The early bird is quickly tired

Good morning!

In the last few days, we had a scene change. But let's start on October 16th, which was our penultimate working day. Together with Annalina and Mara, we decided that we would like to invite our colleagues from the clinic to a farewell dinner. So we met in the evening with almost all of them at the restaurant where they wanted to order typical Cambodian dishes for all of us. Well, typical Cambodian food apparently sometimes jumps off the plate, so we were quite glad that there was also some amok and that we had ordered a portion of fried noodles. Overall, there was a lot of fish and seafood.

The next day, unfortunately, there wasn't much to do, but quitting time came quickly. They had presented us with very sweet certificates as a farewell and even included pictures for each individual. Thank you very much for the wonderful time at Minimolars!

We had to hurry since we had to catch our bus to Siem Reap. So it was a quick but heartfelt goodbye to Annalina and Mara (the two are heading to Vietnam) and off to the apartment to grab our things. The bus ride took 6 hours, and afterwards, we were completely exhausted.

We were unbelievably warmly welcomed at the hotel and taken to our large, beautiful room. There was a little something for dinner, and during that, we watched the movie 'First They Killed My Father', produced by Angelina Jolie. During the filming of Tomb Raider, she learned a lot about the time of the Khmer Rouge and made a film about it—from the perspective of a child. It is highly recommended if you want to know what happened back then, but it is definitely not for a fun evening.

Saturday was supposed to be a day of relaxation. After breakfast by the pool, we simply wanted to do nothing. However, we quickly got bored and decided to go into town and stroll through the markets and little shops. After all, you can really find nice Christmas gifts and small souvenirs there.

In the evening, we had an early dinner because we had booked a sunrise tour to the temples for the next morning.

At 4:30 am on Sunday morning, the alarm clock rang. We left at 5 am with the TukTuk. But it was worth it. Just in time for sunrise, we stood in front of Angkor Wat, one of the largest Hindu temples in the world.

Simply incredibly impressive in size, it was originally built in honor of the god Vishnu, which is why the three towers have this special conical shape. This is how Vishnu's head is supposed to have looked. While we strolled through the temple afterwards (we still hadn't seen everything within 2 hours), the temple seemed strangely familiar to us. And yes, we were right: the film Transformers includes scenes that were filmed here.

The tour continued to several smaller temples and concluded with another really large temple: the Ta Prohm Temple. Significantly worse preserved and partly reclaimed by nature, it is no less impressive than Angkor Wat. This one was also well-known: Tomb Raider.

After traveling for almost 5 hours, we asked the driver to drop us off at a café in the city. There, Feli had a large coffee and we both had a late breakfast. Recharged, we strolled through the markets one more time and finally landed in a massage salon for a foot massage (extremely pleasant after 15,000 steps!).

Back at the hotel, we were surprised by the offer of a complimentary 3-course dinner. We agreed and wanted to spend the time until then at the pool, but nature had other plans. After treating us to a painfully humid heat all day, every cloud now emptied itself. So, I spent most of my time in the room while Feli switched between the pool and the room. At 6:30 pm, we were served our menu.

This morning, we wanted to sleep in; Feli was awake from 6 am and I followed at 8 am. After a great breakfast, we are now still lying by the pool until we switch hotels later. See you soon!