Emotional goodbyes
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2004
1
18
53
Trip End
Aug 15, 2005
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Saturday, December 4, 2004
We ended up staying a week in Angkor Pradise guest house in Siem Reap and what a fantastic time we had. We all agreed that out of all the places we'd been to, this place was the most enjoyable. This was mainly due to the lads at the guest house and the Cambodain people in general. Most nights were spent with Tangly, Tong Hat and Mato at the guest house. On the 2nd to last night, after 3 jug-fulls of Mato's Cambodian wine, and more Khmer lessons (ooh ooh ooh we can count to 20 in Khmer now!! Get a load of this: moy, pe, bey, boen, bram, brammoy, brampe, brambey, bramboen, dawp, dawpmoy, dawppe, dawpbey, dawpboen, dawpbram, dawpbrammoy, dawpbrampe, dawpbrambey, dawpbramboen, pey) we decided to teach them a very useful English word. which goes a little something like this: Supercalafrajalisticexpealidocious, followed of course by the next line.
Angkor Wat
All I can say is - hysterical! After a few attemps (in the end we wrote it down for them) they were spot on! They kept practicing it on and off all night in a strange Cambodain accent getting everyone in stitches. That night, a bus load of tourists arrived at the guest house. Some fuming, some resigned to the fact they have no choice but to stay there. Basically, what happens is that Tong Hat gets on the bus (the same one we were on 5 days previously) just past the Thai/Cambodian border, gets chatting to people and explains to one or 2 friendly faces that the bus will drop you off at his guest house (which is 2 kilometres from the main centre - unbeknown to everyone at the time) So you get there late at night, seeing how far away it is from the centre, and knowing Cambodia's not the safest place to walk around at night, especially with all your belongings, you either get angry and storm off or you stay in this fantastic place with gorgeous big rooms, TV, bathroom and hot water for half the price as you'd get in the main touristy part of town.
But there were some very, very unhappy customers shouting and cursing, and generally being extremely rude. Rich went over to a few to say the same thing happened to us last week but that we're still here a week later and loving it! Some of the guys that stayed joined us for a few drinks and told us that Tong Hat took some abuse on the bus by a load of middle-aged Europeans who were outraged that a) they had a 3 hour wait at the border and b)the mini bus wasn't going to drop everyone off at their chosen hotels and guest houses.
Dave, Mato. Tangly
What the hell do these people expect when it costs 4 quid to get from one country to another on a bus, travelling about 600 miles and taking 15 hours?? Everything to work like it does back home?? no petty scams?? everything to be working like clockwork??? Like Helloooooo! You're in Cambodia!! You can do it by plane for 50 Euros if you want a perfect journey! So poor Tong Hat came back a little upset. We gave him his thank you/goodbye present to cheer him up, which was a new wallet as he had his stolen, with a little note inside from us all with messages and email addresses. We could see him welling up which made me and Claire well-up too!!! We also bought Tangly a pair of sunglasses, as the whole time we were out on the bikes he'd been rubbing his eyes due to the dust from the roads. (hopefully they might same some lives as well!!)
After feeling dodgy all day I went to bed before everyone else and within an hour I was vilantly ill, projectile vomiting and khaki green diarrhea, Rich came up to the room absolutely smashed out his face on the Cambodian wine and tried his level best to stay awake to look after me, which he did by showering his head with the toilet hose every 2 minutes! Moments later, Rich was in the same situation as me, and we took turns to throw-up into the toilet. Being drunk Rich presumed it was the alcohol doing this to him and it took a lot of persuation that the green runny stuff coming out his arse was indeed a result of billions of nasty bugs that had invaded his body. After a night of retching and heaving nothing but bile and spit, we finally got to sleep and woke up some hours later with total body exhustion and aching all over. Rich somehow managed to get on the back of Tong Hat's bike and head out to the countryside as planned the previous day, to look at a floating village and see one of the killing fields. However, we both spent the rest of the day and night in bed watching TV and recovering. What a shame, as this was our last day with the guys.
The next morning Dave, Claire, Rich and I were getting a bus to Phenom Pen. But Claire was now enjoying the delights of looking down the toilet bowl! 2 antibiotics later and she was much better so we got on the coach and in 6 hours we were here in Phenom Pen
