June 9, 2014

Siem Reap

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Angkor Wat, Asia, Cambodia, Drinking, NovaTOURient, siem reap

I’ve fallen in love with Siem Reap. As a long term traveller, it’s just nice to rest your head in one place for a while, and Siem Reap seem perfect for just that: small enough to get around, yet lively enough to keep us entertained.

Our first day is dedicated to sightseeing. Clem, the guy working at the hostel, drives us to see Angkor Wat, Bayom Temple and the tomb featured in Tomb Raider. While it takes a “normal” tourist several hours to look around, it takes us under 2. Clem laughs at us and called us lazy, while he starts the tuk tuk and heads back to Angkor Wonder Hotel. And then it starts to rain. I guess our laziness is really just a good instinct.

Tried to be Lara Croft and failed

After the now mandatory nap, we go check out the night market. I buy some gifts for my family – only the ladies, since I am shit at picking out presents for guys. I buy stuff like pillow cases, scented candles and jewelry. For dinner, we head to the pub street and eat at Temple, a bar/restaurant that has an Apsara dance show. They have beautiful girls in the heavy khmer dress I got to wear in Phnom Penh just slowly dancing to traditional songs, and every now and then they switch it up and do a fun coconut dance with a group of guys.

The next day, we get massages and pedicures. Sometimes I can be a total lady. I am talking to the really nice ladies in the salon and they tell me my chin cleft is cute. That’s a first.
At night, we go to Little Italy and get pizzas and a bottle of white wine – so naturally we also get a tiramisu and pana cotta too. By the time we are finished, we still have a bit of wine left but are too drunk to have it at the table, so I pour it into my water bottle, because I am classy. Shut up. We basically pass out after that.

We sleep for ages and have breakfast at noon. After that, I walk around town looking for the Angkor Hospital for Children, and of course I get lost. I find a hospital and ask some locals for help, but they don’t understand me and it’s awkward and everyone’s staring at me. Someone points me to the right hospital eventually, though. When I finally find it, a lady at the desk tells me to come back an hour later, as the guards who will escort me to the lab are on lunch break. I walk back to the hostel and relax for a while before I drag my lazy butt back to the hospital.

A guard takes me through the big outdoor area, where lots of families sit with their kids in their laps, staring at me like I am an alien. I’m pretty uncomfortable, mostly since I feel like my presence is making their misery a tourist thing. I meet with another guard that takes me to the lab way in the back of the hospital premises. The lab has a waiting hallway and two cubicles; one for taking the children’s blood samples, and one for blood donations. The lab itself is behind the cubicles.

I get a form to fill out, and then a nurse takes a blood sample to see if my blood can be used. Then I am laying on a bed, being drained for blood. Only 350 ml, but it takes quite some time. I am feeling a bit lightheaded and have a strong urge to giggle, all while I can hear children crying and screaming only three metres away from me, and families are waiting out in the hallway, looking at me with great interest – the door isn’t closed. You’d think they are checking to see if my blood is a different color than theirs. Half an hour later, the doctor gives me a coke, some crackers and a T-shirt. I relaxe a little bit in the cubicle before heading out again – this time by myself, which just makes people stare at me even more.

I go back home and have a long nap, feeling pretty good about myself. Days prior to it, I had finally taken out the (healed!) piercing that has been infected since Thailand and went off my antibiotics and malaria pills – and of course alcohol. While that is normally not good enough, the hospitals here are so desperate to recieve blood because of the dengue fever outbreak, that they accept everyone as long as they are healthy. They seem grateful that I went through the “trouble”, and I don’t see any other donors or westeners around for that matter in the hour I am there. So if anyone plan on going to Siem Reap, please donate, they really need your help!

I’m really trying to diet lately, and we’ve been on salads mostly, which we order the next day while having lunch on pub street. I need a drink after being off the wagon for almost a week, and one thing leads to another – we get drunk and decide to have pizza – after our lunch! We go to Il Forno and share a pizza and some wine. Then we decide to eat dessert at Little Italy. We are super wasted at 5 in the afternoon, giggling and falling over stuff back at the hostel. I’m sure Clem thinks we were hilarious. When we wake up from the nap we obviously just had, it’s 10 at night. So we go for happy pizza. Now, that means that they put weed on the pizza. While I am only feeling a bit lightheaded, we go for drinks on pub street and we run into Edda! I end up drinking with her and her Irish friend Amanda until around 2 at night, when we all decide that it’s sleepy time. It hasn’t been a very eventful night, other than that everyone starts dancing on the pub street and then I go home and apparently creat a profile on an interracial dating site. Whoops. I definitely delete that when I wake up, I promise.