TRAVEL TO PHOMN PENH

We decided to take a boat down the Tong Le Sap river rather than the 6 hour bus ride to Phomn Pehn.

The day began at 6am when the brand new Landcruiser stopped at the hostel to pick us up for the trip to the boat, the trip was looking comfortable. The driver took us just around the corner and dropped us off at the first minibus imported into Cambodia, and we boarded with the other tourists for the real, 45min, ride to the boat. The bus travelled, very bumpily, along a pot-holed dirt road in the middle of nowhere to the river. The blood red sun came up over empty, water-logged fields that I assumed must have grown rice as we bounced along.

We passed through a tiny town, no more than a single row of huts, clinging to the roadside and it’s inhabitants to existence. Most of the huts were a single room on stilts made of banana-tree fronds. There were no trees insight so the fronds must have been carried there by the residents. Some houses had corrugated iron for roofs, which would help with the rain but I’m not sure about the lightning in the rainy season. Through a few open doors I was able to glance mosquito nets. They must have eked their existence out of the fields around, but I don’t know how. If the road were paved we would have been through the town in a flash.

Before too long we came upon another town of huts, after a little while all the huts had metal roofs, then they were two deep alongside the road. Further along TV antennas began to stick out of most houses, and large TV’s and DVD players could be seen through the open doors. As we drove along, Cambodians tried to sell us food and water through the windows of the car. Then the small market, and finally the river edge. We left the bus and were mobbed by people wanting to sell us bread, cheese, bananas or water for “only $1”. That’s 1 US Dollar – or about 3 the times the price of the same items in Thailand.

The bus driver directed us to a flat bottomed boat, already loaded with 50 tourists, and no toilet insight. “That’s not what the boat looked like in the photo” by brain reacted, afraid of having to spend 6 hours on the cramped boat. “This one?” I asked. “Go to big boat.” Phew.

We took the small boat 30 mins down a small river towards the Tong Le Sap. Along the edges were villages built out onto the water. The school houses floated, as did the basketball court. School children boated to school in their uniforms all around us, small boats containing 4 or 5 primary-aged children, no adults. Most waved, one cried when his uniform got water splashed on it.

Finally we got to the large speed boat that would take us to Phnom Penh. The bags were loaded onto the main boat by the crew, though I kept a keen eye to ensure they went on. We found seats and settled in. “Hey you give me a tip”, said one of the staff. “What?”. “We loaded your bags, you give us tip”. “But I didn’t ask you to, I’d have done it myself.” He just looked at me, didn’t move. Claire somehow conveyed silently to me to just pay. “Fine, here’s dollar”. “No, 1 bag 1 dollar. 2 bags 2 dollar.” “No way, 1 dollar’s enough.” Again, standing, staring. To get rid of him, and out of fear that my our bags would take a swim I gave him another dollar and the scam artist left.

The ride, 5.5 hours, was smooth and we spent most of our time below deck trying to sleep with the occasional breath of fresh air on the rooftop. The closer we got to Phnom Penh the more developed the view from the river became. It felt like we’d taken a potted tour of Cambodian economic delivery from banana-leaf huts to metropolitan centre.
At Phnom Penh we were mobbed by taxi drivers who wouldn’t take no for an answer, but after grabbing our bags we made a dash for it to a café and managed to shake them.