December 6, 2006 Siem Reap – Bangkok, Thailand

December 6, 2006
Siem Reap – Bangkok, Thailand

For the first time in a long time I slept in late. Jackie and I did not get up until after 9:30. We jumped out of bed and headed down to breakfast to meet up with everyone else. We had another long, delicious breakfast.

After breakfast Jackie and I returned to our room to pack our things. My dad had already packed and spent the late morning walking down the street (He would later complain that it was a walk of fire on the boulevard of flames…).

At noon we met up in the lobby and checked out of our rooms. We sat in the lobby for a very long time discussing what to do. After much deliberation we decided not to go to Angkor and to explore the city of Siem Reap.

Our tuk-tuk drivers picked us up and took us back to Pub Street for lunch. Unfortunately, we picked a bad restaurant. The food took forever (about an hour) to come to the table! Even worse, the food wasn’t that great. Still, we met a super nice little kid (trying to sell us stuff) while we ate. He talked to us for a long time and impressed us with his knowledge and wit. As we got back into our vehicles he handed me a post card. It explained how much he liked us and how he hoped we would come back…

From there our tuk-tuk drivers took us to a fancy store for some shopping. Everything was way over priced! We later discovered that he only reason the drivers took us to the store is because they earn a commission on anything we would have purchased.

Instead, we asked the drivers to take us to a local market. A short ride later we arrived at a crowded, messy marketplace. A great variety of goods were sold at the market. The entire place had a strange odor from the fish market at the center (where they had live fish that they would kill when ordered). We also went by an area with lots of strange meats and pig heads. Eventually, we found the tourist section and everyone did a little bit of souvenir shopping.

Once everyone was done shopping we returned to our hotel. We chilled out in the lobby until our airport transfer picked us up (16:30). We reached the airport super early (about 3 hours before our flight). We passed the time eating cold treats at the airports Dairy Queen.

At 19:40 we boarded our plane. It was a very empty flight. Jackie and I moved to the bulkhead and I slept for most of the short flight. When we arrived back in Bangkok we hoped in a taxi and went back to Ben’s condo. Jackie and I picked up some of our belongings and then grabbed another cab back to the Khao San Road area. We wandered around for a while looking for a nice place to stay. In the end, we returned to Baan Sabai, the hostel we stayed at before leaving for Cambodia (at about 22:30). We tossed our stuff on the floor and headed to bed.