It was hard to believe that we would be traveling to Cambodia soon, but as the day that we would be leaving approached my excitement and nervousness was overshadowed by my last minute preparations for the trip. I had finished packing my bags and completed all the work needing to get done prior to my departure. Now it was getting close to the time when we would start our long journey to Cambodia.
Our journey began with a flight from Tampa to New York where we spend most of the day wondering around the city with Jeff's parents. It was my first time to New York, but we didn't have too much time to actually explore much of the city nor did I want to as my thoughts were zeroed in on Cambodia. I tasted my first New York City corned beef sandwich, we drove around the city, walked through Chelsea market, had dinner at The Place...then we were off back to the airport for the first leg of our flights JFK to Anchorage. The flight to Alaska was 7 hours and we both slept most of the time missing our first in flight meal...whoops. I could smell the flight attendants serving food to the passengers as I was half sleep, but my fatigued body overcame the curiosity I had as to what they were serving. It definitely smelled good and I was regretting not waking up to eat once my stomach was growling later and all they provided to eat was soda crackers. I only had to survive a little while longer and the other half of my monstrous corned beef sandwich satisfied my hunger until we would get our next in flight meal on our 2nd flight. We reached Alaska and is was a brisk 9 degrees outside. There was snow as far as my eyes could see and this made me look forward to the warmth we would encounter upon our arrival in Phnom Penh. We only had an hour layover which was enough time to charge the electronics and make a few phone calls while we were still in the states.
Our next flight was from Alaska to Taipei, Taiwan and was 10 hours. This would be the longest flight of my life so far, however it wasn't that bad. I was able to sleep a good portion of the 10 hours and the rest of the time was spend watching movies on the good ole iPad and enjoying our in flight breakfast at 4am. It was kind of crazy being on an airplane that amount of time. I remember waking up then checking the time left until our destination and it said 6 hours left...LOL. However, the time did fly by (pun intended) and we reached Taipei. The Taipei airport is very nice...many stores and boutiques containing clothes and electronics. We still had about a 4 hour flight to Phnom Penh and the feeling that we were almost there was sinking in.
As our flight approached Phnom Penh for landing the anticipation had climaxed and we were finally here. We peaked out the airplane window surveying the landscape of Phnom Penh and all of the images that we had seen researching Cambodia would finally become reality. As we exited the airplane the Phnom Penh heat hit us and was very nice as compared to our brief encounter with 9 degree weather in Alaska. We picked up our tourist Visa's, a sim card for Jeff's cell phone so that we could communicate when out and about, spotted our driver to our hotel Manor House, and we were off to begin our Cambodia adventure...
Fred
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