Iselin’s travels

Journey End,

Sun, 07 Jan 2018 12:00:00 +0700

I arrived at Oslo airport around noon on 7 January, after having flown from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur with Malaysia Airlines, and then from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai and Dubai to Oslo with Emirates.

Bangkok, Thailand

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 19:00:00 +0700

On 4 January we got up early, had breakfast, and at 7:30 we started the long journey from Battambang to Bangkok. Our tour guide said it would take us 8-9 hours to get us there, but we ended up not arriving in Bangkok before 7 in the evening. We first made a long stop at a coffee place, and then we had to queue a lot on both the Cambodian and the Thai side when we got to the border. Altogether, I think the border crossing took us two hours. So that was not quick, and not much fun. When we arrived in Thailand, we were picked up by a Thai minibus, which was much fancier and more comfortable than any of the busses we had been on in both Cambodia and Vietnam. The bus was very comfortable with leather seats, and even had WiFi. When we finally arrived in Bangkok, we checked into a hotel called Nouvo City Hotel, which was a nice hotel with a great outdoor swimming pool. We went for dinner at a restaurant just around the corner almost right after we had finished checking everyone in, and there we had a nice goodbye dinner with the rest of the tour group, and we said thank you and goodbye to our tour guide Yuth. After dinner, I went to a nearby hairdresser together with Claire, a South-African/English lady in our tour group, and I had a hair cut while she got a manicure. Afterwards, we had a few drinks at a bar next door together with my dad and Sally, an American lady in our tour group. We stayed up until late chatting, before we went back to the hotel to go to bed. The next day, 5 January, my dad and I started the day by having breakfast at the same restaurant where had had dinner the night before, and then I went with Claire back to the same hairdresser to make ourselves more beautiful. I had a manicure and a pedicure, while Claire got a pedicure and a haircut. Afterwards, my dad and I had to check out of our room and into a new room, and then I went to the swimming pool to relax in the sun there. Several of the people from my tour group where there too, and I had lunch in the sun together with Claire and Sally. In the late afternoon, I went together with Claire and Sally by taxi to a very fancy shopping mall. There was a Gourmet Food Market there, and we got some great food at a truffle place there. I had some delicious mini burgers, a glass of prosecco, and some freshly made crisps with fresh black truffle shavings and truffle salt on them. They were definitely the best crisps I’ve ever had. Afterwards, we did some shopping, and took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. Taking a tuk-tuk in Bangkok turned out to be a lot scarier than taking one in Cambodia, as the tuk-tuk was driving just as fast as the cars and took a couple of really scary u-turns. But it was also lots of fun, and we got to see the royal palace on the way. The palace was beautiful, but I unfortunately didn’t get to take a picture of it. When we got back to the hotel, we went for dinner at a nearby restaurant, and my dad and Cathy, an Australian lady from the tour group, came and met us there. Afterwards I went back to the hotel and went early to bed, while my dad went for a massage and to a blues bar. The next day, my dad and I met Claire for breakfast at the hotel, and afterwards I relaxed a bit by the pool, before we had to check out of the hotel at noon. After checking out, I went for a massage together with Claire and my German friend Holger. Claire and I both had a 90 minute massage, and afterwards we went to a place nearby to get a facial. After our spa session was done, we went and got all of our luggage, said goodbye to my dad, and took a taxi to the airport. The taxi driver was absolutely horrible. He made a stop to buy water for himself, coughed and made lots of disgusting noises the whole way, and when we finally got to the airport, he said he didn’t have any change, hoping he would get a 600 Thai baht tip in addition to the 400 baht fare. Claire started arguing with him, and it turned out he did indeed have change. Then Claire and I said goodbye, and I checked in my things, went through security and the passport control and started the long journey back to Oslo and Brussels again.

