Siem Reap - Reflections on the first day

Reflections on the first 12 hours

When visiting Tanzania, I felt very disconnected from the country and its culture. The travel was difficult and had me questioning my adventurousness. Why didn’t we eat any street food? Why did we spend so much time with guides? So much time in walled-in resorts? How have we already spent so much of our budget?

This line of thinking also led me to overpack for this leg of the trip. Two examples jump to my mind

For our first leg, we only brought 1 container of floss and for this leg, we brought 4 containers. The context is: We realized we were running low on our last day in Amsterdam. And forgot to get more when we made a trip to the Pharmacy that day. This led us to run out of floss when we were at Rivertrees. We then made an excursion to a pharmacy that had no floss. So we asked our guide to pick some up in the city center. We were gratuitous to have the floss but it was different and not as effective as the one we use in the States. Katie is using aligners to straighten her teeth, so she needs to floss every day to help with gum inflammation. We made sure we had plenty on this leg of the trip.
We only brought a handful of Tums for the first leg of the trip and on this leg, we brought two full bottles. The context is: After every meal in Tanzania our stomach would feel a little off. At the best of times, mine felt like it was a knot. Our limited tums and inability to buy more lead us to ration our usage. Often only using one when we would have preferred two.

Within the first 12 hours of being in Cambodia, all of my concerns were washed away.

We showed up at our hotel to the most welcoming staff
In our hotel room, everything worked and felt incredibly clean, including consistent hot water
The first meal we ate was dinner at our hotel. I got beef Lok Lak. It was delicious! I even was adventurous and ate the fresh lettuce and tomato on my plate. After the meal, my body felt amazing. I had no problems with the digestion
The next morning we were up before sunrise and decided to go for a walk. One thing we noticed immediately was how unnoticed we were. Tuk-tuk drivers would stop to ask to offer us a ride and business owners would ask us to look in their shops. However, most folks were just going about their day with other things on their mind
For breakfast, we found a french cafe with cheap high-quality pastries and coffee.
At a grocery store, we were able to get great-looking produce and even the imported food was fairly priced

Within the first 12 hours, here a lot of my confidence in myself has been restored. It is acting as a good reminder to be less critical of myself. And if I find something to be hard it is probably hard.

Pacing

One of the things we both struggle with is doing too much. This carries over to traveling as well. We get very excited especially when landing in a new place. No matter how tired we are we often find ourselves out and about experiencing new things.

For this leg of the trip, we are trying to be more intentional about how much we take on and ensure we have plenty of downtime.

One win for us, on this front, is that we didn’t just to Angkor Wat on our first day. Instead, we spent most of our time relaxing in our hotel room.

A night out

For our second night in Siem Reap, we looked for a restaurant outside of the hotel. When researching we noticed that many reviews were from the pre-COVID era and those places were now closed down. So we limited our search, looking for reviews in the past few months. We found a place called JOMONO. It was highly rated and close by.

Half of their menu was vegan and we tried 3 of the dishes from the vegan menu. They were delicious. Our favorite was a wheat noodle with sesame coconut sauce, spinach, tofu, and pumpkin topped with basil oil.

For this trip, I have decided to forgo any self-imposed dietary restrictions. The main one is how much meat I consume. At home, we tend to eat meat 1-2 a week. When traveling in Italy and Tanzania we were eating meat 2-3 times a day! I am grateful to have access to such fresh, delicious vegetable-focused meals.