Day 15 Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

Another interesting day.

Today we spent most of the day driving from Phnom Penh NW to Siem Reap. A large part of the road was only built 4 years ago with Japanese aid. It is a major highway, 2 lanes, 1 in each direction shared by trucks, tourist buses, motorbikes, few cars, tractors, bullock- drawn drays pilled precariously high, motorbike pulled carts pilled precariously high, pedestrians, animals etc. It takes a while to get anywhere – but that is OK because there is plenty to see. The style of housing changes, the wares in the roadside shops change, the vegetation changes. For a large part of the time we drove along the edge of the Tonle Sap river which flows into the Mekong at Phnom Penh ( except when the Mekong floods and it flows the other way) . The houses along the roadside are mostly on taller stilts than we have seen but the area is very poor. We drove past several brick factories and stone quarries, saw many rice fields and lotus ponds. One of the road side places we stopped at specialised in spiders – alive and dead – and assorted other revolting looking insects.

We stopped at a place called Sambor Prei Kuk where there are many ruins of temples built in the 6th and 7th centuries, pre-Angkor. It was nice wandering around the jungle looking at these structures built of small bricks (hopefully I’ll sort some photos out this evening). The area is off the main road and very poor – no electricity, very few cars in sight, dirt tracks, small houses with bamboo walls.

We arrived at our hotel – Ross has saved the best till last. This hotel is described in a book as French colonial. Nice wood, tiling, courtyards, wide verandahs, seating, little nooks and crannies, beautiful flowers everywhere, huge swimming pool.

I had a swim and then we all had dinner here. Delicious.