The day started out interestingly when my ride to the bus station never showed. When I reminded the hostel they were supposed to be transporting me, they tried to get me to pay again (haha good try!) then called for a moto taxi. For me, my big bag, and my little bag. Hmmmm... ok. The big bag didn't fit in front of the driver on the scooter, so he wore the big bag. I wore the small bag and sat behind the big bag, holding onto it like I was the third person and it was the second. The scooter died about two minutes into the drive, but my bus was supposed to be leaving in ten min, so the driver called another moto for me to take. I paid him, got on the bike with my stuff and zipped off to the bus station. I boarded the bus and about five minutes later we left. Perfect timing. Now just a six hour bus ride and I'll be on the Mekong relaxing and getting ready to see some dolphins.
Haha.
The bus had lots of stopping to do, so it took about eight and a half hours. I don't trust bus stop food, so my lunch and snacks consisted of some crackers and a whole pineapple. By the time I arrived at my hostel, I was starving but also feeling a bit deprived of human interaction apparently. As soon as I walked into the dorm and my dorm mate greeted me I was apparently in the chattiest mood of all time. Luckily, I didn't weird her out too much and the next day we decided to embark on a bicycle journey to see some dolphins.
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| A Cambodian ferry |
To see the dolphins we had to bike about 17km up the river. It was a really nice bike ride through a village. We had scooters and cars whizzing by us and little kids running out to say hello as soon as they saw us. We had a really awesome boat driver who drove us over to this shallow area where the dolphins hang out. He pointed a couple out to us and then want back over to the boat to take a nap. They really love their naps here. It's great.
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| Freshwater dolphins. There are only about 70 left in the wild in this area. |
Most people come in, see the dolphins, and leave. I decided to stay there for a couple more days, meet some turtles and hang out. It was a chill place with good food, fast internet, and a friendly cat. This meant I would be staying for New Years.
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| Cat. |
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| One of the tuktuk drivers looks at the turtles in the tank, looks at me and says "I've eaten these. My family is fishermen. These taste good. So do the dolphins." Le sigh.... |
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| Many turtles don't survive past infancy, so the center raises some turtles for a year before releasing them back into the wild. |
New Years always gets a lot of hype. It always feels like a lot of pressure to do something super epic. So I was looking forward to a chill night, maybe a drink or two after dinner. Before dinner on New Years Eve I'm sitting with a cat on my lap, listening to really horrible ballad-style karaoke sung from the restaurant next door. I went to go look in the restaurant. there was one women cooking, one man singing karaoke at the top of his lungs and three kids playing on the ground. I had just got an email from dictionary.com and the word of the day is flapdragon (an old game in which the players snatch raisins, plums, etc., out of burning brandy, and eat them). NYE had a bit of an odd start. Dinner in itself turned into an interesting affair as the Europeans seemed to have a lot of questions about America. Some serious ones, some not so serious ones. I'm sure there would be many Americans appalled by my answers. "Yes, I like Obama," for starters. A couple of my favorites were:
"Is it true that all Americans are so lazy they get their drivers license at sixteen and drive everywhere?"
"Do you really serve punch in a punch bowl at high school dances?"
"What do you think of Macklemore?" (say this in your head in a thick French accent)
To which I responded, "Oh, hes from the city I went to school in. I like him but they play his Thrift Shop song a lot."
*look of utter confusion from the man who asked the question* and "Uh, have you seen Bowling for Columbine?"
Turns out Michael Moore sounds like Macklemore if you say it in an accent.
It's crazy how much American music/TV/movies have permeated the world. I always feel so self-centered when people know so much about the US, but a couple of Europeans have pointed out that they grow up on some of this stuff just like I did. Except they don't live in the US to see what stuff is normal and what stuff is totally made up. So it makes for some funny conversations.
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| Sunset on the Mekong |
Anyway, after dinner a couple of the girls really wanted to find a New Years Party. And they had such high expectations for a tiny, not touristy town in a country that doesn't celebrate New Years until their own holiday in April. So we walked and walked. We found a place giving out free food for New Years (that's my kind of party), but ended up passing on that (no music, no dancing). We finally settled on the one bar that was still open and had a couple beers with essentially all the other foreigners in the town that were still awake. I think the two girls were pretty upset, but still able to find the humor in the situation.
Here's to bringing in the New Year with a bunch of new friends from all over the world.
