The boat from Battambang to Siem Reap
Trip Start
Jun 26, 2008
1
6
67
Trip End
Ongoing
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Well we got up, checked out, got breakfast and got to the bus, all before 6:30am (got to be a record for both of us). We were then taken up the road to the boat dock, which was some shatty wooden steps vertical to the boat at the bottom, slip you get wet :-)
We chucked our bags underneath and scrambled on top of the boat as we were told they only allow a few up there but turns out that wasn't the case and about 20 people tried squeezing up there for the view. The weather was hot but with a nice cooling breeze and plenty of cloud cover the sun still managed to have a good go at burning us (it was 9 hours after all).
After a relatively straight couple of hours the river started to get a bit bendier and we took a few corners too late and ended up hitting the bank, which was fine we just bounced off....
House for family of at least 6
. UNTIL there were tall trees entering the equation. Branches were scratching and not much of a barrier either side to save us. Some people went underneath but we stuck it out with a french couple sitting next to us and a family from Holland. We went straight into some trees and the french girl jumped up screaming after a rather large spider landed on her lap (Adam was next to her) We all jumped up pretty sharpish, i was doing the tourist thing and trying to find my camera but the French boyfriend had used his book to whack the thing off the boat before i could get to it and landed in the water with a splash. YUCK YUCK YUCK hate spiders. The poor french girl was freaking out everytime we got close to the trees or a fly landed on her. I kept laughing :-)Other than that the boat trip was very chilled with a couple of light showers which we stuck through on top of the boat (it was too noisy, hot and petrol smelling underneath, made me feel ill). The photos are cool with kids constantly waving and screaming 'hello' and 'goodbye' the first couple of English words they learn (right before 'you want to buy?). It was a good trip in all.
We arrived at the dock around 3:30, after passing through a very tight gap in the floating village and proceeded to get pounced on by a billion tuk tuk drivers, one of which had our names and he said the trip was free as said where we bought the expensive boat tickets (take to boat, take from boat to guesthouse) we thought the only catch would be the choice of guesthouse he wanted us to go to, but ohhh nooo (he took us to the one we wanted) but wanted to be our driver and guide for a whole day around Ankor Wat, we said not right now as tired and want to rest and took his phone number, sure enough the next morning he was in reception as we were leaving to go get breakfast in town. When we said 'NO' he wanted money for the trip to the guesthouse the day before so we said no and wandered off and he called Adam a few names and followed us around the streets for a while. It is amazing how greedy people are getting out here, they start at a massive price for everything say $10 when really it should be around 2/3. They will rip you off where possible, bartering is a trick you learn quick here if you want to last longer than a week.
Other than that a good, successful trip, found a nice guesthouse and had a good long rest.......
