I spent my last days in Thailand by tagging along for one day at the orphanage and going to another Muay Thai fight night. The day at the orphanage was pretty cool since I haven't been there yet. The orphanage provides shelter and education for around 250 kids. The area is filled with buildings where the kids sleep, play and learn. Greenway does a lot of awesome work over there by teaching English, doing constructing work and ofcourse give the kids lots of attention and love. I also met Adam and Emma, unfortunately only for 2 days, who have been doing fundraising and gathered 3000 pounds to help the orphanage. They got them new matrasses, playground stuff and lots more. So awesome to see that! My day at the orphanage was spent on mixing concrete for the new kantine, playing basketball and football with the kids and helping with unloading trucks with 200 cement bags from 50 kg each.

When we got back at 16:00, I needed to hurry up since I was getting picked up for a Muay Thai fight night. The sons of the trainer were both fighting that night so I was pretty excited to see that. At 16:30 I left together with 6 other people from the Twinhouse. It was a 2 hour drive in the back of the pickup truck. It was not a comfortable drive since it was crowded in the back haha. The ride back was even worse since the fight night lasted till 00:30 and we needed to drive the same two hours back in the freezing cold. The fights itself were pretty awesome. It started with young kids from around 8 and then the age went up. There was a women fight as well, cool thing to see. The youngest son, Tuk (14), lost unfortunately but the oldest, Bon (20), kicked the s*** out of his opponent. I was standing at the ring side with his family and friends so that was really cool to see.

Then it was time for me to pack my stuff. Leaving the Twinhouse and Thailand after two months of voluntary work. It was a strange feeling and I was kind of nervous since my real backpacking would start from now on. I had a flight on Wednesday 10:20 from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. The hostel was arranged and everything was set. I left the Twinhouse on Wednesday morning at 04:30, getting picked up by a minivan to take me to a Skytrain station to get to the airport. Everything went smoothly, until I found out that I was at the wrong airport (nice job Huib, nice f***ing job haha...). No worries, the shuttle bus would take me there in 45 minutes I was told, so I still had plenty of time. However, it took me more than 1,5 hour to get there. I was about to have a mental breakdown but the gate was still open when I arrived.

It might have cost me a few years in my life because of the stress, but everything turned out alright. The next flight will probably go perfectly fine since I now experienced troubles after landing (getting in Thailand) and now troubles before even taking off (getting out of Thailand). I went to customs smoothly and getting a visa went just fine. When I picked up my bag, I was awaited by Kong, a tuctuc driver, to take me to my hostel.

On arrival, I asked what would be the best way to experience Anghor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. I was told that it would be good to start reading some background information in the Anghor National Museum so I did that in the afternoon. After that, I hired a tuctuc driver for 50 dollars (they pay mostly with dollars in Cambodia) to take me around the Anghor Wat park for 3 days including a sunrise. I do not remember all the names, but the most impressive temples were obviously Anghor Wat, Bayon and Ta Promh.

On my first day, I went together with Christoph, an 34 year old Austrian, to the waterfall that the Khmer (Anghor Wat was built by Khmer people) used to transport the stones for the temples to the building site. The waterfall is not big but impressively decorated with stone carvings. After that we passed several temples. They were not that impressive but it was a nice day though. We ended at one of the bigger temples of the big circuit (Anghor Wat has a small and a big circuit people usually do) for a sunset. It was nice to watch and on the way back we had a beautiful view over a lake.

On the next day, Christoph joined me again. We would do the big circuit and since Christoph wanted to see Ta Promh (also known as the Tombraider temple since it was used in the movie) again. After that we continued with the big circuit and saw some nice temples. We also went to Roulous, the previous capital where the Khmer king used to live. This was on route to Tonlé Sap, the biggest freshwater lake in South East Asia where the difference between rain and dry season is an incredible 15 meters.

