Hi! The next few days in Kathmandu were mostly filled with homework in order to catch up, though we watched quite a few movies in the Dalai-la’s cinema! On our last night, it was the Festival of Light! There was a man doing some sand art for the hotel, and I watched him for a while so I could remember how to do it later.
We had a lot of fun and saw many lantern and candle-lit processions down the street, and the owner of the hotel even gave us free slices cake and we noticed that he had put our names on our room’s door!
The next morning, we woke up early in order to get to the airport and Aba almost thought that Ganesh wasn’t coming because he was so late. When we arrived at the airport, Ganesh had to leave us at the entrance, but before he left I gave him all the bracelets that I had made for him and his family. I also gave him half of a white, beaded necklace that I had found on the trek and fixed with my colorful string for his wife. We boarded our plane to Bangkok, Thailand with ease and I watched three movies! However, when we arrived in Thailand we had to go through a whole ordeal in order to finally board our flight. If I can finally persuade Aba to blog (wish me luck!), he’ll tell you about this in more detail, but I’ll make it quick. From what I gather, we had gone to our flight gate because that is where we had been told to get boarding passes, but we had been misinformed so we had to go to our company’s help desk. They were supposed to give us boarding passes there, but because we hadn’t flown into the country using their airline, they told us that we had to go through immigration before they could give them to us. However, Aba, being Aba, harassed one of the attendants into helping us and we sprinted and ran from one end of the airport to the other, going through many, many security checkpoints along the way. We had to go through immigration into Thailand, then out of Thailand, and then finally made it for our 6:15 boarding. We got there at 6:17… Close enough! Once on board, it was a very easy, short flight, but we were soaked with sweat. I think I was more sweaty than any given day from all of our treks combined! We landed in Cambodia and had to go through immigration inside of a room that looked like an Apple store, and then we were picked up by our hotel’s driver. His name is LaLa. We arrived at the hotel and were served some small snacks, my favorite was some homemade chips with spices in them, and then our friend Merrill came down! Merrill is from New York, and she has been friends with Aba since who knows when. She is going to travel with us until partway through Vietnam! Anyway, we got settled into our rooms, ate dinner, and took much-needed showers. Then, we fell asleep. The next day, we got up at 7:45 am and ate breakfast. We got ready and were inside of a hotel van with our driver, LaLa, and a guide by 9. We drove to and toured four temples, the first of which was Angkor Wat, one of the 7 Wonders of the World. It was astounding. In addition to it being the largest temple in the world, the architecture and vegetation of the temple were breathtaking. Piles of crumbled rock covered with moss alongside enormous domed and decorated towers was a sight to behold. After Angkor Wat, the next two temples were very similar and we went to lunch and bought two small wooden flutes! The next temple was special because giant trees were growing over it and holding the structure up. It was absolutely beautiful. Tomorrow, we are flying to Thailand where I will have more time to continue blogging and sleep because I still need to write about the next day and today. Sorry for the delay, guys, but goodnight!
Ella
1 4-12 23-3 26-1-17-6-9……..