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We picked the 7:30 bus because we wanted to get a start on the day as early as possible. We woke up early for the 6:40 pickup and were still waiting for someone to come get us when 7:30 rolled around. A staff member from our hotel took a look at our tickets and said this company only has one bus and it leaves at 8am. So the tour company we bought it from obviously lied to us. We wouldn't really care if we didn't have somewhere to be, but since we are paying $80 for 2 days.. we don't really want our first day wasted sitting on a bus. We finally got on the road at 8:30. When we reached Sisaphon we knew we could catch a taxi to Banteay Chhmar but there was not a tuk tuk, taxi in sight. A moto driver asked us where we were trying to go and he said he'd take us to the taxi station. He pulled over on the side of the road and told us to wait. He went and got a taxi who wanted to charge us $40. We knew for a fact that it only costs $15 (if that)
so we said no. He didn't like that and tried to barter but we left. Once we walked around the corner we had taxi drivers runnin at us in every direction. They had no problem taking $15. The car was packed with four of us in the back, a guy in the front and the driver. The road isn't paved which made it a very bumpy ride. When we arrived we had no clue where to get dropped off. The taxi driver phoned the #'s I had written down and the one guy said he 'didn't speak Cambodian'...?? We got a hold of one that knew we were coming and told him where to drop us off.
We were greeted with big smiles and a big hearty meal of rice, soup, stirfry and water. Starving we scarfed it down.
One of the cool things about this tourism project in this community is that everyone in the community participates in one way or another. The place of the homestay moves around. Local women take turns cooking the food. Locals use their oxen and kuyons for the activities.
After eating we were taken to our homestay. Its upstairs
in a large wood house. The owners don't speak a word of english so we can't communicate easily. The room isn't bad though. Theres a bed with a foamy mattress, a misquito net and top sheet. All in all, it could be worse. We were told to relax for the next couple hours. I ended up falling asleep in the hammock and Tris had a nap upstairs. Our english speaking guide then took us for a walk to the temples here. They weren't that impressive after seeing Angkor. They were all fallen down and just big piles of bricks. Our guide told us what some of the carvings meant which was cool I guess. After, we were brought back to our home and told to relax till dinner. Dinner was by candlelight with the temple in view and the music of monks chanting in the background. It was quite romantic as it was only the two of us, and the cooks and guides off to the side. When we got back to our home the guide told us that no shared taxi's run after 12:00 so to get back to Sisaphon it will cost us $25 to charter one. For
eff sakes... so far we've had a boring time here doing basically nothing but sitting around, then we find out that we have to pay $25 plus whatever the transit costs to get us to Battambang? Like common. It just feels like we keep getting ripped off because we are white. The itinerary paper says that all transport while at Banteay Chhmar is included. Well he charged us a dollar to drive us to the temple for dinner. Tomorrow better be pretty impressive to make this worth our while and money! This just happened, so I am a little bitter. Probably more then I should be. The rest of the evening was spent watching Dexter before the power got turned off.
Somewhere played music until midnight. It also started to pour rain. Between the music, thunder and pitter patter of the rain we didn't get a lot of sleep. I woke up wanting to check my blood sugar and we had a little scare when we couldn't locate my fanny pack. I had hung it on the bed post. Music started playing around 4:30am when the roosters started going.
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