Whew.
I’m laying on my bed, light already turned off, mainly because the switch is out of reach and the bed is big enough to host my electrical life and me, once I want to go to sleep. Anyhow now I see nothing but the screen and dark around. Very unknown dark, with which I’m trying to make myself familiar. Not sure about making myself at home with it – not there yet.
The whole day was like that.
I go to the minibus station swiftly in Siem Reap, the driver with which my guide and me did the three days of temples came to pick me up, which was nice, although he’s very reluctant. But I like him. Seemingly he’s the brother of the hotel owner. Anyhow a quick ride through early Siem Reap, a longer wait in the waiting room (pretty thief-save) and then off into the minibus. Big luggage goes in the back which opens like a trunk, and it is being opened and closed a lot during the drive, but you can’t really see what’s going on. When the only other foreigner, a woman probably a bit younger than me (but only a bit…!….) got out, she complained about her bag not being there. And then I jumped out, to check if mine was still there. But both the bags were fine. That girl was a pro, she spoke a few words of Khmer, she was very french I’m-so-cool-I-don’t-have-to-talk-to-anyone but we did, but only a bit. IN the few sentences we exchanged, I got she works in a conversation project something, judging from google maps that i kept checking to see where we’re going, her work must be close to the Mekong.
As for me, I was quite nervous. You can tell from the way I’ll hug my small backpack, turn around every time the trunk opens, ……. but once we had left Siem Reaps outer rims (it stretches quite a bit) I —- fell asleep. Then I slept some more. And while at it, I slept some more. Made me laugh at one point – it’s like being back home – I’ve been here one week, it’s the weekend and I really need to do nothing to gather all of my energy and tackle the next week. I don’t know where my subconsciousness drew its material from, but my dreams were an interesting mess of everything. At one point I was driving through heavy road in Europe. Waking up to South East Asia is funny, but the air conditioning was cold. Well at first it was. Then we had a toilet stop – quite nice by the way, and the usual mosquito lurking on a wall, waiting for buds to be exposed… I was also nervous because my period started a day ago and I wasn’t exactly keen on bleeding my way towards the East – but it’s been relatively easy.
Anyhow lunch was unknown – not the Khmer noodles I’ve had along the way, but some sort of buffet, where you point & pick at a dish out of the buffet-like choice of dishes, and then they serve that. The youngster was keen to practice his English (cute – you could tell he gathered all his courage and then he asked „where are you from?“ and was superhappy to get a suitable answer) so understood my vegetarian question. And they had nothing. So I ended up with the first chicken in a long time and its vegetables. Consisting mostly of ginger. Spicy. I had a lot of the sticky rice.
Anyhow in sleeping so much and somehow being haunted by my own dreams – it felt as if the world was weirdly same same but different, no matter if Germany or Cambodia or Spain or elsewhere – the only constant being me drifting through it. And then the people on my bus started to feel familiar. Some of them didn’t go that far, some new ones came in – but I felt they would take care of me in some basic way. Weird.
And then the night settled. Somehow it was on my mind it would take us 9 hours to get to Sen Monorom – but it was pretty exactly 12 hours. Including 2 toilet breaks, a small lunch break and halting along the way to drop people off, take on some new ones and also transport some goods – impressive logistics but I was unable to understand its logic… So the night fell and I felt I’m the only foreigner on this bus with all foreigners to me – it was weird. Utterly strange is probably a suitable expression 😉
When we’d finally made it, I got my mototaxi (a sort of closed up tuktuk) and negotiated from 3 to 2 dollars to be taken to my „Nature Lodge“. In Siem Reap, I wouldn’t have taken the closed up thingie, cause it’s too warm. Here, it really is cold enough at night to need fleece jacket.
When I got to my lodge, the reception looked deserted but that’s because the lady, Hera (I can remember her name due to its similarity with greek gods…) vanished behind the desk. Her English is a bit better than my Khmer, but not really there. Which was ok to get to the room. And then I really wanted to go to the toilet… So I opened the toilet-lid from the side, and saw a huge spider on the wall. I retreated. You know exposing my bud to a mosquitoe is one thing… The spider moved a little bit, just to confirm it’s alive. It was sitting on some sort of pebble. I stood on the bathroom’s threshold (remember this is Asia, so you take off your shoes before entering a house, so I’m standing there on socks) and felt 2m is a safe distance to blow some air at the spider. Upon which it moved DOWN THE WALL. It didn’t go in attack-position but then again I have never met a tarantula, even if this was a small one it clearly was one, for real in the wild.
So I did what all of us do when we panic these days.
