The sights and sounds keep getting better and better! This morning we took full advantage of our free 1 hour massage in our room (another perk of the hotel package). Cambodian massage is really good. Nice and strong (if you're brave enough!) and full of all sorts of body manipulations to get the bones crunching and the joints cracking. It's also rather 'involved'. There's this weird disparity between the need to cover up the body in public and the total lack of inhibition in the massage process. Felt amazing afterwards though.
After all the trekking around temples, we devoted the morning to a nice long stroll around Siem Reap, largely focused around two key destinations: the Old Market and Swenson's ice-cream shop (no prizes for guessing which of us picked which destination).
The market was chaotic to say the least. Inside the air was full of all kinds of smells, some considerably more pleasant than others. I felt particularly sorry for the women who seemed to be hand mixing some sort of fish paste by hand in a big plastic container, although the butcher woman didn't look to be having much fun either. Although I generally don't like to buy souvenirs (you usually regret them once you get home) I couldn't resist buying a shoulder bag made from recycled fish food bags. It's made in Cambodia and the workmanship is fab - it's even plastic covered to make it waterproof (i.e. UK proof). The look of thunder on the girl's face told me that I got a pretty good deal for $6 (she started the process at $15).
Whilst we were exploring we came across a lovely art gallery run by a local expat photographer called John McDermott. The gallery is lovely and modern inside and the photos are stunning, so it was a real joy to spend a few minutes walking around and reliving some of our favourite temples.
Lunch was a very basic affair. Just a can of soya bean milk (Yeo's, my favourite from my childhood) and a plate of boiled pork dumplings. Plenty of food for two and a snip at just $3 for the whole meal. The place was called Wooden House restaurant.
After lunch we got involved in some serious chill time, reading by the Central Boutique's lovely pool and taking the odd dip until it was time to leave with San for our afternoon excursions. San suggested we had a bit of time to kill before heading to the lake, so he recommended we check out a local artisan training centre, which we did. It was really interesting to watch the trainee artisans at work carving stone or wood, and painting on silk or painted wood panels. The shop had some lovely silk products and one fantastic painting of two peacocks. Sadly the latter was neither wallet nor backpack friendly.
Once we were done at the workshops, San drove us out to Tonle Sap, where we paid $20 for our own boat complete with a crew of two - a teenage driver and a younger kid, who was like some kind of water monkey the way he clambered around the boat.
The lake is something of a natural phenomenon, rising in size from 2,500 square kilometers in the dry season to 13,000 in the wet season. The lake is fed by 16 different rivers, but the primary source of water is the Mekong.
As I've said before, were coming to the end of the dry season now, so we had to travel down a very shallow channel to get onto the lake proper. At first we were a bit gutted because we thought we'd fallen prey to Scambodia yet again. Who would pay $20 for a trip in a boat up and down a dirty stretch of river water?
We were so wrong.
After motoring along past a ramshackled collection of makeshift houses on the bank and groups of kids playing on the riverbank the channel started to widen and we arrived at the edge of the great lake. The lake seemed to go on forever and after a short stint of open water we arrived at the floating village.
I had been expecting houses on stilts, assuming that the 'floating village' was simply bad translation, but in fact the houses are indeed all floating like something out of a big Hollywood sci-fi movie. I have never seen anything like it: house after house floating on the lake, presumably anchored in place. Each house had its own living quarters and kitchen and a good number of them were gaily painted in bright colours reminiscent of Central American buses. Everyone travelled around by boat and they had a floating market, a floating school and even a floating restaurant complete with aquarium display, crocodile pit and fish pond!!! To cap it all, there were a small number of very entrepreneurial girls who were doing a roaring trade persuading the Japanese tourists to pay them a few dollars to pose with their Burmese pythons. God knows how they feed these big snakes out on the lake, bit we did see a few floating duck and chicken coops...
We went upstairs to the viewing deck of the restaurant to try and capture the sun setting over the village. The houses in silhouette with the golden sunlight rippling on the water was beautiful, but nothing compared to the effect created by the last few minutes of sunlight as we left the village: Once the sun had dropped below the horizon, everything was bathed in incredible pink light - the surface of the water, the clouds in the sky, the boat, everything. I sat on the prow facing the direction we'd come from and soaked it all up. Truly magical. Probably a once in a lifetime feeling.
San was waiting for us when we got off the boat, ready to take us back home. Back at the hotel we freshened up and went out for a fabulous meal at the Sugar Palm. Amber finally got to try Cambodian amok curry. I had pork rib sweet and spicy soup. Nice food in a nice setting. No wonder it's a Lonely Planet recommendation.
We got back to our room in time for a full on tropical rain storm complete with thunder and lightning.
Tomorrow we leave Cambodia. I will be sad to go. We have already decided we will come back one day.
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