How it started

The family at Angkor Wat, 2009

This trip came together just about four weeks ago. It came at a time when I was feeling restless with life and wanted to fly away and explore the world rather than figure out what I was going to do next with work. It also came on the four year anniversary of the first time I traveled on my own to SE Asia. While I was in school, and restless, I would look at plane tickets and, in my head, plan trips that I knew I would never take.  Most of the time these trips were to Honolulu for a week or two. Occasionally I would look at trips to Europe. On August 29 I looked at ticket prices to Siem Reap, Cambodia and found that the ticket prices weren't astronomical and somewhat do-able if I so chose. You see, for whatever reason, Siem Reap is my special place.  I've been there twice, once with the NGO I was with and then again with my parents. I've spent maybe a week total there, but in those few days I fell in love with this small city.  I don't know if it was Angkor Wat, Pub street, the markets, people, or food, but if I go missing the first place to check, if not Honolulu, would be Siem Reap. So I'm going back to see if Siem Reap lives up to the hype in my head. I'm also going back because there is so much more that I never got to see while I was there the first two time. 

While I was looking at tickets I thought about how I wanted to do this very hypothetical trip. I didn't want to travel alone for two weeks. I wanted this to be a trip about soaking up Siem Reap, not being a backpacker and moving from place to place and having to meet people along the way if I wanted company. I wanted to be able to reminisce about this hypothetical trip with someone. It is great now being able to talk to Katie about backpacking around Europe. We still laugh about the naked guy who we ran into coming down the walkway in Budapest. So, I asked Michael if he thought it would be fun to go.  He said yes, he thought it would be great. I later found out that he didn't think anything would actually happen with this plan of mine.  In the 48 hours after asking Michael to go I looked at different dates for the best prices, we both talked with our managers to see if we could even get the time off, and I contacted a travel agent I had used to book my last two big trips to see if she could get us any better deals. 8 days later we had two tickets and travel insurance and we now are leaving. I still can't believe that I was able to put this trip together.  

My luggage, October 2008

So with just a few weeks to get everything together, we are all up to date with shots, have traveler's diarrhea meds (that I hope we don't have to use), bug spray, and a new bottle of sunscreen.  I'm ready for the new foods, different culture, dirty feet, and two weeks of new adventures.  

Oh yeah, and we leave in 14 hours!