I took a photo.
You know that pebble it sits on – well when it moved, the pebble moved, too. It’s the belly and I’m wondering what that is. Not sure I wanna know, though.
So anyhow. I decide I’ll ask the reception for help. The reception is quite far away and you need a torchlight to go there. And I realized, my trouser-legs were covered in gras-seeds that come off when being asked personally one by one. So back I go to the reception. And am so nervous that I forget to show the picture. Hera of course doesn’t understand spider. So I get out my supersmall notebook and do a drawing. A bit more time would bring barbarian evolution so as to show the photo and then mimick Hera in using google-translate. But we weren’t that far yet. So I do a fabulous drawing of a picture and she says aaaaah ooooh, offers something with „change room“ (which felt more attractive than my original assumption that we would have to catch it) ((I told it it would be a good idea to leave on its own rather than have a pro coming, but that didn’t convince the spider, probably also because I didn’t use google translate)). So off we go again through the dark and I am still nervous (now, that the spider will be gone as a demo-effect and will wait to come back once it’s only the two of us again…) and I still haven’t shown the pic. So I do not get that we are in the NEW room (it sort of looks the same, even though a professional tourist might have realized the big backpack missing but that’s just details) and open the door to the bathroom veeeeery carefully. Hera says yes, it’s not there! and i check every corner. And then something huge just beside the entrance moves — and I shriek — and it’s a frog. A very adorable cute-looking frog who backs off after being shrieked at. I think good, maybe the frog at the spider, do frogs eat tarantulas?, ………. well long story made short. I did change the room. I was left to go back to spider-hut to get the big backpack (the door to the bathroom remained CLOSED and no I did not check so again do that yourselves you sensational onreaders) and carry it over to the froggie-hut.
Which, apart from the frog that, so far, has disappeared (I feel guilty), but there’s a patrol of quite big black ants so I have decided to take my sandals onto the bathroom-threshold and relax. Easier said than done. Funnily enough, I need to go to the bathroom AGAIN while writing this, and it’s —– a stretch.
I’m not sure I’m brave, really. Hold on. It’s nice to have a blog there waiting for me to survive going to the toilet. I’m so out of training (no jokes about potty training now, thank you) to travel, let alone to contain wild things.
I mean being HERE is something I really wanted to do. Still want to. I’m just darn scared. The Nature Lodge (nomen est omen…) is just the civilized start to go off to the elephant camp. Their confirmation email really was something, I might need to mail them tomorrow or see if I can call them from the hotel (my Cambodian sim card today has decided to already have used up the 5 bucks that were supposed to last a week). They suggest to bring along only small luggage. But I’ll need my daypack when we go trekking, they say if it rains (which it did today) you have to do the last 800m to the camp on foot, carrying your luggage. That should be easily doable with my big backpack. But I imagine a scene out of a jungle-action-movie where those 800m mean climbing on a cliff and / or following a slippery jungle path in heavy rain and everybody doing it very elegantly while I struggle with my backpack.
I should include the tarantula in the phantasy, while at it…
Anyhow the confirmation also said you should be in fit to very fit condition.
Have I mentioned I’m nervous..? I was hoping to ask the hotel here all my detailed questions. And talk about it to other travellers. But – once again – I’m the only fu—g guest there is (apart from the tarantula occupying the other hut, obviously). Well Hera’s real nice, though. She even turned on the music in the (for one guest) huge restaurant area earlier, asked me where I’m from and all that. And we have Google translate. I’ll rely on her to find the right bus out of town. Having seen the roads today I doubt it will still work out Wednesday evening to get back to the Mekong / Kratie in the dark, so I’ll need to stay another night in the frog-hut.
Oh more of that tomorrow.
I really hope I’m cool enough to not only take things in as they are here – but to enjoy them.
I love wild things but I also love to stay at a safe distance, if you know what I mean. Now I’ve provoked being exposed to it. It means sharing the bathroom with black ants and still looking in the mirror, rather than looking at my feet trying to make sure the patrol is not getting at me.
I hear the cicades outside. No town any more. There was far-away music and drums earlier, that must have been the wedding we passed by earlier. They stopped, though, I assume people get up rather earlier than go to bed so late. I’d leave the door to the bathroom open to let in the air (the bathroom, in case you haven’t figured that yet, has all sorts of holes to the outside) which is indeed cool – but I don’t dare to. Same with the front door… A bit stupid.
I still need to unplug the refrigerator. It’s making constantly weird noises.
Thanks for some reactions back to me of you onreaders, that’s nice to know.
Good night from the spiderwoman / froglady