Tonle Sap

Not sure what made me decide to not fly directly to Siem Reap but for some reason I ended up in Phnom Penh. I read somewhere that there was a ferry available from Cambodia's capital up the Tonle Sap river into the Tonle Sap Lake so I decided to take the scenic route.

Unfortunately, at the time of the year I decided to take this trip, the river had dried up in some areas which meant I had to take the bus some 3-4 hours to the beginning of the lake. The bus ride was interesting, between the great countryside spotted with amazingly decorated houses, halls and my comical effort in asking how much a bottle of water costs at the rest stop, the time flew by very quickly. At the rest stop, I took my camera down and just watched the locals go about their business. Lots of interesting shots either just drive or walk by you or are sitting right beside you.

At the "pier", more like a place the bus driver decided to drop us off, we waited for another hour for our ferry to arrive. Luckily the locals were entertaining and I'm sure we were entertaining to the locals.

The boat took off and after fifteen to twenty minutes of seeing the shore line and some fishermen, there was just a huge expanse of brown water. Every now and then we'd bump into other boats or lone stilt houses on the lake but for the most part it was 6 hours of watching the water drift by and looking back to see the wake of even browner water that our boat left as we traveled on. There is a covered passengers seating section but it's pretty cramped and can sometimes smell of diesel fuel (imagine taking that in for 6 hours) and so most of the people opted to brave the harsh sunlight for most of the trip. I have to say, the boat probably did not meet any international standard of safety (no lifevest were visible) which can be a worry considering this was a fresh water lake and would not provide any kind of buoyancy should we find ourselves in the water (or maybe I'm just getting too old for this kind of stuff).

When we reached our destination we were transferred to smaller boats that brought us inland. The transfer though was interesting as vendors in their own small boats "boarded" us and sold us very refreshing (we were under the sun for most of the ferry trip) drinks.