Tonlé Sap Lake, Cambodia

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Seen on the way to the lake. I would’ve given my right arm to travel about like this when I was a kid.

At about 4pm on Friday Ean picked us up from our hotel and we headed out to Tonlé Sap Lake. Now, I’m not sure what was going on in my head, but from somewhere I’d picked up a mental image of a lake with trees in it and blue water and … I don’t know… nice stuff. It really wasn’t like that at all.

Houses on the way to the lake. Our driver lived quite close to here. They are on stilts because of the monsoon floods.

We bought $20 US tickets from the dock about 30 minutes out of town. Imagine an open cut mine with some raggedy boats milling around. The water was milky-tea coloured and there wasn’t a tree (or anything green other than a toxic sludge around the water’s edge) evident anywhere. Somewhat unfortunately, we’d timed our visit for the end of the dry season. The lake is filled once a year by the monsoon to levels of 5 metres or more but for us it was more like half a metre. We saw a couple of boats being pushed out of the mud.

There was a 20 minute ride along a narrow channel (strewn with garbage and shacks) to the lake. I was kind of wondering what we’d signed up for. Luke and I had one of the little boats to ourselves – us and to young men, one as pilot, the other as our guide. It turned out that only the pilot was paid, our guide did his job in the hope of a tip at the end.

This boy jumped aboard to sell us coke and beer. That’s our guide in the background.

When the channel emptied out into the lake we saw the floating village.

Groups of dwellings, some looked a lot like regular wooden houses, others like boats with shacks perched on top. Our guide told us many interesting things about the people who lived there. Accommodation on the lake is free but dangerous. Hundreds of people die each year due to the monsoon storms. Our guide himself was orphaned at the age of 5 when his parents died in a fishing accident. There are currently around 150 orphans living on the school boat and surviving on charity.

The children here are some of the ones who live at the school.

We bought a bag of rice to take over to the school from the co-op boat. When we got to the school they had quite a lot of rice already, if I’d known I would’ve preferred to take some fruit or vegetables, it seemed as though they lived on rice and fish most of the time. While we were at the school some Chinese people arrived and handed out books and lollies. I am not a fan of giving junk food to children in these situations. I can’t imagine the kids have toothbrushes or toothpaste to deal with this kind of diet and the wrappers from all the sweets get chucked in the water.

The teachers at the school, if I understood correctly, work there for a week at a time for free and then rotate. It seems to be a pretty unstable arrangement but better, I suppose, than no school at all. The lake community, according to our guide, looks after each other though. And he said that he thinks they are happy – “poor but happy,” and they share their resources.

This boy on the boat was dancing about and singing, much to everyone’s amusement. Reminded me very strongly of my nephew.

It was quite heartbreaking to watch families using the lake water for swimming and drinking when sewerage clearly would be going straight into their environment untreated.

The visit was… well, obviously not fun… but definitely interesting and eye-opening. I’m glad we went. On the boat ride back our guide and pilot brought a bag full of beers and shared them with Luke. They gave me a rather odd soya drink in a can. It was a bit like sweet, floury milk.

We watched the hazy sun set from the prow of the boat and watched families go past, back to their floating homes.

Ean was waiting for us at the dock and on the way back to Siem Reap he took us to his house. Even though he said I could bring my camera I felt a bit uncomfortable about taking photos. He lives with his wife and son and daughter in a one room cabin that is raised up off the ground. The village market seems to happen pretty much right outside his front door and he said the dust from the road often blows in. He had 3 dogs but now has 2 and fears someone took the one that is missing.

Ean had lots of photos up on one wall, a tv and shelves of toys that belong to the kids. There was one bed that had a curtain around it. It seemed that often the kids slept there and he said he would sleep on the floor. Speaking of which, the floor in his house was the most beautiful wood. Dark and super shiny and smooth it was absolutely lovely to sit on and I told him about how I have a wooden floor at home but it is full of holes and nowhere near as nice.

We had a drink and talked for a while before heading back to the hotel. It was sobering, realising what luxury we had to return to when there were people so close by who lived in fairly extreme poverty.

That evening we met up with Kitty, a friend from Melbourne who is traveling around Asia with her 13 year old son. Turns out I thought I’d messaged her back last night and hadn’t – no wonder she didn’t turn up! Tonight I’d suggested we meet at ‘Butterflies’, a restaurant inside a butterfly enclosure. Now, because I am a certified genius, it did not occur to me until we got there that butterflies don’t fly around at night so we didn’t see a single one. Le sigh.

Still, we had a great chat about Cambodia, compared travel stories and just generally enjoyed talking to people who weren’t the people we’d spent all day every day with. Kitty’s son Harvey particularly seemed to enjoy talking about gaming with (to?) Luke. Mums aren’t the best audience for that.

