Cambodia Continued...

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Our Adventures in Cambodia have been many and varied! Here are a taste!

Tense Sit Off in Siem Riep

Time: 8am
Location: Taxi
Participants: Cat, Phil and Grr annoying taxi man
Reason: $$$$$

After the previous day's sightseeing we'd locked our man in to take us round for the next day. We wanted to go and visit Beng Melea which is the furthest temple from Siem Riep (80km away) and we thought a car might be a good way to do it. The price was agreed the night before, slightly more money due to the increase in distance. Fair enough we thought... Morning rolled around and we jumped in the 'cab'. Grr Man turns around to us and gives us a completely different itinerary to the one we discussed the night before and says Ok? Um... Phil and I look at each other, NO that's not ok. We want to go to to BM (see above) Oh he says, that's very far if you want to go there it's an extra $30. Us -No it's not we discussed yesterday and we agreed on a price. Him - Even check with you hotel I went and asked how much they charge and I'm $10 less than them. Us - We don't care what they charged we had an understanding.. At this point things are getting VERY tense. Phil and I have both taken our seatbelts off and he's starting to get a tad aggressive. Him - You booked me, I'm here, you HAVE to pay me. Us- We're sorry but that's not what we agreed to etc.. Eventually we managed to get out of the situation and move on, but it was rather unpleasant. We ended up taking a Tuk Tuk ride which cost half as much (we really hadn't counted on how far it was though - we spent over 4 hours on the journey and only about 1.5 hours at temples - though it was still worth it!) Beng Melea was an Indiana Jones type of exploration place! Crawling in and out of places, clambering over ruins etc.

Night Bus to Sihanoukville
Our time in Siem Riep was up - temple fatigue had hit, the heat was getting ridiculous so we booked ourselves on our first over night bus ride. Things were looking promising with larger than normal seats and blankets provided. Of course the people in front of us decided to put their seats down straight away leaving Phil with no leg room, leaving him a bit cramped. Other than that though we survived ok. I'm still trying to forget the trip to the bathroom though! The worst part was getting off at the other end at 7am still half asleep with tuk tuk drivers trying to grab your bags and not getting out of your face. One in particular followed us for 15 minutes before giving up! (we found out afterwards each one is allocated to one set of foreigners and they have to take them, no wonder the poor bloke didn't give up!) We got a tuk tuk when we wanted one and even got him to drive us where WE wanted to go - after two attempts on his part to take us to his guest house ie the one where he gets commission!



The whole Kampot experience
We had a spare day up our sleeve so decided to visit Kampot, described as an undiscovered gem, a great place to visit etc. We took a share taxi to avoid the bus (didn't cost much more) and bargain the price down - until the guy had to take another passenger to make up the difference. We preferred to pay slightly more to only have 3 in the back seat! Phil was amazed at the DVD player stuck on the rear view mirror which gave us a wonderful visual to the karoke music playing!! We also learnt the law of the diving jungle- the bigger you are the more power you have, the tuk tuks beep the motorbikes out of the way, the cars beep the tuk tuks, the 4wd (a surprising amount) beep the cars out of the way, and trucks win of course. Vans fit in somewhere dependent on how full they are, they could be just full of people OR full of people with half a house on top OR full of people with half a house on top AND the rest of the house strapped off the back! Motorbikes are a bit the same, the stuff they can fit on those... but that's for another time.

When we got in one passenger spoke to us briefly, testing out his English. "You sweethearts?" and "Why you go to Kampot?" Well, on being dropped of at the bus station we also asked ourselves this question. Despite the numerous taxis there it looked like a ghost town out of the wild west, or a deserted town somewhere in the north of Australia. Old deserted buildings, rubbish blowing down the street and hardly a person to be seen. As we walked off in the direction of the river Phil actually took $20 out of his wallet and hid it in his pocket. "So we can get home!" The desolation didn't seem to improve as we walked and tried to work out whose idea it had been. Phil's of course! We reached the river - with the bridge in four parts (it was blown up by the Khmer Rouge way back when and they couldn't afford to build it all back at the same time so there are four different types of bridge stuck together!) - and a lovely spacious very french looking boulevard. Still no people though! We took a walk and gradually warmed up to the place. It was actually really nice not to be hassled for a few hours! We didn't stay long but enjoyed the change - we're sure in a few years it will be full of tourists - on our trip we saw hardly any Khmer let alone Westerners/Tourists!


More Diving
After two weeks of no diving we thought we'd better see if we still remembered how to do it and booked ourselves in for a two day trip. The morning of the trip was extremely stressful as at 7am when we were checking out of our hotel the ATM ate Phil's card, and while he tried to deal with that I tried to pay the woman with visa. "No visa" at which point I ran off on her as well to try and get cash out with my card. Phil found her later after his card finally came out wandering the streets looking for us (she thought we'd done a runner) and helped her put the visa through (same machine as the Vets apparently)! Pheew and the diving people didn't seem too mad that we were so late! Ah.. that was because the trip was just for us! Yep that's right, on the boat there were Phil and I, the dive master and 3 boat boys! Crazy! Admittedly the boat was a lot smaller than the Smilians but still!

The diving wasn't quite the same either - the visibility no where near as good, but the dive master let us do what ever we wanted and we ended up with shallower dives of over an hour - we saw lots of cool little stuff - including these creatures that seem to have many arms and they feed themselves - they do have a scientific name which is escaping me at the moment. The night dive was the best dive we were down there for over an hour and the visibility was less noticeable, there's something about being down there in the dark!

We slept on the top of the boat under some canvas and survived the rain and lightning! It was very relaxing and now we've done 16 dives! 😉


Next stop - Rainbow Lodge Eco Resort - have to save that for next time! xx

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