Tony and I just came back from a mini honeymoon trip. This trip was planned a long time ago, mainly for the Siem Reap International Half Marathon. 2 weeks before the trip, my running mates cancelled due to injury and life events. After two weeks alone in DC, I didn’t want to spend another day alone in a foreign country. So I convinced Tony to go with me and ask my mom to take care of the girls. THE BEST DECISION EVER!
We arrived at our hotel Thursday evening quite late, ready to tuck in right away.
the next day we joined the temples tour. We were a group of 10 or so, many from the Philippines too. So funny. We visited three temples. The guide explained to us the history
Saturday: we didn’t have anything planned other than picking up my race packet, so we did that first
after that, we were both very lazy and sleepy, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. After the nap, we went to the Old market, starting with the famous ice cream flower
after walking around an hour or so, browsing cheap souvenirs, which we didn’t find exciting anymore since night market is everywhere in Asia cities. But I did get very excited to try a vegan restaurant (Chamkar Cafe). Everything on the menu looks appetising so we ordered quite a few:
Rice paper roll with a curry sauce, super fresh and delicious
a mushroom salad with udon noodles, also very tasty
a vegetable curry, very mild and a bit sweet
an oyster dish that was SCRUMPTIOUS
an eggplant stew that was super delicious too
all the dishes came with brown rice. We were quite full after all this but couldn’t pass to try the local dessert. It looks like rice wrapper sweet dumpling. Fresh, not too sweet, a perfect ending
we were soooo satisfied with this meal. I knew I had to come back! 🙂 Then we walked back to the hotel, enjoying all the lightings
Sunday was my race day. starting time was 6:30am for the half marathon. It was quite chill (16C). We waited in the cafeteria until it was time to go.
While I run, Tony enjoyed the sunrise of Angkor Wat. So beautiful.
The course was fantastic, flat, shaded, passing through all the temples in the complex. Around 3000 half marathon runners, and another couple thousands for other distances. I enjoyed the run very much and again felt so lucky to run there. I also cut down 1 min from my last half marathon in 2016 😀
then we went back to the hotel for breakfast, a nap, and spa time. We debated if we should go back to the Old market to take advantage of the cheap massage (USD6 per hour) or indulge in a proper/luxury massage. Tony was inclined to the latter and I happily agreed 🙂 We went to Bodia Spa in Old Market. I got the 180 min spa package while Tony got 90 min massage. We were both super relaxed and half-asleep by the end of it. Then we had to go back to the vegan restaurant to try new dishes. We ordered
thai green mango salad. Fresh, a bit sweet
a pumpkin curry dish that I devoured by myself
a simple vegetable sour spicy soup
and the oyster dish again
Overall, we liked the pumpkin stew and the oyster dish the most but I will definitely go back if I ever visit Siem Reap again. Then we went to the airport, thinking we would be home the next morning. But … we didn’t. Apparently we needed visa to transit in Vietnam because we were flying with Cebu, an economic airline, a visa that we didn’t have. After evaluating our limited options, we decided to book new air tickets for next day laying over in HK (separately)… oh well… stressful moment and extra $$$. But we made the best of it. We embraced the shock and turned it as an extension of our unplanned honeymoon. We even joked that let’s make this hotel stay a USD400 night stay with an amazing buffet breakfast, although it only costed us USD36 including buffet breakfast for two and free transfer to airport
The biggest takeaway of this trip was: we need to regularly put into our love account through these solo trips. We felt closer to each other, enjoyed more each other’s company, doing nothing felt right and nice. 🙂
Our New Journey 