Snakes on a Boat… So Phnom! (Part 2 of 2)
By scott.poniewaz | August 31, 2006
The easier going part of my trip was also one of my summer highlights. Cambodia has its dark corners, but it also has its sunshine and I hope this will bring that to you. Our trip to Cambodia began with a somewhat rainy beginning in not-so-sunny, southern Cambodia on the beaches of Sihanoukville. Our two days of rest and relaxation after an early morning flight from Bangkok and five-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh turned out to be a little more wet than the beach getaway we expected, but it still gave us a chance to enjoy the beaches and our hotel pool a little bit. After avoiding “Happy Pizza” shops around town and opting instead for delicious Khmer and Thai food in the area, even a little Shepard’s Pie from a western restaurant, we had to bail and head up the road for a good 10 hour drive to Battambang. This is where our trip got interesting. Battambang is a city that still shows its influence from the French, but its secret is the river that runs through it.
Our bus ride, which departed at about 4 a.m. didn’t hit Battambang until 2 in the afternoon. This same drive took 6 hours the night before for a couple co-workers. Go figure…our bus driver took the wrong route while all of us were sleeping, so we went all the way through Phnom Penh and up. It was only the beginning to our adventurous day as we chased down our boats that were threatening to leave without us, because the 7-hour ride would take us into the darkness. It didn’t matter though; we made it, paid a few bribes and were headed for Siem Reap. The beginning was calm and easy going as we meandered away from Battambang on the Sangker River. The adventure was just beginning as we made a turn into a narrow channel in our wooden boat that was about 40 feet long and as we later found out, was in questionable condition. I don’t think Cambodia has any coast guard laws, because we couldn’t find the life preservers, didn’t see any sort of operators licenses, but there was a big sign on the front that said, “Angkor Express 4,” so I guess everything was alright. Commercial Cambodian passenger boats…why wouldn’t it be?
The channel we entered soon narrowed itself down and we hit a fork in the stream that it had become. We were entering the marsh and basically started creating our own path through the overgrown, mangrove water trail that we were now traveling on, but things soon widened back out…. at least we thought. The breathing room was temporary and we soon found ourselves hitting another junction in the river and couldn’t stop the boat in time before we slammed into the bank between the two choices. As most of us sat looking a bit confused by what just happened, we thought to ourselves that we should head to the left, but the driver, who also knew his way better than we did apparently, thought we should head to the right. As our little boat boy, who couldn’t have been much older than fifteen, pulled out the lone, deteriorating paddle on the boat, we realized they did this on a regular basis. That was about to begin our game of bumper bowling boating as we entered another tight, overgrown section of water that also was bringing with it a bit of rain.
At this point, choices had to be made, either you sat in the boat and stayed partially dry, but got whipped by branches coming through the side of the boat and screamed about spiders, or you stood up on the top, got soaking wet and played Frogger with the branches. I opted for the latter and ducked, jumped and covered while wiping spiders off my legs and praying that I wasn’t going to get a snake in the face that was hanging from a tree and not expecting a crazy boat driver with a bunch of farang dodging branches. By this point there were about eight of us laughing and having a good time before the rain stopped, the sun broke and we hit an actual river again.
After working up an appetite, it was time for sandwiches made on legitimate French bread. We’re talking real sandwiches, not crappy gas station sandwiches like you find elsewhere in Asia. This is the real deal…even better than sandwiches in the States. A couple of us that have been over here for a while ate four of them we were so psyched (contributing to my new rice belly, I think so!). As we cruised through the main river for a couple hours and watched the sun fall over Cambodia, darkness waited for us. We cruised along seeing village after village in the beautiful light of the falling Cambodian sun. Some you wondered what they actually did to live, most just surviving day to day by eating fish and waiting for the day when the river would flood their house out. The nicer and more affluent villages were actually built to float and I think the most intelligent just lived on their boat. Most just lived in their meager huts that would only flood again soon, in which case they would pick up and move to a little bit higher ground further down stream in their boats. The shorelines are littered with simple, abandoned homes made from wood and tarps. It was surprising that some actually had televisions in these completely stripped down living conditions. Where they got their programming from is another question, there were no antennas and obviously no such thing as a satellite dish.
