Day 2: Up, Up, and Away (and SPLAT!!!)

That night when Natalie and Korwin arrived in Siem Reap, I don't know whether it was the "happy pizza" or the fact that both of them were OD'd on cold meds, but our tour operator did some voodoo magic and made it sound like a great idea to sign up for a "sunset" hot air balloon ride. I had no opinion on this matter, after all I had never flown on a hot air balloon before... we all had ZERO idea what this would entail, but boy were we in for a surprise...................................... o_o

We arrived at the launch field at around 4pm the next day (not a launch pad, I guess, though a rocket ship would have been much cooler haha). It turned out that no, it was not a "sunset" ride since the most ideal time slots for hot air balloon flying is at sunrise and right BEFORE sunset. Doh! The reason being that hot air balloons require very stable air conditions, which is determined by a change in temperature between the earth and the sky. What does this mean? Basically the earth is a huge heat sink during the daytime, and obviously the sun is... a hot ball of flaming gas. The earth is constantly spitting up blobs of heat (the correct term is "pockets", but I like the visual concept of "blobs" better), in which creates no-good turbulence for our corpulent floating friend. During sunrise, it is bright enough to fly a hot air balloon but the sun has not risen up enough to heat up the earth yet. During the 1-2 hours before sunset, it is also bright enough to fly a HAB but the earth has chilled out some to not spit heat blobs at us.

RAWR FEEEEEED MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE........

Now as it turned out, the three of us were the ONLY passengers on this HAB ride! I guess this was a relatively new operation (umm as we found out later on when we "landed") headed out by a Chinese guy. I should have been surprised to find him speaking 北京話, Chinese people are so enterprising (and invasive). Haha.

So this Beijing HAB operator's name is Liu Xiang, the same Liu Xiang (劉翔) as that famous hot Olympic hurdler. I was a little disappointed at the vast dissimilarity, even after Mr. Liu had proudly told us that if we Googled "Liu Xiang Chinese Hot Air Balloon" he'd pop up everywhere. Apparently he was one of the very first HAB flyers in China, and that most of the HAB pilots (are they pilots?) are his disciples. Welps, all I can say is... DON'T FLY IN A HOT AIR BALLOON IN CHINA. 

You can skip straight to 4:50 when I start freaking out, hahahahahahahahahaha

I'm too lazy to translate his Chinese, sorries! But it's mostly him trying to reassure us and me/Nat squealing. And Korwin being reticent. 

The HAB was HAF [hot as fuck]. Man, it all sounds really romantic and classy, but when you're underneath a fire spitting machine and your upper lip can't stop sweating, it ain't so sexy no mo. You believe it when they say that heat comes in waves, because you can really feel it lapping at your face.

And off we go, scaring villagers and domesticated animals alike.

It's difficult to tell the difference between screams of joy and fear when you're that high up. ;)

We were real popular with the kids, you can see them standing on top of the wall waving at us. That was fun. :)

Ah, so THIS is how it feels to be Prom Queen...!

My camera was hanging out of the basket for this shot, 300m above the ground. O_O

So we learned that it's actually very difficult to navigate a balloon. Because it's kind of like an elevator, all you can directly control is the up/down button (i.e. fire on/off), and catch the right "level" of wind direction. This was very cool, learning that the sky is composed of different air streams levels, and that you have to adjust your altitude to get on the right air stream. I imagine it being a Neapolitan Sky Cake of Automatic Walkways!

Welps, we kind of got on the wrong walkway, missing our first landing attempt and then a rough n' tumble touchdown in the middle of an abandoned field. HAHAHA. I remember as we were landing we swept past a house, and I made eyecontact with the family (they screamed). Then we rolled around a bit like a hamster ball. And all these people mysteriously appeared to investigate. I really don't know where they came from, because I swear there weren't that many people even as we were sweeping the countryside. Well, I had lots of fun. Can't say the same for Nat though. ;) 

WHAT, so you're saying I'm NOT a HAB Jedi Master?

[Me: No. Hellooooo, we come in peace!!!]

[Nat: My face...]

[Korwin: Churr.]

The kids were super excited seeing a HAB so up close and personal. Many of them wanted to hop in for a ride and were pulling at the gas tank tubes. That's when I started getting nervous... o_o

We waited at least 30 minutes for assistance to arrive since we landed in such an isolated location. 

You can see the Wicked Witch's feet if you look very very closely.... ;)

Being a sideshow and listening to Mr. Xiang spit out angry Beijingese at his crew for that long grew old quickly, but overall this was a pretty fun trip since it was a new experience. I wouldn't have liked it so much if we had to share this ride with strangers. Given all the manpower and trappings for $125 USD/pp I think that it was a decent deal. My advise? Hot air ballooning is fun! You don't need to do it in Cambodia though, there is not much to see from the landscape. And think twice if your pilot is Chinese. Haha.