Another early start (seems to be normal to get going by 8am) Thankfully none of us were worse for wear for the cocktails and beers last night. It was another round of pancakes and syrup for breakfast for me and a full English for Leigh. Today we were travelling leaving Phnom Penh by private coach to Siem Riep where we would spend the next 3 nights. The journey including a few stops was meant to take 5 hours but . Unfortunately it was on another small bus so quite a bit more bumpy than the transfer to Phnom Penh.
Our first stop was at the equivalent of our motorway services a stations. However I doubt you would ever find deep fried spiders at home. Yes that's right, there was a huge vat of them along with beetles and crickets and some kind of cooked bird.
Zach was the first one to try something, a whole cricket. He then tried a bit of spiders leg. Now these spiders are not like the little things we get at home. They are seriously chunky beasts. Just the sight of them was making me feel ill. One by one everyone else in the group decided they would try a bit of leg including Leigh.
Needless to say I am NEVER kissing him again. As you can imagine I couldn't bring myself to do it and have absolutely no regrets. Apparently the legs are like eating pretzels but not that tasty. Bouna told us that the spiders are common around the next city we were visiting and can be found in peoples homes. So when we arrived there for lunch I was on the lookout. I would have been very upset to see one. We stopped for a pastry and then were off again.
The last stretch of road took us past an 800 year old bridge where we had the opportunity to get out and take a few pics.
We arrived in Siem Riep around 3.15pm and just from looking out of the window of the bus, it seemed a much more commercial and touristy city to what we had seen before. Lots of large hotels everywhere.
We met the group again at 4.30 to go out to watch the sunset by the lake. We were taken to a stilt house which was over the edge of the lake and one part was full of hammocks. We all got a drink and chilled out to watch the sun set over the flooded fields.
Across the road from this is where we had our dinner. The place was the same set up of a stilt house over the lake.
I found a cat on the roof! – L
The family who owned it placed a few large mats on the ground and served us up a feast of Amok (curry based fish dish) in Banana leaves, rice, stir fried vegetables and chicken. The food was amazing and they kept bringing more and more for us to eat.
The mum then brought out our desert which was a pumpkin stuffed with coconut, milk and a few other things. It was delicious and even better to see how happy she was that we all readily accepted a second portion.
As we ate the kids played around us with their dogs (not pets like we have but they are well looked after) which added a really dimension to the evening. I think this will be the nearest we get to seeing how the local Cambodians live.
The only downside were the mozzies, but it didn’t detract from the evening at all.
Then it was off back to the hotel as we had a 4.30am pick up the next day!
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