Picture this. It's February of 2022 and you have fallen in love with everything about Thailand. You know your routines, you have a wonderful apartment to call home, you have friends who you are making travel plans with constantly, and life has been beautiful, steady, and filled with gratitude. You know that you need to extend your visa soon, so you pick a day to head down to immigration to extend. When you get there, you sit down with an officer, requesting the visa that you had researched, and they tell you that you are no longer eligible for any visa extensions and you need to leave the country by the end of your current stamp. Which is in 11 days.
If you are anything like me, then a rather intense amount of panic might set it. We left the office realizing that we needed to leave Thailand, and we had no idea where we could go. Our first idea was Singapore, an awe-inspiring city-state on the tail of Malaysia, and we had always wanted to go there. However, we quickly realized that the apartments and general lifestyle in Singapore was much more expensive than what we were used to in Thailand. So, we started looking at other options.
That was when we realized that Thailand’s next door neighbor to the east had recently opened with fairly easy entry requirements. The flight to Cambodia’s capital of Phnom Penh was only an hour from Bangkok, and we found a cheap and large apartment in a great part of the city that we could teach from, so we quickly decided that this would be the spot.
In the next few days, I spent lots of time compiling all the documents needed to enter Cambodia, along with the documents we would need to bring to the Thai Consulate there to get tourist visa to come back, and trying to book hotels and COVID tests for entry back into Thailand. The whole process was much more work than I was hoping for while previously being so blissed out, and so I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even really want to go. We had grown so comfortable in Thailand, and leaving sounded like time away from a place we had grown to love so much. It really just seemed like something we would have to do, and hopefully we would have some fun while we were there.
While I was still processing all of the paperwork, Nolan was playing in a disc golf tournament on another island (you can hear about our disc golf tour of Southeast Asia in his blog post), and while there, he heard about a disc golf tournament that would be happening in Siem Reap the first weekend we were set to be in Cambodia. As I looked at all the dates and times, it seemed impossible that we would be able to make it. We were flying into the capital, Phnom Penh, at 6 pm on Friday night, and the disc golf tournament started at 9 am on Saturday morning in Siem Reap, which is a 6 hour drive away. Nolan threw out the idea of renting a car and driving through the night, which I quickly shut down as all too adventurous for me. After doing a bit of googling, I found an overnight bus that left Phnom Penh at 10 pm, and arrived in Siem Reap at 4 am. The bus had full beds, and from reading reviews, you could essentially just sleep through the night on the bus, and wake up the next morning at the destination.
I threw the option out to Nolan and we decided, hey, when would we be able to play a disc golf tournament in Siem Reap again, so we bought the bus tickets and packed our bags for our first flight out of the country in almost a year.
While the planning journey was stressful, the first part of our trip was easy! We took a flight to Bangkok, had a long layover that included a DQ blizzard in the International Terminal of Suvarnabhumi Airport, and we caught our flight over to Cambodia! Upon landing in the bustling city of Phnom Penh, we disembarked the plane and I almost immediately started greeting the Cambodian people in Thai, which if you guessed, was fairly confusing for all those involved. By 10 pm that night, Nolan was exhausted and ready for sleep, while I was buzzing from the adrenaline of being in a new place. It was late but the city was bustling with tuk tuks and hand carts being pulled down the street. It was reminiscent of what we had seen in Thailand, but looked like it was decades behind in terms of development. We arrived at the bus terminal and hopped on our home for the night, a full sized bunk bed that came equipped with pillows and sheets. Nolan slept the entire time, while I had a little more trouble, but still managed to get fairly good sleep on the bumpy Cambodian highways.
As our bus pulled up to the stop in Siem Reap, we groggily rolled off our bunk, grabbed our bags, and called a tuk tuk to take us to our hotel in the city. We checked in at 4:30 am, and we decided to take an hour and half nap to try and get a little more sleep before heading out to the disc golf course.
We called yet another tuk tuk on an Uber-like app called Grab to get us there, and this was where
things started to get interesting. We found the pin to the disc golf course which the driver had on his phone, and started heading out of the city. The sun had finally risen and we were seeing Cambodia in the daylight for the first time as the tuk tuk exited the gravel roads of the city, and bumped down onto a dirt road that was covered in giant ruts and potholes. Our tuk tuk driver kept looking at us, like, is this really the right way to go? We seemed to leave behind any semblance of westernized life, as our tuk tuk bounced right into a local village. There were cows on the streets, young children running around houses high on stilts, and rice paddies stretching to the horizon. At a certain point, I had to wonder if we were in the right place, thinking that we might get dropped off in some random village and get abandoned by our tuk tuk driver in the Cambodian countryside! As the tuk tuk pulled up to the pin, I got out with all hope lost, until I turned around and found discs piled high on a hut, signifying that we were indeed in the right place. Nolan has already written about the disc golf tournament, so if you want to find out more about that experience, you can read it here.
