Day 120 – Siem Reap to Vientiane, LAOS BOUND!

Our flight was at 10am so we got to the airport about 8am. It was quite a small airport and we were able to check in straight away. We went through to the other side and our choice for breakfast was rice, noodles etc, ice cream or a sandwich, so we went for the last option. Not really what I wanted but I did want something and it seemed the most logical option. I did end up buying an ice cream before 9am though… it just looked so good!

We had a propeller plane and it was probably the smallest plane I’ve ever been on (minus the skydiving ones). It was great though, only about 8 passengers on board, we got given a ‘light snack’ and the pilot called the one woman his cabin crew, wouldn’t class one person as a crew. The flight was about an hour to Pakse and we left about half an hour earlier than scheduled. I hope my luck with planes continues! We then sat in Pakse for a couple of hours and sorted out our Laos visa, which was super easy and took no time at all. We then got on another plane (probably the same one), which took us to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. The belt your bags come out of was one straight line about 5m long… such a terrible system. Our bags were last of course. We then jumped in a taxi to take us to our hostel. Vientiane seemed very quiet and not like a city at all and our first impression was not wrong.

Our hostel was in the middle of nowhere and after going on a walk around we discovered Vientiane is a nothing place. All the shops were shut or run down, we didn’t really see any other people apart from in cars, this place was just really weird. We were going to stay 2 nights but decided to cut our loses and book a bus out of here! We went back to the hostel for a bit and looked online for somewhere to eat. The number one on Trip advisor was some burger/Mexican place called ‘Rays Grille’ and it really did look awesome, so we went on a hunt for dinner! We eventually found it and it was that busy we even had to wait 10minutes for a table! Once again Trip Advisor didn’t disappoint!

Day 119 – Quadbike Sunset Tour.

Emily and Cara left today and it already feels a little bit weird without them. We travelled the whole of Cambodia with them and kept bumping into them along the way in Vietnam too. We spent the morning chilling by the pool and soon enough it was lunchtime, so we went on the hunt for some cheap food. Instead of going to the usual area we went down a random side road instead where the food is half the price. We spent $7.90 on lunch, 90? Why? Why not just make it $8, 10c means nothing to us out here! Anyway… I also woke up with a terrible cough and cold this morning, first time being a bit ill in nearly 5 months, think I’ve done alright! So next stop was to a pharmacy for some tablets, hopefully they’ll do the trick.

When researching Cambodia and Siem Reap, I read a lot of people’s favourite thing to do was the sunset quad bike tour. To save a little bit of money and to make it more fun, Chrissy and I decided to share the quad bike and take it in turns to drive it. We got given big helmets with visas and a mask to cover our nose and mouth. We drove along sand tracks, through fields, it is by far my favourite thing I’ve done in Cambodia! We had such a laugh and on the journey back when Chrissy was driving we decided that to make it better we needed music, this wasn’t going to happen so we just sang random songs instead! Loved every minute!

Day 118 – Angkor Wat and Temples.

We woke up to a knock at our door… oh crap! Our alarm didn’t go off, or if it did it certainly didn’t wake us up. So we had Cara and Emily banging on our door just gone 5am. The reason we were up so early was to go and watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat temple.

Angkor Wat is the world’s largest religious building. There are three main temples, the other two are Bayon and Ta Prohm. Unfortunately the weather was quite cloudy so the sunrise was very disappointing. I don’t know whether it was that or that this building just looks more impressive in photos than in real life, but I wasn’t that amazed by it.

We walked around the grounds for a bit before making our way back to our driver. We hired a tuk tuk for the day, which is needed as these temples are quite far apart from each other. Next stop was the Bayon temple. There are 216 faces of Avalokiteshvara watching you as you walk around; wooden stairs have been added, as like all of the temples we saw this day, because although there are always restoration works happening, these temples are falling apart/eroding day by day. Bayon was my favourite one of the day because there were a lot of carvings on the walls and I felt this temple had more of a story than the other two.

Last stop of the day was at Ta Prohm, the most famous among tourists because it was used in the Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones’ Two Brothers movies. It was built in the 12^th century and has mostly been left as ruins instead of restoring it.

It was about 11am (even if it did feel about 4pm!) and we were templed out! We got back to the hostel, had a quick nap, grabbed some lunch and didn’t do a lot for the afternoon. We went out for dinner around 6pm and looked in the night markets along the way, probably one of the best markets we’ve been to so far and I didn’t even buy anything!

Day 117 – Siem Reap.

I didn’t sleep that well as the aircon was so overpowering I was frozen, which is the complete opposite to the last 3 nights sleep. We arrived in a dumpsite just before 7am, obviously meaning we had to get a tuk tuk into the city to our accommodation. I’ve got to hand it to them, these bus companies know how to make money, it was a dollar each but still! Like in Phnom Penh we’re staying at the Mad Monkey hostel, which nearly every person I’ve met has told me to stay in, it’s got a pool so why wouldn’t we?

We couldn’t check in until midday but that didn’t matter as we just lounged around sunbathing and chilling in the pool until we could. This hostel was slightly weird though, as a private double room was cheaper than a dorm, in a way it was quite nice to have our own space seeing as I haven’t reorganised my bag in a while and I had acuminated quite a bit of washing. Our hostel wanted to charge us $2 per kilo, which is expensive, so we went around the corner where they wanted to charge $1.50 but I knew I had seen it for $1 so we started to walk off to find somewhere else when they called us back and accepted our offer of $1 a kilo. I knew you haggle for a lot of things in Asia but I didn’t realise I could barter for laundry as well!

After our strenuous day we decided to explore the local area. We found pub street, an ice cream parlor to hang in for a bit and a cheap massage. We went for a neck, shoulder and back massage, which was alright, it was funny experience for us 4 girls to partake in. We then wondered back to get changed before going out for dinner and meeting the boys for drinks in pub street.