Of course Kyle and I got a later start than we wanted to, but we got up and had breakfast at our wonderful hotel, which is included! I had muesli with fresh fruit and milk, and I added a poached egg with toast. Kyle had fresh fruit with yogurt and a banana pancake. When my egg came it was actually two eggs, and then I was stuffed. We went back to the room to get ready to explore, and I feel asleep on the bed while Kyle uploaded some of our pictures. Finally we set out, the hotel hooked us up with a tuk-tuk driver (Mr. T) for the day for only $13. He first took us to Angkor Wat, which is so big and amazing. You can see from the pictures, it is hard to describe it. But there were a lot of Korean tourist, and children running up to us to get us to buy something from them. This first day we learned a lot about the game/job these kids do. The boys all seem to be named Spider Boy, and they try to get you to buy postcards, book, cold drinks, t-shirts, anything really. When you look at them or even say no, it makes it worse and then continue to hound you. This may sound cold but I try to see them like little bugs that are buzzing around my head, and I just try to ignore them. Kyle is so much kinder than I am in general, he has a hard time with this. When I try to tell him to ignore them, he says "But they are so cute!" And I realize then that I don't even look at them, this is probably why they bug Kyle much more than me. On the way out of Angkor one, very cute little girl walked with me for quite a ways trying to get me to buy 10 post cards for $1, she counted them out for me, I was impressed that she could count that high in English at such a young age, so I told her if she could count to 15 that I would buy them from her, but of course she had no idea what I was saying or how to count that high, finally when the rain started to pour she ran back to her station. We ate some fried rice and pork curry at a little restaurant type place that our driver recommended to us. It was good, but in the back of my mind I am always worried about getting sick.
The rain didn't last very long, and we found our driver and headed to the next destination. Angkor Thom, was the next place and had some interesting things to see. I won't go into too much detail since I was bored and so recounting it here will only be boring for me again and for my readers. Don't get me wrong, it is amazing to see, but just take a look at the pictures, or better yet come here to witness it yourselves! I wish we would have gotten an English speaking guide to take us around so that what we were seeing would mean more to us.
Anyway, after that we saw some more temples, we were going to go back by Angkor to watch the famous sunset, but because of the rain there we tons of mosquitoes and clouds, so we decided to catch it another day since we had bought a 3 day pass to all the temples. Mr. T took us back to our hotel where we showered, had a cocktail by the pool, and then went to dinner. I had been dying to try the local Amok fish, that is wrapped and cooking in banana leaves with coconut milk and lemon grass. I expected it to be a whole fish but what I got was more like a stir-fry/stew with rice on the side. The flavor was amazing, but very not very many chunks of fish in it. I had Angkor beer with my meal, which filled me up and I wasn't able to eat that much. Kyle struck up conversations with the people who sat at the table next to us, first the Korean couple and then after they left (we sat there for quite a while) a couple from Vienna, which in Vienna they get at least 5 weeks vacation every year, this couple had been all over the world! the Koreans were very cute (Koreans are the largest population of tourist to Cambodia, not sure why but the next highest is half of how many Koreans come, if that makes sense) the guy of the couple told us about how worried he was when his girlfriend went off by herself at one point that day, Kyle commiserated with him about this while the girlfriend and I just looked at each other like the guys were being over-protective. Dinner was good, and the same little boy kept coming up to our table, we were seated right by the alley, and trying to get us to buy stuff, or play a game with him. After the third time he came back Kyle finally relented and played tic-tak-toe with him. If he won then we had to buy a post card, but if Kyle won then he would leave us alone. Well Kyle won, and the boy called it a draw, so they played again, and Kyle let him win, and paid him about $3 USD for 2 postcards, the boys face lit up, he was so happy. Then he ran off because he spotted the security guard that walks around shooing off the children.
After dinner we went back to the hotel, and went to bed. Mandy, someone from the US who is working on a research project here, invited us along with her guide the next day, but they were leaving at 4am to catch the sunrise at Angkor. We should get some rest then for the long day, but of course I felt like we were imposing, the rest of her group wasn't there when she invited us, plus that is really early. So Kyle and I slept in a little, but we had to be ready for our driver at 8am, so really we couldn't sleep in that long!
