7th February: Battambang, Cambodia to Siem Reap, Cambodia
After checking out, we found a tuktuk across town to the café from yesterday which happened to be conveniently located directly next-door to the office for the bus company. I had my eye on the waffles but, apparently, they didn’t do them for breakfast! Instead, we had an interesting take on French toast with some kind of sweet sauce, lettuce, and veggie ‘fish’ flakes between the two slices of bread. I also had a very, very strong coffee that the owner made me specially. She was very funny and came to chat to us about the rude American from yesterday.
Breakfast eaten and lunch in a box, we went to board the bus. It was only half full, so we were able to stretch out. I was having some bad tics for the first time in ages (maybe the strong coffee exacerbated this?), so sat back with my ear buds in and tried to calm my brain.
The first part of the journey to Siem Reap was retracing our steps in order to go around the giant Tonle Sap Lake and the wetlands on its fringes. The landscape was dominated by flat plains, strewn with plastic waste, with occasional peaks that looked like islands popping up. Perhaps this was once a seabed? On the road, minivans with propped up rear ends and sunken fronts passed regularly – these must’ve had a 10-15 degree slope up from the front to the back! I’m not sure of the purpose. We made one short stop where we picked up some tasty banana chips. The other interesting sights were two processions, which we guessed were likely funerals.
We’ve become comfortable with tuktuks now and took about our 20th of the week to the hotel. For what I think is the first time on this trip, our hotel has a swimming pool. That’s something we couldn’t refuse for the last 2 hours of sunshine. I even had a Blue Hawaiian cocktail for £2 to go with my dip in the rooftop pool. Kaja soaked up the sunshine. It felt like something other people do! We had to double-check we were in the right hotel.
We had a nice little dinner around the corner too of a lemongrass and coconut tofu amok and a classic sweet and sour vegetables and tofu. I’m exhausted again today so hopefully these veggies will help. Siem Reap is much livelier than we anticipated, but thankfully our hotel is just far enough away from the action to be fairly quiet.
One not so good thing about the hotel, however, is the mosquitoes! We’re used to killing a couple that have come in during cleaning, through the balcony, or perhaps in the evening when we’ve gone in ourselves. This place though was infested! We’re a few floors up and it seems well kept, so we don’t know where they were coming from. But come they did. We’ve killed 45 now as I write! There’s also a resident gecko too which is, frankly, not earning its keep! Kaja insisted on getting the mosquito net out for the first time, not for the mozzies but to protect herself from the friendly little gecko!