We got to one of the so called floating villages (the houses are on stelts for the changing water levels. It was a half an hour boat ride to get to the villages and the captain of the boat explained that this was a road in dry season. It was strange to realise that. The village was a lot bigger than I expected and it was very cool to see everything you see in a normal village on stelts. A school on stelts, police office on stelts, workshops on stelts etc. We did a small boat ride through a flooded forest where we had a closer look on the trees that were half under water. We already saw them from our big boat but it was cool to see it from up close. After the village, we went a few minutes on the big lake. For me, it was just like floating on the North Sea because if you looked at the horizon you could only see water. That was it for the day and we went back to the hostel.

On the third day, I would go for a sunset at Anghor Wat. Christoph already had 3 days at Anghor Wat so he didn't join me (1 day was 20$, 2 days 40$ and you would get the third day for free) but there was a girl from Germany, Diana, who wanted to join me. We were ready to leave at 04:45 as we agreed on with my tuctuc driver but he wasn't there. After asking the receptionist to call him and hearing that he would be there in 10 minutes, I said to the receptionist that he could cancel the trip for today since he wasn't there half an hour later. I just went to bed again and had a free day to plan my next destination a bit more. Later that day, the owner said that I would get some discount for the inconvenience. She apoligised for the inconvenience and said the driver was sick. It was ok, he's only human like us right?

So, next day we tried again. We left at 04:30 and Toni, also a German, joined in as well. We were there perfectly on time and we had one of the best spots for the pictures. In front of Anghor Wat, there are two ponds. In front of the left one you can get the best picture because of the reflection of the temple in the water and the sun coming up behind it. Unfortunately, it was clouded and we didn't see anything of a sunrise behind the temple. We only saw more light coming and no red sky or anything related to a sunrise.

After the sunrise we went into Anghor Wat. It is incredibly big and it looks very nice. It's unreal to think that it was build like centuries ago without any modern construction machines. Same for the other temples ofcourse, but this one was a lot bigger than the rest. We wandered around for like 2 hours, looking at the carvings in the walls / murals, the statues and many rooms on the inside. We went all the way to the top, where you had a nice overview from the Anghor complex. After Anghor Wat we went to the Bayon temple. This temple has towers that are decorate with huge faces in it. This was the most awesome temple I have seen. It was very crowded but I still had a great visit over there. Managed to snap some nice pictures without tourist so I was very happy. We also visited the old palace of the king, the terrace of the elephants (used for ceremonies for the king) and some other small and big temples.

In the afternoon, we visited a landmine museum founded by a former child soldier called Aki Ra who has become a mine expert during the war. He fought for the Khmer, Vietnamese and later the Cambodian army. I learned a lot about the horrors Cambodia has gone through and was shocked to read that America has bombed the country for almost 10 years because there were Vietcong hiding in the area near the border with Vietnam. Besides that there was a lot of information about the Khmer Rouge that murdered around 25% of the Cambodian population in the seventies. Aki Ra has cleared over 50.000 mines already and displayed a lot of them. He also had bazookas, mortar bombs and other deadly devices. It was impressive to see all that. Even now, there are new landmine victims, about 2 every hour, and that is devastating to realise.

On the day that I missed the sunrise, I met 2 Italians, Sergio and Fabian, in my quest to find people who were interested in going to 2 temples that are a bit more off the grid. These temples are rarely visited by tourists because they are unreachable by public transport and a car or motorbike needs to be hired to get there. On my own, it would cost me around 100$ for a daytrip. After some research I arranged a taxi that is willing to take 4 people (Sergio, Fabian, Toni and myself) to the temples for 60$. I'm so happy about that since it will cost me 30$ (transportation + entrance fees) instead of the initial 100$. We will make that trip tomorrow, on the 24th, so it is like my Christmas present haha.

After that I will have one more day of nothing in Siem Reap before I travel to Kep. Kep is a town near the seaside in the South of Cambodia. I can't do very much around Siem Reap anymore, at least nothing that interests me, and I can't go to the capital Phnom Penh already because I have a lot of things over there I want to do with my lovely brother when he arrives on the second of January! So I will just chill out at the beach, maybe visit some caves and the, said to be cool, pepper farm over there.

I have been able to upload a lot of videos from the past few weeks so if you haven't seen them yet you should take a look at them. It will give you an insight on the amazing experience I had with the elephants, at the waterfalls, with the gibbons and the Muay Thai training/fights!