Cambodia - a brief history of ancient ruins and crowded islands

So... now, if you're thinking that I've changed countries again because of the title... Well... What can I say, you're absolutely right...😏

It's Thursday, January 19, 2017.

Two days ago, we crossed the Cambodian border.

For that, we had to pay an entrance fee of 37 dollars.

In return, we got a 30-day visa in our passports....

After an 11-hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Siem Reap.

Due to extreme tiredness (is that even a word?🤔), we didn't manage to explore our new surroundings.

But we planned to make up for it on the next day...

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Next day.

The calendar says January 18, 2017.

We were fresh and ready to go at 8:30 am.

You probably all know Siem Reap.

...Either because you've already been there. (Bro🙏💙)

...Or because you plan to go there...

...Or because you know about the city through general information flow.

It is mainly known for its huge temple complex.

The Angkor Archaeological Park.

Where you can find the Elvis of temples.

The King.

ANGKOR WAT.

Practically part of the tourist must-see program.

And yes... we also wanted to witness the enormity there.

Since we knew that it was not feasible to walk, we rented a tuk-tuk driver for the tour, who took us to all the temples we wanted to see and then waited for us outside...

It was scorching hot.

That's a preface. 

And as impressive as it all was....

Neither of us is really into archaeology.

After the first one, it wasn't like we had to hold our hearts.

Yes, it was impressive. 

And yes, we thought it was great to experience it, but when we reached the 2nd temple, skipped the 3rd one, and the 4th one didn't blow us away, we just wanted to see the most famous temple and then we were done.

Call us philistines, ignorant, or blasphemous. 😇

But for us, it was really just something to check off. ✅✅✅

For the driver, it was probably the shortest tour ever.

But since we had agreed on a fixed price, it was still a win-win situation. 😎

.............................................. 

The rest of the day, we spent walking around, eating, drinking lots of shakes, and strolling through markets.

Here, there is a street called Pub Street.

I think I don't need to say more about that.

The Simon-Dach-Str.

The La Rambla of Cambodia.

And hey, whoever told me back then that Cambodia is cheap,... they must have been in a different Cambodia than we were. 😏

So far, it is by far the most expensive country we have been to. 

German price level. 

Sometimes even significantly higher. 

And what's really strange is that here the dollar is worth more than the euro. 

Maybe we just don't understand it, but when we had money sent to us via Western Union, we got less dollars for the euro. 

It was the other way around in Vietnam... 

(If someone can explain it to me, please make a sound!...) 

On the other hand, we have seen how poor some of the people are.

And how some of them pass the time...

And THAT really shocked us, touched us, and stuck with us.

We were just on our way to a supermarket when 3 boys passed us.

I guess they were between 6 and 9 years old.

Dirty skin.

Torn clothes.

Each of them had a plastic bag in their hand

In each bag was a can of varnish.

And now guess what they did with it!

.......

Exactly.

.......

Man, they had such glassy eyes and a seriously absent expression.

Those were little children!

Totally high!!

Totally lost.

Jule and I really couldn't believe it and we're still talking about it.... 

That sight really left a deep impression and will probably always stay with us.

It was just wrong.

Cruel. Sad. Wrong. 

And a few hours later, we unfortunately had another encounter that touched us in a similar way.

As we were waiting for the bus, a small family passed by us.

Mother, son, daughter.

Behind us was a pile of garbage and they headed towards it.

As if it were the most normal thing in the world, they all looked with practiced eyes to see if they could find anything valuable in it.

Again, the children were almost black with dirt.

They looked like a well-rehearsed team.

I imagined that they probably do this every day...

But 3 minutes later, more children came.

Alone.

Without a mother.

2 girls and 1 boy.

Again, not older than 9.

And they also went straight to the garbage.

Their little faces were so dirty.

I don't need to say anything about their clothes...

Jule first gave them some cookies, which they gratefully accepted.

In the end, I gave them 1 dollar and never thought how much a child could be happy about 1 dollar.

And this experience itself was intense.

I'm not naive or anything.

I know that Cambodia is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world.

We know about the history of Cambodia and we didn't come here and expect it to be like Dubai or something.

But to unexpectedly be confronted with this harsh reality in a complete tourist area, we just didn't see that coming in that moment.

It really hit us hard. (in a negative sense, of course)

We would have loved to put the kids in our suitcase and take them with us.

But overall, we felt comfortable in Cambodia from the beginning.

The people are very lovely.

Helpful.

The weather is great and from a landscape perspective (at least what we have seen today), it's amazing.

So we only stayed for 1 night and yesterday evening we got on another bus.

We wanted to go to the beach.

It's been too long, we thought.

So off to Sihanoukville.

I heard and read that it's beautiful there.

But it's also 13 hours away. 😴

Alright.

We accepted it.

The journey was annoying, long, and seemed really endless.

When we arrived, we quickly booked a ticket to KOH RONG and headed to the island, which is about a 45-minute high-speed ferry ride from the actual destination.

Guys:

I've never seen water so turquoise. 

Crystal clear.

Never seen such a white sandy beach.

Well, I know.

I am also a part of tourism.

But it doesn't make it any better for me. :)

So many tourists.

So many bars and cafes next to each other on what should be an amazing beach.

Mega loud music from every corner.

You hear everything at once, and no... it's total sensory overload.

It's not as built-up as in Mui Ne, for example.

You can walk along the water and be stopped only by rocks.

But there are simply no free spots on the beach.

It was difficult to take pictures because there were literally millions of people just millimeters away from us in any direction. 

All those pseudo-cool loud backpackers and other party people... 

Welcome to the Ballermann of Southeast Asia!! 😑

Not what we want.

Not what we expected.

Not what we read in blogs about how it's supposed to be here...

Well.

Now we're sitting on an island that would really be dreamy if we could just zap away the other people here....

We have been traveling for over 4.5 weeks now and had enough adventure. 

We want to chill. 

We either had rain all the time or were sitting in buses and trains or jumping through caves and running through the jungle. 

So a few days at the beach can't hurt, we thought...

But unfortunately, we can't really chill here.... 

...by the way, the ferry ticket cost 20 dollars and since we're already here....  ;)

So we rented a really shabby accommodation here for 12 dollars and tomorrow morning at 10 am we'll take the first ferry back to the originally planned destination.

Keep your fingers crossed that we'll like it better there. :)

Goodbye and greetings from Jule, me, and our first world problems. 😘