My plan was to use the speed boat from Siem Reap to Phnom Phen to see the Boeng Tonle Sap (the biggest lake in SO-Asia). I had read about it, including prices and schedule, had seen a video and Seyha said that there is enough water to go. I planned the tour, fed Mr.G with it and felt well prepared.
Instead of 5 I woke up at 4 and still wanted to carry on for leaving even earlier. When I was closing the gate, Seyha came out to say good-bye.
The first part was dirt road and I had been 5x before, 3x in the dark and I had my very bright lamp in use, so it was no big deal anymore to go there. The way to the port was sometimes very beautiful and of course the sunrise was amazing. (To avoid inflationary sun-rise posting, it is only 3sec on the video 147)
One Tuktuk with tourists overtook me and again I had mixed feelings – am I late? Will I get a ticket? And: I will there one hour earlier at least and until now, there are only two other passengers. At the marked point from the map there was nothing to see, but I anyway expected to go on 2km to the end of the road. But then there was a barrier and two officers send me away. They showed me a direction to a house but the road to that place soon ended and it became more and more difficult to go, including balancing my bike over a kind of “bridge”
The result was that I was back on exactly the street I had been coming, because it made a bend there.
At the building they explained me that they only go to another town and again showed me a direction. There, I got the explanation that this was again the wrong place, but that the speedboat doesn’t go anymore. I couldn’t believe it and wanted to get more information. At a nearby police station no one heard me, but a man at a shop asked if he could help me. And he explained that since a year they had stopped the speedboat, because too few people had used it. I wondered about people writing that it is hard to get a ticket and they sell more tickets than places available etc.
Plan B was rejected, Plan A became plan C and I had to go back 10km. Then I could use a kind of shortcut to come to the original route.
It was interesting to see how near to the touristic hot spot Siem Reap /Angkor Wat people still were so friendly and gave me things to prices so cheap that I am sure these are the price for locals. (I also saw 2500 Riel as the price fo a haircut).
When I, after 2 hours making a detour and searching for the boat, was on the road to HoChiMinCity, 3 Chinese elder cyclists stopped me for a photo.
They spoke only 2 English words, “hello” and “China”, so I have no idea where they were coming from or going to.
Today, it was windy and so I tried to stay in the slipstream of cargo-motorcycles as often as possible. This was also exhausting sometimes, not only because of high concentration (there is only 20-40cm distance that should be kept but if the driver would brake abruptly, this would not be enough for a proper reaction. It is also exhausting because of the higher tempo, although I often could let it roll, too.
Although I should know that at least since Georgia, I am still fascinated that in some areas you can get something special in unbelievable masses. Here it was sticky rice with beans in that reed, sold by maybe 100 women in a row several kilometers along the street (again
video 147 )
It was strange to reach a city 125km away from starting shortly after 12 and I also found a guest house after a few minutes (I knew before that there should be some and I could search more purposefully).
After a first round of charging devices and transferring data, I went out to find food. First was rice with vegetables and something that turned out to be no veggies for sure with a Durian-like bad smell and some meat insinuation. All in all I was glad to have rice to wrap everything and reduce strange tastes.
Then, I went to a hairdresser. He was about to close the shop and he wanted 5000 Riel just for the head, the beard would be again 5000 if I understood correctly. Now, I don’t know if the advertisement that I had seen really was valid, I don’t know if everyone in Stoung would pay 5000 Riel for the same haircut, I just know that this is 1,25$….
Some of his tools were a bit less attractive than they would be in clean state but I tried to think on something else.
I went to a bakery and bought some bananas and went back.
The internet connection in the room was very poor (at the corridor it was better) and I was very tired after getting up early a few times, so, the films of 3 days stay uncut, the Ankor Wat photos are unprepared, nothing except the blog text is uploaded.
I think of staying somewhere extra for doing that