Now that it was dark, the most logical option would be to hit more of these channels, several of which were little more than about an 8-foot wide trail through short bushes, so we obviously took it! By this point our boat boy was standing on the top of the boat holding two wires together that created light while trying to pick out where the path was. In the dark, small variations made it difficult to discern our river from small side channels and at times, the further in we got, the more questionable it was about whether we were going to get through things or not.
Everything took another turn when Jamie, my co-worker, found himself in the position of light controller and ultimately, the route finder. We ate a good meal of bugs and the bugs ate a pretty good meal of us as we moved along, so far no Dengue and no Malaria to speak of! I stood next to him with another flashlight to try and illuminate more along the sides, but as it got darker and things got tighter, we found ourselves stopping, having the driver come out to scratch his head for a minute, then hop back behind the wheel and plow through trees and bushes that I’ve never thought boats could push through. If there’s no path, why not make one? It is totally logical when you’re in Cambodia and goes right in line with my new realization that in Asia you never ask why, but why not? Eat some dog for breakfast? It’s already dead and cooked, why not? Put five people on a motorbike? If you can squeeze everyone on, why not? Cover yourself from the sun using gloves and a ski mask when its 110 degrees out… Otherwise you’d have to buy the sunscreen with whitening action, so why not? Travel doesn’t always have to make sense and that seems to ring true on a more frequent basis in Southeast Asia that’s why their new marketing slogan should be “Come to Asia…Why not?”
As we crept along through the water in the dark, strange noises started coming from the back and the boat started to get a bit jumpy. Jamie and I just started looking at each other and laughing at this point saying, “Welcome to rural Cambodia!”
Here we are in the middle of a mangrove trying to push our way through and our boat breaks down. Its completely dark out and all we can see is a green light on the shore in the distance and we have one old, deteriorated paddle. I know I’m not going to be getting in to swim the boat back with the snakes we just saw a few minutes before poke their heads up to say hello in our spotlight. A couple of us head to the back to have a look at the engine and see if we can’t get it working again, meanwhile our fearless 15-year-old “Gilligan” is trying to tell us through our not so good guide that he doesn’t know how to fix the engine after he had jumped in earlier to fix a prop that was acting up earlier. We notice now that its simply the axle that had a broken bolt. We cannot fix it and even in my limited mechanical knowledge I know there has to be something we can do to get this puppy working again. Meanwhile as we look into the floor, which is ridden with cobwebs, Jamie starts thinking about the snakes we saw a few moments before and since its one of the only things he can truly say he is scared of after traveling the world many times over and going through some crazy experiences that warrant the fact that he has nine lives, he quickly went on perimeter snake watch duty. The last thing he wanted was a sequel to “Snakes on A Plane,” but I think it would have a good ring… “Snakes on a Boat: Cambodia.” (Insert copyright here Samuel L!) So here I am, the most mechanically disabled person in the world trying to repair a broken axle on a boat in the middle of a mangrove somewhere outside of Siem Reap, Cambodia. We had no tools, but we did have a rope that we managed to get through and get the thing to work for a minute, but that quickly ended when the rope loosened and the floorboards started getting banged around.
Our fearless Gilligan figured out that his cell phone got a little bit of service at this point and managed to call in another boat, meaning about twenty minutes in the dark, because we didn’t want to kill the battery or the lights or we would never be found. The whole time, Jamie and I scoured the perimeter for spiders and snakes. We then saw the boat in the distance approaching and it happened to be the same boat we turned down earlier in the day, because it was a little smaller. Oh the irony! By the time we got back to shore it was about 9:30 and we were wiped. It was over 15 hours of travel that day and we had made it to Siem Reap, home to Angkor Wat.
