Day 3

December 10: Day 3 Emily Sorry for the late update. We were way too tired yesterday to write a coherent post. The morning and afternoon were actually really relaxing. We got up and ate breakfast (I hadn’t had coco krispies for a while! I love it when the coco comes off and then it’s like you’re eating regular rice krispies, but with chocolate milk. Genius.) Then we got these amazing mango shakes with Zoe and Sophie. After that we headed to a man-made lake, where we napped in hammocks and lounged in the water with inner tubes for a few hours. We got home by 4:30 and ate at the hostel. I also chatted with my best friend from Kenyon online. Then we napped until 9. Decided to go walk around, because Nicola and Natalie had just arrived in Siem Reap. I was feeling pretty out of it, though. I got some pizza-flavored goldfish that were sooo good. I really didn’t feel much like dancing, but the others did. Eventually Zoe and Joey walked me back home so I could chill. They’re the best. They don’t get mad at me when I don’t have any energy. I played geography games online until they all came back home around 12:30. Zoe and Sophie had to sleep in our room again. So yesterday all feels sort of vague, but it was a very good day nonetheless. Hm. Cambodia was pretty cool. Both Joey and I agree that we did a great job for the first leg of our vacation. We had a really good time there. The people I met in Cambodia were all really nice, too. I don’t know the best way to put this next sentence. It’s easy to get annoyed when people constantly ask for money on the street, but if you look into the beggars’ eyes, you can tell that they are really nice people. Well, now off to Thailand! We’ll see what happens there. I’m writing this from the Siem Reap airport. Haha, the two of us sure are good travel buddies, even if we don’t know how we’re getting to our hostel once we get to Chiang Mai! Okay, goodbye. Emily

Day 3, Dec 10 Joey             Another great day in the lives of Joey and Emily. If yesterday was like our full-on tourist day, then today was our full-on vacation day. We woke up around 7:30 naturally, which is pretty late for me given that noise started around my house in Hanoi around 6:30 and got me fully awake by 6:45 basically every day. We lounged around, ate breakfast at the all-you-can-eat buffet at our hostel. Pancakes, fruit, cereral, toast. We come back, lounged, and enter Sophie and Zoe stage right. They go down stairs, eat, and we are off to West Balay, a lake in the area.             We arrive at West Balay and think ‘Holy shit. This is going to be awesome.” There is a massive, beautiful lake, with little hammocks hanging from a rickety dock built of wood and bamboo. The lake is calm, and flat (I would say the one thing that all lakes and oceans share is the characteristic of being exceptionally flat). We lounged by the lake for about 4 hours, swimming, chilling in the hammocks, talking, eating peanut butter and butterscotch. Sophie did a sketch of Emily and me, which hopefully we can get a picture of to put on the blog. It was really nice and at one point Sophie looked up from her sketches and goes, “This is amazing!” It really was amazing.             A big little funny thing happened during our time at the lake. Zoe and I were talking about how some people try really really hard to look like travelers. They wear a scarf, purposefully don’t shave, show off their baggy pants with elephant designs that they bought at the mega-touristy markets, wear their fancy travel backpacks. Its kind of amusing. So, this one guy takes a hammock next to us and is the picture of someone trying hard to look like a traveler. Scarf, travel hat, backpack, and conversations about international development theory. Not just international development, but the theory of international development. We were thoroughly amused as we lounged.             We were eating at the hostel after the lake, thoroughly tired from spending the day outside, and enters Natalie W and Nicola, two more friends from our IHP family. Another moment of excitement, as we haven’t seen our sisters in days, and now were seeing them in a hostel in Cambodia (like, what?) and not in the classroom. We spend the rest of the day together- eating, napping, watching a movie, walking around Siem Reap, dancing. Emily was pretty zapped from the day, so she went home but the five us were dancing in the streets at around midnight, just loving life and loving our limited time with each other.             Like I said, another great day. Tomorrow will be another travel day, this time to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. More on that tomorrow!!!