The Boat Ride to Battambang

The next morning, I woke up at 4:40am, to get ready for my 5am pick-up by Mr. Mab. I was paying him $5 to take me to a hot air balloon that takes tourists for a 15 minute ride over Angkor Wat for sunrise, and to then take me back to my hotel in time for my 6:30am pickup from a minivan that was to take me to my boat ride to Battambang, the final province that I would be visiting in Cambodia.

At 4:55am, there was a call up to my room that Mr. Mab was waiting, and I made my tired way downstairs. We drove back towards Angkor Wat, got to the balloon place, and they said 'No Ballon Today.' Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! This is what they had told me the evening before when I tried to come for afternoon/sunset, and they said 'come back tomorrow morning at 5:25am, we will definitely be going out.' Oh well. Apparently, there is no 'definitely' in these parts, and I decided I had to make SOMETHING out of my ridiculously early wake up time. So, Mr. Mab drove me back to my hotel area, and let me off at the morning market, where I proceeded to spend a half an hour taking some stellar shots of the daily morning market set-up time. It was cool to experience, and I was glad for this little visit to the market before leaving Siem Reap for good.

Went back to my hotel, got my stuff, and got picked up. Took a 20-30 minute mini-van ride to the dock, and about 30 or so people loaded on to a small boat. At first we were all crammed butt-to-butt along the two built-in benches along the two long sides of the boat, but before we even got moving, I suddenly realized that there was a rooftop (intended for luggage, but still, a rooftop) and this is where I spent the next eight hours of this long but beautiful boatride.

This boat ride, by the way, is predicted to range between 3-8 hours, which, is quite the range, don't you think?! So, I've learned along the way in my travels to expect the longest projected time, and just be happy when it is less. That said, it was a (mostly) very enjoyable boatride, despite its length being at the maximum high end of the range, (8 and a HALF hours!) and I highly recommend it to anyone traveling from Siem Reap to Battambang. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest to go to Battambang from Siem Reap JUST to experience the boat ride! Because, this boat ride spent the first two hours at the very least cruising through long floating villages, where people's homes and shops and EVERYTHING were floating, and almost no part of their lives existed on land. The homes and boats and shops were beautiful, and colorful, and all of us on the boat were waving and smiling and calling out 'Sos-a-dai!' (hello) in Khmer and taking tons and tons of photos. It was really cool. And the river was beautiful, the sky was beautiful- it was just great. I am also glad that not so many people know about it, and that our boat was a mixture of travelers as well as locals, which made it so much more interesting.

We made a pit stop at one point just for the boat to drop off some cargo, when one of the tourists noticed that there were coconuts for sale (to drink). She started a contagious exodus of coconut-buying, and what was meant to be a 30-second stop became a 5 minute stop where we all got coconuts. A bit later, we had a planned stop at a floating shop/restaurant, and some of us got the rice with some vegetables and a little bit of chicken and pineapple- tasty! When we got back on the boat, a bunch of us starting talking, and I wound up meeting two women who were to become my companions for that night and also the next two days in Battambang! Molly is Puerto-Rican-American, and Lucila is Argentinian. We were all quite different in our personalities (and quite strong at that!), but it was a great dynamic that turned into great fun, conversation, and laughter, quite quickly and easily.

For the duration of the boatride itself, sometimes we were chatting, and at one point Molly and I wound up sharing an umbrella that a Dutch guy lent us, just because we were getting FRIED by the sun on the boat rooftop, and no amount of sunscreen was going to protect us anymore, and we also didn't want to go down below. So, we had a really good and deep conversation together while huddled tightly together under one small umbrella.

At one point, the umbrella was left unused, and after a bit, I felt quite tired, so I curled up in the fetal position on the rooftop, and took a nap under the umbrella. As I have mentioned in other blogs, I have become quite skilled throughout my travels in sleeping in the oddest and most uncomfortable places. When I woke up 30-45 minutes later in a daze, I offered the umbrella back to Molly, and she took it gratefully. Now it had been a good 7 hours that we had been traveling, and finally, we were all beginning to tire.

We arrived around 4:30 or 5pm, and got picked up by a tuk-tuk driver from the hotel we wanted to go to. There was a mob of tuk-tuk drivers at the dock stairway, (as is always the scene whenever disembarking from a boat, bus, or train in SE Asia) so, I was happy that I already knew where I was going, not to mention the driver carried my bag (which inside of it the HUGE and HEAVY Buddha for my parents was!) Between the three of us very particular girls each wanting her own room with our own special requirements, we had an incredibly patient hotel-guy showing us room after room until we had each finally found what we wanted. We planned to meet for dinner in an hour and a half, to take a load off for a bit, take showers, and then get some food and check the town out.

We went to the 'White Rose' restaurant, and had some excellent Khmer Food, Fruit Shakes, and conversation. We talked for about 3 hours until finally we tired, and went back to our hotel, and made a plan to meet around 9 or 10 the next morning for the famed 'Bamboo Train' ride, and other explorations by bicycle. Hooray! So far, Battambang was GREAT!