Paul and Tracy's Main Blog

I spent most of the night coughing violently until I discovered some of Tracy's tablets called “Night Pain”, and reasoning that's what I was being, took a couple. Within half an hour I was fast asleep, and that's the way it remained until I woke in a blind panic as I realised we'd overslept and it was less than an hour until Andy arrived to take us on our boat trip. So I woke Tracy, and fell asleep again whilst she had a cold shower, then got up and enjoyed a warm shower as all the cold water had been run off. Unsurprisingly, this didn't start things off in the best of spirits. And missing breakfast didn't help matters, nor did the overcast sky and high humidity. But the sight of Andy, filled with enthusiasm at the prospect of taking more money off us during the day, lightened our moods and we gaily jumped in the back of his car and set off towards town, where we parted with $40 for 2 tickets on a “VIP boat tour” of the lake and the floating village...

The journey out of town took us through a part of Siem Reap that looked a lot more like we remembered it from back in 2004, with the hotels giving way to residences, wooden houses built on stilts with the lower level for storage (of what looked mostly like junk) and the upper level comprising a single room for living, cooking and sleeping. The residents were out and about too, small children in tattered clothing playing in the street, mothers with babes-in-arms cleaning or cooking, and fathers bathing under outdoor showers wrapped in sarongs, or sleeping in hammocks. Further out of town the houses got more and more sparse, and more and more derelict-looking. Andy asked us if we wanted to stop for a photograph, but we declined, feeling that to do so would be an intrusion. How would we feel if a car full of tourists stopped outside our house to take a picture of us, cleaning or washing or tending the garden?

Eventually we arrived at what would normally have been the lake shore, where the boat-house station was situated. None of this seemed familiar, despite us catching a boat down the Tonle Sap in October 2004 to Phnom Penh. That's probably because this huge lake undergoes something of a dramatic transformation every year. After the rainy season, the Mekong River into which it flows floods and reverses the flow, filling the lake and flooding the plains, pushing the forest we could now clearly see underwater. Last time we were here was shortly after the rainy season, and only the tops of the trees were visible emerging from the lake. Now, whole forests were visible, a whole town of Cambodia's really poor had sprung up on the dry flatlands, planting and growing rice, and the lake was reduced to a muddy river for around a kilometre from the shore. Andy explained that the people who lived here either had enough money to claim good land, and could build houses on stilts that would survive the lake flooding, or built temporary houses on the unclaimed, and therefore “free” land further away from shore, in the certain knowledge that their homes would be lost to the floods in a few short months...





Andy sorted out our boat ticket and drove us down a muddy causeway past rice fields until the muddy river grew to our right, where there was a collection of small boats waiting. Our “VIP boat” was there too, so he parked up and we slithered down the muddy bank and over the gangplank onto the narrow wooden-hulled boat, ducked under the low ceiling and sat down on the garden chairs laid out across the deck. Once on board, the 'captain' and his cabin-boy pushed us away from the bank and started the car engine out-back and we were on our way, past families in dug-out canoes fishing in the muddy waters and onto the lake proper...








All along the side of the river we sailed down was evidence of it's peculiar existence. The banks were layered with clear lines where the previous year's flotsam and jetsam had been deposited and then covered with a layer of mud, and atop those were the trees... with endless bits of rubbish in their branches, from where the floating garbage had been left when the water level dropped. All around was evidence of the lack of care afforded to the environment here, with plastic bags, bottles and other assorted junk littering the ground like it was part of a huge landfill. I guess when you live in this much poverty, cleanliness goes out of the window...

Before long, though, we emerged from the river and onto the lake proper, and there, filling the horizon was the floating village. Houses, complete with floating herb gardens, churches, schools and even a basket-ball court (with mesh-wire sides) floating serenely on the muddy water as we past by, taking the obviously well-worn route, judging by the smiles and the waves from the inhabitants...








Before long we stopped at a large floating building and moored our boat alongside. It was a “Fish Farm and Souvenir Shop”, obviously geared to receiving tourists taking the trip round. We disembarked and were met with an unexpected sight. Crocodiles. Lots of Crocodiles. All sleeping in their under-deck compartment, unaware they were being grown to be photographed or eaten by curious tourists. We took our photographs, but declined lunch. And then went wandering round the souvenir shop, only to be accosted by a very pretty young girl holding a large snake. Yes, a SNAKE! Tracy was naturally very wary, but I had to act brave and have my photo taken. What you can't quite make out in the photo is the large puddle behind, where I wet myself...





Once we'd done with exhausting our cameras with the views of the lake and the floating village, it was time to head back on our “VIP boat” to the shore. As we approached the “docking area” we noticed a really strong smell of fish. Further investigation revealed it wasn't my stomach misbehaving again, but the locals unloading a fishing boat into a dumper-truck. Using large wicker baskets and shovels. At first, I thought they were shovelling gravel, but Andy insisted they were fish, so a closer look was necessary to confirm his assertion. He was right. And the smell was truly awful...





and with that, it was time for Andy to take us back to the hotel...

… where we showered (it's so damned hot and humid here that showering 2-3 times a day is not only a good idea, it's essential to prevent yourself from becoming a puddle on the floor), changed and headed back into town for some lunch. Fancying something other than Thai or Khmer cuisine (or Indian which we had last night) we headed for the pizza restaurant we'd spotted earlier. Opposite the river, it afforded yet another fantastic opportunity for our favourite sport – sitting in the sun, drinking beer and watching the world go by. This time, with aptly-named Angkor beer...





When the pizzas finally arrived, they were very, very good, although with the amount of garlic on Tracy's, any ideas of amorous entanglements later were quickly put on hold...





After a hearty lunch, we wobbled in the direction of the market for a bit of cultural exploration. Rural markets might be making a comeback in the UK (although the one in Royton seems to specialise only in Chav clothing), but here they're very much a way of life. The market in Siem Reap is an odd affair, with the prime tourist-facing stalls on the outside of the market bulging in locally-made crap whilst inside was an eclectic mix of silk clothing stalls alongside silver jewellery stands which then led onto a fresh vegetable, raw fish and spices area, all bright colours and pungent smells. The dead frog stall was particularly fragrant. As was the pickled cabbage and fish heads... now we know where the truck full of fish end up...

But what completely stopped me in my tracks was the “foot and sandal” stall...





There was no way to deal with that sight, except with another beer, and so we crossed the road and sat down in the sun and ordered a couple of cold ones, which we sank relatively quickly before grabbing one of the weird “Cambodian Tuk-Tuks” which are actually small 2-person covered trailers towed behind a scooter. Naturally, our driver rode the wrong way up the “one-way” streets at the side of the river, but I was very relieved to find Tracy laughing like a lunatic next to me, and not at all freaked by what was going on... me, I was crapping myself...





Back at the hotel it was time once again to try and catch up with the blog, largely because I don't want to forget anything that's happened and unless I write it down I will, but also because it allows me to sober up before we go out for dinner. Which we didn't because the East India Company restaurant on the 6th floor is so damned good, we went there again. Whilst neither of us would claim to have got our appetites back, we still managed to eat a delicious meal and down a bottle of more than acceptable South African Chenin Blanc before retiring to bed...