Cambodia has certainly, in our short time here, been a positive, and learning, experience. If I could give any prospective travelers advice it would be to come in November/December. You’ll get a lot more out of the place when it isn’t nearing 40 degrees.

Siem Reap: A Night Out

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After a 4 hour nap (is it still a nap if it’s 4 hours?) we headed down the road to a large open-air restaurant where we’d booked a table for the evening. Any cultural experience that can be had sitting down while eating is ok by me, so I was quite looking forward to a night of Cambodian dance and a buffet. All for the princely sum of $12. I tell you, it’s making life a lot easier now that the US and Australian dollar are pretty much equal and here in Cambodia people prefer USD over their own currency. I’m very glad I brought $1000 US in cash with us. I’d advise anyone traveling overseas to take several day’s worth of currency for every country you’re visiting. It makes the process of arriving and settling in so much easier.

The venue we chose would’ve easily seated several hundred people and was about half full. There was a huge buffet featuring everything from sushi to spaghetti and, of course, traditional Khmer food too. I was happy to heap my plate with salad for the first helping, although on reflection perhaps the possibility of food being washed in tap water is responsible for today’s upset stomach.

We had a good view of the stage and enjoyed the performances. There was an alternating mix of what I’m guessing was court dances and ‘peasant’ dances. The court dancing was of the kind that most people would’ve seen. Highly elaborate metal headresses for the women and masks for the men and very slow, graceful twisting of feet and hands. It’ll probably be more clearly explained in the vlog when Luke puts it together.

I preferred the group dances that told the stories of Cambodian farmers and fishermen and women. One of the dances showed a courting ritual. They were nicely choreographed and upbeat. The show lasted about an hour and then we went back to the hotel to dump my camera before having our first tuk tuk ride into town (only about 3 blocks). Tuk tuks here are a little trailer with seats and a roof that are towed behind a motorbike. Thank goodness the traffic is nowhere near as hairy here as being towed behind a motorcycle makes near misses seem much closer.

We headed to The Sun restaurant in town where we’d arrange to meet a fellow Aussie who happened to be in Siem Reap also. Unfortunately she didn’t show but we got to enjoy the sight and sound of the power going out across Pub Street. Sometimes just one side of the road would go black, at the other times everywhere would go out. We talked to the bar manager and he said that a while back a truck had knocked down 11 power poles leading into Siem Reap and the town had been without power for 4 or 5 days. It had been so hot he’d checked into a hotel that had a generator just to get some sleep at night.

This afternoon, my stomach willing, An is going to take us to the floating village near where he lives so we can watch the sunset on our last full day in Cambodia. Next stop: 6 days in Bangkok!

Angkor Wat

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Before I relate yesterday’s adventures, I’d like to do a quick plug for another blog, The Adventures of Lames McFuzzy, written by another Australian couple who, sadly, have just finished their 3 month tour of SE Asia. I’ve really enjoyed reading their adventures and if you’re planning on visiting the same part of the world they include lots of good travel tips. Whenever I have time, which isn’t often, I like to search for good travel blogs and this one is a lovely read.

Speaking of having time on my hands, Luke’s gone out temple-touring today while I sit in our room in close proximity to the bathroom. Just in case. People tell me this is bound to happen on any trip to SE Asia, I’m kinda grateful it’s happening while we’re staying in a four star hotel with reasonable wifi, room service and all the other mod cons.

Anyhow, enough about my bowels, on to Angkor Wat, reputedly the largest religious site in the world.

The thing to do (and it certainly seemed that everyone was doing it) is to get up at 4:30 in the morning and drive out to the main temple to watch the sunrise. An picked us up at 5:15 and we went to the kiosk along the way to buy our tickets. $20pp for one day’s entry to all the temples and they take your photo and print your ticket with your picture on it – very high tech!

There’s a pool of water right in front of the main temple structure and so the reflections of the sunrise look great. We were in a crowd of at least 2 or 300 people so there’s wasn’t a whole lot of serenity to enjoy, unfortunately. At least the dozens of people selling guide books sort of leave you alone at that point.

Even at dawn the weather was hot. It was 32 degrees, which climbed to about 38 over the course of the morning. After grabbing a few shots we wandered around the temple. The restoration works are much in evidence but are clearly very well done. The whole thing reminded me of Tomb Raider (the game), which I spent one Summer in Canberra watching my housemate play. There are parts of Angkor that look as though they should be filled with water and there’s so many swimming scenes in the game that I was half hoping to spot some kind of secret lever or trap door 😉 .

