After going to the museum we hang around in the hostel bar. That night we decided to go out with a lot of other people in the hostel. The driver of the tuktuk asked us – like they all do – whether we wanted to go to the temples the next morning. We hired him for the full day the next day for 15 dollars. We told him to pick us up the next morning around 8 in the morning. It turned out to be a fun night, but we decided to go home no too late as we had just planned to to go to the temples early in the morning.
Day 5
The next day me and Nick both managed to get up early and we had breakfast in the hostel. Unfortunately around the time it was 8am, it started to rain really hard. Even though we really wanted to go and see the temples, we knew in this weather we just wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. We decided to wait for a while and thankfully after an hour it stopped. There our tuktuk driver was still waiting in front of the hostel to pick us up.
He drove us all day around the temples, which was really good. We decided to go to the most famous temple first, the Angkor Wat, which was really impressive. After exploring that temple our tuktuk drver ‘Chung’ drove us around the other temples. All of the temples are laying near each other in some sort of national park. At the end of the day we saw four really beautiful temples. At that point we had been going to temples for about 6 hours. As it started to rain and thunder now, we told the driver we had seen enough and liked to go back.
Once back at the hostel I had a little powernap and then we went to eat some food with a few other people in the hostel. That night we decided to go out with the hostel again, and it became a big night. The hostel had these horrible shots on offer called grenades. It contained a shot of tequila and right after a jager bomb. You can kind of imagine why they’re called grenades, if you drank 10 of them during your stay you’d get a t-shirt stating you did it. I passed on the t0shirt but two Australian girls managed to each get a tshirt within 2 days.
Day 6
The next morning I decided to sleep in a little bit. I needed to check out as well, but not until 12.00 o’clock. After checking out it turned out to be a rainy day again. We were first planning to do a cooking class, but in the end we skipped it because it was fully booked. It became a lazy day just relaxing in the hostel.
That evening I caught my bus to Ho Chi Minh. The ‘luxurous’ sleeping bus turned out to be not as luxurous when I stepped in it. I was sitting next to a tall other Dutch guy. As it was a ‘sleeper bus’ the seats were all sort of small beds, but so small that now I was basically sharing a single bed with a big Dutch guy. We laughed about it for a while, but thankfully there were some spare seats in the back, so we both had our own ‘bed seat’.
Unfortunately sleeping was not really an option, as the roads are so full of holes that every – just I actually counted this – 20 seconds the bus drives in a big hole which shakes up the whole bus. After 6 hours of having 20 second powernaps we arrived at 2am back in Phom Penh. There we had to change into another bus which turned out to be a even worse than the previous bus. Thankfully again the bus wasn’t full, so at least we all had our own seats.
The ride through the night was bumpy, but I still managed to get a bit of sleep. In the morning we arrived at the border of Vietnam. After a quick breakfast we came to the border and got our passports stamped. Unfortunately three British guys on our bus had a problem with their visa, which took another hour for them to get that sorted. All the while we were sitting and waiting in the bus. It then took another 2 hours to finally arrive in Ho Chi Minh.
I had already booked a hostel for my stay here, and I knew it was very near from where the bus stopped. Even though I told all the mototaxi’s that I was staying in a hostel across the street, they still all tried to give me a ride. I ddin’t fall for their tricks and checked in to my hostel for a hot shower and clean clothes.
This afternoon I am planning to explore the city. Unfortunately there’s still some rain here as well, so I’ll have to wait until it gets dry. Stay tuned for updates!
Oct 3rd 2013 – Oct 5th 2013
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