Day 270 - Boat Ride to Phnom Penh

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Another self-inflicted early start but it has to be said they are a lot more bearable after sleeping in an air-conditioned room. As we said a couple of days ago, the road from the Thai border at Poipet to Siem Reap is dreadful by any standards (and we’ve seen some pretty bad ones) and we opted to travel on it. The road from Siem Reap to the capital, Phnom Penh, is by all accounts quite good, but being the sensible creatures we are we decided to make things harder for ourselves and chose to travel by boat. This began badly with a transfer to the river in a packed pick-up truck. Gemma one of the sardines in the double cab, Ed half-in and half overhanging the track behind us and worst of all our bags balancing on top of the cab, unattached whilst the truck bumped its way down progressively bumpier dirt tracks. Eventually all 4 of us made it (including bags that is) and we boarded what looked like a glorified canoe with engine - and Phnom Penh is about 200 miles away! Luckily this was just to take us to a bigger boat for the 7 hour ride down the lake and river - the first bit of the journey was extremely shallow despite the best efforts of a half-submerged JCB trying to dredge the river.

We passed some fascinating sights: a floating school, a floating church, floating houses with TV aerials and entire floating villages. As the ride wore on we were beginning to think we’d never make it and after the 8th mechanical failure were getting a bit restless. At Phnom Penh we were greeted with utter mayhem with people trying to offer us transport or accommodation and we settled for a uniquely quiet taxi driver called Alex which proved to be an excellent choice. We went to Simon II, the guesthouse we’d picked, but it was full so we ended up staying at a nice and clean hotel called Pho Paris for $15 with the all-important air-con.

Later, we stumbled across a shop called the Boom Boom Room which rather helpfully (if you’ve got poor morals) transfers albums onto an iPod for 75 cents a go. To illustrate, 65 albums costs $48.75…

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