By Garrett Cooper
5 Jan 2014
Still in Kampong Cham, we decided to go to the Man and Woman mountains and the surrounding areas. I heard a couple versions of the story, but basically there was a man who wanted to marry a woman, but she did not feel the same way. In order to get out of the marriage, she challenged the man to see who could build the tallest mountain by sunrise. If the women won there would be no marriage, but the men were confident so they accepted the challenge. As they worked, the women built a large fire, which the men mistook for sunrise. The men stopped working and fell asleep while the women worked until the real sunrise, and won the contest.
Between the mountains is another Khmer Rouge killing field. I was told that all the bodies here were found headless. It's hard to imagine the terrible things that happened in this amazing place. There is a small shrine nearby with with a pile of skulls inside.
A bit further on is a beautiful pagoda and a giant golden statue of a sleeping Buddha. The several monkeys running around added to the feeling that we are very far from home.
7 Jan 2013
We got an early start with the idea of paddling a long day. In fact, we didn't stop paddling until about midnight, covering 51 miles with very little help from the current. Just out of the city is an incredibly long bamboo bridge going out to an island. Every year this bridge is washed away, and every year it is rebuilt to connect the island community to the main land. Last year, I rode a motorcycle across this bridge with Cambodia Expeditions, and this year I got a different look at it from the water. The bamboo is so tight under the bridge that I didn't expect to find a way under, but as we paddled beside it, we found one opening which we could just squeeze under.
Paddling at night provided us with many adventures we would not have had under the sun. At one point there was a smoky haze over the water, reducing our visibility even further, and we took a route around an island which kept getting shallower and shallower. Making it to the other side was a bit slow because we had to find a way through all the shallow sandbars. Sometimes we would come to a school of fish which would frantically jump out of the water as we passed. At one point, there were so many fish that it sounded like someone pouring a bucket of water over loose gravel. Some of these fish jumped into the side of our boat and one even found its way in the boat at Matt's feet.
In order to keep paddling, we started a rest plan. Each of us took turns taking a 20 minute nap while the other kept paddling. Eventually we decided we would sleep at least a few hours on land, and when I thought I saw some small islands in the distance, we decided to paddle out to them only to find that they were in fact anchored ships. Obviously we were not going camp on these large wooden boats, so we paddled a bit further to a beach I could just make out in the dark. When we approached, we could not get to the beach because there were so many small wooden huts on stilts in the water that we couldn't fit through. It was tempting to sleep in one since no one was around but we went a little further and slept on the ground on the edge of a field. The mosquito net on our Snugpak sleeping bags are nice for camps like this. It significantly reduces the number of bugs and spiders I have to kill inside my sleeping bag when I feel them crawling around.
8 Jan 2014
Before sunrise, a man was walking up. In camps like this I prefer not to be seen so I kept still, hoping the man would just walk past, but I had to alert him to our presence before he stepped on Matt which startled him. After a laugh and a couple friendly greetings the man left. Matt slept through the whole thing and had no idea someone was about to step on his face! We were up before sunrise and went back to where all the small huts were. When we pulled in, a woman said "eat rice?" I said ok and she took our mat and laid it in one of the huts and told us to sit. A bit later and she brought us a platter with a whole chicken, huge pot of rice, and a few other things. It was so much food we couldn't eat it all. The huts seem to be an attempt at bringing more tourists to the island, and it is pretty neat.
After eating we paddled to the other side of the island where the village is. This is a weaving community and many houses have hand operated machines to weave many things from silk and cotton, all beautifully done. I motioned to a woman at a house that I wanted to see and she invited us in and showed us how things are made. It's an interesting process and afterwards we each bought a couple things from her.
As we paddled towards Phnom Penh there were more and more fishing boats as well as large boats passing through the masses of small boats. It seems like a dangerous combination to me, and we passed through with caution. Sanghi, the tuk tuk driver, met us by the water and gave us a ride to the hotel.
9 Jan 2014
The day was spent sleeping in and doing chores. I have made arrangements to make our instructional video in Vietnamese for the next leg of our trip.
10 Jan 2014
I took a boat and Matt took a bus up to Siem Reap to go to Angkor Watt and to some paddling in the area on the Tonle Sap Lake. The boat ride was interesting. The other tourists were really impressed to see the way people live on the river as our boat went speeding past, destroying several nets and fishing lines along the way. The fast boat is a good way to see something differently than from a bus, but I am glad to have seen the country in a different way, because it gives another perspective. We have spent most of the last few weeks with or near river people, going into the villages, passing slowly by, saying hello to everyone. I love it.
11 Jan 2014
We got up early to take a tuk tuk as close to Kampong Phluk as we could. Kampong Phluk is a village on stilts which is in the water for much of the year. The Lake rises and falls dramatically every year and much of the road in is still flooded, so we assembled the Pakboats canoe on the edge of the water. There aren't many canoes that can can so easily be taken on planes, busses, boats, and tuk tuks and brought everywhere we need it to go and I am glad to have one. We were able to explore this place in a way that people besides locals rarely get to see.
From where the road was flooded, we paddled into a maze of tight paths through the bushes. We even had to push our way through trees by grabbing branches to push and pull through and over tight spots. Eventually we found a way through and made it to the village. Paddling into this place was amazing. All the houses tower above on wood or bamboo stills, and even crops and animals are kept on platforms above the water. Paddling the "streets" of this village is one of the most amazing paddles I have ever had. We were passing a school as they we're let out and all the children stepped off the steps into boats. We paddled with some of them for a short way and Matt traded his Bending Branches paddle for one of the paddles a boy was using. They all thought it was pretty neat, but they traded back and we kept exploring.
Paddling around the village and all the back roads, which most tourists don't get to see, and especially not on their own terms which the freedom of our own boat gives us, was reason enough to make the trip. There is even more to see though since the village is nearly surrounded by a beautiful flooded forest. Where the sun can shine through the canopy, it reflects back up to the trees. It's almost a magical experience. We took a break to just sit in the flooded forest to eat some mangos. Matt even set up his Hennessy Hammock over the water to be a bit more comfortable. We kept paddling through the flooded forest and out to the open lake where it is so big we couldn't see the other side. We paddled a bit on the open lake before going back into a flooded forest where we decided to climb into trees to have a pee break.
After paddling around the village again we made our way back to the dry road in time take the boat apart just before sunset. What a day!