Siem Reap by Night

I forgot to mention in the bus blog that, in addition to being the bumpiest bus ride ever, that it was also extremely dusty. So, the bus was falling apart and there was so much dust! At one point, we hit a bump as I was taking a sip of water and the water rocketed to the back of my throat, which lead to a hacking fit. I had gotten rather ill in Phnom Penh and had a heinous cough, which the water seemed to exacerbate.

To further explain how heinous: I got the cold my last day in Malaysia on November 27th, after not getting sick for almost 2 years. Of course I got sick on day 4 of a one month trip. On February 5th, I went to the doctor in Gig Harbor because I was still coughing dramatically every morning when I woke up and then to a slightly lesser extent throughout the day. She was worried and had me do a tuberculosis test.

Since those results don't come for a few days, I had a slightly hypochondriacal reaction and for three days imagined myself dying in a dramatic, Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge kind of way, even though I knew it would not be as beautiful and would definitely be disgusting and terrible and exactly what was going to happen to me, because I clearly had TB and would never recover because I had really bad luck and of course this was how I was going to die.

I did not have tuberculosis.

The countryside was beautiful. It was interesting to see the differences in buildings. The stilted houses, lakes and rivers. The bus had AC but the sun was on my side of the bus, so it was slightly sweltering, but I survived. It was much better than the bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok, but that's for another blog!

I arrived in Siem Reap in the early afternoon. I immediately met Anne and Erin from California. Anne was staying in the same dorm as I was. They invited me to dinner, so we went to dinner. I got some delicious curry.

We then wandered the Night Market and bought some awesome pop-up cards.



There were some sanitary issues with the market, so I didn't get anything. This included people standing directly next to the food and lots of flies. It was not the dirtiest market I visited. That was a few days later.

After visiting the market, we people watched the crazy, drunk people on Pub Street. There are a lot of them. One girl was so dramatically drunk she couldn't stand. It seemed like a very bad idea and dangerous to do that in a foreign country. not that I drink or needed to worry about that. But I was definitely worried about other people.

We wandered around a different market as well. It was a nice evening!

We also chatted with this 13 year old girl who was dancing with all the tourist. We asked her about her bracelets, since she was selling them. She said she came to Pub Street every night, but that she didn't really care about selling bracelets, she just liked to dance! Whether or not that was true, she did seem very happy to be there. The following day, I went to Angkor Wat and it was wonderful. But, that will be another blog!