Itinerary: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China
Fellow Travelers: Elizabeth, Sarah, Justin

The trip started out fine with a comfortable emergency exit row window seat from New York to Beijing. On the leg to Bangkok, it was a rush to make the connection but we did. Unfortunately we found out later, our bags did not. Once in Thailand, we were notified by a woman with a sign displaying our names that our bags had not made it. We spent several hours in the baggage office figuring out how they would get to Siem Reap, where we would be at their projected arrival time. China airlines does not fly to Siem Reap so there was no option to deliver them to our hotel, neither did they have any intention to reimburse us for our time/travel to the airport to retrieve them or for the items we'd have to buy. I haggled with them for an hour or so and got it up to $45 US per person for compensation. We were all satisfied enough with that and felt it time to move on to happier things.

Flying into Seim Reap was unexpectedly peaceful. The airport was just a strip in the middle of dense jungle. The town itself is pretty small and mellow. We arrived at 9 in the morning and having no hotel yet, we went straight to a cooking class we had been eying in the lonely planet. The class was in conjunction with a restaurant so we each got to pick two things on the menu to learn to make. I chose banana flower salad and a traditional Khmer tamarind/coconut curry with seafood. We took a trip to the market a few blocks away and then proceeded to our preparation. The dishes were delectable and a super positive introduction to Khmer food. We topped it off with dessert of custard cooked inside a steamed pumpkin. Yum!

The next day we hired a tuk-tuk to take us at 5am for the sunrise as Ankor Wat - the most famous temple in Cambodia. The early morning in the jungle was exciting and serene as the sounds were overwhelming but the cover of darkness put a veil of quiet mystery over the temple complex. We kept the tuk-tuk all day to ferry us around to further afield temples and sites. We had a few hours driving through the countryside as we watched houses on stilts, small shops, and people on motorbikes carrying anything from a whole pig to a load of firewood, roll past like a filmstrip. We saw 5 or 6 amazing temples as well as the Landmine Museum, created by a man who was a child soldier and laid mines for the Khmer Rouge and for the last 20 years has worked with rural communities and identifying minefields and deactivating and removing the horrific devices. Minefields still litter the countryside and I was horrified to learn that many were undocumented as to where the mines were placed even from the start. They are usually discovered when a child foraging in the woods is found with a leg blown off as they seem to disproportionately affect children. The mine museum is also a home for children of disabilities whose parents cannot afford to support them. Many of the contaminated lands have been marked but not all. Around the temples, there are often music groups composed of mine victims who play for donations and sell cd's. This was quite an informative stop on the temple tour of the day.

The following day we rented bikes to explore the closer temples. It was exhilarating to ride around on the shady roads through the jungle and stop for temple visits here and there. Ankor Thom was our main destination but we more or less just explored the area. The mishap of the day was my hat blowing off my head on the highway. It wouldn't have been so bad, but when I parked the bike go grab the hat, the weight of my bag in the front basket caused the bike to topple, then when I tried to right it, the basket tried to fall completely off the bike as it was missing several screws. I was starting to make a scene for all the motorists but all was well in the end and the hat was not smashed in the road. This was the second hat incident as it flew off my head while riding in the tuk-tuk the day before and we had to u-turn to grab it. I must remember not to wear it in breezy conditions.

Now for the baggage claim episode. After a long day of temple visits, we paid the driver a little extra to take us to the airport before going home to retrieve our long-lost bags. He waited outside as we had a very confusing conversation with the airport employees and were shuttled into a secured area before we even knew if the bags had arrived or not. There on a lonely cart sat a stack of sad unclaimed bags, all ours. We were prepared to show our id's which matched the luggage tags but unfortunately did not all have our individual copies of the lost-bag reports. The agents were understandably not going to release the bags to us without the claim number but we haggled until it was worked out - we promised to leave the claim number with the hotel so the airport could call and get it. Sure, yes, of course, no problem! We were not about to leave the airport without our bags after all this time! Then we walked outside into an afternoon thunderstorm. Boo. Now to get wet with all our luggage... but the tuk-tuk driver was so nice, he came into the airport parking lot fee area to pick us up and had all the plastic walls down and ready on the vehicle for our safe and dry journey.