A big dream and a big world: Christmas and New Year in Cambodia

Hey guys! :D

First of all, I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a great start in the new year of 2017!! <3

We celebrated Christmas in Phnom Penh where we had rented an apartment on airbnb. The apartment was amazing! We had lots of space and privacy (I even had my own room which felt very weird after not having one to myself for over two months!). The apartment also featured a big kitchen. We used the opportunity and cooked our own Christmas dinner. For that, we went to a local market right next door and bought lots of fresh veggies. We also found a big supermarket where we picked up some other ingredients. It felt so good to finally be able to cook something ourselves again and we had a great time. And it tasted very good! :)

On Christmas Eve, we went to a cinema and watched a Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th street. That was honestly the only moment I felt a little christmassy. It was hot, noisy, and dirty in the city, and the fact that Christmas doesn't exist in this Buddhist society didn't really contribute to the spirit...

On Christmas day, we walked around the city centre and visited the royal palace (more like took a look at it from the outside). We had a lot of time to kill because our night bus to Siem Reap left at 11:30pm that evening, so we decided to sit into a nice cafe and spent a couple hours there. In the late afternoon we watched another movie, The Jungle Book, in the cinema. After that, we found a cool night market where we spent the rest of the time until our bus left.

The bus ride was pretty amazing! We actually had real beds this time and I was able to sleep through the entire journey. Very comfortable!

We arrived in Siem Reap at around 5:45am. Our time there didn't start well though... When Sofie got off the bus, she fell and twisted her ankle. It was clear that she was in a lot of pain, so we went straight to the hostel where she could lay down and put some ice on her foot. After like two hours, her ankle had swollen really bad, so we called a doctor. The doctor looked at her swollen foot and took us (with his private car!) right away to a hospital to get an X-ray. Luckily, nothing was broken. Sofie got crutches and we went back to the hostel to rest and cool her ankle. The doctor didn't do any other tests and didn't really tell us what could actually be wrong with her ankle, so we weren't sure what it was. Later, her entire foot swell even more and turned purple. Google helped us to find out that she probably ruptured her ligaments. That means she has to rest a lot and stabilize her ankle for like 6-8 weeks... Luckily, we stayed in the same hostel in Siem Reap for a week, making her able to rest a lot. Still, our plan here was to visit the famous temples of Angkor Wat which required lots of walking... in the end, we managed to do it anyways, but I'll come to that later. ;)

While Sofie stayed in the hostel, Taddi and I explored downtown Siem Reap. The city is very touristy because of its proximity to the famous temples. Nevertheless we liked it a lot! There were several cute streets with lots of shops and restaurants and several markets where you could stroll around, buy and haggle about souvenirs, take pictures, etc. We did a sort of live-ticker, so Sofie could follow our steps a little bit.

In the evenings, we went to some restaurants nearby our hostel and found a great Indian place where we ate several times. :)

On our third day here, we booked a cooking class at "Lily's secret garden" which was absolutely amazing!! Lily's husband Chris, a Belgian who now lives in Cambodia for 8 years, and her little son Austin picked us up at our hostel with a tuktuk. First, we drove to a big local market to buy some ingredients for our cooking. The market was so cool because there were only locals and no other tourists. After we bought some lemons, pumpkin, and garlic, Chris showed us typical Cambodian vegetables like for example "Galangan", a spice that looks like ginger. Very cool!!

Then we drove to Chris and Lily's home in the suburbs of Siem Reap where the cooking class took place. Lily welcomed us warmly and showed us her vegetable garden before we started the cooking.

Here's the menu that we cooked that day:

1. Fresh spring rolls

2. Lord Cha (a typical Cambodian noodle dish)

3. Pumpkin in coconut cream

We started with the desert and cut the pumpkin into pieces. Then we went to the cooking station where everybody had their own little stove and cooking gear, and steamed the pumpkin. We added little Tapioka balls and the coconut cream and let it sit until we were ready to eat.

After that, we cooked the main course, the Lord Cha. First, we prepared the sauce made of garlic, onion, water, sugar, lemon, and salt.

Then we went to the cooking station again and stir-fried garlic, egg, cabbage, the special noodles (they were thick and short and made of rice), bean sprouts and chives. When we were done with that, we continued with the fresh spring rolls. For that we cut some cucumber and carrot and rolled it with lettuce in the thin wet rice papers. We arranged everything on plates and finally, everything was ready to eat.

