Slow Boats, Tuk Tuks, and Kids
Cambodia – Tonle Sap Lake
This week our most memorable experiences revolved around transportation and children. We finished our long stay in Siem Reap by visiting the museum. Then we made our way to Battambang via a surprisingly long boat trip. We spent a few days exploring this sleepy second city, including a full day tour by tuk tuk, before making our way to the capitol, Phnom Penh. Everywhere we go kids jump and wave and yell “hello” as loud as they can. Parents laugh and encourage their little ones to wave. It seems that we are just as interesting to them as they are to us.
It’s hard to believe that Christmas is next week. Cambodia is 95% Theravada Buddhist, so Christmas is not a common celebration. There is a little bit of season envy and most hotels that cater to western tourists have a tree in the lobby. But if your not looking for it, you will completly miss it. We’ve traveled for Christmas before, but we’ve never missed all the preparations too. To get in the holiday spirit, we went to a screening of Love Actually at a restaurant/bar/theater. At $3.50 per ticket and $0.75 beers, it was money well spent.
1. Go
- Minibus – 300 km. We took a short minibus ride to the pier that was beyond crowded. They crammed five people per row and stacked bags to the ceiling. It was like a clown car. Our six hour trip from Battambang to Phnom Penh was much more enjoyable.
- Boat – 80 km. The boat from Siem Reap to Battambang was an adventure. In the wet season, it can be as short as four hours, but in the dry season, it can be eight hours. Yep, it’s the dry season! We spent all day on the crowded boat, sitting at the back breathing exhaust fumes, avoiding the heat of the engine, and using ear plugs to dull the constant drone of the engine. The upside was seeing the floating villages and the kids waving.
- Tuk tuk – 62 km. We enjoyed a full day tour of the Battambang area with our entrepreneurial driver. Like our driver in Siem Reap, we were moved by his motivation to better his life and his family’s life. He told us his story of learning English at night by the light of the fire, buying his first used tuk tuk, and saving to by building materials for his home. He even had a guestbook signed by all his patrons.
Cambodia – Battambang – View from the tuk tuk
- Foot – 78,000 steps in 7 days (approx. 39 miles)
2. See
We finished our time in Siem Reap by visiting the Angkor National Museum. It was definitely worth a visit for the wealth of historical information about the temples. However, we felt like it was missing something. We have visited a lot of museums this year and found that our favorites not only impart information but tell a compelling story. The story was missing from the displays here. Despite that, it was still a nice conclusion to our Angkor experience.
We saw a completely different side of life on our boat trip from Siem Reap to Battambang. There are numerous floating villages on Tonle Sap lake and even more homesteads along the Sangker river. Some of these villages are Vietnamese immigrants. Our boatful of western tourists was as much of a sight to the locals as the villages were to us. Everyone stopped to watch us motor by and all the kids waved with enthusiasm normally reserved for celebrities. We stopped only once, at a floating store for lunch. Unfortunately, they ran out of hot food so we bought some packaged pastries for lunch.
Cambodia – Battambang – Our driver/guide with his six month old son
Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia, but it still feels small. It’s far less touristy than Siem Reap or Phnom Penh, but there is still an established tourist trail. We took a full day tuk tuk tour to see the sights in the area. As mentioned in the GO section, our driver was delightful. On the way to the first tourist attraction we briefly visited his family. He’s currently renting, but wants to build a house. He showed us the stilts he has purchased. He told us they were $25 a piece. He had about five but needs about twelve to begin building. He introduced us to his young daughter and his six month old son. He spoke a lot about how being a tour guide has helped him earn enough money to buy rice to feed his family.
Our first stop of the day was the Bamboo train. It’s an odd attraction, but kinda fun. It’s a bamboo platform on wheels powered by a motor. It’s only one way, so any time we encountered travelers heading the opposite direction, they would just pick up the platform and wheels and set them aside while they passed. At the end of the ride, we stopped for ten minutes where we were relentlessly hounded by little girls selling bracelets. From there we traveled through rice patties to visit a decaying temple behind a modern, well used temple with impressive paintings. It was much less impressive than those around Siem Reap.
