Today I want to tell you all about the bunches of adventures that I've had in the last month, starting from the most recent, and will also explain my long negligence from this blog.
First, last night was one of those emotion-packed evenings, filled with elated happiness mixed with sadness. My dad left Cambodia after having visited for 10 days, all the way from America! (That's only 30 hours of flying.) On his last day here, I told him to prepare 3 sentences for all the "How was Cambodia?!" questions that he was bound to receive upon his return, especially considering that he had never before left the country (excluding Canada). (We Baers don't half-ass these things: My brother owns a golf course, my dad went almost 9000 miles for his first trip out of the country (again, Canada doesn't count), just mere examples of our awesomeness.) Moving away from the parentheticals, his responses were as such:
1. It was great being with Emily. (Awwwww)
2. Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot!!! (I guess that counts as a sentence.) (It wasn't that hot, it's rainy season, so this is the colder half of the year. Granted, it was pushing 90's everyday, with nearly 100% humidity, but I was wearing a sweatshirt and a scarf for half of our trip, because that's cold for Cambodia.)
3. The traffic is insane. The way it runs so smoothly, I should have seen 20 accidents by now, but I haven't seen a single one! Everybody is in everybody else's lanes, and there are no stop signs, and people are going both ways around roundabouts, it's crazy. (This reminded me of my first reactions to traffic in Cambodia, and it made me chuckle, because after a year, I barely notice it anymore.)
I said we were moving away from parentheticals, but I fooled you, didn't I?
My dad arrived in Siem Reap at 10:30 at night on August 27th, with a giant duffel bag, and a tiny backpack. We stayed in a wonderful hotel in Siem Reap, called Gloria Angkor, that was not too expensive, but also very fancy. My favorite part was the bath tub. I can't remember the last time I had taken a bath. After getting squeaky clean, and sort of getting a good night's rest, (except not, thanks to jet lag) we toured the city of Siem Reap on our first day, visited tons of markets, all my favorite restaurants, a modern pagoda, some malls, and then more markets. The next 3 days were all spent touring Angkor Wat. I asked my dad which temple was his favorite, and he picked Angkor Wat itself, the most famous of the temples, because of its size and grandeur. It is quite amazing.
We feasted!
And we saw a Cambodian family doing the Ice Bucket Challenge from my hotel window.
On the fifth day, we visited my site! We got there around lunch time, so right away was eating rice time. Then it was visiting time. We visited my school, some houses, friends of mine, the local Wat, and finally stumbled back home in the rain, on my muddy road for more eating rice time. We played several rounds of Uno with ChayNa and Srey Neeat, until everyone got tired of me winning. Oops.
That night, we spent the night at my host family's house. I was completely covered by blankets, while my dad was sweating in his sleep. The next morning we rode the bus on to Battambang!
Two nights in Battambang, most of which were spent with much needed relaxing. Lots of good feasting, as is wont whenever one goes to Battambang. Roich howey, more bus rides, (in which I introduced my dad to the wonders of podcasts!) and back to Siem Reap we went!
Besides the traffic, my dad was also very impressed by the floating villages.
These villages are houses that float on the Tonle Sap lake, the biggest lake in Southeast Asia, all year round! They make their living with selling fish and crocodiles, and they also have the benefit of no property taxes! There are 3 major villages: the Vietnamese village, the Muslim village, and the regular old Khmer Village. We visited the Khmer village, and then the Vietnamese village's school, where I was very surprised to hear everyone speaking, and learning in Vietnamese. There were no secondary or high schools in the villages, only primary.
The villages, amazingly, flow with the ebb of the lake. During the rainy season, which is nowadays, the lake is swellingly full, so the villages are near the mainland. But, during the dry season, which starts in about December, the lake dries up like a sponge, causing the villages to move several kilometers away from the mainland. This drastic change in the lake is also why the Tonle Sap river, which connects the lake to the Gulf of Thailand, is one of the only rivers in the world to change directions every year.
At last, after one more day of relaxing and ice cream eating, I had to send my dad off to the airport at 11pm last night, with his giant duffel bag and tiny backpack. Google tells me that right now he is on his way to Atlanta, Georgia, flying very close to the North Pole, on a 15 hour flight from Korea. Hopefully he finds his way back home again. Athena and Scat miss him.
Just before this big adventure, I had just recently returned from another adventure, one equally filled with many emotions, which was a combination of vacationing with Emma, and sending off my dear site-mate, Meghan, back to America after 2 whole years. Meghan left on August 9th from Phnom Penh, and it was heart-wrenching to see her go, but she is going back to a wonderful life in America. Right now, she is traveling in Nepal and Italy, before she returns to her parents' house in New Jersey for about 5 days, and then continues on to Maine, where she will have a new job! My first year of my service was greatly defined by Meghan, and I couldn't have asked for a better site-mate, or a better friend. She brought out my good qualities, and all my sassiness, too.
After that sad departure, Emma and I went south, to the coast! We visited Kampot, first, which is a beautiful little city on the river. It's very quiet, and has a nice, cool breeze, delicious food, and a giant durian statue.
After Kampot, was Kep!
We only actually spent a few hours in Kep, because where we really wanted to go was a small, tropical island off the coast of Kep called Rabbit Island!
We spent 2 nights on this amazing tropical island. The two of us stayed in a small, one room shack on the beach.
It's the classic tropical island. Ocean, palm trees, hammocks, the whole shebang.
The island had about a 6 kilometer circumference, and it took us a little over 2 hours to walk around the whole thing.
Besides that, we spent a lot of time relaxing in hammocks, and reading. There was no internet or electricity in our shacks, so I read a whole book in 2 days!
We had a spectacular time on Rabbit Island, and I hope that someday I will have the chance to return.
What's next? On Wednesday, I head back into Phnom Penh to meet the newest volunteers, the K8s!!! They will swear-in as official volunteers on Friday, and Saturday they will all be dropped off at their prospective sites, to start their 2 year journey that is Peace Corps Cambodia.