We spent our weekend in Siem Reap with some of the coolest expats that we had ever met. Everyone playing in the tournament had been living in Cambodia for a decade or more, and many of them spoke the local language, Khmer. As we arrived at the tournament, newbies fresh off the night bus, they were all 100% ready to welcome Nolan and I into their circle of friends and family. We spent both nights that weekend hanging out in local bars at tables surrounded by our newest friends who were so excited that we had made the trip out to the Siem Reap to play in the tournament with them. By the end of Sunday night, we turned to each other and realized that we had spent our entire weekend here playing disc golf and consequently hadn’t seen Angkor Wat which is the biggest and most intact ancient religious site in the world that is just a few minutes outside of Siem Reap. We decided in an instant that we needed to come back the next weekend. Knowing that we would be back in just five days, we hopped back onto our overnight bus and headed to Phnom Penh.
If you haven’t caught on yet, our two weeks in Cambodia ended up being some of the most hectic and chaotic two weeks that we experienced in Southeast Asia. Here is a list of things we did on our first week in Phnom Penh:
We applied for and successfully obtained two tourist visas back to Thailand (yay!).
We learned to keep our phones in our bags and our bags tightly secured around our bodies as it is common in Phnom Penh for people on motorbikes to snatch valuables out of your hand and ride away.
I learned that I could call tuk tuks through an app on my phone, and go literally anywhere in the city for less than $2.
I took a lot of tuk tuks.
We ate amazing Greek food at a corner restaurant right down the street from us.
I faced my first signs of culture shock in months since I had fully transitioned into life in Thailand. Thailand is truly the land of convenience, with 7/11s on every corner and food delivery like you’ve never seen before. So when we walked around the city and I couldn’t find a single store that sold rice or eggs, I picked up a serious feeling of discomfort in this new place that was so different from what we had gotten used to.
I seriously struggled trying to figure out the currency which was a mixture of US dollars and Cambodian Riel. Everywhere we went accepted both, and it was very common to use both in the same transaction. The exchange rate was roughly 4000 Cambodian Riel to $1, so if something cost $12 you could use $10, and 8000 Cambodian Riel. It was a struggle.
I solved my culture shock by eating at a restaurant called Bay Area tacos, and we ate burritos while talking to a Khmer-American who had spent years of his life in San Jose.
We went to a rooftop bar overlooking a gigantic bustling market with a friend from the disc golf tournament.
And then, by the time Friday rolled back around, it was time to head back out on our good old friend the night bus and sleep through our journey to Siem Reap. This trip up to Siem Reap was designed specifically to go see Angkor Wat. If you have never heard of Angkor Wat, I highly recommend searching it up because it is one of the most truly spectacular places that we have ever been. To briefly summarize, Angkor Wat was a temple at the heart of the most bustling city in the entire world between the years 1000-1300. The temples and remnants of the city sprawl through the jungle for miles, while sections of the structures are still being recovered after pointless destruction from the Khmer Rouge.
Quick historical note on the Khmer Rouge: from 1975-1979, the communist party of Cambodia, called the Khmer Rouge, took over the country and ruled as an authoritarian dictatorship. Dedicated to bringing Cambodia back to its “agricultural roots,” they destroyed modern technology and systematically killed anyone who was educated or connected to the modern, outside world. By the end of their rule, they had killed 20% of the Cambodian population in this genocide. Their reign of terror had many long lasting negative effects that exist just under the surface to this day, including stunting the modernization of the country’s cities and fracturing any form of civil society. We saw these lingering effects pop up in small ways a few times. If you’re interested in learning more about this horrible yet incredibly significant time in Cambodia’s history, I recommend the memoir First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. I read this story during the two weeks I spent in Cambodia, and, although devastating, it shows what the Cambodian people really had to go through in the years of the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Anyway…
For our day spent at Angkor Wat, we hired a tour guide (recommended to us by another disc golf friend!) and he took us off to tour the ruins by tuk tuk. Our first stop was to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Because of how impressive and historically important these temples are, Angkor
Wat is usually overrun by tourism. However, with tourism still relatively low in our COVID world, we were able to watch the sunrise over the temples in silence. We walked through the first and main temple, the temple known as Angkor Wat, as the sun continued to rise. This complex, like many in the area, was a Hindu temple, and many of the spires were dedicated to Hindu gods. Ban also showed us marks on the temple walls left by gun shots of the Khmer Rouge. Walking through an ancient wonder of the world was one of the most real and visceral pieces of history I have ever seen in my life. My favorite part of Angkor Wat was the incredibly detailed carvings on all of the walls. Angkor Wat is massive, which makes these carvings all the more impressive when you realize that every square inch is covered by some type of marking. These carvings included scenes of generals in battle, farming, people in heaven and people in hell, and each inch had some type of amazing detail. My favorites include a baby boar drinking from its mothers milk, alligators and snakes eating people in hell, and a turtle biting a man's butt.
