My Apologies….
Hello again!
I know it has been ages since I last posted. Let me start by apologizing for those of you who read regularly. Our trip did not end after Vietnam, and I did not mean to leave you in suspense. I simply was going through a phase where I didn’t want to do it. Blogging is a lot more time consuming than I had imagined and I was feeling unmotivated. It was nicer to take my free time and watch a movie than to work on it. Also, I didn’t really think anyone was reading it given the lack of feedback I had gotten. However, the other day I was on the phone with my Uncle Jim and he was telling me he had been checking it every day, waiting for me to post anything after Vietnam. Since he didn’t have Facebook, it was the only way he was able to look at my pictures and check up on what I was doing. And I will be honest, that sparked my motivation. Even if it is just my Uncle reading it, I will keep writing it for him and for myself.
All that being said, I am not going to continue listing what I did every day. It became very tedious and quite frankly I am not sure I remember all the details at this point. I am going to try just writing about a country or a city I was visiting. I will still add tips and give an overview of what we did and whenabouts we were there, but some of the next posts may be a bit briefer. Because seeing as I have not even finished my Asia posts despite being two continents ahead, currently sitting in the back of a packed car in Argentina, I need to get caught up on this thing.
I am going to start with Cambodia. This is a country that took me by surprise. See, I was not all that excited to go here. I didn’t know a whole lot about it, except that it was part of the typical mainland Southeast Asia backpacker route (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia), and was the home to Angkor Wat. While we had received some warnings from a Cambodian guy I met in Tokyo about how unsafe it could be, we decided to pay it a visit anyway but stick to some of the main backpacker hotspots. This included the capital, Phnom Penh, the beachside town of Sihanoukville, the island of Koh Rong Samloem, and, of course the home of one of the world’s most famous temples, Siem Reap. Whatever hesitation I had had about this country was misplaced. While it is definitely the most third-world of all the countries I had been to thus far, it was well worth my time. Being less developed, Cambodia did have more visible poverty and the negative effects that come with it such as higher crime rates, trash and pollution problems, and lower quality infrastructure. But I found this place to be a diamond in the rough, with exceptionally kind people, a complex and fascinating history, and some of the most gorgeous beaches I have seen in my life.
Adam and Katie both decided to help me out a bit getting caught up. Adam completed the post on Phnom Penh, and Katie covered Sihanoukville/Otres Beach. I will be rounding out our tour of Cambodia with brief posts on Koh Rong Samloem and Siem Reap. Hope you enjoy!!!
