The rain in Asia falls mainly on the plains

Hello Siem Reap

What a lovely city, beautiful gardens, great buildings, expansive markets, temples and more temples. Over the river, not so wonderful, smaller buildings, more dust, lots of traffic, but then we mostly like it in the real world. Our boutique hotel is great. We are welcomed in and sat down to register. Brought a cool drink and sign in, at a leisurely pace. The room is perfect for us, bath lined with marble. We even have a balcony, which we use often over the next few days.

First up, we deprive the hotel's driver of a job and walk to town to check it out. We already know that road rules mean little in this part of the world and take our lives in our hands every time we cross over. Pedestrian crossings aren't a help, not even at traffic lights but so far so good! On our way home from town we find the Peace café, a vegetarian eating place where we spend a lazy hour cooling our heels. This place is another NGO run establishment, providing services for the poor.

Unfortunately, trying to connect my laptop to the wifi service proves time consuming and near fruitless, so I give up. Dinner at our hotel is a bowl of noodle & veg soup brought in from the Khmer restaurant over the road. And, this will be out dinner each night of our stay. Boring aren't we?

I've already written about our visit out to the Angkor temple site where we first explored the Bayan then the Terrace of the Elephants, the massive Phuneanakas (the actual building is closed to the public). Then drove further on to Preah Khan, then Ta Phrom which is the site where tree roots have taken over and are crushing the buildings. Lunch at a local restaurant during the height of the afternoon downpour, cheap and tasty. We still eat everything put in front of us and so far no ill effects. After lunch, the main event, the great Angkor Wat, overrun with people like us. Lots of restoration work going on, but tastefully so, repairs/renovations don't look like new work. All of these works are carried out by foreign NGOs.

Lots of poor people here and most are trying to do something meaningful to earn a living. It is a bit galling to us that the man who owns our hotel is in the government and also has a huge house next door and a string of black cars.

Next day our driver took us out to the village of Kampong Phluk on the Tonle Sap Lake. The people here live in houses built on stilts at the river and lake edge. They fish the lake, which is where over 60% of the protein eaten in Cambodia comes from. Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater Lake in S.E. Asia. In the wet season when the lake is at peak height the water can be up to 10m higher than during the dry. In the dry people abandon their houses and go out into the lake on tiny boats and “houseboats” to fish.

Once off the main road and onto a red mud road which was appalling, we came to a rather neat building – the ticket office! Then another kilometre of sliding to where the boats were tied up and climbed over three boats to get onto ours for the trip.

A narrow tree and scrub lined channel which is usually the river in the dry season but now part of the lake took us towards the lake proper. We passed many small boats, some with fish and other sea life traps on board. Sometimes we passed people wading and picking weed, other times boats loaded with wood or goods. Our first sight of stilt houses were the official houses and these looked pretty new. When the village came into sight it was a humbling experience. Here we were peaking like voyeurs into their lives. In order to supplement their incomes their men take tourists around to gawk at them.

We stopped at one floating café to deliver some stores and learned that Vietnamese “boat” people gather round in their little boats hoping to attract tourists who they in turn, take among the trees where the bigger long boats can't go. The trip was really very interesting though we were happy to get back to town. In the afternoon we went into town and did our emailing then had lunch at the Peace café one more time.

Early Thursday morning we took a quick walk to the Post Office to send postcards and some books back to Australia, but while the cards cost US$1 each, a 500gram envelope would have cost US$42, which is why it is still with us!

Back at the hotel we said goodbye and the staff gave us a present of a silk scarf each. These were not from the hotel but it turned out that we'd been so nice to the staff, they took it upon themselves to give us a send off. Talk about emotional. We'd discussed tipping them and Howard suggested that because these people were the management team they would be paid accordingly, but not far on our way we turned our driver back and we left $10 with them. I mention amounts because people with good jobs are paid somewhere between $1 and $2.50 per day. A cup of coffee is $2. 2.5litre water bottle is $1.

Next stop Phnom Penh.