Battambang, Cambodia

Wed, 03 Jan 2018 14:00:00 +0700

On 3 January, we got in a bus straight after breakfast and drove for about three hours from Siem Reap to Battambang. On our way at there, we made a stop at a market where you could by grilled rats. I didn’t dare try to taste one, but several of the people in my tour group did, and they said it tasted a bit like chicken. Apparently the rats in Cambodia only eat breakfast rice, so our tourguide told us eating them is not so bad. But despite that, I didn’t feel like tasting one. We arrived in Battambang around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and checked into a hotel called Classy Hotel. And it was indeed classy. It was the best hotel of the ones we stayed in while in Cambodia, and it had a wonderful swimming pool and a nice rooftop bar with a view. But unfortunately I did not get to try the swimming pool because I did not find the time. After checking in, I went with some of the people from the tour group on a tuk-tuk ride to a nearby village to see how the people there lived. We visited several people there, and got to see how they produce different things, such as rice wine, rice noodles and spring rolls, which they later sell to earn money. When we got back to the hotel a couple of hours later, I had a drink on the rooftop of the hotel together with some of the people from the tour group, and watched the sunset. Afterwards, Susanna, the Spanish girl in my tour group, and I had a foot massage at the hotel. It was great, except for the fact that the woman who gave me the massage started begging for a tip afterward. I don’t like it when people start asking for a tip. Later that evening, I went back up to the rooftop, and had dinner and something to drink there, before going to bed.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 18:00:00 +0700

On 31 December we got up early, had breakfast and got on a bus to go from Phnom Pen to Siem Reap. On our way there, we stopped at Santuk Silk Farm, which was about in the middle between the two cities, and learned how silk is made there. The farm is run by a woman from Laos and she told us how she had started it together with her late American husband. The woman was really nice and friendly, and she showed us around the farm and told us all stages of silk production. She said it takes one silk worn six weeks to produce a tiny amount of silk, and that’s why silk is so expensive. She had about 15 employees on her farm, and they all made only 5 US dollars per day. After the tour of the farm was over, the owner showed us some silk scarves that had been made on the farm, and I bought one of them; a beautiful green one. Then we had a nice lunch on the farm. Afterwards we got back on the bus and drove a couple of hours more, before we stopped at a floating village with about 60,000 inhabitants near Siem Reap. We walked through the village and learned how they make money through fishing and selling fish and fish products. We also met lots of really beautiful and friendly kids who all wanted to say hello to us. Most of the people in the village seemed very poor, but despite that, they were all smiling and looking happy. After walking through the village, we got on a boat and went on a boat trip to further explore the village. When the boat trip was over, we went to see a monastery nearby, said hello to some really young munks who lived there (I think they were about 12 years old), and then we got back on the bus to continue our journey. We made one more stop just outside of Sieam Reap, and we then stopped to see a bridge that was about 700 years old. We walked across it, and then we got back on the bus. We finally arrived in Siem Reap around 6 o’clock in the evening, and checked into Dinata Angkor Boutique Hotel. The hotel was nice and had a swimming pool, and me and my dad got a big room with a balcony. We met with the group again shortly after checking into the hotel to go out for dinner and celebrate New Year’s Eve. We went to a restaurant downtown near the pub street, and had a nice dinner there. Afterwards we went to Pub Street (that was actually its name), to have a drink there and see the fire works. But Pub Street was way too busy with too many people everywhere, so that was not fun at all. We also didn’t find a place to have a drink to go home. We found a more quiet side street and stayed there until midnight, and then we took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel to go to bed. On the next day, 1 January, we got up early, had breakfast and then we got on a bus together with the rest of the group at 9 o’clock to go explore the temples of Angkor Wat. The temples are all between 800 and 1200 years old, and the ones we saw - Banteay kdey, Ta Prom, Angkor thom, Bayon, Banteay srey and Pre rup - were all really beautiful. Walking through them felt a bit like being in another world, and I really wish I could have seen the temples the way they used to be, when they were first built. Today only ruins are left, and all the gold and other treasures that used to be there are gone. We spent the whole day seeing the temples, and only stopped for lunch. We also saw the sunset from one of the temples, but that didn’t feel very magical at all, because we were standing on top of the temple and watched the sun go down between some trees in the distance, and over a field. Afterwards we went back to the hotel, and had a couple of drinks by the pool, before going to bed early. On 2 January, we got up super early to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Together with the rest of the tour group, my dad and I got on a bus and left the hotel at 5 am to go to Angkor Wat. It’s was pitch black when we got there, and I had to use the flashlight on my phone to see where I was going. We sat down by the lake in front of Angkor Wat and waited there until it started getting light and the sun rose. It was beautiful and it was well worth the effort of having gotten up so early! When the sun was up, we went on a walk through Angkor Wat together with our tour guide to explore the temple. It was huge and there were lots of small ponds there with beautiful, pink lotus flowers. We also met some munks, and some of the people in our tour group got one of the munks to give them a blessing. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and spent a few hours relaxing by the pool. In the afternoon, my dad and I took a tuk-tuk downtown together with Susanna, a Spanish girl in our tour group, to find a spa place and get a massage. We found a nice place and got a great massage, and Susanna and I were placed next to each other in the same little room, so we got to know each other quite well. After the massage, we had dinner at a restaurant nearby, and went to the market. I bought a nice, blue silk scarf with elephants on it. We then took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel, and there I met my German friend Holger, who is travelling on the same group tour as me, but the one who started one day later. We ended up going for a massage nearby, because Holger still hadn’t had a massage in Asia. Afterwards we bought a couple of beer at a nearby supermarket and sat and talked outside the hotel for a while, before going back to our rooms to go to bed. The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel, and then my dad and I got on a bus at 9 am together with the rest of the tour group to go to Battambang.

