Floating villages and crowded markets...

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First off, we're writing this post from an internet cafe in Phnom Penh - a small 13" dusty monitor reminding me of hostel days 13 years ago, and a keyboard where you need a hammer to get any key to work. So pardon the typos in advance. (More thoughts about Phnom Penh in another post).

I love Cambodia. Reminds me so much of India, and more specifically South India, but instead of Mallu or Tamil script, their written script resembles the jalebis of the two neighbors above. The people are more friendly, helpful and nice. The weather, as hot and almost as humid. The roads - as crowded and chaotic and dusty, with so many motorbikes, mopeds, cycles, tuk-tuks (auto clones), cyclos (rickshaw with driver at back and seat in front), roadside dhabas, but not as many animals on the road. And not as many homeless folks or beggars - though I am sure there are many who need the money.

To finish the note on vehicles, I saw ones that resembled Ashok Leyland buses, TVS mopeds, lots of similar bikes, maruti van clones, 16 seater buses similar to the matador vans that run between key points packing in 100s of people - among many other similar ones. Among trees, we saw mango, palm, coconut, banana, banyan and some other trees that I can recognise but dont know names of.

Another observation which we should write more on in another post is how Siem Reap is more like Trivandrum and Thrissur and other smaller cities in Kerala, whereas Phnom Penh feels more like Chennai. (With a smile, the wife (sitting by my side) says that Siem Reap looks like a "kugramam"just like TVM 😊 )

So much for that. On day 1 we had taken an air-conditioned toyota camry with driver and tour guide to explore the Angkor temples. It turned out to be a great decision since the day was hot, started at 7.30 am and ended at 9.30 pm and the cool car gaves us good breaks to last through the day, in between each set of temples.

On the second day, we decided to be more local, since it was a shorter trip and took a tuk-tuk to the Tonle Sap lake to see the floating fishing villages. It was 20 km out of the city, and the ride was really great and gave us an opportunity to see the countryside. The road in the latter half, as we drove through lush green paddy fields was quite bumpy, like the Old Mahabalipuram road to Kalpakkam about 14 years ago. We saw several shops making buddha sculptures and little home-sized stupas, a roadside school, houses on stilts (as the road was adjoining a canal which likely flows into the lake).

We got caught in a little bit of a tourist trap as since we had ventured there on our own, they asked us to pay 1.5 times what the big tour groups paid. they said this was because they would get a large boat for all of them and we'd get our own boat. We said all right and went ahead having contributed our share to the growing tourist economy there. In hindsight it was nice having our own boat as we had the freedom to go to any corner easily and facilitate photographing the area.

Tonle Sap Lake btw is the largest lake in Asia (or so our guidebooks say). The fishing village is supposed to be mainly of Vietnamese people. It was amazing to see the variety of homes constructed on the water. We saw stores - mechanic shops, supply stores and food stores, multiple churches (interesting as it is a predominantly buddhist country and we didn't see any wats), and a variety of houses from beautifully painted, sturdy looking ones that could easily have been on land to shacks that were little more than a boat with a roof on top. We saw many little kids boating around in small boats, and it was amazing to see how adept they were at rowing, and how comfortable they were standing, jumping or going about their daily lives on water.

Midway through the boat ride, our boatsman stopped at a floating exhibition area meant for tourists. It had a souvenir shop, fresh water fish, crocodiles, and lots of food available. The wife was, as usual, quite grossed out by all the fishy business but she says that I am getting better at pointing them out so she can turn the other way 😊

After that, we came back into town, and hit the markets. Siem Reap seems to have been built to milk the tourists, and man, do they do a good job of that! In a few more years, the prices will go up even more. As mentioned in an earlier post, the prices for everything is in dollars and only small change for fractions of dollars, comes to you in Riel. Even at the airport we foreigners and locals are charged in dollars for some airport fee - that was interesting.

We were talking about the markets before that sidebar. Wonderful clothing in all sorts of colors and materials, sculptures, paintings - they had the works, and were ready to give it if you had the stamina to bargain to get it down to a price that you thought was reasonable (though that still might have made a Cambodian laugh at how much you paid). The shops were more organized than the Temple St street market in Hong Kong, more like a shrunk down version of Pondy Bazaar. We saw so many things that we would have loved to buy, but as we had mentioned earlier, weighty matters ruled our minds, so we had to tone down our enthusiasm, lest we had to gift away all of this at the airport 😊. We had lots of fun nevertheless hanging out in the middle of all the shops and tourists and haggling to our hearts content.

We took a break in the middle of all the shopping when by happenstance we ran into another wonder of the world (in addition to Angkor Wat of course) - an Indian restraurant named Taj Mahal that actually served good food! The usual Taj Mahals ranging from the one in Castro St, Mountain View to Niagara Falls serve fare that ranges from edible to downright insulting to the palate. So that was a pleasurable experience, and something to remember for years to come 😊

We also took a quick detour on our way to the airport to go to the Landmine Museum. It is just shocking that so many lives are lost so many years after conflicts because some idiots sold landmines to this country and now they are strewn all over. It costs $5 to lay a landmine but $500 to find and remove one - just really saddening and shocking, and definitely "real" experience being here since we saw so many landmine victims, especially many of them who now form bands and perform outside Angkor temples, playing beautiful music.

We rushed to the airport thinking that we were late, but the flight was an hour late. The airport again was almost like the TVM airport with one small domestic departure area. While airborne we got another spectacular view of the Angkor temple - how they built something of that scale at that time is just mindblowing. We're really happy that we added Cambodia to our itinerary this time and got to see such an amazing sight.

We got to Phnom Penh at around 7.00 pm and are staying at the Dara Reang Sey Hotel, where we met Reang Sey, who is among the nicest people we have ever met. More on that on another post.

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Comments

[Akanksha]

Hey guys I just got back from India. Glad to see you are enjoying yourselves. See you when you get back. Akanksha

[neha]

hi guys, it's always nice to see such detailed documentation/travelogues. was a joy to read.