The idea came up 3 years ago or so. The group of friends I was supposed to go with backed out due to the political issues that were ongoing then. And then the idea kept lingering around in my mind. Come 2011 I thought I must make this trip no matter what, even if it meant travelling alone.
During one of our weekly breakfast routine with the duo, Esther and Nim, the discussion came up again. And this time, it was yes, go ahead, look for the good deals and book. It was at the edge of being cancelled again due to various issues. Initially the plan was in December and then I realised that my passport was expiring in Nov and i am yet to renew it. But they kept watch and the budget travellers as we were, the deals came up again and prego! We booked it. Thanks to the watchful eyes of Nim and easy accesss to the Internet Esther had, we confirmed the flights at RM260 (to and fro)!
Thanking God and lucky stars for the wonderful deal, the dates we had were end of January.
The long awaited months became weeks, then days then hours and finally at 5am on Jan 24th, we all met at the KL Sentral to board our bus to LCCT.
I had less than 4 hours of sleep that morning. Met up with Sumi at about 3smtg and went to McDonalds for breakfast. Unfortunately, since breakfast is only served at 4, I had a fish fillet instead.
Sumi volunteered to drop me off at the bus terminal. At that hour, it took us less than 10 mins to reach. I bought us a return ticket since we were all going to have our pick up from the terminal. On the bus, I chatterred away with Esther, boring her to death. Next to our seat was a well dressed guy who looked like he was the captain. (Our thoughts on the same were confirmed when we heard him on board the flight when he made the announcements and we saw him get off the flight.)
We reached just in time to board the plane and there was very little checking done at the exit. Nim managed to grab some coffee and sandwich while I used the wash room and prep for the 1.5 hour flight.
We were one of the last few to enter the flight. Took our seats and prepared to doze off.
We arrived at Siem Reap to beautiful weather at 23 degrees. After clearing the immigration, we went on the lookout for a cardboard with Nim' name on it. We found none and there were quite a number of tuk tuk drivers who were offering us their services. We ignored them all and sat at a small closed cafe to wait for our own driver. His name was Bora. A very hospitable bora.
He found us within minutes after we sat down. Introducing ourselves, he hurried to load our bags onto his tuk tuk. A tuk tuk is a motorcycle that pulls a wagon-like seater. This seater can handle at least 6 small frame people at any one time and in our case, it was 3 of us seated in one row and our luggage loaded in front of us.