Now I keep saying we spent a day at Angkor Wat, but that is not the name of the entire historical site. Angkor Wat is the largest and most famous temple complex, but there are other such complexes in the area that have other names, were erected by different Kings, and were built for
other Gods. After we left Angkor Wat we hopped in our tuk tuk and headed to a temple just down the road which was called Bayon Temple. This temple is known for having about 200 Buddha faces smiling down from all of the tall pillars, as this was a Buddhist temple. The spires and carvings on this temple were stunning, with small pathways weaving through the ruins, the Buddha’s face smiling down at you from every angle.
We continued on through the temple complex, seeing 3 more gigantic temples, climbing up to the top and back down to the bottom, sweating a lot, and just generally staring in awe at everything around us. Most of the temples we saw were inside what was once the largest city of the pre-modern world, surrounded by a still-standing ancient stone wall. By the end of the tour of the central city, we couldn’t believe what we had already seen, and we were ready for some lunch.
Ban brought us to a nearby restaurant to try the Cambodian specialty of Amok. Amok is a type of
coconut curry with vegetables and a meat of your choosing, so of course, Nolan and I were hyped.
It was dropped off at our table and we dug right in to find that it was kind of just a bland Thai curry, with absolutely zero spice. Our waiter had dropped off some homemade chili paste and we each dumped a small spoonful into the curry hoping to kick up the flavor a little bit. But, unfortunately, it was just bland and spicy. Although it was not the most delicious lunch of our lives, it was filling and gave us the necessary calories we needed to continue on the tour of the outlying temples.
We visited a few, but our favorite one was called the Ta Prohm Temple, or Jungle Temple, and it is most well known for its appearance in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. That's right, I lived out the Indiana Jones ride from Disneyland- in real life! As I mentioned earlier, the entire Angkor Wat Temple Complex was lost to the jungle for centuries, but this temple still felt largely a part of it. Gigantic banyan trees had grown right on the top and through the sides of many of the temples here at Ta Prohm, and if those trying to restore the temple tried to remove them, then they would have fallen apart. The trees were literally holding the ancient structures together. Walking through this area made us feel like we were on another planet.
After our day at Angkor Wat came to its close, we were so grateful for the opportunity to see these amazing structures with the help of our guide and tuk tuk driver, with hardly any other tourists. This was seriously a once in a lifetime chance to see one of the most impressive temple complexes in the entire world, and we were so grateful to see it for every second that we did.
After our day at Angkor Wat, we went back into Siem Reap to meet up with the same friends we had met at the disc golf tournament the day before. Luckily for us, the tournament director, Jared, was also a food tour guide who was currently on a hiatus because of Covid. We met him and a few other friends at a local restaurant where Jared ordered us a Cambodian feast. We tried another version of Amok, a fermented fish paste pork salad, a fish dish, and a papaya salad with peanuts. It was so much fun to try all of these foods with someone so knowledgeable on the ingredients and ways of eating the foods. And, these dishes were much more impressive than our earlier trial with Cambodian food. But, as these were our new friends and I felt like they would tell us the truth, I asked, “Do you think Cambodian food is as amazing as Thai food?”. The sad answer from everyone at the table was, no. It was different, and it was great to try it, but in terms of flavor and spice it just didn’t have a seat at the table with all of these amazing foods we had tried in Thailand.
The disappointment in Cambodian food definitely did not take away from the night we had. We went back to a local bar we had been to the week before and spent the night getting to know new
people and laughing. At this point, Nolan and I had planned to go back to Angkor Wat and nearby temples the next day, but we just couldn’t give up a day of disc golfing with the hilarious and unique group of individuals we had met.
