Melting

Started out early with an 0800 horse back riding tour at Happy Horse Ranch. They recommended 0700 but that was a bit too early for us but I completely understand why. Between 8 and 9 the temperature felt like it tripled. There wasn't much to see since its dry season but our guide was great and it was nice to try something new. Michael has a lot of experiences with horses, he helped a girlfriends family as a stablehand in his early twenties therefore he got a brute of a horse who was ready to canter at anytime and who my poor horse was afraid of. I'm not too keen on horses and was afraid my fear would make it worse but it ended up being great. My horse was gentle and after a few minutes I felt pretty comfortable.

We spent the rest of the day running some errands. We found the post office so we could purchase some extremely overpriced postcard stamps. We didn't send any post cards from Laos because they wanted $1.50 a stamp when we paid .50 in Thailand and apparently Cambodia is no better. On the walk there we passed a random statue of a woman breastfeeding and behind it was a sign about confidential HIV testing, how those go together we're not sure. A good portion of our female friends have recently reproduced and are breastfeeding so we took a picture to show them it's really only in America that feeding your own child is taboo. There's no coverups, blankets, special boob covering contraptions found in this part of the world.

After that we changed our forward plans and then changed them again. That's the joy of planning as you go! We were going to take a 10+ hour bus to the beach and then go to Phnom Penh last since we need to get our Vietnamese visas but Michael found some information that we can get the visa cheaper and quicker at Sihanoukville (beach town). So instead we're going to stay one more day here in Siem Reap and bike to the Angkor Wat to use up the last day of our three day passes and then head to Phnom Penh for a quick two days. We haven't heard anything good about it, most people recommend going and doing a quick tour for the history of it (Khmer Rouge killing fields) and getting out since its a dirty town filled with old Western men and child prostitution. After that we'll head to the beaches where there are a few National Parks and Conservation areas that we want to see. This leg of trip has a little more planning because of the wait time on the visa and because we can only be in Vietnam 30 days but we have a flight leaving there already booked so we can't enter too early.

We spent the rest of the day trying not to melt, getting messages and Michael enjoyed .50 beers. He's still not 100%, he has an awful cough which has worked to our advantage because not as many tuk tuk drivers and sales ladies approach us :). Laughing starts a coughing fit and it seems he's always laughing.

Pic of the day:
Me on my horse Ablue
The random statue
Michael with his cheap draft, seriously who knew that a haircut could change a man