Trip to Siem Reap

This comes from Siem Riep, the gateway to Angkor Wat. Getting here was quite an adventure. I decided to take the boat up the Mekong River and across the lake, the name of which I can't remember. It's the largest lake in this part of the world and very abundant in fish.

So at 6:30 this am the tuk-tuk came (actually he was late since he couldn't find the street where I live) to take me to the boat for a 7:00 a.m departure. Oh, what an adventure! I'd wanted to see life on the river and well, today was a real revelation. Lots of people live on the river in boats or houseboats or along the shores where they farm as well as fish. It was so interesting to see whole villages that were made up of houseboats. Some of these had TV antennas, which looked really incongruous. OK it''s a developing nation, and though they have cable in the big cities, I doubt they even have electricity in some of these villages. By the way, a TV can run off a car battery, so the lack of electricity doesn't hinder the functioning of a TV. Most of the houses along the water were built on stilts, which makes good sense in the tropics, where homes are subjected to insects, rats and snakes. Having the house up off the ground also adds to the coolness of the place since air circulates under and over and through the building. There were rice paddies of a brilliant spring green, people plowing their land with a team of white oxen, there were miles and miles of jungle, flocks of snowy egrets all along the way--in short, it was a magnificent panorama! The photographer in me was enraptured with all this new visual material. She was also frustrated because this was a speed boat and sights flew by so fast it was impossible to capture most of it.

The boat is like any of the tour boats you might find anywhere in the world, in Paris, for instance. It probably held 100 people or more in an enclosed area, each with a quite comfortable seat. However, people could also sit outside, either in the prow or in the back. Since I didn't think I could handle 5 or 6 hours in the hot sun, I sat by the open doorway. This craft would never pass USCG standards for safety. Although there was a railing around the prow, there was nothing to protect people on the catwalk from the prow to the stern from falling into the river. I don't recall anyone mentioning that there were life preservers, of which we thankfully didn't have need.

A couple of hours into this trip we slowed down as we went through a populated area of the river (as in houseboats) and a smaller ferry came out into the channel in which we were travelling, sort of perpendicular to our trajectory. I thought, "Wow! Water traffic is just as crazy and daredevil as vehicular traffic on land here." However, our boat slowed down and the other pulled alongside us to transfer passengers from their ferry to the boat to Siem Riep. In something like 3 minutes we were on our way again.

When we landed at our destination, they put a gangplank from the prow to the beach. It was just a plank about 15 inches wide with smaller strips of wood attached horizontally, to help people to stay upright on the muddy gangplank--no railing, no ropes. It was quite a balancing act to get off.

However, the first thing that one noticed even before we got off the boat was the crowd that was waiting for us, holding up signs with names of the passengers they had come to meet. The man from my hotel had one that read, "Mr. Cora". There was a frenzy of confusion as people disembarked and the inevitable tuk-tuk drivers tried to solicit business.

They told us in Phnom Penh that it is 16 km. from the docking place to Siem Reap. The first few miles of dirt road are deeply rutted and dusty, but I would love to have filmed every bit of the way, as we passed mile after mile of bamboo houses, some with people sleeping in hammocks. In the tropics people live outdoors and life is very public. All you need a house for, really, is as a place to sleep. From the safety of my moving tuk-tuk I tried to take as many photos as I dared. For a while we were part of a parade of tuk-tuks that reminded me of a line of Amish buggies going down a road in Lancaster County, only with the putt-putt of motorbike engines rather than the clop-clop of horses. And like the line of Amish buggies, this is another world!

I'm staying at the Ancient Angkor Guesthouse, which has air conditioning in the rooms and cable TV so I look forward to watching CNN to find out what has been happening in the world since I've been out of touch. The cost? $15 per night.

My tuk-tuk drive, Mint, took me over to Angkor Wat just before sunset so I could see it at sunset. He didn't warn me that you have to climb a steep hill and then the ruins of a temple at the top of the hill. Actually, there is a way out. You can pay $15 to ride an elephant up the hill. I declined to pay that much for an elephant ride, although one of my goals while here is to ride an elephant, and joined the crowd who climbed the hill in the hot, muggy evening. The view from the top was too hazy to see clearly, and the sun sort of sank into a cloud bank, so I beat a hot path down the hill, hopefully before most of the rest of the crowd, although the path was pretty crowded.

Tomorrow I set out for Angkor Wat in earnest. Like Toad in Wind in the Willows I discovered something I MUST do. As we sat on those temple ruins at the top of the hill, I noticed a hot air balloon drifting over the valley below. Next time, I, too will be aboard!