Cambodia

There appears to be an inverse relationship between the level of progress of a country and the amount of paperwork required to enter. Sweden and Iceland: Barely any; USA: A fair amount; Cambodia: Six pages per person. A short 45 min flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap was the only time allowed to execute the project of filling in the Cambodian paperwork for a family of three. I was hoping for some assistance from my dear wife but unfortunately she did not have a pen at her disposal, leaving myself with the total of 18 pages to complete before the landing. Right hand started cramping halfway through but eventually the paperwork was finished, just a minute or two before Camobodian touchdown, a few curse words uttered in the process. Our first impressions of Cambodia, which we mentioned in the previous blog post, were highly favorable. People were very friendly, food was quite good although not at Thai levels, and we were staying at a great hotel. For those unfamiliar with this place, Siem Reap is one of the biggest tourist destinations in Southeast Asia, famous for its temples of Angkor, dating all the way back to the 9th century. As I would soon find out, Siem Reap is also the region´s inofficial capital of ballsweat, with humid 36C (97F) days tormenting the poor tourists. The main temple is Angkor Wat, built in the 12th century, but there are literally hundreds of temples scattered over an area roughly the size of Manhattan. We ended up purchasing a three day pass as one day would not nearly have sufficed. The temples really were incredible. The coolest one by far was the Ta Prohm, a temple in the middle of the jungle overgrown by huge trees. Exploring the temple with Oskar Fulvio was awesome as he would just run around randomly, which meant you did not follow any set path. The main Angkor Wat temple actually ended up being the only somewhat disappointing experience, but only because the expectations were unhealthily high and because the higher quantity of tourists. The heat didn’t help either. In fact, those three days we had temple tickets for would only consist of 1 to 3 hours of actual sightseeing per day. The heat made it highly unpleasant to continue longer. And that is where the benefit of our hotel kicked in. Post Tanzania and our first two nights in Bangkok, we had been limited to budget bungalow or tented accomodation in Thailand, but in Sieam Reap we were finally able to redeem some Starpoints and check in to a nice ass hotel. The room itself was very nice, the breakfasts awesome, and the swimming pool truly amazing. At the end of a full day (well 3 hours max) of sightseeing, it felt pretty damn good to jump into the Roman bath style pool and relax for 3 or 4 hours, especially with Oskar Fulvio loving life swimming non stop in his Sponge Bob Square Pants floaties.

After 5 days in Siem Reap it was time to move on. We ended up flying to Sihanoukville on the coast of Cambodia where we found our happy place at an Italian owned place called Papa Pippo, on the great Otres Beach. The beach itself was NICE, but nothing like the truly top class beaches of this region. However, sometimes nice is good enough (nice in Southeast Asia still means better than anything Europe can offer and better than all but a handful of American beaches) and we ended up staying at Otres for over a week. Basically, the beach just had a very chill atmosphere with an older backpacker crowd where we were among the younger guests. We had travelled from Thailand, with the median 24 year old dreadlocked Swede traveller, onwards to Siem Reap, the young Swede replaced by a 67 year old recently retired American sporting the lethal white socks/TEVA combo, soaked through short sleeve dress shirt and one of those hats you tighten with a ribbon underneath the chin, and further onwards to Sihanoukville with a median lost boy 43 year old, still enjoying his occasional shrooming moment.

Besides being an incredibly chill and friendly place, Papa Pippo also had some absolutely excellent homemade pasta, primarily the Tagilatelle Carbonara and the Gnocchi Bolognese which we OD:d on for the next week or so. We did take a break for two days and went out to the amazing Koh Rong Island. We steered away from the backpacker beach and headed to the 6km long Southwestern beach where the 250 man strong “Survivor” filming crew resides while the contestants compete at some isolated Cambodia island not too far away. Unfortunately we spent our two nights at the northern end of the beach where trash had a tendency to wash up, but on our last day I ran to the midpoint of the beach and found an absolute stunning white beach with no tourists in sight. I also found a guesthouse but we had to return to shore the next day so we did not end up staying there….BUMMER!

It was time to leave Cambodia. I had struggled from some severe case of auto-foot shooting planning, which meant we had to back track from Sihanoukville to Siem Reap in order to catch a flight to Philippines (basically because we decided to postpone Vietnam to our next trip instead of rushing it). The flight from Siem Reap to Manila was overnight, which makes no sense when the flight is only 2 hours. We were supposed to connect in Manila to catch a flight up north to the amazing rice terraces of Banaue and surroundings. However, in keeping with the Tanzania tradition and ending Cambodia with a gastronomical bang I decided to have crocodile for my last meal (along with ostrich and kangaroo). I threw up twice at the Sieam Reap International Airport and once in the airplane restroom. I was feeling really shitty and as we were about to land the flight attendant called out to make sure we had finished our immigration paperwork before landing in Manila. My nausea immediately got even worse just thinking of filling in a bunch of fucking forms with birthdates, passport numbers and expiration dates (sidenote: I now have my entire family´s passport details memorized in my head), but then the wonder woman that is my lovely counterpart showed up at my row (I had resided in an empty backrow the whole flight while she was taking care of our beloved child) with all the paperwork ready! Once in Manila, we decided not to jump on our connecting flight to the rice terraces but rather go sleep at a shady hotel close to the airport and board a flight to the beach paradise of Boracay instead. A wise decision for sure, even though the amazing White Beach of Boracay is filled with green algae from March to May (once again failure of the trip planner to do proper research). Turns out the treated sewage of the island runs out in the water and the ammonium kills the fish, which means nobody is around to eat the algae, which means we have to wade through a few meters of green before we get to relax in the picture perfect turqoise water (buhu life is so difficult). Either way, we are loving life and staying at a great hostel mixed with drunken youngsters and drunken 60 year old Aussies. Our next tough decision is whether we do a booze cruise or rent our own bangka (sail boat) to head to some nearby islands tomorrow. We just got back from celebrating St Pattie´s day at a bar called Hobbit House, staffed singlehandedly by dwarfs. Life could be worse.