First, these posts aren't in order of itinerary. Tori and I rode down to the big lake Tonle Sap on our day off. Rice paddies and poor/messy. We were going to boat tour to a floating villiage but the ultra aggressive dopes promoting it when we rolled into the parking lot (they monopolize the road like a pier because it's just one way in/out and try to charge big bucks) turned us off enough not to want to leave our bikes with them. I don't think they are used to a) people who don't comply, b) dealing with people who don't comply out of basic fear or fear of impoliteness, and c) those who are mobile without the help of a colluding tuk tuk or car. 90 mins on a boat with no choice but being in their hands didn't sound too hot either. Since we're people used to economic and mobility freedom, I couldn't give a flying f-ck about a little attempted tourist coercion and we just poked around a bit past them, they took my excuse of "we'll go after we eat" to heart and followed on a moto trying to hawk a restaurant till that got to what you might call a "not needed, not appreciated" moment too.
We eventually turned back and passed the same mopes (there's enough money in this one at $10/head they kind of have the police onside too - if it was just a nice "want to go for $10?" it'd be a lot different...) and checked out a town by the mountain, which turned out to be a total gem. Funny how that works!
The town is a sister town of one in South Korea. They've done the dozen clean water wells, a town hall, a school, and seem to have helped teach better building, road grading, garbage cleanup. Looked positive overall. Nice little farms, as this part of the world goes. We stopped as Tori wanted to take a picture, and I said hi to a guy standing in the shade in a Kim Jong Il like outfit. He replied back "hello, how are you today". Ok, so that's workable. He gave us directions around and some basic facts, pretty neat actually. Tori took some pics of a guy on a moto selling sno-cones to kids. We didn't find the path to the monastery at the top, but did see more hot dogs lying in the dirt (its the national pass time of all Cambodian dogs), some cows in the water, etc.
The road to and from was nice, lots of little shops at city outskirts fading to rice paddy side farmland.
On the way back into town we stopped in the shade of a park and watched kids play in the river. We wouldn't play in that river. Call us bad people if you will, but we pretty much concluded that if one of the kids started drowning, we'd find help instead of going in the river. Lots of garbage, plus our scientific musings figured a probably composition of the river fluid itself was probably 99% poo and 1% cockroaches surfing on the poo. Hence bottled water and a necessity of better/more wells and sanitation, especially around the cities. Rice paddy farmland seems just fine and clean, it's just basic bare earth living. Lots of people wear surgical masks - seems like their preventative efforts could be better placed (what do I know though?).
Overall, fun exploring on our own. Found some good experiences and sights, and made it back to where we started - fortunately in this country seemingly devoid of street signs we didn't take many turns (let's be honest - if there were signs the likelihood of us deciphering them is small). All I can say about the alphabet is it's beautiful and I've learned there are 33 consonants and 33 vowels.
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