To sit or to be sat on.. boat trip to Phnom Penh

Travel Pod

The Tonle Sap is a huge natural lake in the heart of Cambodia separating Siem Reap on the northern side, from the Kampong Chhnang province in the south. During the dry season (like now), the lake is at its smallest at appr. 2700 sq km and just a metre deep, but during the wet season it swells to 16.000 sq km and about 9 metres deep. Arguably the fastest way to get from Siem Reap to the capital Phnom Penh is by boat crossing the Tonle Sap and then venturing further inland along the Tonle Sap River. I say "arguably" because the last time I opted for a boat trip over the longer bus, I found that the guys selling me the boat tickets had been fairly optimistic on the time it would take (I think a 6 hour boat trip turned into a 10 hour one then, doing no ends of good to my humour).

This time round however the 8 hours wasn't far off the mark from the quoted 7 hours, and the boat was a lot more comfortable (read: less full) than last time when I went from Siem Reap to Battambang. Hordes of waving kids along the river, and fishermen doing their daily chores with a smile to the ferry, meaning the passing boat isn't too much off a hindrance (anecdotally the fishermen along the Siem Reap to Battambang route hate the passing fast boats as they severely disrupt the fish). Steven left the boat "slightly grumpy" (in his own words), as two rather rotund English girls had taken turns (almost) sitting on him en route. It's spectacular how badly burnt these girls got from sitting 8 hours on the top deck of a boat ploughing along through an unrelenting sunny day, but on more than one occasion I've likewise been guilty of undervaluing the benefits of applying a liberal slap of factor 30 to the bod. But it is surprising why it's always the English that choose to wear the colours of the St. George's Cross on their bodies as well as their football t-shirts.

The warm welcome of a horde of tuk-tuk drivers at the dock in Phnom Penh didn't help the mood either. Their hand-made signs with "Tuk-tuk driver. Good English! Decent price!" contain at least two demonstrable lies, when the simple answer "no" tot their shouts fails to settle in after even three or four attempts, and the first quote for a trip through the city with a straight face is quoted at 15 dollars (no way should you be paying anything more than 2 dollars for a trip within the city with a tuk-tuk). And why a tuk-tuk driver is unable to understand that if you've just told the guy standing in front of him that you don't need a tuk-tuk, that this will probably apply to his as well, is completely beyond me. I've had plenty of arguments with tuk-tuk drivers on what is so difficult about the word "no" (maybe to the dismay of Steven and Kim), and one guy even had the gall to blame me for the fact that he wasn't earning any money that day, because "I wasn't using his tuk-tuk" (this remark nearly cost him his nose). Should you read anything about mass culling of tuk-tuk drivers going on in Phnom Penh, I'd just like to pencil myself in a the first prime suspect.

Right, I'm off for a draught Angkor at one of the many places with a happy hour here. What is 50 dollarcents worth these days?
Cheers!