Back in Laos
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Well I've been pretty slack on blogging but I'm back in Laos now. It feels a little strange to be back in a country where things are more familiar after travelling for a month.
Cambodia was pretty good but I did get a bit worn out from all the temples. My motorcycle driver was really good though and he helped me see a lot of cool places.
Honestly though, I found that Angkor Wat itself was kind of disappointing. I think part of it is that it's so hyped that your expectations get raised too high. The other thing is that it's completely overrun by tourists which really takes away from the experience. I found that I enjoyed a lot of the other temples much better as I found them much more atmospheric and they tended to not have as many tourists.
What was particularly odd about Cambodia though was their complete aversion to their own currency (the riel). I'm used to having prices quoted in other currencies (such as USD or Baht) but they honestly seem to prefer to deal in USD or Baht in Cambodia. I went to a money exchange place and tried to exchange $50, they told me they didn't have riel but they could change it into smaller bills. After that I gave up on trying to use riel, I just paid in dollars and got back riel in change.
I also have to take back everything bad that I said about the aggressive sellers in Vietnam, they have absolutely nothing on the sellers in Cambodia. Particularly little kids would come up to you and keep pestering you to buy something for really long times. I saw some people have the same kid harrass them for well over 10 minutes.
Well now I'm back in Laos. Only a for a few days and then it's back to Canada. I'm not really sure how I feel about that.
Cambodia was pretty good but I did get a bit worn out from all the temples. My motorcycle driver was really good though and he helped me see a lot of cool places.
Honestly though, I found that Angkor Wat itself was kind of disappointing. I think part of it is that it's so hyped that your expectations get raised too high. The other thing is that it's completely overrun by tourists which really takes away from the experience. I found that I enjoyed a lot of the other temples much better as I found them much more atmospheric and they tended to not have as many tourists.
What was particularly odd about Cambodia though was their complete aversion to their own currency (the riel). I'm used to having prices quoted in other currencies (such as USD or Baht) but they honestly seem to prefer to deal in USD or Baht in Cambodia. I went to a money exchange place and tried to exchange $50, they told me they didn't have riel but they could change it into smaller bills. After that I gave up on trying to use riel, I just paid in dollars and got back riel in change.
I also have to take back everything bad that I said about the aggressive sellers in Vietnam, they have absolutely nothing on the sellers in Cambodia. Particularly little kids would come up to you and keep pestering you to buy something for really long times. I saw some people have the same kid harrass them for well over 10 minutes.
Well now I'm back in Laos. Only a for a few days and then it's back to Canada. I'm not really sure how I feel about that.