Reflections regarding Tuesday April 22, 2025 travelling between Ko Samui, Thailand and Siem Reap, Cambodia
Our flight to Cambodia was straightforward and uneventful. When we landed, the boys quickly clustered around me, hanging onto me, jumping on me, peppering me with questions, and asking for help gathering their stuff. It took us a little while to get through immigration to baggage claim and then we had to wait for a while for our bags to arrive. As we waited for our bags I kept thinking about how smoothly everything was going.
Then, I reached for my phone to take a picture.
It was not in my pocket. Or my other pocket. Nor was it in my backpack. It was nowhere to be found. Just like our first flight to Iceland, when I forgot my purse on the plane, I realized I’d never had a chance to double check my own belongings before disembarking in Siem Reap. I lost my parental cool and became deeply frustrated.
I went straight to the lost and found. They tried to help, calling the airline’s team, but the plane was already boarding other passengers for the flight back to Bangkok. This crew flew back and forth from Bangkok to Siem Reap multiple times a day. We were going to have to wait until it returned from Thailand to search the plane. They assured me they would look for my phone and return it if found.
Now I was even more annoyed. The boys assumed that I was distraught because I’d lost my phone – an important tool for for navigation, translation, and communication, especially when traveling in foreign countries. But, that wasn’t it. I am terrible at keeping track of my phone even at home, where it usually lives on silent. What tipped me over was the lack of sleep, the lack of personal space, and the lack of a single uninterrupted thought. All of it merged together into one colossal Mommy’s lost it moment. It was a reminder that I needed to take time for myself. Not so easy to do while traveling with four children and a husband who still needed meet work demands.
Deflated, we caught a ride into Siem Reap. During our hour-long ride, Chaim asked me how I thought the kids and I were doing with school. Were they meeting the traditional academic benchmarks? More importantly to us, were they demonstrating growth in resilience, independent thinking, global citizenship skills, and all of the other goals I had set for us before we left?
Perhaps it was because I was already feeling low, I admitted that I felt like I was failing the boys as an educator and parent. Chaim disagreed. It is hard to assess the boys’ growth in non-traditional settings until a random moment reveals itself, when suddenly they’re sharing information we never knew they had. The conversation reminded me to stay present and grateful for what they had gained in social-emotional learning skills, resilience, worldliness, cross-cultural comfort, self-awareness, and an abundance of family time.
Our hotel was quaint and very clean. The boys were thirsty when we arrived so we ordered drinks for the boys from the bar. The service was incredibly slow. Only later did I realize they were preparing welcome iced teas for us, which were delightful. Had I known, I wouldn’t have ordered drinks.
By the time we were able to go out and explore, the Angkor Wat Museum was closing in forty-five minutes. We went anyway because it was part of our preview for the next day, and Matanel had put it on his list or recommended places to visit. I took Chaim's phone and we squeezed into a tiny tuk tuk that fit three slender passengers in the back. The boys loved it. At the museum, we moved quickly, snapping photos of explanations to read later at dinner. It was hard to rush; the boys kept stopping to read and watch videos.
As if he’d overheard my conversation with Chaim, Matanel began explaining everything we were seeing. I hadn’t realized how much he’d absorbed while researching Cambodia independently. He shone. Every few minutes, Matanel shared a factoid or made a connection between his research and what we saw in the museum. As we left, Shai grinned widely and exclaimed, “Wow! That was really educational!”
We returned to the hotel by tuk tuk and then walked to dinner at My Little Café. The ordering process was such a balagan/pandemonium that another tourist came over to our table and offered Chaim some wine, commiserating, “Traveling with kids is stressful.” We chuckled and declined. Then, we reset everyone’s expectations around ordering. Twenty minutes after arriving, we finally ordered our food.
While we waited, Matanel read the explanations we’d photographed to everyone. We learned about Cambodian history, mythology, sculpture, and the symbolism we’d see at Angkor Wat.
We tried going to bed early because we had a 4:00AM wake-up, but everyone was wired. The boys didn’t settle in until 10:00PM and Shai didn’t fall asleep until an hour later. Chaim still had work to finish, and I discovered that my moisturizer bottle exploded in my toiletry bag. It was a long day.
