Journey To Cambodia

I've been back from Cambodia for a week and a half now. It feels much longer though. That goes to show that I'm back to MY reality again. The time difference didn't affect me as much as when I went to Cambodia. In fact, it posed no difficulty for me at all. It was when I came back that it really affected me. For about a week I slept at around three or four in the morning! I still sleep at around two or three, which totally sucks!! On the day I flew back home I got sick. I guess the dessert I ate the night before got me sick. I was thinking the flight home was a lot better than the flight to Cambodia until half way through it. I woke up about two thirds way through the flight with wierd movements in my stomach. It didn't ache or anything. It was more like crazy stomach growling without the growling noise. Then when we were getting served breakfast the smell of the food made me nauseous and gave me a headache. I thought it was from lack of sleep on the plane since I stayed up to watch movies while everyone else were sleeping. Well, I ended up throwing up twice on the plane. I made it to the bathroom the first time, but I didn't the second time. I didn't have anything in my stomach so only stomach acid came out. When we got to the airport I threw up again after we passed through the first phase of customs. Luckily I took an extra barf bag from the plane. I also threw up in the car on the way home and several more times at home. The first thing I did when I got home was hop into my bed. I couldn't eat or sit and stand upright without wanting to throw up. That was just the first day though. The following day and for about week I had diarrhea. I was also out of it because I couldn't eat. It made me weak and light-headed. I knew after the first day of throwing up that it wasn't from motion sickness. I'm better now though and no more diarrhea!

I've been meaning to update on my last segment of the trip. I didn't keep a written journal so I'll try to remember what I can. We spent four days and three nights in Siem Reap. On the first day we just visited a bunch of my grand-aunt's relatives in Dom Dek, a district/village on the way to Siem Reap. My grand-aunt and grandma reunited with an aunt of their's after 30 years.

Well, our first full day in Siem Reap was spent at Phnom Kulen and a brief stop at the Banteay Srei temple. The temple was a lot smaller than I thought. It is said to have the most intricate and beautiful carvings, but I think all the temples have amazing stone carvings. That evening the sky was too cloudy to go up Phnom Bakheng to witness the sunset over Angkor. On the third day we started at Banteay Kdei, then to Ta Prohm where I was really excited about. This is one of the temples featured in the movie Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. Of course the other temple being the Angkor Wat. What I like about Ta Prohm is its clash with mother nature. Abandoned for many, many years the jungle engulfed part of the stone temple. It is said that the trees may even be supporting the ancient stone structures together. It is just an amazing site to see. Our next stop was at Ta Keo, a temple that was never finished during it's time as apparent from it's lack of any carvings. It actually looked like a minature Angkor Wat to me. From there we did a brief stop at a section of Angkor Thom where we were led to another popular temple, the Bayon. This temple is one of the more interesting one because of the 216 smiling Bayon faces. The faces aren't as obvious outside the temple walls, but as you step inside and go up the stone steps the faces suddenly appear from all directions. I loved it there. We took a lunch break between this and the next temple, which was the long awaited Angkor Wat. You couldn't really see the towers of the Angkor Wat from outside the moat that surrounds it until you get to the front. After a tiring half a day touring the other temples I initially wasn't as excited as we approached the Angkor Wat, but as soon as those five central towers popped into view, something awoke me from inside and I was in awe. It was smaller than I had imagined, but it's still huge. I took a lot of pictures there. I wanted to keep the memories and emotions I felt in those pictures. However, because I invested so much time into taking pictures I never really got to soak in everything that was around me. That is the one thing I regretted. I wish we didn't rush through all the temples just to get pictures. That evening we missed the chance to go up Phnom Bakheng again to see the sunset. It was still cloudy, but there was a hole in the sky where you could see the sun piercing through. We ended up watching the sun set from our car as we left the temples. On the the fourth day we stopped by the Bayon again for the experience of riding an elephant. Then we briefly checked out Preah Khan and Neak Pean temples. We took another lunch break near a reservoir and then headed to the Siem Reap Cambodian Cultural Village in the evening to watch robams (traditional classical and folk dancing). Boy there were a lot of misquitoes that night. I was glad I had a long sleeve coat, but my capri pants didn't save my legs too well. On our last day we head back towards Dom Dek for a bonn my grand-aunt had for her aunt at a wat her father helped fund and built. That took up much of the day before we headed back to Phnom Penh where I was to fly home in a day and half.