Bats and Lotus Flowers

Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Siem Reap, Cambodia
We woke up thinking about packing our ever growing collection of belongings -- not a small chore and it is funny how the suitcases had grown with all the sand! After breakfast, Barbara and I took one last walk along the beautiful beach and enjoyed that. It was sweltering hot but sooo nice to remember our last look at the Thai beaches.   We snapped back into reality and had to "get it together" so we could head off to the airport.

The airport in Krabi is not very big and we looked around at all the different dried fruits and food while waiting for the plane . We all realized as we sat there that there was a baby bat perched above our head (how he got into the airport in the first place is anyone's guess) but you should have seen those girls move seats so fast when they saw it above their heads!! Other than that the trip, was uneventful and we arrived in the Kingdom of Cambodia late that evening after a quick transfer of planes back in Bangkok.

I must admit I had not really thought about this part of the trip, but everyone enjoyed it so much. Once you hit Cambodia, you have to stand in a long line to obtain a visa -- what a money-making operation -- and then go through passport control. The visa took less time than the passport control --Asian bureaucracy, I suppose. We all got through that mess as best we could and then went outside to meet our driver. There was some confusion as to our meeting time and place, but we eventually lashed up with the driver – I have never seen so many people holding up signs to meet arriving passengers -- and off we went to our hotel .

On the way, I was telling the girls about the really nice Aussie gentlemen Barbara I had met on the plane. They had all come on holiday to see Cambodia -- especially Angor Wat -- and they were so cute and nice. They wanted to talk all about Donald Trump, so it was interesting, if not a little uncomfortable. They wanted to know why “we” would vote for him. I was selective in my response, but made it clear that I was not one of the so-called “we……”

So we arrived at our hotel after driving through much of Siem Reap City. It is definitely Third World, but somewhat Westernized. It was fun to see all the Christmas decorations that had been put up for the tourists. We were driving around the city and all of sudden the cab stopped and told us to get out and we walked into the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. It was done all in Angor decoration – colonial French style – with beautiful bamboo sofas in the lounge, all surrounded by individual rooms which were surrounded by a pond with beautiful flowers, especially water lilies. The decoration also included many lotus flowers. It was just fabulous, and then we got to our room and it too was amazing – a big bed off the floor for each of us, and beautiful dark mahogany and Angor interior. The rooms looked out over the pool and that was nice, although I was going to be so careful about mosquitos here due to the dengue and malaria reading I had done before we left!

Ah, great to get into that big bed and fall asleep.

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