I don’t know whether it was the onset of my stomach issues or just being a wuss, but the heat was making me feel woozy. I didn’t take many photos and eventually went to the line of drinks stall in the hope of getting some ice for my neck scarf. After I bought some water and tried to explain what I wanted, the lady sawed off a piece of ice (they come in enormous blocks here) the size of a housebrick. Smaller please! I ended up with something the size of maybe 4 Mars Bars bundled together which was a bit awkward but heavenly nevertheless and there’s nothing like icy water running down your spine to perk you up in baking heat.

Luke and I wandered off down one of the side roads and found a run down little part of the wall where there was a gate and a gorgeous view over the lake. With no one else around it was extremely peaceful and lovely. From there we wandered around the outside of the walls back to the main entrance.

From there An drove us to another temple where the wall carvings were in excellent repair, even thought there was no roof left to this building. While driving us around An told us that all these ruins had lain in the jungle, completely unknown to anyone for over 200 years before a French Archeologist discovered them last century. Due to a war with Thailand everyone had left the area a long time ago and so even the local people had forgotten them. I can’t imagine how that explorer must have felt, coming across these buildings for the first time. It would’ve been magical.

We walked through two more complexes. One was the ‘Tomb Raider Temple’, featured in the movie and currently undergoing huge restorations, the other was the ‘Smiling Face’ temple (probably not it’s real name but handily, I didn’t write down anything An told us), which I walked around the bottom of and Luke went through. I have a minor phobia of steep flights of stairs and this one had lots of steep, slippery, narrow stairs.

But this time it was about 12 and An took pity on us and drove us by a few other sights before dropping us back at our hotel. He had been a great driver all day – unending bottles of icy cold water, lots of local information and even told us about his family and what happened to them under the Khmer Rouge. I was very glad I’d spent a while reading about the history of Cambodia on our way here. I’d heard of Pol Pot but I’d had no idea just how atrocious the history of Cambodia was. Seems like they’ve been at war for a very long time, and when it wasn’t other countries trying to take over it was their own leaders commiting genocide.

A very instructive, interesting and active day. I was very happy to get back to the hotel for a shower, swim and a nap before our evening excursion.

First night in Cambodia

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Since I napped the afternoon away and we have dinner booked I’ll make tonight’s post a quick one.

We arrived in Cambodia yesterday and, although the heat was as bad as Saigon, the air seemed better and we were picked up from the terminal by a man named An. The hotel has an arrangement where self-employed drivers pick you up for free and then, if you like them, you can hire them for some time over your stay as your driver to get to the temples. We decided, pretty much straight away, that we really liked An. He smiled a lot and his English was very good. He told us that he is traveling to Bangkok on the same day as us to meet his godfather who is Indian but lives in Australia.

We arranged to be picked up at 5:15 the following morning to watch the Angkor sunrise, then we checked into our hotel. The Somadevi Hotel is very nice. Big, deep pool, swim up bar (luxury!) and we have a nice big room with a balcony. We’ll sure miss this sort of thing when we get to Europe. The whole thing is costing us about $30 each a night.

After we checked in and dumped our gear (and went for a swim, of course – practically bath temperature water) we headed to Pub Street, the very bright, neon-lit, noisy part of town. We enjoyed some people and cat watching and had dinner, two of the local dishes – amok and luklok (sp?).

Cambodia is clearly making the most of the tourist trade, there’s massage stalls everywhere, fish spas where they nibble your feet, endless market stalls and people just generally hassling you everywhere.

Crocodile products also seem to be prevalent, apparently there’s a farm nearby. Another blogger mentioned that it’s not really a great place for anyone who cares about animal welfare so I don’t think I’ll be going.

Tomorrow: temple time!

Weird Pizza

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So after the crushing disappointment of not being able to go on the tour we wanted today, we sat around on the internet all morning catching up on blog stuff then caught a cab to the local mall to watch a movie – that one about Oz. The name already escapes me.

Before the movie we got lunch. There’s a food court at the mall and almost all the shops serve a variety of noodle and rice dishes but we felt like something familiar. Now, before you judge me harshly know that Pizza Hut is the fast food of my childhood and I *hardly ever* eat it. In fact… I’m sure it’s been at least a decade but I still have occasional moments of nostalgia when I recall the taste (I said don’t judge me!).

Anyhow, eating at known names and finding that things aren’t *quite* the same as you expect is a fun experience so we gave it a go.

I ended up having a pizza with the following on it: cheese (so far, so good), tuna, crab sticks, gherkins, pineapple and (if that wasn’t weird enough) thousand island dressing instead of tomato sauce.

And you know what? It really wasn’t that bad.