Cambodia is the only place where I received my tourist visa on arrival at the airport. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I arrived to a well-oiled assembly line. Provide your documents, pay for the visa, and wait at the end of the line. You can literally see your visa being passed along from person to person, each with a different task. In less than 15 minutes, my name was called, and I had a Cambodia visa pasted in my passport.
Outside the airport waiting for me was a vintage 1969 Mercedes. Now that is the way to start an adventure! I spent the afternoon settling in and getting my game plan together for how to tackle the next few days. I knew first thing was first: sunrise at Angkor Wat. At a groggy 4:45 a.m., my guide and tuk-tuk driver arrived at the hotel, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to whisk me away. A key reason why I hired a guide instead of just a driver was because I didn’t want the stress of potentially wandering around in the wrong direction, in the pitch black, and missing sunrise at the temple. There are no outdoor lights at Angkor Wat, so people just start walking with cell phones lighting the way forward. Luckily, my guide knew some great spots to get pictures which were not where the majority went.
Once inside the temple, you can go to the top, which is restricted to a limited number of people, due to size and human impact on the ruins. You can imagine that there are hundreds (plural) of people flooding this temple, so you have to queue to get up there. I was in line not long after sunrise, yet the heat was still frying my behind before 9 a.m. Because it’s a temple, women also have to be covered past the knees and the shoulders. I wanted someone to do an ice bucket challenge on me right there. I can’t imagine waiting in that line for an hour in the blistering heat under the mid-day sun. Throughout the day, we saw a variety of temples, including the one from "Tomb Raider," where the towering trees have taken over the body of the temple, intertwining their roots and trunks with the stones. During restoration, if the trees were to be removed, the structure would collapse as the trees have literally become part of the temple, making it truly a living temple.
The following two days, I hired the same tuk-tuk driver but without the guide. Tuk-tuks, rather than cars, are absolutely the way to get around for a more authentic experience. Tourists may wonder, “Is it a million degrees outside?” Yes. “Could you get a smidgen wet from a passing rainstorm?” Absolutely. “Will it wreck your hairdo?” Get a grip - you’ll look a sweaty, hot mess by lunch anyway. Put your big boy (or girl) pants on! Getting driven around in a car just screams obnoxious, and getting through a hundred motorbikes in your car wastes time. That’s my subtle opinion anyway.
By tuk-tuk, some of the temples were an hour outside of the city, but that gave me the opportunity to see the countryside - a welcome respite from the city bustle. You pass bikes hauling flatbeds with local workers sitting on top in the open air, carrying straw or mats or machinery, anything that has to go from point A to point B. You’ll pass cows grazing, or on the road - we are all headed somewhere, I suppose.
While in the countryside, we stopped by the landmine museum. The museum is very much a homegrown museum, meaning it’s not a giant concrete building with official signs and placards. This museum was started by a former child soldier who used to plant landmines in the war and later dedicated his life to finding and decommissioning mines. As you walk up to the entrance, the walkway is lined with decommissioned bombs. The number of landmines you see is astonishing and eerie. Imagine an above-ground circular swimming pool that fits about 20 people in it and comes off the ground about 10 feet, and then replace the water with landmines - that’s what you are looking at. You can also see the breakdown of how many of those landmines are from which country, many from the U.S. Go, see it, learn about it, and learn from it.
By the end of the third day, I was "templed out." In three weeks' time, I saw 20-30 temples and that was enough. Every temple is unique in its own way, from the history to the architecture but it begins to feel like a church tour in Europe - you can only see so many before the sheer mass dilutes your experience.
It cost $20-$25 a day for my tuk-tuk driver who was so kind. I tipped him at the end of each day, and on the final day, he made my heart melt when he thanked me so much for giving him a good job the last three days! At that point, I wanted to give him my whole wallet. "Just take it all!" I thought. It’s a humbling reminder of what the locals live off of each day and what we take for granted.
