For anyone who was wondering, I did get my new passport before my trip (with a few hours to spare). That feels like ages ago, but I'll start from the beginning.
On Wednesday Feb 21st, after 2 presentations on Monday and a midterm on Tuesday, I woke up bright and early to get my passport from the US embassy. Thankfully, they actually had my passport this time (after an unsuccessful attempt to get it on Tuesday). Later that afternoon, I went to the airport to fly to Phnom Penh Cambodia. I hadn’t heard the best things about Phnom Penh, and had low expectations. For this portion of the trip I was with 3 friends (Talia Trevor and Grace). Once we landed in Cambodia I took out some riel, the local currency, only to find out that everywhere accepts and prefers USD. We checked in to our first Mad Monkey hostel of the trip, found a nice bar on the river, and went to sleep. The next day we hired a tuk tuk (small cart type thing pulled around by a motorbike) to take us around for the day. We went to the genocide museum and the killing fields, both very sad but also really informative. Personally I knew next to nothing about the Cambodian genocide before this trip, so it was really eye opening to go to these museums.
After an emotionally and physically draining few hours (it was so hot that I almost fell asleep every time we got back in the tuk tuk), we got lunch and went to get our luggage from the hostel. Talia and I were supposed to have some food delivered for Shabbat, but the Chabad Rabbi insisted that we could not leave Phnom Penh without seeing the Chabad house, so we made a quick stop there before finding our bus to Sihanoukville.
The bus ride took about 5 hours, and we got to Sihanoukville pretty late at night. From the bus it looked like a pretty seedy place, but luckily the bus took us directly to our hostel, so we didn’t have to find out. First thing the next morning we splurged and took a $2 tuk tuk to the ferry terminal instead of walking with our luggage. At the ferry terminal we boarded a 'Speed Ferry Cambodia' boat to Koh Rong Samloem. The trip was only 45 minutes, but I was clinging to the bottom of my seat the whole time to stop from flying in the air when we hit waves. There were some older people who didn’t get seats, and I felt bad not offering them mine, but I don’t think my legs would’ve worked if I tried standing on this boat.
Once we reached a pier, we boarded a smaller, much calmer boat, which took us to our hostel (the other way to get there is a 45 minute hike through the jungle after the initial ferry). When the boat stopped a few yards from the beach, we got off the boat into the water, luggage in hand, and walked to shore. This island had the whitest sand and the bluest water I’ve ever seen. It’s completely isolated, untouched beauty. Our beach was occupied solely by our Mad Monkey hostel, and surrounded by either jungle or water on all sides. Me and my friends had a 4 person bungalow which opened right up to the beach. This place is like a super relaxing paradise/adult summer camp. Reception, which was also the restaurant and bar, was surrounded by picnic tables. When we got sick of lying on the beach, we’d get food, drinks or just play cards. One night there was trivia, the next was pizza night and a fire show. Friday night we made kiddush with the many israelis there, who were very excited that we had brought grape juice and challah with us from Phnom Penh. The two days I spent on Koh Rong Samloem were the most uneventful of the trip, but in the best way possible.
On Sunday morning, the ferry company that we had booked only had a ferry leaving at 10am. Since we had a flight from Sihanoukville at 1:20, and these boats often don’t leave on time, we wanted to take an earlier one. The hostel was really helpful and said we could get tickets for an earlier boat, and that one of their taxi boats could take us to the main pier in time. It turns out that they were able to do this because they also had to take all the garbage from the hostel to the main pier. So we got to walk through the water (this time it was high tide-going up to my waist) and ride the garbage boat to the pier. But, needless to say we made our ferry (which was even more rocky than the way there) and we made our flight with a few hours to spare in the very small Sihanoukville airport.
Next stop- Siem Reap Cambodia. One friend, Grace, left us in Sihanoukville, and two more, Yoni and Lauren, joined me Talia and Trevor in Siem Reap. We found a vegetarian restaurant, went to the night market, and went to sleep early. The next day we woke up at 4am to go to the Angkor wat temples for sunrise. The temples were really awesome-very different (much older) than any we had seen anywhere else. However, the sunrise was less awesome, mostly because it just didn’t rise. It got light out, but no sun in sight. On the bright side (no pun intended), arriving so early allowed us to explore a lot of the temples at a more bearable temperature. After 6 or so hours there, we went back to the hostel, napped, and had a snack before going to the Cambodian circus.
The next day we got really good brunch, a manicure (which I picked off immediately since it was so bad), and then did a tour of a floating village at sunset. It was really sad to see the village as it was really poor, and the standard of living there was so low. The person steering our boat looked about 15, and we passed many people bathing in the river (which was very dirty) along the way. The sunset was beautiful, but overall it was sad to see, and I feel like poor peoples lives shouldn’t be a tourist attraction.
Once we got back to the hostel, me and Talia grabbed our luggage and went to the airport to fly to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our flight consisted of a 40 minute leg to Bangkok, 7 hours in the Bangkok airport, and a 40 minute flight to Chiang Mai. We slept at a hotel called sleepbox (inside the airport terminal). Definitely wasn't the best sleep of my life since you could hear the flight announcements through the wall, but it was certainly better than nothing.
Our first day in Chiang Mai we relaxed in the morning, before taking a vegetarian cooking class in the afternoon. I learned how to make some really good stuff, so hit me up if you want pad thai! That night we went to chabad for megillah reading. It basically felt like we were in Israel. The next day we went to an elephant sanctuary, where we fed, bathed, and hung out with elephants. As most people know, I'm not the biggest animal person, but they were actually so cool. After that, we showered, relaxed a little, and went back to chabad for the purim seudah. On the walk there, I ran into my roommate from my gap year in Israel, and a few other Israeli's from my program. After Chabad we went to a traditional Thai dance show, which I had to see for my dance class in Singapore.
The next day, we got Shakshuka for breakfast at chabad, dropped out bags at our new hotel (we figured it would be nice to stay at a hotel as opposed to a shared dorm in a hostel for shabbat, so we stayed at Lanna Palace 2004 hotel- pro tip: don't include the year that the hotel was last updated in the hotel name), and hired a red van to drive us to waterfalls an hour and a half away. The waterfalls are called sticky waterfalls, I think because they are not slippery and you're able to climb them which was a lot of fun. At one point, I asked an English speaking couple to take a picture of me and Talia, and then offered to take one for them. The guy responded "Thanks, she actually just said yes to marrying me!" He had proposed to her on this hike, and I was their engagement photographer (which was a lot of pressure).
That night we went to chabad, and then walked around the night market even though we couldn't buy anything. The next day we overslept a little and were late to Shabbat lunch (and had to sit with old people). After lunch we walked around the old city of Chiang Mai, and then rested at our hotel since the heat is so tiring. Saturday night we tried a vegetarian restaurant and got cocktails at a cool bar recommended by someone I met at the hostel. Then we went to check out the first of two night markets, but they were already packing up when we got there. We went to the next one and the same thing happened. I was able to grab some quick gifts from the stands that were still open, but it was pretty sad considering we had seen how many options there were the night before.
On Sunday I got a Thai Massage at a really nice place for $11. I have had other Swedish massages before, but the Thai one was definitely interesting and different. We got falafel for lunch at Sababa, before heading to the airport to go back to Singapore. The trip as a whole was really amazing. Travelling is definitely tiring and it's been nice to be back in Singapore this week. At this point my Sunshine Plaza apartment really feels like home. I have a few more trips planned, but the semester feels like it's almost over, which is really crazy. That's all for now- sorry to bore you but thanks for reading if you made it this far!
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