Thursday 19th July

Even though I woke up quite early there was no way I'd have made it to Angkor Wat this morning. A day in Siem Reap was on the cards. I got talking to Jeff, one of the owners of the hotel and he made a few recommendations of stuff to do while I'm here. He's a retired Australian who's chosen to base himself here. He invested in the hotel along with 2 other Australians. I decided to go on an afternoon trip to the Tonle Sap lake to have some dinner, a few drinks and watch the sun set. After getting up I went down to the Old Market to have a look around and grabbed some food at a place called the Funkey Monkey that's run by an English couple. They invited me along to a Table Quiz night they have every Thursday, which I would have liked to go to, but would have scuppered all chances of seeing the sun rise at Angkor Wat.

The Tara River boat was recently done up by a couple of Australian guys. It was well worth the visit. The water level isn't yet at its highest level, so I was collected from my hotel and taken by car to a nearby floating village where I was taken by a small boat out to where the larger river boat was at anchor. The 'captain' of the small boat thta I was in couldn't have been more than 12 years old, accompanied by his younger brother who I'd say was about 7. No radio, no GPS, although there was one life jacket which I presume was meant for me. On the way out to the lake the younger of the 2 guys pointed out a few things to me; fish farms, crocodile famrs, churches, schools and even a basketball court which were all wooden structures floating on the water.

At one point I thought I was the only person who was going to be there. But after an hour of having the boat to myself a few other tourists, and the Aussie owners turned up. The sunset was really nice and I'm glad I went out on the lake. You get to see what life is really like for some of the Cambodians living in rural parts of the country. Probably not a million miles away from rural Ireland's poor from days gone by, libing off the land.

The short boat ride out to the Tara in the smaller boat was made all the more interesting by a few Cambodians in rowing boats launching themselves at out boat in what looked like an attempt to board the boat I was in, but in actual fact was them trying to come alongside the boat to see if I wanted to buy anything to drink! This happened a couple of different times on the way to and from the river boat. Invariably the seller of the soft drinks would be a young child accompanied by older brother and sister or by parents.

On the way back to shore the engine of the small boat I was in cut out a few times. However, my two young Cambodian captains appeared to know what they were doing. They got the engine restarted each time, except when it finally cut out just as we got back to the spot where they moor their boat. They attached their boat awkwardly to one of the other boats and we were able to make it to shore by hopping across a couple of other boats until finally making it to shore. Luckily there was still some light from the sun at this point as I wouldn't have fancied jumping from one boat to another in the dark!

The car ride back to SIem Reap was intersting, no a dirt track thats lined with houses, bars and restaurants which are all built on the water (on stilts). There's no electricity out this way, but people have power through batteries and generators. A lot of the bars we passed had sings outside advertising karaoke and the range of local beers on offer. In most places hammocks seemed to be the seating on offer.

While we were sitting on the river watching the sun go down, drinking a beer or two, you do find yourslef aksing the question, "Where else would you rather be?". When I got back to the hotel I went for a boring early night after arranging a tuk tuk to take me to Angkor Wat at 4:30.