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Published: February 20th 2015
The bus trip to Siem Reap from Kompong Cham didn't get off to an auspicious start. After sitting outside Daly Hotel for 45 minutes waiting for my pick-up, I decided to get the reception staff to give them a call. It was then I discovered my ticket was dated with yesterday's date, the blame for which I'm placing squarely on the shoulders of the guy who wrote it out. I knew which day I was leaving, but I should have taken a moment and checked the ticket date before paying for it.
So, I walked back to Lazy Mekong Daze, the guesthouse where I purchased it from and pointed out the error. The guy was very good about it, got on his mobile and sorted another seat for me. I knew there was another bus leaving at 9.30 and hoped I could make it. He changed the ticket date from a seven to an eight and directed me to tuk tuk which would take me to the departure point. Well, the bus drove straight past and the driver had to be phoned. Eventually he pulled up further down the street, I was hustled onto the back of a moto and
taken down to catch it. It was a dilapidated local bus, I was the only 'barang' on board, but the big plus was, it was only half full! So I had the entire back seat to myself, bonus!
The trip was a mixture of good road, bad road, and dusty gravel road with lots of road work in between. Twenty minutes from Siem Reap, a loud banging started under the bus. The driver tried to ignore it at first but eventually had to pull over and see what the problem was. His off-sider pulled a toolbox out and they were able to fix whatever it was and we reached Siem Reap without anymore mishaps.
The staff at Horizons welcomed me back profusely, which was lovely, and I settled back into my room. The following day I felt vaguely unwell and things went downhill from there. After purchasing dinner in Pub St that evening, and finding I had no appetite, I returned to my room and didn't leave it for almost two days. The dreaded tummy bug had me in it's grip. Thankfully I had come prepared for this, and started taking prescription medication from home, obtained 'just in
case' I needed it. It had me back on track in no time, and just in time for the arrival of Carolyn, a friend from home, at midday Thursday 12th.
Carolyn's plane was 20 minutes early and I was waiting with a tuk tuk and driver from Horizons when she finally appeared through that door. No one is allowed inside the Siem Reap airport to wait for arrivals, so we all stand outside. Fifteen minutes later we arrived back at Horizons and Carolyn settled into her room.
This is Carolyn's first visit to Cambodia so we need to sit down with all the brochures and information I have collected, put together a 'plan of attack' and create a well rounded holiday for her to enjoy. A week has now passed and I think we have done very well with our itinerary. I'm not going to give a lot of background information for Siem Reap and Angkor Wat in this blog as it has already been covered in my 2013 blogs. Instead I'll give a rundown on what we've done in the past week.
No visit to Siem Reap is complete without a visit to Angkor Wat. So
we've had two - one late afternoon visit to Bayon, The Terrace of the Elephants and The Terrace of the Leper King, and a sunrise visit to Angkor Wat, followed by a ramble around Ta Phrom, the tree temple.
The Frangipani Hotel on Wat Bo Road is just around the corner from Horizons. Ginny and I used their swimming pool in 2013 so Carolyn and I headed back, hoping nothing had changed. Lucky for us it hadn't! We walked through the foyer and out to the pool, settled ourselves in deck chairs and ordered a drink. Management have no problems with 'walk-ins' as long as we spend money whilst there. We always did, on both drinks and meals. I think it became Carolyn's favourite place....
We have walked Siem Reap's touristy Pub Street and Old Market area, from the Royal Residence on National Road
6 to Steung Thmet St where Artisans de Angkor have their workshops and retail store where, I confess, both of us have succumbed to a touch of retail therapy.
We've browsed the shops, taken photos in the Old Market, and eaten some lovely meals in the restaurants of Pub Street. We have, possibly, over indulged in the
amber fluid and enjoyed people watching at the same time. We've also been horse riding at the Happy Ranch and visited a silk farm so Carolyn could learn the silk making process, from worm to cloth.
We've had a guided tour of the Artisians de Angkor workshops and watched their artisans create the products sold in their shops - wood, sandstone and soapstone carving, hand painting their lacquered pictures and buddha figurines, jewellery making, and the tin workshop where men sit for hours tapping out the embossed patterns on boxes and trays. The silk farm we visited belonged to Artisans de Angkor, so we were able to see silk fabric being woven out there.
There are many worthwhile places to visit outside of Siem Reap, and we are booked into three days trips during our last week here. The first one is to the stilt village of Kampong Khleang on Tonle Sap Lake. We are doing this trip with Triple A Adventures and it cost us $39 each. I had already visited Kampong Khleang in 2013 but am more than pleased to return, as it's an amazing place!
Our mini van pickup was a little late and
already had five others aboard when it pulled up. We headed out of town and pulled into a small village off the beaten track, down the road past Preah Ko temple, about 15klm outside Siem Reap. We started our cycle ride from here, heading down sandy tracks accompanied by local kids, some on the back of our bikes and some content to run alongside. We visited a small temple ruin and a local market which really gave Carolyn a taste of rural Cambodia.
Once we reached Kampong Khleang, which is 35klm from Siem Reap it was lunchtime. Our guide had organised lunch for us, and our host lived in one of the stilt houses. We enjoyed a simple meal of rice or noodles with vegetables, relaxed in the hammocks or on the woven mats for half an hour, then headed down to the water to catch our longboat which would take us down the waterway, past those amazing stilt houses on either side of the water and out into the lake proper. During the monsoon season, the water level in the lake raises to the floorboards of these homes, flooding the sourrounding countryside. Once out into the body of
the lake, we cruised around a Vietnamese floating village where everything, including the school, is on the water.
The water was very busy with local transport with lots of fishing nets and boats crowding the water. The main difference I noticed, from 2013, was the green bean farms that stretched along the banks of the waterway.
We were dropped back at Horizons at the end of the day, too tired to even consider going to Pub Street for dinner. We had some crackers, cheese and fruit in our fridges so made ourselves a makeshift meal and had an early night. What a fabulous day!
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