Late to start
We had a late start today. After an exhausting trip to Angkor Wat yesterday, there was no way we were getting up early. It’s a great feeling when you wake up in a foreign country, and you can just have a lie in. We did manage to get ourselves ready and out of the hostel by 12pm. Today, we were going to be exploring Siem Reap. This depended on our energy levels too. Our first objective was to look out for some nourishment, we were both starving at this point.
As soon as we began exploring Siem Reap, we came across the shopping centre, right near our hostel. This next part is a little gruesome, and something similar happened before, in Phnom Penh. I went to fart, thought nothing of it, but just like Phnom Penh, it was more. Once more, I realised what had happened, and diarrhoea had struck again, in broad daylight. This unfortunate event was enough to need a trip to the bathroom in the shopping centre. It didn’t help when a little kid tried to crawl under my stall either!
After I had thrown my pride and my underwear away, I resumed my trip to the supermarket, where Mat was. We stocked up on some snacks, and then carried on exploring Siem Reap. The common denominator appeared to be the whole pineapples I had eaten prior to arriving in Phnom Penh, and Siem Reap. Both occasions I had the same issue. I google it, and it turns out that pineapples are natural laxatives. Now I know! Click here for the first accident I had.
Converting
We decided to walk down the opposite street to the one we took the other day, to the Indian restaurant. Thankfully, we were able to find a nice looking restaurant, and had some yummy lunch! After we’d rested from the searing heat, and my delicate bowels, we searched for a currency conversion shop. We wanted to trade our remaining dollars into Thai Baht. For some reason, this seemed quite a difficult task to accomplish. Several could convert from baht to dollars, but not vice versa.
After most of our options were exhausted, we tried one last shop that showed on Google Maps. Turns out, we could convert from dollars to baht, thank the lord! Once we’d found out we could convert, then we nipped to the nearby ATMs to withdraw the amount we wanted. This came to a couple of hundred dollars’ worth. Please note, these ATM kiosks get baking hot, just like a microwave, so don’t spend too much time in them! We returned to the conversion shop, and swapped our dollars for baht…mission complete!
Chilling
After accomplishing today’s task of converting money, and also exploring Siem Reap a bit, we were bound for our hostel. Once we were back, we chilled out on our own beds for several hours. This heat just takes it out of you in a major way. In addition to relaxing, we also decided on where we wanted to do our Advanced Open Water course in Thailand. We decided to do it on Koh Tao, an island on the East coast of Thailand. The pair of us were buzzing for this, we both love scuba diving. However, we decided not to book any onward travel, contrary to some advice when travelling to Thailand. We’d just hope for the best tomorrow.
During our relaxation time, we got talking to a French girl called Charlotte. She was on the bunk above Mat, so we spoke about our stories and journeys so far. We told her we were going out for dinner nearby, to a small stall basically outside our hostel. She agreed to join us. The 3 of us sat down on the very small chairs, and ordered our food on the very small tables. In all fairness, the food was nice, and incredibly cheap…right up my alley!
