Our VIP bus left at 6 am. We got our own seats (you might think this would be obvious, but rarely do we ever get our own seats; usually, we are sharing a seat with 1 or 2 other people)! It was a fairly comfortable ride that took us about 8 hours. I read and listened to podcasts the whole way.
We headed to the U.S. Embassy as soon as we got to the city. Now, I was imagining in my mind what it would be like to show up at the U.S. Embassy. I imagined showing up to a welcoming group of Americans with smiling faces, beckoning for us to come in and sit down in the air conditioned building. I imagined them bringing out cold cans of Dr. Pepper and peanut M&Ms. I imagined the ambassador coming out to meet and greet us one by one, inquiring as to what state we come from and where we have traveled thus far. I imagined myself asking him political questions and having a great discussion about the affairs of Cambodia. Obviously, I knew it wasn't going to be this magical; however, I thought it would be a welcoming situation. Boy was I wrong! As we walked up to the gated embassy and buzzed through the window, the gentleman who dealt with us looked at us as if we were extraterrestrials and didn't belong within a galactic distance of the embassy. I will say, I was highly disappointed in how we were treated.
Essentially, the embassy informed us that we had to make an appointment and we had to file a police report first of the lost passport. By this time, it was getting late so we had no real time to get anything else done.
We found a simple hostel-like guesthouse and dropped our stuff off, ate some food, and made plans for the rest of our night. We decided we wanted to go see a movie. We found a theater location on Google and made our way over. Little did we know that the movie theater was going to be the nicest movie theater we've ever been to. We were VIPs (which cost us $12), so we got free popcorn and soda, a reclining chair with a blanket and pillow, and free wine or beer (this did not apply to us, obviously, but the gesture was appreciated). We watched American Sniper in the most luxurious of conditions. I actually started to feel a bit of sadness while in these conditions. I was talking to one of the workers who was attending to us, she told me that she makes $6 in an entire working day of 9 hours! Here I am, sitting in luxury, while this young girl works 9 hours and goes to the university in order to make $6 a day. It would take her two full work days just to be able to watch the same VIP movie that I was at that very moment.
I fell asleep thinking about the injustices of the world. Besides the young girls measly wages, the film we watched was also a catalyst for these thoughts.
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