We had a jol in Siem Reap. One obvious outing was a visit to the Angkor Wat temples, a huge complex in the jungle that ranged from 700 to 1300 years old, mostly controlled by the Angkorian rulers before they moved their capital to Phnom Penh. It was absolutely astounding to see these massive rocks which had been transported from miles away, making up the incredible structures from so many years ago. We rode there on our bikes and then found a tuk tuk to ride us around to the various temples recommended by Paddy. Yet another surprising aspect of pricing in Siem Reap was that the tuk tuk around the temples was more expensive than if we'd caught one in town, ridden it to the temples, toured around the temples, and been dropped back off in town.
Riding in on bikes was fun though, if not nerve-racking. I was following Rafe, keeping snugly to the side of the road alongside all of the parallel parked cars and tuk tuks, but I was being boggied by a tourbus on my left hand side which wouldn't pass me. After about 400m of riding alongside the idiot driver's window, I realised he was looking for a parking spot and was not going to spare me once he found one. Right then he started edging in, narrowing the gap between himself and the parked cars, and all Paddy saw from his position behind me was a fast closing space with me in the middle. I managed to put foot and squeeze through with a few inches to spare, and got no comfort after from the boys as they joked about my close encounter, which they called a 'Pant Sandwich'! (Ed: Angkor Wat has the biggest moat I have ever seen...probably 200m wide and a couple of kms along each side of the square enclosure!)
This was not the only teasing I had to endure. When Rafers and I were standing in the queue for tickets, we soon realised we were about 3 people deep in a tour group, also awaiting tickets. When we got to the front, their squeaky little guide told us to wait for his whole group to finish, and so we stood aside while about 45 people pushed in front of us to get their tickets and have their photo taken as an ID. Needless to say, by the time I got to the front, my ID picture was not very pretty, and I'm sure the photographer was glad to be separated from me by a sheet of bullet-proof glass because I looked like I wanted to kill him.
(Ed: Chinese New Year was in full swing EVERYWHERE in SEA so i feel like we've ticked off visiting China given the droves present at Angkor Wat. Some notables include a complete lack of fashion police, they do not possess the gene for having a sense of space, and i wonder whether they ever get round to editing the hours of video footage taken while wondering around.)
Apart from Angkor Wat, we spent our time going for nice long runs in the flattest place on earth...we did about 11km on one of the days, and I swear we didn't see a single incline...not even a speed bump! (Ed: whilst winding along one of the single track paths, no less than a dog and a little boy who had kicked his ball into a nearby bush shat themselves at the sight of x2 westerners trotting past). Turns out that, although we were about 500km inland, our altitude was a paltry 75m above sea level!
We spent a lot of time wandering around markets in the town, eating really good Cambodian food, and enjoying the nightlife. Some QT was spent chilling at the pool at our hotel, having doggy paddle races, watching the closing stages of the Aussie Open, and climbing the watch tower for sun downers. (Ed: Jeanie kept up her newly found taste for experimenting with the condiments...this time we enjoyed salt in our coffee!)
The Lotus Lodge opened our eyes to the flaming exuberance of a Volcano Pot (Cambodian barbecue) which is a strange sort of bin that sits on the table with a convex lid covering a gas flame. You balance a piece of pork fat on the top, and as it melts it coats the lid, where you place your meat so it can cook. Around the rim is a little moat of soup broth, which you fill with veggies so they can also cook and collect juices from the pork and cooking meat. All the while emptying the barbecue to fill your little bowl, and gobbling that up while more stuff cooks. Not the most slimming meal ever, but really good. Kimhe, the friendly waiter who served us this meal, asked a lot about where we come from. When we first told him we hail from South Africa, he said 'but you're not black!'.
Walking through the town, locals often greeted tourists in English and tried to sell them something. One local thought he'd win some favour by guessing where a tourist was from and then greeting them in whichever language he thought they spoke. When he saw Rafers, he approached him with a friendly and triumphant 'com es das?', which we thought was very funny.
One day we took a tour guide, John, with a tuk tuk to one of the many canals that joins a river up to the massive Tonle Sap Lake. We hopped onto a little wooden boat and headed out to a floating village on the lake. This was a really interesting collection of houses, schools and shops on rafts, constituting a village of some 2000 people. Most men are fishermen, working at night, while their wives raise the children and sell their fish during the day. The village has a chief, who decides twice a year when it's time to move the village (because of high or low waters in the rainy or dry seasons respectively), and once the families have performed a little reconnaissance mission to pick their new property, each building is towed down or up-river until the whole village has been relocated. Sounds crazy, but if you consider that the lake, which is thousands of hectares big, almost triples in size in the wet season, it seems fitting that the village would move when it's entire population depends on the water for their living. One rather funny, though tragic, problem that John says plagues the community is people dying from 'drunking', which is John's interpretation of the word 'drowning'. Apparently, rice whisky is a huge thing there, and the fishermen spend a large portion of their time hammered. Consequently, it is common for someone returning home from a session with the boys, to fall off their boat and die from 'drunking'!
We didn't really do too many other tours, as Paddy's experience from before we arrived sounded entertaining but not very interesting. He had taken the advice of a blackboard advert in the hotel, and paid $15 for a half-day countryside tour. In the end, it involved sitting on the back of a motorbike driving around, while the driver pointed to random 'sights' and explained "there is the boy", and "there is the cow". (Ed: the highlight of Paddy's tour was watching a fisherman standing in front of a small puddle with a cast net. After 20 odd minutes of nothing, John the guide encouraged the fisherman to cast his net which reaped a clump of mud for his efforts!)
We had decided instead to spend one of our days riding bikes on our own tour, led by Paddy who by then had been in Siem Reap for over 10 days and was therefore basically a local. Unfortunately though, the bikes we booked the night before were pinched by some cheeky Germans, and so we enjoyed a forced day by the pool. We relaxed to the max, and Rafers claimed that he was so chilled he almost drowned.
Rafe and Paddy also spent one Saturday evening teaching English at a local school (these Asians are incredible when it comes to dedication and time allotted to learning). They were both really impressed by their respective classes, whose students ranged in age from about 7 to 14. When asked what they were being taught, the kids screamed 'conversation!', and so the lesson commenced. When asked what their favourite food was, most kids shouted normal things like 'bread' or 'chicken', but one little wise-arse with some knowledge of squeamish Westerners, thought he would be controversial, and shouted 'dog!'
(Ed: On our final evening, we did some bar hopping in town in search of the ultimate bar. A relatively unsuccessful excursion while most sold super cheap draft beer, forgot to include a bar counter in their restaurants. We ended the evening at a weird trans bar where one dude was playing the electric piano on his own in front of a screen with psychedelic colours and shapes being projected onto it. There was a pair of impressive beards sitting across the bar which gave Paddy and i the inspiration to grow Wolverine beards. We couldn't resist popping into the local karaoke bar on our way home although quickly worked out that a private room came with a hostess...we decided to walk the last 100m back to the lodge.)
Our traveling compass went somewhat haywire as we juggled with our options to either bus the loooong route into Laos, fly to northern Laos, Luang Prabang, or hop over the border into Thailand a sacrifice Laos altogether. We decided to fly the next morning to Luang Prabang in Laos. Before boarding, we had to have photo's taken and provide electronic finger prints. After scanning Rfe's right hand, the official mumbled in a heavy accent to which Rafe responded by planting his forehead on the scanner to be abruptly corrected to place his left hand on the scanner. Some would call that 'lost in translation'!? Once the confusion settled, we boarded a rickety old propellor plane with a bunch of crazy Russians, destined for Laos.
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