Non-driving to Siem Reap

Megan arrived in Phnom Penh safe and sound on Friday night and after finishing up my work on Saturday morning (hasta la vista laptop!), we were on our way to Siem Reap. Vacation time, here we come!

Now, about two and a half hours into the drive, it clicked for both of us that our driver wasn't exactly a "real" driver (in that he probably didn't do this for a living). Instead, I'm pretty sure that he was just a friend of the hotel receptionist who was going to Siem Reap already and this way could make some extra cash ($70 to be exact). But given we were already halfway there, we shrugged our shoulders and agreed that was just fine. And two and a half more hours later, after a sudden stop for Megan to purge her mango breakfast into an unsuspecting family's yard (where they all sat watching, btw) and an unexpected stop for the driver to drop off some goods at a somewhat shady looking market ("you wait 3 mins okay?") we were in Siem Reap. (Mom: don't worry, I'm sure we were only mules for cigarettes and beer...)

Upon arrival, after the aforementioned delivery, a slight dilemma was presented to us: apparently our non-driver driver didn't actually know where our guesthouse was (which, honestly, wasn't exactly surprising at that point). "You no worry. My friend know. He take you." Uh okay. And so, with that, we drive up next to a tuk tuk where our new very patriotic friend ("USA! USA! USA!"), Richard, happily transfers our stuff from the car to his tuk tuk. And after acknowledging that this is precisely the scenario that our mothers would strongly advise us against, we were on our way... yet again.

Now quite frankly, after the ordeal we had just been thru (yes, while benign in the end, it was a bit unnerving), Megan and I were feeling a bit skeptical about the quality of our guesthouse. At this rate, we fully expected those photos on the Internet to have been doctored to hide the most likely scarred resemblance of the "villa" they advertised. And so when we drove up to the Villa Loti, you can only imagine our absolute ecstatic sigh of relief when we saw exactly what bad been presented to us online: a gorgeous candlelit guesthouse set amidst a lush garden. Ah yes, we made it and the mild adventure leading here was totally worth it.