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My list of what to do in Angkor was agreed upon with my new Parisian friend; running away from the monkeys had not been budgeted!
What to do in Angkor with the best Parisian I’ve ever met
In addition to being really beautiful, she was also really nice and made me laugh; it was all a joke and a joke.
We returned together to Siem Reap (base for all visitors to Angkor). I imagined her in her daily life as a lawyer for a big company in Paris in a suit all pulled together. Instead she was there with me sweaty and silted up (to get to the temples there is only a dusty lane where even trucks pass), telling me:
Now we should take a shower, we are unpresentable…but who cares, let’s go have a beer?
Adorable.
Siem Reap is a small village that is getting bigger around a small river. It lives in function of the archaeological site, so it’s all hotels and tourist places, however I had found it fun even the night before alone.
Running from the monkeys
We planned together what to do in Angkor the next morning, always cycling back there. As soon as we arrived, we came across a small group of monkeys at the entrance. We got off our bikes and approached them to photograph them.
As mentioned, the park is huge, completely surrounded by forest with only the roads and part of the temples free of vegetation, and of course there are animals as well, which have adapted to the human presence.
Of this group of monkeys there was also a mother monkey with baby in tow. My new friend got too close and, hearing the little one threatened, mama monkey began to shriek and with a leap approached aggressively.
The Parisian girl ran away but the monkey chased her for several meters before stopping. We had a hard time; monkeys have a lot of strength and dangerous claws.
Luxury evening
While I was enjoying the company, I also felt somewhat pressured because I did not have much time to convince her, too, that spending more time together would be a good idea. She was a recently single mother of two who, after a period of great stress, had made a rather strong decision; to leave the children with their grandmother and take two weeks off, coming to Southeast Asia alone to recharge and return to her family in the right frame of mind.
After the beautiful day, for the evening we decided to treat ourselves well and went to dinner at what was the coolest restaurant in town, out of the round of tourist places all the same: I bought, and I think I paid a whopping 8 euros in total.
Sad farewell but beautiful memory
Cambodia was really cheap and deserves another visit to see what survived one of the worst dictatorships of the last century.
That was what Laure had planned, while I had flights, trains, and hotels booked for the last part of my trip still in Thailand. I asked her if she wanted to go with me. She told me that perhaps at another time in her life she would, but she had chosen that trip specifically to be alone with herself.
The dream I had before I left turned out to be half prescient; I met a smiling blond girl, but we took no bus together and said goodbye on the banks of the Siem Reap river.
Home travel Travel to Thailand and Cambodia: Buddhist temples, stray dogs and a lawyer
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