Boatin' in Cambodia

From Mark:

During our tuk tuk tour of Angkor area, our driver tried to convince us to book him for other tours around town. His story went something like this: "I have a friend that owns some motor bikes... I know about a secret temple 50 km away that... How about a boat ride to watch the sunset?"

Boat ride, you say? 

We were planning on doing that sort of thing at some point. We have read that it can be quite a scam though. What the heck? His price was cheaper, and he was claiming to be taking us to a different place than most tourists go to. We arranged to meet at 3pm the next day to drive out to the river. 

We didn't know where we were headed or how long it would take to get there though... We drove for 35 minutes east to a random dirt road where we turned south. We drove through the jungle past a few small villages for another 30 minutes and saw no other tourists. I was starting to get nervous. I was imagining being kidnapped or taken to a far away village to be robbed! 

The red tint on the trees were from the dirt road.

Just imagine what we looked like.

Quite the opposite actually happened. We finally ended up at a building that wanted our $20 ticket fee. Hooray! There were a few other tourists around again! We got back on the tuk-tuk and rode down a dusty and very bumpy (the driver called it "dancing") road before we got to a large row of boats. A young kid, maybe 9 years old, led us up the path to his brother's boat. We boarded and 5 of us (the tuk tuk driver, two boat men, and us) set out on our way. 

We went down stream through the most amazing village on stilts. The design of the houses and village was incredible because they are designed to sit at water level during the rainy season. The people here were going about their daily lives as we floated by taking pictures. It felt a bit strange, but I was in such amazement that I didn't care. 

The longer structure on the left was labeled a school

We finally got to Tonle Sap, the giant lake that connects Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. 

Nope, not an Instagram filter.

That's just what it looked like.

Here we sat until sunset as small boat came up to our boat to offer us refreshments and snacks. We bought something for everyone on board as a celebration of being in such a cool place. Our tuk-tuk driver insisted on taking lots of pictures of us for our blog. Turns out, we're not very good at posing. 

It was a beautiful sunset filled red, orange, and purple. The sky was blue straight above us, but grey on the horizon which made the line between the water and sky almost nonexistent. It was as if we were floating above the surface! 

As soon as the sun disappeared, we cruised back to the docks. We were in for a long, dusty, and insect-filled ride home in the dark. 

All in all, we were so glad we trusted our driver to take us out on the lake. Sometimes, a little trust goes a long way. We learned that we need to always try to make connections with locals where ever we go. They will take us to the coolest places.