After a mid day break for lunch and a fuel stop we visited some rice patties and watched some kids fishing in the irrigation creek. Our final stop was to the hill top temple at Phnom Sampeu. The temple and the view are impressive, but just next to these is a large cave with a dark history. The Khmer Rouge used this hill top as a prison and threw thousands of people to their death into the caves. There is now a shrine in the bottom of one cave with a pile of broken skulls. Our driver grew up in this area and said that when he was six years old he remembered his friends coming to school and saying their parents had been killed. He remembers living in fear that his parents would be killed. He was very angry about the damage the Khmer Rouge did to his country and told us that we would have been targets because we are educators. After a somber tour we returned to the bottom of the hill to watch as six million bats streamed out of the cave for the night.
For our first touring day in Phnom Penh, we chose to explore town. We visited the waterfront and the Royal Palace. It was similar to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, but smaller. There is a lot of potential for restoration and organization, but currently it’s a bit of a mess. The Silver Pagoda, inside the Palace compound, is listed by all the guidebooks as one of the top sights. It’s named for the silver tiles that cover the inside of the Pagoda. Unfortunately, the floor was covered in rugs and the only tiles showing were badly damaged.
3. Eat
Khmer food continues to be delicious if a little bit boring – maybe predictable is more accurate. Finding food in Thailand and Cambodia has been incredibly easy. There are tons of restaurants catering to tourists with English menus and photos of their dishes. It’s actually hard to find a place that doesn’t cater to tourists. The only downside is that nearly every place serves the same stuff. Amok, the traditional Khmer curry, can be found at every restaurant along with hamburgers and pizza.
4. Drink
The coffee continues to have a unique taste everywhere we go. On the plus side, it’s always fresh from the espresso machine. We’re also enjoying cheap beers. A glass of beer at a restaurant is usually $0.50 to $1. Since it’s often cheaper than bottled water, we have been imbibing a little more than we probably should. On a slightly more exciting note, we visited a brew pub in Siem Reap for an early dinner. The beers were pretty good, but nothing too exciting. We were really impressed by the quality of the food. We had western food for the first time in a long time.
Cambodia – Siem Reap – Brew Pub
5. Sleep
We left our beautiful boutique hotel in Siem Reap and stayed in a business hotel in Battambang. Our room was huge and nearly empty except for large carved wood furniture. Luckily, it was quiet and cheap (only $20 a night). Our place in Phnom Penh is a bit strange. The room is pretty bare without a window, but with A/C, a bathroom, and cable TV. We are right on the waterfront, so it’s a bit noisier than we would like, but it works.
6. Move
We are trying to be a more active lately, but it’s a bit difficult. Pat has fit in a few runs, but the roads are not very conducive to pedestrians. We are getting a little frustrated with our inactivity. It may be for the best since Lindsey still isn’t feeling 100%.
Check out Pat’s CADENCE Week 29 post (coming soon) for details about this week.
7. Etcetera
We continue to be impressed by Cambodia. The people we have met are some of the friendliest, most generous, and hard working folk we have encountered. On our last morning in Siem Reap, while waiting for our bus, our Angkor tuk tuk driver drove by with new patrons. He stopped and ran across the road to ask if we were well and to say goodbye. In Battambang, our tuk tuk driver introduced us to his family and hiked with us up to the temples.
On a more somber note: although we are really loving our time in Cambodia, it has been tainted by the prevalence of sex tourism. In Siem Reap and Battambang, nearly all the tourist seemed to be actual tourists interested in seeing the sights and experiencing the culture. However, upon our arrival in Phnom Penh, it became clear that some of the tourists are not here for the right reasons. Sex tourism is deplorable and degrading. With all the atrocities that Cambodia has gone through in the recent past, it’s hard to believe that people would want to take advantage of Cambodians even further.
Check out our Flickr album to see all our photos from this week.
Nomadic Cadence 
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