pounding. Not only were all the bars full of people, but the whole street was blocked off with a DJ and it was a huge dance floor. We checked out a couple of recommended bars: Angkor Wat? and Temple. Both were fun and so packed! We ended up on Temple’s 3rd floor rooftop for awhile just watching the madness below.
Day 35: Spa Day
Have you ever been massaged for 3 hours? It’s a sure fire way to feel like straight up royalty. Pretty fantastic! After some smoothies and an adventurous search through Old Market for nail polish we landed ourselves at a massage place a little off the beaten path. The menu showed a 3 part package for $32. 1 hour facial, 1 hour oil massage, 30 minutes foot reflexology (and by request 30 minutes playing with my hair) totaling 3 hours of massaging for under $40. Okay, I’m sold.
After this we were just absolutely famished from our exhausting day, so we treated ourselves to some pizza at a place Abby found to be recommended online, The Pizza Company. Delicious, but expensive. Thin crust pepperoni for the win. Back at the hostel we found a new roomie arrival, Emily, from Canada. We realized our travel plans for the next month were pretty similar, so I have a feeling we’ll being seeing a lot of each other. She has been traveling solo for a few weeks and is meeting her boyfriend in Bangkok in a couple days. (Side note: This is becoming quite common that we run into people we have met traveling… like in different countries. Checking out of Once Again I ran into some guys I met in Koh Phangan a couple weeks earlier. And a couple more people from Koh Phangan ended up being two seats in front of us on our flight to Cambodia. It’s wild and neat!)
It’s about this time that my day really took a turn for the worst. I had finally won food poison roulette! (Abby was sick last week, and I’ve heard countless other stories from basically everyone I’ve come to know on this trip.) It was finally my turn and it was the worst night ever. A trash can and I became best of friends after 3 hours on the hostel balcony together. I definitely needed my own room and bathroom to handle this situation or I’d never get any sleep. I was on the top bunk, so trying to lay down wasn’t even an option. I was too weak to climb it and would never make it back down in time for the next episode.
Abby to the rescue! She went down the million flights of stairs to the lobby and got me a private room for the night. She helped me pack up all my things and walk them down to the first floor to my new room. I would have never made it off that balcony if it weren’t for her! Forever grateful for you girl!
A couple hours later I finally passed out in my own room of 6 beds. Haha. They were out of the private rooms that resemble a hotel room with 1-2 beds, so they blocked off an entire 6 bed dorm room for me to have to myself.
Day 36: Out of Commission
Wow! I felt so much better after sleeping a full night. However, I was still not back to normal and judging on others’ stories I’d need at least a day of rest to regain muscle strength and energy.
Lots of sleeping, blogging, and Netflix later I met Abby in the lobby for a late lunch. Some steamed rice and fresh coconut juice went down quite smoothly. Our tuk tuk was scheduled to pick us up shortly for a tour of the nearby Floating Village. Our roommate, Emily, was also joining us. However, after finding out that this was a 40 minute ride there and a 3 hour boat tour I just couldn’t commit. I was too scared to be away from a bathroom for that long even though I’d been feeling much better.
So here I sit alone in my creepily empty 6 bed dorm. 🙂 It’s 5pm and I think Forrest Gump is calling my name before bed. YOLO.
Day 37: Goodbye Cambodia!
Thanks for the food poisoning, but I think I’ll head back to Bangkok now! Siem Reap was a really cool area. Unfortunately I didn’t get to explore as much as I would have liked, but I really enjoyed our hostel area. Pub Street was fun and a blast for Halloween. The Angkor Wat temples were an incredible sight and huge! The Old Market and Night Market are also great places to walk through near Pub Street. And I’ve heard great things about the Floating Village although I did not partake! It’s really nice how close everything was here to walk around. I recommend staying near Pub St and just taking tuk tuks if you need to go further.
Off to meet an old college accounting friend of mine in Bangkok! Woohoo!
Wander On,
SK
Yay for food poisoning encouraging you to take a day of rest! You are making me tired just reading about your schedule! I have massage envy. Thanks.