Road to Siam Reap

Cambodian-style taxi
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We left Bangkok just before the Khmer New Year’s festivities started, which was a good plan, since the popular way to celebrate involves dumping water on everyone or shooting them with Super Soakers, and we had a long, long drive ahead that a thorough soaking would probably diminish any comfort level we were thinking we might enjoy..

The road from Bangkok to Cambodia was nice, smooth and pleasant. We even saw a random elephant just walking on the side of the road, even though there was no circus in town (Audrey)!

rock and roll road

a local village market
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Because of the holiday, the border crossing was pretty empty and it only took around an hour to get stamped out of Thailand and into Cambodia. We took an open-air car to the bus station and boarded our bus for the long haul.

The roads in Cambodia are not good. Occasional sections were paved, and the driver would speed up over them only to be greeted by more bumps and shaking when the dirt started again. But mostly it was loosely packed red dirt. We were in an air-conditioned bus listening to our iPods or trying (futilely) to sleep. The traffic we passed was usually two people on a moped or a truck with 25 people packed in the bed and no cover – they call it a Cambodian taxi. Even though my teeth were chattering from the bumps (I was in the back of the bus) and I couldn’t really focus my eyes on my book, we were really riding in luxury compared to the locals – imagine how much dust you would breathe in during 9 hours on a dirt road. I tried to take some pics of the local villages and farm areas as we passed, but it was mostly just holding my camera up to the window, trying to steady my shaky hand and hoping for something decent when I pushed the shutter button. In case the pictures don’t convey it, what I saw was a whole lot of poverty – 1/3 of the population lives on 36 cents a day. It really made me appreciate the relative ease of our lives.

A typical Khmer style home, on stilts for the flooding each monsoon season. The temples on the corner of the property are sold to give alms to the garden spirits, and usually kept on the NE side of a property
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We arrived in Siam Reap in the evening and found the hotel. After a nice swim in a saltwater pool, we dined on the local favorite, fish amok. It’s a fish stew heavily flavored with coconut milk, kind of like tom kha soup but not so much of the lemongrass and inedible flavorings. The amok is served in a banana leaf bowl – it’s all about the packaging, right? Anyway, I found it delicious, especially washed down with the local Angkor Wat beer.