We ended up missing the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I didn’t set an alarm and my body wasn’t up until after the sun had already risen. Oh well…today we were scheduled for an ATV tour around Siem Reap. Since it was our last night in Siem Reap, after the tour we were planning on checking out the night scene on Pub Street, which we heard is a good time.
The ATV tour was fun and a great experience. We were the only two people on the tour so it had a more personal touch to it. Our tour lasted about 2 hours and we were able to see rural Siem Reap, visit an orphanage, and see another temple.
Rural Siem Reap is very nice. It was nice to experience something outside of the cities we had previously walked around. As we drove past house’s and towns, many of the kids would run out towards the road and wave at us. Very cool! I also enjoyed our visit to the orphanage since we were able to give a little to the kids. We were given a tour of the orphanage by one of the orphans. He did a great job of explaining how the orphanage operates and his English was excellent. I think he also spoke a few other languages and was studying to be a tour guide. He gave us a little insight about the orphanage and told us a little about his life. Very cool experience and we enjoyed donated some school supplies to them. These kids have so little yet they make the best out of the things they do have. After leaving the orphanage we drove past another temple, which was another amazing sight, then the tour was completed. The ATV tour was a lot of fun and probably one the greatest experiences I had while in Cambodia.
We next headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up from the dusty ATV riding, then ate and headed out to check out Pub Street. We met a group of people from many places around the world: Canada, London, France, Morocco, and Australia. The conversations we had with them were very interesting with most of them talking about their travels throughout the world. This definitely motivated me to make traveling more of a priority in my life. Many of them had plans or had been traveling for 4, 6, or even 8 months, whereas we were only traveling for not about two weeks….a very short time compared to them. Having commitments to things back home caused our trip to be this length, but I will hopefully be in a position to have longer trips to many more places in the future. Traveling opens your eyes to many different things. Different people, cultures, traditions, etc and it helps break the bubbles that we sometimes put ourselves in. There are many things, not only about others but also ourselves, that we can learn from traveling and being open minded to the experiences of how other people live throughout the world, whether we agree with it or not. Experiencing places you’ve never been is a great way to broaden our perspectives on life. I’m glad I was able to meet these people. It definitely motivated me to push myself to see and experience new places.
Fred
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