We headed back out to the course the next day for another
amazing round of disc golf. We truly relished in the experiences we had in Siem Reap with this community of local disc golfers, and Nolan and I reminisce about it constantly. We know without a doubt that the next time we head back to Cambodia there will be more laughs and disc golf rounds to be had with these goofy and kindhearted friends.
That night we jumped back onto the night bus headed towards Phnom Penh, and woke up very early Monday morning to start another week of teaching. That’s FOUR overnight bus rides in the span of nine days. It may have been some kind of record. This week included some more amazing adventures, including:
We ate more Greek food at our little restaurant.
We went to two different roof top bars with some friends, David and Lindsay, who worked at our school the first year of our contracts! This night was so special for us, because we not only got to catch up and hear about their lives in Cambodia, but they gave us so much great advice on living abroad. They have taught in four different countries and traveled the world learning about international schools and diverse cultures, and now they have two daughters who get to go on this incredible ride with them. We treasure the conversations we had with them and all of the insight we learned while sipping cocktails and looking over the Mekong River.
I think I figured out how to use the currency.
We rode in more $2 tuk tuks.
While on a walk after school in the chaos Phnom Penh, Nolan and I tried to walk down the side of a street because of a total absence of sidewalks, but then got cut off by two motorbikes and a tuk tuk and somehow ended up walking right down the middle of the street as traffic flowed around us, wondering how we got there and trying to figure out how to get back to the side.
We went to trivia at an honest-to-God brewery, and drank honest-to-God good beer for the first time in a year.
And then, we ended our time in Cambodia with one of the most unique and special experiences we have ever had. One of the guys we had met in Siem Reap at the disc golf tournament was named Greg, and he lived in Phnom Penh with his wife and two sons. He invited us over to his home just outside of the city to have dinner with him and his family. So, on Thursday night, Nolan and I grabbed a case of the local beer and called a tuk tuk to his home. At first we thought it would just be a simple meal with him and his wife and kids, but quickly realized that we were in for a night much more special than that. Greg is from Texas and his wife is from Cambodia, so between the two of them, they created the most amazing meal we’ve ever had in our lives. On top of being delicious overall, they prepared every single dish pescatarian so Nolan could try it. Here is a list of everything we ate: garlic bread, burritos dipped in salsa and guacamole, homemade crab and shrimp stuffed raviolis in a cream sauce, a sesame seed seared tuna steak with soy sauce and wasabi, shrimp etouffee with rice, a Cambodian spicy minced salad, river lobster cooked in curry, and an entire fried fish. By the end of the meal, Nolan and I wouldn’t have been able to eat another bite. Then, after we finished eating the spectacular meal, the special and unique part of our night was about to begin. Greg’s wife had invited over two of her sisters and their kids to join us for dinner. We spent the meal connecting with them and hearing about their lives in the outskirts of Phnom Penh. And then, when we finished the meal, one of the sisters invited us to her bar that she owned just down the street. We each grabbed a beer for the walk and moseyed through the neighborhood to the bar.
On the walk, we learned that ever since the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian families had become extremely tight knit and important. The Khmer Rouge constantly pitted Cambodians against each other, and so the only people they knew they could trust were people in their families. This was when Nolan and I realized that their invitation to the bar meant that we were really being invited into their family. After arriving at the bar, the brothers were passing out shots for Nolan, and when I told them that I didn’t prefer whiskey, they told me to walk behind the bar and grab any bottle I wanted. So, I grabbed a bottle of tequila and we spent the night learning more about their families and hanging out. Eventually, since it was a school night, we told them that we had to go, and not only did they refuse any money for all the drinks we had, but one of the sisters hopped in a tuk tuk with us back into the city, and refused to let us pay the cost for that too. We were shown such unbelievable kindness from these people, and they made us feel like we really belonged there with them at that table in Cambodia.
When I learned that we needed to leave Thailand and go to Cambodia, I seriously did not want to go. It wasn’t that I had any negative view of Cambodia, and I was excited to experience a new culture, but I had grown so comfortable in my life in Thailand, and leaving that life was scary. I realized that while I often talk about the importance of exiting your comfort zone and challenging your way of life, I was still weary of doing it myself. And then, we went on one of our most fun, hilarious, and special adventures to date. It really reminded me that while sitting comfortably in life brings me security and ease, pushing myself into new experiences is where I will really grow and enjoy the most out of what there is to offer all around me.
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