Day 7: Road Outrage

Today we are travelling from Battambang to Phnom Penh

We packed up at La Villa hotel and started the 200 mile drive from Battambang to Phnom Penh.  Rather than waste a day travelling, our itinerary gave us a few stops on the way, the first of which was a floating village at Kompong Luong.  As the minibus pulled up to our boat we could see an appealing scene of busy waterway life.  As we stepped outside the vehicle the unappealing smell of rotting fish knocked us off our feet.  Undeterred, we climbed aboard and the captain, who was all of 16, cast off.  All the comings and goings of what was clearly a thriving community were intriguing and captivating.  Not only were the house-boats attractively maintained as living quarters, but each had a dual role such as shops selling fresh vegetables, fish, fishing gear and a place to get your outboard motor fixed.  There was a pool hall, that also sold mobile phones, a town hall and a temple, complete with an on-going service attended by 30 people.   Over 10,000 people live here and because each dwelling requires between 1m and 4 m of water in order to float they have to relocate twice a year to accommodate the wet and dry season.  As usual, H&S was kept to a minimum and there was a lot of hopping between boats and dipping into the water (not by us, you understand).  At one point our captain actually became completely disconnected from our boat, which everyone thought was highly amusing (including us, when the crisis was averted).  

The local supermarket

One of the prettiest houseboats

Collecting the morning's catch of fish

 












The next stop was lunch at an open-air cafe adjacent to a petrol station, so I suppose it was the equivalent of our service station.  It had the most authentic menu so far, including stir fry with frog, snake's head soup and rice with black ants.  I have to own up that our choices were relatively conservative. 

Third stop was Oudong Mountain to see the royal tombs at the top of Fortune Hill.  500 steps, so the kids who became our tour guides happily informed us.  As they skipped alongside I wondered how many times they went up and down in one day, and whether I was actually going to make it at all. Gasp gasp, sweat sweat - I reached the top!  The view was good and the children very entertaining, telling us all about the tombs that we were looking at and how they love to practise their English and how they have never seen Angkor Wat even though they live just a few hours away.  Louise and I were pleased to hand out our sweets and presents again. 

After 7 days of rural backwaters, driving into the capital city was a culture shock.  Hot, dusty roads with traffic jams and pollution.  We just could not believe the vehicles that we were seeing. 

Top Ten Things we saw on a moped, in reverse order of incredulity:

• a door
• passenger side-saddle, dangling flip-flops and texting
• youngest driver approx 10 years old
• youngest standing passenger approx. 18 months old
• refuelling whilst in motion
• 5 people on one moped
• 3 dead pigs
• a lit barbecue
•  a passenger with a plasma drip (connected)
• AND COMING IN FIRST PLACE 13 MATTRESSES

You can see a whole heap of these marvellous photos in  Ian's Moped Madness blog

Unfortunately there was a mix up over our hotel reservation and we were bumped onto another hotel.  In itself not such a dreadful thing, but it took ages to sort out when we were hot and tired and it was well past wine o'clock.

MARKS OUTTA 10

Louise:  I enjoyed the boat trip and the views from Oudong Mountain.  I liked seeing the paddy field with water buffalo, a typical scene I've seen so often in photos.  The service at the lunchtime restaurant was not so good.  7/10

Rich: I enjoyed the boat and was pleasantly surprised with the hotel we ended up with, after all the shenanigans.  My ear was blocked up and I couldn't hear a bleedin' thing until they made me walk up 500 steps to see a stupid temple or something, but then my ears popped so something good came of it.  6/10

Ian:  6/10
Good Things:
1.  Not crapping myself in public
2.  The floating village people - the kids were lovely and nobody asked me for a dollar
3.  Kids at the royal shrine.

Not so good:
1.  Kerfuffle about our hotel reservation
2.  Having to PAY for the tuk tuks to transport us to our second hotel
3.  Fishy drain smell at Kompong Luong

Jackie: Floating village was great but today was just about getting from A to B for me.  6/10