Our group grows

Ursi’s parents have now headed back to Bangkok to leave us in Cambodia to continue our adventure. In a random turn of events our little duo has now turned into a rag tag bunch of 4 travellers all from Tiger Muay Thai.

The day before I left Tiger Ursi had just got back from her travels to do some training for a few weeks and so was at Tiger up until the time I left from new Zealand. While there she met another guy called Kieran who also wanted to come to Cambodia and so he has ended up coming out to meet us here as well. The next day we decided to had out to an animal sanctuary at one of the temples that was quite far out into the countryside, well off of the beaten track. Unfortunately for us we had calculated the drive to take us an hour, however we had not remember that Google maps uses western time and we are now using Asia time, where nothing adds up and distances don’t matter. After an hour of driving in the Tuk Tuk we were still over 20 mins away and so missed the tour we were heading for. A little disappointed we headed into a different temple on the way anyway to have a look around.

This temple was older than the others at Angkor Wat and Angkor Tohm and seemed to have been lost for hundreds of years before being discovered by some farmers. It was quite small in comparison, however the detail on the carvings and stone work was still done to a high level so made it nice for a quick walk around but only took up about half an hour to see it all.

When we were done we headed back to the Tuk Tuk only to get a bit of a confusing message from our driver to tell us that we couldn’t leave yet because our friend was on his way. We didn’t quite understand and thought he meant his friend and that he had some sort of problem until about 2 mins later a moped pulled up and off the back of it jumped our friend Rowan who had randomly come to meet us. Rowan needed to leave Thailand for a visa run since he had been there so long and had heard that we were all going to Cambodia so said he would tag along. We knew he had talked about it but he wasn’t 100% sure of his plans so it was a pleasant surprise to see him there after apparently the scariest moped experience of his life.

Our new little crew got a chance to catch up on the chit chat while we headed for the next temple that was even further out. We had not really bothered to look into the temple details too much since initially we had been waiting to go to this place to see the animal sanctuary and so just assumed that there would also be some sort of impressive temple there for us to look at. We soon found out the first big of interesting information, that the site it was located on was actually 1.5km from the enterance we had parked at meaning we had a little hike ahead of us. That hike turned out to be uphill, over massive boulders and up steep stairs while wearing flip flops which I must say was a new experience for me personally as up to now I have worn my trainers pretty much every day.

The sun was out and the hike was hot but we all had smiles on our faces and got to carry on chit chatting as we went, all happy that we were doing some exercise so felt a little more accomplished in what we managed to do. On the way up there Kieran started joking with each other as to who the hell would build a temple all the way out here and how hard it must have been to do it before we then started saying “what if we get all the way to the end and there isnt a temple? What if it is just a single carved rock and the locals get a kick out of us doing a big walk?”. We thought that maybe this could have just been one big Cambodian practical joke to troll us into walking all that way. We laughed about it as we carried on our climb, slowly and slowly getting higher and closer to our goal when we finally met someone coming the other way. We asked “is it worth the climb?” and got the answer “No, not really.” which kind of shocked us. The guy said that he had gone there to swim (we had no clue there was water) but that the water had dried up a lot and was better a few weeks before when he was there. No matter to us, we were not there to swim, just see another sweet temple… or so we though.

As we finally got to the top the trees were cut back to slow some large stones that formed part of a dried up waterfall that was covered in some stone carvings. We looked at that for a few mins before deciding to head on for the temple… before realising there was no temple.

It was just a carved rock. In the Jungle. 1.5km from the main road. Why? Because Asia!

To be fair it was quite good because it caused us all to just crack up laughing and realise that we should actually read the guide book a little closer next time as all the info was in there, we were just focused on doing something else that didn’t materialise. It made for lots of jokes and laughs on the way down the hill and all in all wasn’t that bad. Yeah we hadn’t seen a temple, however we did have a good time with friends on a hike through the jungle so what more can you really want from life.

On the way back from there it started to rain…. hard. So hard in fact that we had to pull over to put some of the sides down on the Tuk Tuk to try and stop us from getting wet. Luckily for the driver Rowan had a rain jacket with him and gave it to him to try and keep him dry. The dude was a trooper and carried on ploughing the way him in the pouring rain.

The rain also provided a different dynamic for the trip as suddenly everything looked different as it seemed to change the landscape. All along the road were people riding bikes, now soaking wet. None seemed to mind and Rowan even got his camera out to start taking pictures of all the people we passed so seemed to smile, laugh and wave. The funniest thing we saw in the countryside small children on large bicycles where they could barley reach the peddles.

After a little while longer we managed to reach the main Angkor Wat complex again and got to head inside for a little look around before it was closing time and they kicked us out. This was great for Rowan and Kieran as they hadn’t seen it yet and just rounded off our evening. After that it was back to the Hostel for some well earned dinner and beers.

Lets just hope the rest of the trip is just as fun and eventful as that. Tomorrow Ursi, Kieran and I are on a bus for 12 hours down to our next town of Sihanoukville to continue our adventure by the sea. Time to visit the islands, sleep in a hammock and live life Asia style.