Day 1: 31 Dec 2011 – Arrival in Cambodia

When flying to Cambodia, we had a stopover in Seoul (South Korea), where signs led us to a “Korean experience”. This experience consisted of a fenced part of the airport where foreigners could fit on Korean traditional clothing after which a picture was taken. We thought it was amazing to get an Korean experience in just five minutes, which was more than we’d hoped for as we only had 1,5 hour between flights. It transpires the experience was only free for foreigners!

After 4,5 more hours, we arrived at Siem Reap airport after only surprisingly smooth and on time flights. A few hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, we were greeted by a smiling Bang Kung, the tuk-tuk driver sent by the guesthouse we stayed at. Apparently, the Western New Year’s Eve is usually not celebrated in rural Cambodia. To make up for that and then some, they do celebrate the Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese New Year’s Eve, each of them for a period of three days.

Party animals as we are, we quickly freshened ourselves up and went to what we were told was The Countdown: the place to be for the best New Year’s Eve party. It turned out to be a street in Siem Reap with almost only bars/pubs. Both inside and outside, it was full of people: lots of Cambodians, but also lots of tourists. Other than that the temperature was very pleasant (around 25 degrees), it was much like European celebrations of new year’s eve: there was music, dancing and a lot of beer throwing. We later heard that the celebration that we took part in was a Western version of the Vietnamese celebration, as people were throwing with beer at each other instead of water!