Stephanie - Snapshots - A Catching Up Blog

It has been a few days – crazy days – since we have written. I’ll try to be brief and get caught up!

• Standing in Pub Street in Siem Reap with a crowd filling the street watching the World Cup on TV screens hanging up in every restaurant. People from many nations, cheering and groaning in spirited factions 

• Revisiting Angkor Wat, without Ponheary this time, just wandering around thinking about what we’ve learned and looking one more time at our favorite spots. There are several chambers here where you stand against the wall and with your fist, pound once on your chest. The resulting sound is like a gong, deep and full. It gave us goosebumps. The story is that people would go there to pray, that Buddha would know their heart.

• Cancelling our elephant trek up in the remote jungle of Mondulkiri province. One of us finally fell ill, and it was Mollie. She was up all night, sick, on Friday, and we had a driver scheduled for the day-long, 4-wheel drive required, Saturday trip. No way could we pack Bean up and put her in a car for 8 hours of hilly, muddy roads. Especially since the area wouldn’t have medical care available should she need it. Time for the beach backup plan.

• Sweet Mr. Hong – reserved, like most Cambodians, dropping us off for dinner and saying goodbye after a week together, turning suddenly to Peter and hugging him, with the declaration, “I like you!”, then bowing, hands clasped, as we left.

• Quickly departing Siem Reap, a day late, when Peter discovered that the bus we needed to be on left at 7:30…at 7:05. We raced around the guesthouse, trailed by Ponheary’s brother and one of her sisters, racing to a waiting van which was driven by a family friend determined that we would make our bus!

• Collapsing into seats only to realize that the bus was cramped and full, and that our driver clearly thought that he was zipping through the countryside in some kind of James Bond chase scene, honking his horn incessantly. (a surreal sight – Cambodian families, tourists, terrible Thai music videos on the bus tv, all of us with iPods on, trying to doze…and across from me, a young monk, barefoot, saffron-robed, sitting lotus position, tapping away on his laptop with rice fields and palm trees passing behind him in a blur )

• We were all a bit green by the time we arrived in Phnom Penh to transfer buses and ride another four hours to get to Sihanoukville, our stop at the beach. Thankfully, the bus was much nicer, but we had another Mario Andretti driver, who would slam on the brakes and let people off at seemingly random points along the way, whenever someone would stand up and walk to the door.

• Meeting a fresh-faced young Cambodian on the bus “My brother has a tuk-tuk at the station, you need a tuk-tuk?” One thing we have learned, everyone is somehow connected to a person who wants nothing more than to drive you somewhere, be it by tuk-tuk, moto, or van!

• Gratefully arriving, at last, at the beautiful Independence Hotel on Independence Beach. I can only say that if you have ever imagined a tropical paradise, this exceeds it. The kids spent the day frolicking in the clear, warm water of the Gulf of Thailand, Griffin traipsed around the nearly deserted, jungle bordered coastline, and I had a massage…on the beach. We are taking a boat tomorrow to a nearby little island for snorkeling and swimming, and the following morning, back to Phnom Penh. We will spend one night there and then catch our flight home on Thursday morning.



Thanks to all for your comments and well-wishes. Big hugs from Independence Beach, Cambodia!