Angkor Wat by Liesl Pfeffer

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Angkor Wat, Cambodia
April 2018

There’s already more than enough pictures of Angkor Wat in the world, so I won’t share many. Our three days visiting Angkor Wat were really lovely and surprisingly calm in my memory despite there being a lot of tourists there. The place is unfathomable and amazing. We got caught in a storm and spent an hour sitting inside an ancient temple watching the rain. We ate mangoes, bananas, and other fruits we don’t know the names of. We watched the sunrise and the sunset over the ruined temples, several times.

Phnom Penh by Liesl Pfeffer

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Phnom Penh, Cambodia
April 2018

We spent four nights in Phnom Penh, most of them with mild food poisoning, but it wasn’t Phnom Penh’s fault. Rather our tendency to eat anything that looked delicious. I regret nothing.

Outside Kampot by Liesl Pfeffer

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Kampot region, Cambodia
April 2018

We hired a motorbike and Nico drove us through dirt roads surrounded by rice fields. The drive was a bit wild after it rained all night; there was mud everywhere and we had to go slowly. A truck overtook us and splashed us head to toe with mud down our left sides. We bought a few bottles of water and washed some of the mud off ourselves, and some friendly guys on the other side of the road washed our motorbike for 2,000 riel ($0.50). We stopped for lunch at a roadside stand next to Secret Lake and ate the spiciest green papaya salad that I have ever eaten. We ate with tears pouring down our faces, constantly sipping sugar cane juice and breathing heavily. We visited a cave with green moss-covered walls and stalactites hanging from the ceiling that surrounded a 1,300 year old temple. Our guides were two local kids (literally kids) who pointed out shapes in the cave that looked like a turtle, an elephant, an alligator and a pig. We drove home at dusk, the highway full of trucks and rickshaws.

Kampot by Liesl Pfeffer

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Kampot, Cambodia
April 2018

I loved our days in Kampot. It’s a smallish town with beautiful old houses, a wide river and tea plantations all around. We found a lovely small cinema that was screening films and documentaries, many of which were about Cambodia.