Phnom Pen, Cambodia

Fri, 29 Dec 2017 17:00:00 +0700

The bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City was a long one. We started at 8:20 from our hotel, and it took us two whole hours just to get out of Ho Chi Minh City because the traffic was horrible. The city is quite chaotic, and I’ve never seen that many motorcycles anywhere else before. After about three hours, we finally arrived at the Cambodia border. There we had to queue for a while before they stamped our passports to let us out of Vietnam. Afterwards we had lunch in no man’s land, in a restaurant next to a duty free shop, before we had to queue again to get into Cambodia. Everything went fine, and we then got on the bus again to drive for four more hours to Phnom Pen. The bus ride was quite uncomfortable. The seats were really had, we did not have much space, the bus was old and the air con wasn’t really working that well. We finally arrived in Phnom Pen late in the afternoon, and checked into our hotel, Town View II, around 5 pm. After leaving our luggage in the room, we went straight to the rooftop on the 10th floor to watch the sunset together with the rest of our tour group. The sunset was really beautiful, and the view from the hotel was great! Afterwards we all took tuk-tuks to go out for dinner. We went to a restaurant by the river, and that was nice. Afterwards we took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel and went to bed. The next day, we got up early to go on a city tour by tuk-tuk. We first had breakfast at the hotel, and then we left together with the rest of the group at 8:30. We first went to the Royal Palace, and spent one and a half hours there walking around looking at it. The palace was huge, with lots of buildings, and there was gold and silver everywhere. From there on we went to the artificial hill which Phnom Pen is named after, and walked up the hill to visit the temple on the top of it. After that, we got back onto the tuk-tuk and drove around the city exploring other sights, before we went and had lunch in a nice, little restaurant. After lunch we went back to our hotel, and got on a tour bus there to go visit the Choeung Ek Memorial, which is located at the former Killing Fields, and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former torture prison used by the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian genocide in the late 1970s. A really nice female tourguide showed us around, and she told us that her brother, uncle and two of her grandparents had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. It was all really sad and horrible, and at one point at the Killing Fields, the tour guide started crying when she told us about how they used to kill small children by hitting their heads against a big tree. It was really upsetting. The Killing Fields were several mass graves, and in several of them, you could see bones and clothes sticking up from the ground. About 20,000 people had been killed there. After visiting the Killing Fields, we went to the torture prison. Almost all the inmates here had been killed at the Killing Fields after first having spent some time and getting tortured in the prison. The prison had kept track of all the prisoners, and we saw lots of pictures of them. In some of the pictures, the prisoners looked badly injured and in one picture, it looked like the prisoner had just had his teeth pulled out. There were also some pictures of some non-Cambodian inmates, and the tour guide told us that these had been journalists from Australia, Japan and Germany who had failed to get out of the country in time and had instead ended up being imprisoned and later killed at the Killing Fields. There were also lots of pictures of the Khmer Rouge soldiers who had worked at the prison. These were mostly between 10 and 16 years old. In the prison, we also met a former inmate, who told us that he was one of the very few survivors of the prison, and that his whole family had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. After visiting the prison, we went back to the hotel, and went upstairs to the rooftop to watch the sunset. My dad and I didn’t feel like having any dinner that evening, because the events that day had just been too upsetting and we didn’t have any appetite. Instead we went to a spa just around the corner from the hotel, and got a massage there, before going to bed. The next day, we woke up early, had breakfast and got on a bus to go to Siem Reap together with the rest of the group.

View from the rooftop of Town City II Hotel.

Me and my dad’s room at the Town City II Hotel in Phnom Pen.

The view from the rooftop of the Town City II Hotel

Watching the sunset over Phnom Pen from the rooftop of Town City II Hotel.

Our tour group watching the sunset and having a few drinks on the rooftop of the Town City II Hotel in Phnom Pen.

Sunset over Phnom Pen seen from the Town View II Hotel

Ho Chi Minh City

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 18:10:00 +0700