Seeing More of Cambodia

While in Cambodia we experimented with some different ways of travel to see the landscape.

As reported in our “Learning from the Locals” blog entry, we spent one morning biking around Battambang, seeing a bit of the urban landscape.

On a separate day, we gathered our courage and rented a scooter so that we could get out into the rural landscape. Since neither of us had ever been on a scooter or motorcycle before, this was a big step for us!

One of the things we had to get used to was the idea of a “petrol station” in Cambodia.  They are everywhere along the road: some looking smarter than others, but most, like this one, simply recycling old coke and vodka bottles to store the gasoline in. In Cambodia, the official currency is riel, but most everything is actually sold in dollars. For the most part, we paid $1 per liter (sometimes a few cents less).

It’s pretty simple to fill up, even if you don’t speak Khmer: you drive up and hold up as many fingers as you want liters of gas. The seller then grabs a funnel and a bottle, and fills your tank.  Here’s a video of how it works!

Having the scooter allowed us to roam out to some of the smaller temples in the area and get onto some back dirt roads that took us among some of the rice paddies. (The scooter also allowed us to get out to the bat caves and killing fields mentioned in previous blog entries).

Another “landscape” that we explored was that of a floating village.

While on our birding trip to Tonle Sap Bird Sanctuary, we visited the Prek Toal. This is one of several traditional villages (in this case with over 6000 people) that is made up mostly of homes that float. When Tonle Sap lake is full of water during the wet season, the floating homes spread out across the vast lake. During the dry season, they come closer in to where the river continues to flow.  The only stationary buildings are the schools, temples, and a few municipal buildings built on stilts.

It was quite something to see women ferrying goods across town on small boats, bigger, faster boats roaring down the “main street” of town, and lots of children paddling their way home from school instead of riding their bikes.

Fishing is the main economic driver of this area, with crocodile farming also a way to bring in money. And, of course, tourism. We were treated to a very pleasant lunch at a local floating restaurant, complete with vegetables grown in “floating gardens” (rafts with dirt).

We even got to use the local ‘taxi’ system to get from one side of town to the other:

One of our last experiences of Siem Reap was to attend an evening of story-telling. This short (45-minute long) show was an opportunity to hear some humorous Khmer folktales as well as some of the legends of the founding and falling of the Khmer kingdom. As always, we were intrigued by the blending of hindu and buddhist legends, and struck by the consistent human strengths and foibles that legends are built on. We were struck by the final story of how the Siamese army overcame the Khmer town that was protected by a magical forest of thick bamboo. The Siamese shot coins into the forest, knowing that the Khmer people would come looking for the coins and cut down the forest to find them, thus letting their greed pave the way for their defeat.

Video link

The day after the story-telling we boarded the bus to Bangkok, Thailand. We chose the Giant Ibis bus company because we had read Tripadviser reviews that Giant Ibis closely accompanies you through the border and we were so grateful for this. It took almost 2 hours to pass through the border and we think if we had tried to do this on our own, it might have taken twice as long. Signage was minimal, and mostly in sanskrit, which makes it difficult to navigate!

Our only surprise on the bus was where it dropped us in Bangkok. We thought it would be at a bus station rather than on the side of a street. So we grabbed a tuk tuk to navigate the ridiculous traffic, and arrived at our hostel for the night a little hot and frazzled, but ready for the next adventure.

We’ll share more about our time in Thailand in the next few blogs.