Day 9: On to Siem Reap

The night before, we had a farewell party with our pen pals. As our farewell, we had a dance party on the rooftop lounge of our hotel and rocked out to the biggest hits of both of our cultures. Both the international and Cambodian students had a blast dancing the night away! While it was a fun night, it turned out to be a bittersweet goodbye as it was our last day seeing our pen pals for the trip. Filled with emotional tears and a warm hugs, we all shared a true moment of raw joy and endless love for one another and the relationships we made and will continue to have.

We began the day in Battambang and ended it in Siem Reap. We had the option to walk through the city one last time in the morning to get coffee with our intrepid chaperone, Mr Gass. This coffee was voted the best in Cambodia, and it was a perfect way for some of us to take advantage of our last morning in this beautiful city. Although we still missed our pen pals, we climbed on the bus and began our journey to our next and final destination: Siem Reap.

The bus ride was short (2 plus hours) and consisted mainly of breathtaking rural landscapes along a well-paved two lane road. The journey paled in comparison to the length of our 6 hour bus drive from Phnom Penh to Battambang, however, and stopping at a grocery mart along the way, where we bought plenty of American and Cambodian snacks to keep us sustained for the duration of our journey, made the brief ride pass quickly. Best of all, our guide, Por Heng, kept us occupied with stories of his younger years in Siem Reap and the ways in which he and his family dealt with the horrors of Khmer Rouge rule and the civil war and Vietnamese invasion that followed. It always seems amazing to us that these very kind and loving people could have gone through so much so recently.

Our hotel is conveniently located in the center of the city, surrounded by many markets, including the famous Night Market. We were given some free time before our next activity, and most students decided to explore Old Market, one of the many located only a few blocks away. There we found the type of tourist gifts that seem to dominate the local markets in this bustling city, such as Buddha and elephant statues, paintings of the various temples (wats), charm bracelets, and huge tubs of small fish that nibble the dead skin off of people's feet. Most interestingly, we kept running into vendors selling fried tarantulas, scorpions, and other large insects, but it seemed like everyone was able to resist the temptation to indulge. Meeting back at the hotel, the entire group and the chaperones went to the Angkor Panorama Museum.

The museum was relatively new and very high-tech, offering images of what the nearby temples that many kings of the past had built since the 9th Century, when Cambodia was a regional powerhouse under the Angkor Empire, looked like in their day. These pictures were especially helpful because we will be visiting several of these temples over the next few days. Best of all, there was a gigantic detailed 3-D panoramic painting of the sequence of events of the Angkor Empire's history that showed scenes of war, people's daily lives, and the construction of the temples, all of which were depicted in both gruesome and powerful ways. We concluded our tour with a short documentary about the building of the biggest temple, Angkor Wat, which explained the religious and political reasons significance of the temples, while showing us the step-by-step process that the workers and artisans went through to build the temple and produce its magnificent carvings. Even the floor of the river that ran through the city was embedded with sculptures of gods that the Cambodians believed made the water holy! They used local sandstone for all the temples, which was layered on top of the foundation of red clay. The video was very informative and sparked further interpretive questions from all of us that increased our interest in the subject and prepared us for tomorrow's adventures.

We then drove to a restaurant further into the city for dinner and were, surprisingly, served Western-style food, which made some of us wonder how much Siem Reap was built around the large number of Western tourists. Following our meal, we were given the option to go to the Night Market or explore the streets safely on our own. There was a lot of activity in the streets and it was clear that Siem Reap really came alive during the evening with beautiful shops, lights, and conversation. The streets were filled with shoppers and gawkers, even though it was Monday night, proving that Siem Reap is a hub for interaction for people from all over the world.
- Written By: Aeriel S. and Rachel K.
- Pictures: Camryn M.