Bumper boat to Battenbang!

After a couple of days in Siem Reap we decided to follow the Lonely Planet's advice and take 'the five hour scenic boat ride along the river to Battenbang - a beautiful town with lots of French Architecture'. Sounded pretty good.

This is a picture of our boat - funnily enough it doesn't look anything like the one in the travel agents window where we bought our tickets from! We set off at 7.00 am over this enormous lake. As we picked up speed the wind started to whip around us - freezing us to death! The water was splashing up over the sides so the side covers had to be pulled down - what a great view that was!

The lake part of the jouney lasted for about an hour, a very long, cold hour! Then it got more pleasant. Beatiful scenery, tranquil villages. This is the life - 4 hours of gentle cruising - nice!

However, a couple of hours later our driver managed to somehow completely loose control of the boat and ploughed into some poor fishermans nets. They got completely entangled in the rudder but instead of stopping and sorting it out he tried to continue on the journey. We found it quite amusing to watch the panic on his face as we just careered between the riverbank, stationary boats and anything else that didn't move out of our way fast enough. Amusing for the first two hours that is. By this point we had been on the boat for the promised 5 hours - our bums were starting to get numb and hunger was setting in. We realised it was going to be a very long day.

Nine and a half hours after boarding the boat we arrived in Battenbang only to find it's a little town with absolutely nothing to do! Certainly no beautiful buildings!

I tell a lie when I say there was nothing to do. We found a small restaurant that also ran a cooking school. Had much fun visiting the local market, buying all of the ingerdients and then desperately trying to follow the instructions to make exotic dishes. Got to say they tasted pretty good and we look forwards to wowing you with our new found culinary skills when we get back. If we can ever find the ingredients that is - any idea where to buy morning glory and snake beans??!!