3 Ginger Snaps

Friday. It’s time to move.

It seems that my research skills might need a little brushing up. I read in the lonely planet guide that the boat trip from Siem Reap to Battumbang had the potential to be a wonderful trip. There can be no question that the trip is beautiful and fascinating – If for no other reason than the interesting people you meet on the boat along the way. This picture was taken by my new acquaintance Anna from Italy who went out of her way to tell me i was for travelling with my young family and that Italians would never do this. 

If I had dug a little deeper I would have learned that:

1. The trip can take anywhere from five hours to 12 hours depending on water levels and circumstance along the river. Our journey took 10 hours to complete. Not as bad as it could’ve been and I’m grateful to my daughters for being very forgiving.
2. It gets incredibly hot on the boat. This was true. Between the five of us we consumed approximately 9 L of water throughout the entire trip while we did nothing but sit around and watch the world go by. And we didn’t get up to pee once!

The boat is prone to mechanical issues. This titbit of information that is widely available on the Internet but was not included in the guidebook is true. Our boat broke down. When the crew try to fix the problem with a hammer the boat became incapacitated. Fortunately we were only about 1 km down river from the closest fishing village and it only took about 90 minutes for us to be towed there and for two new boats to show up and get us on our way again. Hopefully a good lesson and how to go with the flow of life and take things one step at a time. 
Along the way we encountered many interesting things along the river. The one thing I didn’t get a picture of that I was hoping to where the pigs in floating in cages. I’m not sure if they are used as food for the people in the floating villages or for the crocodile farms… I just know that they don’t qualify as free range.

We also saw floating villages

These incredible contraptions are home made and are some kind of fish farm. 

And the trip was truly a lesson for all of us and how fortunate we are to have what we have and live where we live.

It was a tough 10 hours to Battambang but we breathe a sigh of relief when we got here. Our hotel is very nice… And they have a full wall of Oreos in the supermarket.