Angkor is obviously a stunning place to go, but other than the fact that its there, its amazing and you should all go experience it for yourselves, I don’t know what to say. I could try to explain the intricacies, the fact that they managed to move these huge stone masses to create it, wonder why they decided to build the steps so narrow (I would say its because the Asians have small feet, but there has to be more), but even further how no one has fallen off the side of Angkor Wat yet. I’m sure there has to be someone with how many thousands of people go there. I could say how amazing it is that trees that are hundreds of years old grow out of the walls of the temples in the Angkor complex and talk about the monkeys that frolic along the sides of the road when you walk to Bayon, but there are some things that cannot be put into words and are meant to be put on the emulsion of your mind. The feeling of the cool stone, the sound of the trees or echoes of the temples, the band of land mine victims that play quietly on the side of the path and a conversation with monks as they head out to collect their morning alms while you stand in the midst of Angkor Wat are simply things one must experience on their own, but also things that I am thankful to have had the opportunity to experience thus far in my life, but the serenity could only last for a little bit, because our couple days ran out and we were headed by bus to Phnom Penh.
Our bus trip turned out to be yet another one of those “A three hour tour…Then it started getting late, the tiny ship was tossed…” you know the rest, but of course, its Cambodia, so the bus had to get a couple flat tires when we were near a few small villages. It worked well though, we got to get out and take some villager pictures again, which we had also stopped to do earlier, one of my favorite things, because you really get to get out and meet the people and understand where they come from and where they live. Where we were though, we had to use extra caution, because you never know where land mines are and they haven’t been able to rid the country of them yet. Our best safety theory was to stick to well-used paths and if you have to go off a trail go where the cows have been. If the cows can walk there we should be able to walk there…another one of those Asian, “Why not?” theories put into play systematically. Finally the bus picked up and we cruised in just late enough to miss the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that night, so instead we ate a meal at a great place called the Boddhi Tree across the street. The Boddhi Tree, where Siddartha Gautama is said to have reached enlightenment is in India and a site of meditation pilgrimage for Buddhists, but here its an oasis from the atrocities that happened thirty years ago across the street. It was easier to eat that night rather than the next. I’ll stay away from that stuff though, because that is in the first part of this post just below.
So I covered the last bit quite a bit on my other post, but I didn’t mention the sign that we had in the back of our hotel in the city that confused us all. Here we are in a pretty decent hotel, but in the back hallway there is a sign that had some effort put into making it, so it wasn’t just a joke, but it literally went down a list saying: No guns, No grenades, no tank tops, no flip flops, the list goes on…What the deal was, I don’t know, but we were definitely wearing flip-flops, some wearing tank tops, but sure as hell weren’t carrying guns or grenades. That’s Phnom Penh for you though, dangerous at night, extremely dangerous. Its not even recommended that foreigners go out at night and its not uncommon for people to pull out guns in clubs for stepping on another person’s foot. If you do go out, you’re only supposed to hop on a motorbike and go from point A to point B, do not collect $200, go directly to your destination. I did venture out for a little bit one night in search of an ATM and in that time, I was walking past a guy filling his gas tank, only when we walked by one of the guys put the lighter up to it and the top of the gas tank started to have flames come out. Like a bunch of 12-year-olds, why not? That’s when my buddy and I decided it was time to move on and avoid becoming the next day’s headline of, “Two Americans and four Cambodians killed by exploding gas tank in Phnom Penh.” I’m sure it would have made the Darwin Awards though!
Phnom Penh (pronounced Pa-Naam Pen) gave me a burst of ispiration for new slang in the States. All these fashion people usually say, “Oh, that’s so fab!” I think they should start taking a variation, if you pronounce Phnom like it looks in English, you get more of a “Fa-naam,” or a more hip version of Phenomenal. Just remember you heard it here first. Suzie, you should introduce this into your fashion grad school and that way it will start making its way through the industry. I can see it now, on the red carpets, everyone will be saying how Phnom their dresses are and their designers are just so Phnom! I’m hip, I’m cool, I’m with it now… As they say in Asia, “hey, why not?”
This is part two of a two-part installment on my journey’s through Cambodia. To read more please check out: Peeking into the Darkness of Phnom Penh (Part 1 of 2)
Topics: Travel, Photo Galleries, General, Thailand, Cambodia |
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