Day 3-4

Day 3

Yesterday I stupidly fell asleep at 2pm and then woke up at 10pm wide awake- definitely not good for beating the jet lag! I managed to sleep on and off until the early hours of the morning when my roommate - Aviaja arrived. She’s from Denmark and taller than me - it’s rare I meet girls taller than me she’s 6”2 making me feel like a short arse! We chatted for a few hours and we get on really well which is nice before we both went for a quick nap.

Waking up to growling stomachs we decided to head into Bangkoks china town which was really close to the place we were staying for lunch. Wandering through lots of street food stalls selling skewers they looked yummy but I decided I didn’t want to get a poorly tummy on the very first day! We ended up in a small noodle bar where I had ramen - the dreaded ramen I’m going to hate it by the end of this year!

Relaxing for a few more hours we then headed down to the lobby to meet the rest of our group! There are 13 of us in total and we have people from England, wales, Scotland and Ireland, Denmark, and America so quite a mix which is nice! The way they’ve set it out is that there are three groups they have combined all with the same itinerary up until a point. So the longest one you can do is the one I’m on for 40 days and then there is 30 days and 20 days. So we all stay together until each of these milestones where we say goodbye to some people and more people arrive! This is quite nice as I’ll get to meet lots of people but it’s going to be hard remembering everyone’s names!

We met our group leader or CEO as he calls himself - Lee who is lovely, he’s from Laos and is a very sweet soul. He lead the group to a small local restaurant with flowers hanging from the ceiling which was sooo pretty! We all had a meal as a group and got to know each other. It quickly became apparent that I was the youngest with one guy being 19 but the rest all being 23+ but I don’t mind too much as they seem like a super bunch and hopefully over the coming days we will get to know each other well!

Finishing up my delicious cashew and chicken stir fry most of us headed back to the hotel as we have a very early start tomorrow. A few of the girls came back into our room for an hour or so which we spent chatting which was really nice! The boys went out drinking and we found out that they didn’t get back until 2am (bare in mind we have to be on a bus a 6am) and one of them had lost their phone and a few had ended up at the police station so safe to say we made the right call going back to the hotel!

Day 4

Alarm blaring at 5.30am we groggily clambered out of bed and got ready to make the journey to the Cambodian border which would take us 5 hours this side and then another 3 hours once we have crossed the border. Being handed a take away breakfast by the hotel I was rather excited. The breakfast consisted of two pieces of bread, two small Frankfurter sausages and a slice of very plasticky ham. Feeling rather dissatisfied I ate away and then I discovered we also had a lovely bowl of fresh melon which was delicious and so fresh! So this made up for the shoddy start!

We clambered onto the bus and started to make the journey to the border. Luckily it only took us 3 hours instead of 5 which we were very surprised by! I think this was a combination of our early start but also the fact our driver was going 120km/h in a 60km/h so we made up a lot of time! When I asked the driver if the rules in Thailand were strict his response was slightly worrying; “rules? What rules, once you get your license there are no rules”. Slightly regretting asking I sat back and tightened my seatbelt!

Once we arrived at the border we were worried about long queues as we had been warned that on busy days it can take up to 2 hours to get through but luckily our group was first in line! It still took us 30 minutes for 13 of us to get through so you can see how if there was a queue you could wait quite a long time but luckily for us it was all rather easy and we got through nice and quickly with no dramas.

Now officially in Cambodia we had a lunch where we all shared a few different platters of Thai green curry, chicken and cashews, and Asian styled veg salad - all lovely! Before travelling to our hotel and checking in to relax for a few hours, I’ve been paired with Aviaja again which works well as we get on very well.

After heading down to our hotels pool that has a swim up bar, pool table, and beer bong table hopefully going to make the most of these tomorrow! We spent an hour or so playing pool and going for a swim which was really refreshing and needed after a long sticky day in a bus!

We then quickly got ready and went out for another group dinner before heading to the circus. These aren’t usually my thing but it was really incredible with some amazing acrobatics and people jumping over skipping ropes on fire, it definitely had us ooing and ahhing and it really was a fab experience!

After this we hopped in a Tuk Tuk back to our hotel to settle in for an early night as we have to be up before sunrise tomorrow!Read more