Cambodia part 2, a day in Bangkok and the end

It's time for the last post.
Sounds a bit sad to me...

So first I would like to share some more videos from my travels with Anker that I couldn't upload earlier:

Floating markets in Vietnam

Crazy scooter traffic in Vietnam

Now the remaining chronicles from our travels:
From Phnom Penh we took an exhausting 7h bus tour to Siem Reap, the supporting city for the close-by temples of Angkor Wat that we intended to visit.

We arrived there quite late around 10pm and found that the hotel we had booked online just had ignored our reservation, “sorry, no responsibility for online booking”. And because of the Chinese New Year we found that pretty much everything else was booked out (prices were also doubled). At some point a friendly old motodriver came up and tried to help us in searching a room for the night. Eventually after 30min he came back without success. In the meantime Anker called the Agoda.com customer service and tried to talk them into booking a different room for us. They would even have paid a 5star hotel that was right in front of us for 90$/night but even that one was booked out :-/
Slowly the idea of having to sleep somewhere outside seemed not completely unlikely anymore.
And the motodriver started telling us to sleep next to the police station as that might be safer :-/

Around 12pm though things improved a bit and the motodriver finally came back once again and told us he had found a guesthouse for only 12$ and additionally Anker had talked agoda.com into compensating us with up to 90$.
Pretty relieved we started our journey to the guesthouse: The two of us with our big backpacks and all our other stuff plus the old guy on one motorbike :D Cambodian style!




Happy that we won’t have to sleep on the street, we finally arrived at our new room and were quite disillusioned. The bedlinen were quite dirty, the trashbin still full, it smelled intensely like pee and insects were everywhere around.
Seriously, our blanket seemed like a insect farm with all kinds of different types crawling out of it it. I guess an insectologist would have a great time there.
But without any alternative options we gave in to our bad fate, threw the blanket in a corner and went to bed with shoes and jackets on, tightening everything so no insects could sneak in and sprayed lots of mosquito spray on us and our stuff, hoping it would also stop all the other insects from attacking us -.-
Before falling asleep though, Anker also got a really bad electricity-shock, when he plugged in his phone charger. Nice!

Anker going safe

The next morning we got out as quick as we could and went to a different hotel that he had found. It was such a relief when we arrived there and just took a few hours to recover from the night.

Oh and one more remark: Never complain about insects or bad smell in your room. During our travels on one occasion they had sprayed so much odor spray around that it was actually worse than before and an other time when we had complained about lots of mosquitos in the bathroom they had contaminated our bathroom with so much insect spray that we didn't want to enter it anymore.
So either try to get a new room or complain afterwards, but don't let them try to fix it! ;-)

So finally around 2pm we started our day for some temple sightseeing and hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day to move us around. First though we stopped at one of the many Indian restaurants there true to our motto Indian food is the best.

And then it was time for some freaky temples:

Angkor Wat temples

During the travels I have actually managed to increase my banana consumption compared to Berlin :D Didn't expect that to be possible...

Objectively the temples were really mind-blowing, but somehow I was quite tired most of the time in Siem Reap and couldn't really appreciate the sights. To annoy Anker a little, who's generally a bigger fan of churches and temples than me, I used to say "Temples - seen one, seen 'em all!"

Finally it was time for Anker to head back to Taiwan and we had our last goodbye meal fpr the time being at our newfound favourite Indian restaurant.
Afterwards I headed to my next guesthouse that was actually run by a German. The owner said that he had always used to say that after 50 he would leave Germany behind to start a new life in other countries. He had already lived in Vietnam and Korea for 1-2 years each and now managed the guesthouse with his Cambodian wife/girlfriend. Interesting people you meet.

After, I spent the days mostly in my hotels, waiting for the days to pass by and looking forward to my flight to Germany. I was just so exhausted from the weeks of traveling laying behind me.
I also got to spend one day in Bangkok from where my flight back to Germany was departing. During my flight there I met a Swedish/South-African couple that was travelling for a total of 7 month with their 2 children and an au-pair girl. And the children actually grew up trilingual, speaking English, Swedish and German (as they used to live in Switzerland). Pretty amazing thing to do.

Here a few pics from sightseeing in Bangkok:

this wall of Buddhas was completely surrounding one of the temples

And then eventually it was time for my flight back to Germany.

That's it.

So now half a year of living in and travelling Asia is lying behind me.
What an experience!
I have visited a total of 9 Asian countries, more countries actually than I'd been to before in my life.
I have tried all kinds of delicious food from Japanese ramen and Vietnamese springrolls to Chinese dumplings, Korean bibimbap and fried oreos. I have hiked grand mountains, seen exotic one-tree-forests, enjoyed perfect beaches and have seen probably more temples than I have ever visited churches in Germany. And the people I met: All the Germans :D ...and the other half of the exchange students; all the UCSD friends I could meet again, the fascinating travellers and all the Taiwanese of course.
What a mind-blowing experience!
Sitting here, back in Germany in my parents house I still feel overwhelmed from all thats lying behind me and I'm extremely grateful for this opportunity, this gift to me. I'm sure it had and will have a profound impact on my life.

However, the countries I have seen this time have been especially demanding. Compared to more developed places like Taiwan, Korea or Japan, in these relatively much poorer countries I felt that it is just taking away much more energy if you have to be so careful about everything. From the food-hygiene, not overpaying for stuff or the traffic to general safety and generally having to be careful which people to trust. And furthermore some experiences have been extremely intense like experiencing first-hand corruption, seeing devastating poverty and begging children or learning about the terrible Cambodian history.
Therefore by now I'm really looking forward to being in my own room in Germnany again with all the good and safe food and also eventually getting some routine again.
The last weeks have been more than great but to be upfront, now I am quite happy that it's over. My mind is just full and now I need some time to mentally process everything and recharge my batteries again.
And by the way, I've been working on a different blog on some things I've been thinking about. I hope to publish it in the next weeks.

For now, maybe I should take some break before getting into new adventures.
Half a year should be enough ;-)
Possibly India then.
I'll keep you updated.