All the dishes tasted so good!! Luckily, we got a little recipe book at the end, so I'll be able to cook it at home! :)

After we said goodbye to Lily, Chris brought us back to our hostel. What an amazing and special day!! :D

On the next day, the 29th, we got up early and met with our tuktuk driver Mr. Sky. (He had brought us from the bus station to the hostel on our first day here and we had arranged that he would be our driver for the visit of the temples.) Mr. Sky took us to the ticket counter where we bought our 3-day passes for the temple complex. Then, we entered the Angkor compound and drove to our first temple, the Shra Sren. The temple was huge! It consisted of multiple one-story hallways, arches, and squares. It was pretty damaged and piles of stones lay around everywhere. On the walls that were still intact, we could see lots of beautiful carvings of Buddhas, animals, different patterns, etc. I was amazed!

After that, Mr. Sky brought us to three more temples. Ta Phrom (or Tomb Raider Temple), Tao Keo, and Bayon. The temples were so different from each other! Each one had its own specialities and qualities.

Ta Phrom, for example, was especially beautiful because many giant trees grew on the ancient walls and their roots covered large areas of the temple. (That's why it was chosen to be a part of the movie "Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie).

After strolling around the site of each temple and never getting tired of gazing at their beautiful carvings, we got back in the tuktuk, and Mr. Sky brought us back to our hostel.

We were pretty tired (especially Sofie, she had walked around with crutches the entire time!), so we decided not to visit the temples again on the next day, but to stay in the hostel and relax a bit. (That's the cool thing about the 3-day-pass: you can choose three days within a week to go to the temples.) in the afternoon we went to the different markets here in Siem Reap and bought some souvenirs. :)

On the 31st, we continued our visit of the temples of Angkor Wat. Mr. Sky was busy that day, so another driver (we called him Mr. Sky Junior XD) drove us around. On that day, we visited five more temples: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Pean, and Preah Khan. Again, I was struck by their diversity and their beauty. I can't even imagine how the Khmer people constructed these immense buildings over 800 years ago. Unbelievable!

We took our time to explore the different temples and took lots of pictures.

As it was New Year's Eve that day, we originally wanted to go to a bar in the lively Pub Street, but the entire city centre was incredibly crowded and it was very exhausting to fight our way through the crowd (especially for Sofie!). Instead, we went to our favorite Indian restaurant and afterwards climbed up on the rooftop terrace of our hostel to watch everything from above. At midnight, we watched the fireworks over the roofs of Siem Reap and enjoyed our view from the rooftop. We didn't stay up very late because we had to get up again at 4:30am to do a sunrise tour at Angkor Wat.

After like 3/3,5hours of sleep, we got up on the first day of 2017 and were picked up at 5am by Mr. Sky Junior. It was pitch dark when we arrived at the most famous and biggest temple: the Angkor Wat itself. Along with like a thousand other tourists, we waited in front of the huge temple to see the sun rise behind it. It was a truly magical sight! The perfect start of the first day of the new year! :)

After the sun had risen, we went into the gigantic temple. It was a lot bigger and better preserved than the other temples we've seen so far. Very beautiful! We could also go on a view platform on the top floor of the building from where we had an amazing view on the complex and the surrounding jungle.

After exploring the site, we walked back to our tuktuk.

I can say that the 3-day-pass in Angkor was totally worth it! The variety of all of the temples was incredible and I wouldn't wanna have missed any of them. :)

To further celebrate the new year, we went to a nice cafe for breakfast after we finished our sunrise tour.

We spent the rest of the day sleeping (:D) and relaxing in the hostel, organizing our bus ticket to Bangkok tomorrow, and eating one last typical Cambodian dinner in a nearby restaurant.

Now that our time in Cambodia is almost over, I have to say that this country has a lot to offer and is definitely worth a visit. I loved the time I was able to spend here! The food is great, the people are especially nice, the history is very interesting, and the nature is absolutely beautiful! :)

As I said, we will continue our journey and go to Thailand tomorrow where we will spend about 4 weeks. Can't wait! :D

Happy new year and lots of love,

Annette <3