Trips

      We arrived at a “dock” to get a boat ride to the Tonle Sap Lake to visit a floating village.  The lake is low during the dry season, high during the monsoon season, and high after the Mekong River floods and backs up into this lake.  The water flow reverses from the dry to the wet season and the lake is one quarter the size it is in the wet season.  As the lake drains, the village boats must move and the flood-plane is then planted with rice.
        We rode along in a canal that looked like the Amazon with floating rafts of elephant grass and flooded trees.  Near the village was a platform on stilts where village people who are Hindu are cremated.  The village we visited is one of the smallest floating villages with 1500 people.  A man-made island has a Buddhist temple with monks only during the wet season.  As the village moves away, the monks go back to dry land.  The “houses” are built on bamboo rafts.  The rafts last about 10 years, then they need to make a new raft.  Among the houses are rafts with gardens, shops (6 to 10 ½ instead of “&-11s”), pigpens, chicken coops, clothing stores (this is a place where Good Will can send clothes no one in the US wants), and boats selling goods.  Some houses have TVs run by car batteries.  These are fishing people.  When they catch small fish they let them grow larger in fish pens beside their houses.  They take their catch into Siem Reap by boat and motorbike to sell.  All told there are around 1.2 million people living this kind of life on this lake.  Some of the inhabitants have never been on land.  This village has a primary school sponsored by a US charity and a new floating Catholic Church.
        We stopped at a crocodile farm and souvenir shop.  I bought a Cambodian spoon.  It was $4 US, I gave the owner $5.  The same spoon was for sale in our hotel gift shop for $13!  The crocodiles are raised mostly for their hides and are sold to China.  The “happy room” was a bowl to flush with a scoop of water – right into the lake.  There is no garbage or sewer service for these villages and everything goes right into the lake.  Of course the lake water is also used for bathing and cooking.

Boat ride to	We saw this style of drive shaft on the Amazon
Family returning from town	Hindu cremation site
Floating Village on Tonle Sap Lake
Primary School	Catholic Church
Floating home
	Pig pen
Store	Political sign
Chopping up a snake for dinner	Crocodile
Floating grocery	School kids going home for lunch
Ron making the mistake of trying to hand out goodies to children - he got mobbed and not all the kids got something	We made a visit to the War Museum of Cambodia. It consisted mostly of rusting artillery of various sorts. It was not a happy place.
Back in town, we saw the fruit bats in the trees of the Royal Independence Garden.  At night the bats go out and eat fruit in the jungle.  Across the street from the garden is the Royal Residence of the king when he is in town.              Before re-boarding our bus, we watched two dragon boats practicing for the Water Festival next month.  There were maybe 25 people paddling and one person steering.  They were not very good at working together!  The festival is in honor of the naval victory over the Cham people (Vietnam) in the 12th century.
Fruit bats	Fruit bats
Royal residence	Dragon boats practicing for an upcoming festival
Buddhist Temple and Shrine	Buddhist Temple and Shrine
We walked to the Old Market in the old French Quarter.  The architecture was French colonial but the buildings are now pubs and shops.  The market was too crowded, with narrow dirty aisles and rank odors from the meat and fish sections.  We did not stay long and had no desire to shop.  Enough said.  Instead we went to the Blue Pumpkin for ice cream and enjoyed it in an air-conditioned room upstairs.  We had Baileys, coconut (Gale) and Swiss dark chocolate (Marge).  A few of us walked around the block with Soeng.  The streets were full of activity.
Fancy taxi	Meat market
Cute	Carrying purchased goods
Electrical nightmare	Looks like home! One person working, three supervising
Public works	Transportation for a family of four

Tues., 10/21/14 – Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong
            Our plane to Ho Chi Minh City and then to Hong Kong on Vietnam Airlines was not until 4:45 PM so we had a free morning.  We got up without an alarm clock, had a leisurely breakfast, and waited until the rain stopped to go out for a walk.  We walked to the Star Market (like a Circle K) and bought chocolate candy and Ritz crackers to eat with our peanut butter from home when we got to Hong Kong around 11 PM and then we walked around the Royal Garden and browsed a souvenir mall and store.  By then we were dripping wet from the heat and steam after this morning’s rain.  So once again the air-conditioned hotel was wonderful.
            At 1 PM we put our one suitcase (the other one was stored at the Hong Kong hotel) out for the porter to pick up and went down to have lunch at our hotel cafe.  A grilled veggie sandwich on brown nut bread, French fries, two fruit skewers, and coleslaw (they spelled it cold slaw on the menu) and fish and chips with an Angkor beer cost us only $14.70 US.  The meal was very good.  Our bus took us to the airport at 2:30 where we said our good byes to Soeng and our nice bus driver. 

            We had an eventful flight to Ho Chi Minh City.  It was POURING rain and there was a lot of lightning and thunder all around us as we landed and then sat on the taxi-way, waiting for an outdoor place to park.  The bus to take us to the terminal got as close as it could to the flight stairs, but even so everyone got wet getting onto the bus and then wetter getting off and under the marquee roof of the terminal.  Fortunately, the rain stopped before we got onto our flight to Hong Kong – late, of course, but a good thing this time.  We arrived in HK a couple hours late and didn’t get to our room until almost midnight.

Wed., 10/22/14 – Hong Kong to San Francisco to Denver
            Our hotel last night was at the airport and we had a 100-yard walk indoors to the terminal.  Our early morning flight was delayed four + hours.  Unfortunately, the local OAT guide did not tell us that and we had checked out of our hotel room so we spent all morning inside the airport terminal.    Evidently our 747 had mechanical problems and we had to wait for another plane and a new crew.  We also had to have our flight to Denver rebooked for later in the day.  As a result of the delay, and since we were at the ticket counter so early, we got bumped up to economy plus for the long (10+ hours) flight to the US.  This time we had TV screens at every seat, more legroom, and a faster plane. 
            We arrived in Denver at 6pm, got home to Estes Park at 9PM, and went straight to bed.
            On this tour it was interesting to see the ancient and historical landmarks and learn about  new cultures and ways of life, but the squalid conditions and third rate hotel rooms (train, boat, and home-hosted conditions) were rather unpleasant.  We think we are done with visiting Southeast Asian countries.