Day 143: Kampong Cham

Hay-vy load
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If you’re paying attention to the map you’ll have noted that we’re back-tracking today (having gone Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham and then back to Phnom Penh). Basically this route gives us the chance to see a bit of life on the tributary river beyond Phnom Penh before getting up to Siem Reap.

In the morning we disembark to climb a mountain (not really, anything over a 5 min hill climb is called that here) to visit the pre Angkorian temple of Wat Hanchey. Expecting just one temple and a monastery, we’re pleasantly surprised to find a complex of several impressive ancient temples and a few newer ones as well to reward our brief exertion.

Safari

Temples
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Oddly the site also contained various painted animal statues in a Disney like fashion. Apparently real monkeys did visit, but only after we’d began heading down to the boat. Usually teaming with monks, it’s quiet today as they’re away building a road (all Buddhist males devout time as monks, usually one year, even Kings). This gives ample opportunity for uncluttered photos, but we still find a few orange robed subjects.

The afternoon excursion sees us up Man of Man and Woman Hills (some local legend about woman outsmarting men – legends eh!) to see a modern temple before descending to find giant Buddha’s in various (sitting, standing, reclining, etc) positions.

Another temple
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On the way down we encounter tens of monkeys, doubtless encouraged to the area by the women selling bananas to us tourists for the creatures, so no longer feel we missed out on real animals this morning.

Next up for the afternoon was another rural village this one the ‘eco –village’ of Cheungkok – not really sure what that means but it was another rural community with friendly locals and smiling kids, but with some NGO support.

Last stop was at the local orphanage, supported by the Pandaw Trust, where we delivered some Lego (or the Vietnamese ‘Bricks’ – no copyright infringement there) and other goodies picked up in Ho Chi Minh.

Some sort of sanscript on the temples
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Back to the boat for another night of Khmer dinning.  In particular the fish Amok was particularly fine, but another Asian nation met its downfall with desert in the shape of semolina covered sweet pototoes!