Day 3

We went to Angkor Watt also known as “the 10 million temples” luckily for us we only saw 4 of the 10 million. Angkor watt is a Buddhist temple that started out being a Hindu temple and now has characteristics of both religions but all and all it is the largest religious monument in the world and a world heritage site. When we got there we walked across the man-made moat that is so huge that it’s hard to believe that it could have been done by hand but the big rocks still have the holes in them where they put bars in to carry it on their shoulders. Once we got into the first temple you could really see just how old everything is and the immense detail in everything took my breath away I still can’t believe it was all done by hand. We walked to the main temple and the pictures started! When we got to the middle of the temple and there where stairs to climb!! The steepest stairs a have ever seen and all of us held our breath while climbing them… I could see the original stairs through the new ones and I am amazed that people could actually climb them and I’m very happy I did not need to!! When we got to the top we had the most amazing view of the temple around us, in reality the temple is crumbling slowly and it made me sad to think of all the people who died building the temple and now it is falling apart, and even though it is falling apart it still had an unexplainable beauty.

When then went to the rest of the temples and each one had its own atmosphere if that makes sense? We started wearing our country’s flags on our backs and it’s amazing how much attention we attracted wearing them  and it seemed to lift all of our sprits a little bit in a weird way. We saw a temple that had a 16 meter wall with carvings on it that told a story. How people worked, celebrated, built everything was right there engraved in the walls of the buildings and that amazed me. We went into a little room where you stand against one specific wall and hit your chest then it echoes through the whole room, it was amazing.  We walked and walked and looked at these buildings that had been there for hundreds and hundreds of years and everything was so peaceful until one of us found something funny…we went to the temple where tomb raiders was filmed witch was amazing but we all expected a signed Angelina Jolie rock or something, there wasn’t one BTW… its amazing to me how we could find something to amuse us no matter where we went.

After seeing 4 temples we were pretty templed out and wanted to go home. When we got onto the bus they told us they would drop us off at the night market and we had to be back at the hotel in a couple of hours. Then everybody went their own ways and I and my friend Taylor went shopping for Christmas presents. We ended up walking around trying to get the best deals we could and fighting off all the people wanting us to buy random clothes, bags and tuck tuck rides… I then bought a shirt that says:” no money, no messages, no tuck tucks”. And then we went to a shop that had that little fish who at the dead skin off your feet and we decided to try it, let’s just say we had 20 min of giggling and pulling our feet out of the water every 5 sec… But we had fun.

We met up with some of the other exchange students on our way back to the hotel and I had a quick Thai lesson from Brandon who is AMAZING in Thai and believe me all the little Thai lessons throughout the trip helped so so much. When we got to the hotel we all met up because it was Christmas Eve and we had a secret Santa. So all the exchange students gave gifts and then Becca and Mirri had letters to all the exchange students and Brandon and Noemi had made us all t-shirts with the Thai flag and our Thai names on it. One boy got a cake for Christmas and he decided to stand up and go around the room feeding it to everybody in HUGE bites! At the end the cake got shoved in his face and the cake fight started. I was sad when the gift exchange started but about half way through I realised how much love was in that room and how much everybody really cared for each other. The sadness was gone. We all stayed up to midnight to say merry Christmas to each other and then started packing and went to bed (after playing with the free between room calls that is).

Day 4.

We got up and got into the bus for a 9 hour drive to Laos. We went from Cambodia to Thailand and Thailand to Laos. When we got to the Thai-Cambodian border most people laughed because all it was was a chain over the road with a little house on the side of the road where they took forever to check your passport. It made me think of Africa: D. we had fun taking pictures of standing with one leg in Thailand and one leg in Cambodia. We got into a party bus when we crossed the border and let me tell you the boys had a lot of fun playing with the microphone … this is where the America Vs. Europe fights started.. When we got to the Thai-Laos Boarder it became apparent how much corruption there is in these countries because they kept some exchange students back because it did not look like their race matched the country their passport said they came from and demanded a bribe to get them over the border. After our travel person mad a long talk with them they just let them through and we went on without trip. We had a party in the bus on our way to the hotel and it was so much fun… when we got to the hotel we had dinner and then we got to walk around in the city close to the Hotel and we made the best of that. A pretty uneventful Christmas but it was filled with jokes and great people so I loved it.

Day 5

We went to see some Waterfalls in Laos. The first waterfall we went to ha blue blue blue water and it was so beautiful, not big or impressive but to peaceful and beautiful. There was a wooden bridge over the water to get the other side and a paper that said 10 people crossing at a time it’s no surprise all of us kind of went at the same time… well we are still alive !! The second waterfall was so so so so so big!! Its two waterfalls next to each other and the locals call it the crying mountain. They said it was 120m high but I don’t believe them because from where we where I could not even see the whole thing so I think it was much bigger!! We swam in the 3de waterfall and froze half to death but we had so much fun. We then drove to the place where we slept. It’s a cute little guest house thing in the hills and we all stayed 2 2 in rooms but somehow all ended up in Brandon’s room sitting around making jokes playing music and talking. A group of people that really don’t know each other that well but all send time with each other so effortlessly.

Day 6 we woke up and went across the border again back to Thailand. We were all very sad that we did not get to see that much of Laos but we had a great time anyway. We then divided into 3 mini vans and spent the whole entire day in the vans. I had a great group of people in my van and did not mind spending the whole day in the van, we talked and joked and laughed, I found a love for Danish music and we watched a lot of harry potter. We got the houses we would stay in had dinner and went to sleep because the nest day the Phukandung adventure started