Farang: Obligatory Southeast Asian Boat Trip

All travelers in Southeast Asia need at least one "I survived hell on a boat in Cambodia" story. Now we have one too.

We definitely acted against our better judgment when we signed up for this boat trip. We'll blame it on the lack of sleep in Siem Reap and the temple-induced catatonia. The logic went something like this: why travel from Siemp Reap to Battambang on a comfy air-conditioned bus when you can travel by boat in double the time and cost? I was drawn in by Richard's romantic ideas of meandering down lazy Cambodian rivers in a rickety boat while passing fishing villages and listening to "All Along the Watchtower." The fishing villages were idyllic and I did tune into some Dylan on my iPod (we call it the tiPod), and if the boat trip had been two or three hours it would have been very romantic indeed. But, it wasn't three hours - it was nine.

We arrived at our boat just in time to claim some of the very last seats...er, wooden benches, on board. Thirty minutes later, three more vanloads of people had been escorted onto our "rustic" boat. The posted capacity was 24 and there were easily 60 people on board - many of whom were forced to either stand or bake on the roof. Though we nearly tipped over a couple times and had a moment where everyone on the roof had to come down below because the boat was unbalanced, I'd say the first three hours of our ride went very smoothly. We had a good time looking at the floating houses and waving to the naked children playing in the river. We spent the next six hours in a daze, staring at our feet and trying not to be pushed off our bench by a fat man. I only remember two significant events from the last 2/3 of the trip, both of which indicate the grand time I had:

1) While our boat was pulling away from our lunch spot I was hit in the back of the head (twice!) by a passing boat.
2) Ducking down to avoid a branch from hitting me, I was none too pleased when an enormous insect fell from the branch down my shirt.

Thus began our "Cambodia sucks" campaign which, sadly, was not helped by our visit to Phnom Penh (stay tuned!). I'll leave you with photos of some of the boat trip's better moments.

Hour one: pretty good so far!

Hour four: so bored that Tiara is reading Tolstoy and Ian has stopped playing his DS. There are no pictures of hours five through nine as they were all too unflattering to keep.