Cambodia

My options were to take a cheap long bus ride skirting the Tonle Sap lake in Northern Cambodia to Siem Reap, or a pricier and assuredly more scenic boat ride straight through the marshy lake. I hopped on the boat in the morning, shortly after meeting travelling friends that I'm still with. So Raf the Aussie, Phil the Brit and Dan swede and I pushed through large patches of river weeds and dodged long thin fishing boats, just wide enough for young fishermen to sit on the bow, feet dangling into the water, riding the waves which pass from the gentle rocking of the boat through their body, rolling slowly up from hips, chest, neck to head. Their homes are boat houses or stilted huts, sometimes flanking the water-highway of passenger boats, sometimes scattered about a large bulge in the river, a kind of urban vs. rural. Life not only revolves around the river, life is the river for these people. 90% of Cambodians are self-sustainable, so the river dwellers fish constantly, scaring the fish into their nest by sharp smacks on the waters surface by curved wooden rods. We lay on the roof of the boat, dodging low hanging branches, ducking inside quickly for short-lived bursts of rain that come upon us silently and violently, offering no hint of its approach. With a clear blue sky, baking in the sun whose heat plays second to a perfect watermelon-eating kind of summer wind, you suddenly hear the smattering sounds of water hitting water, rain moving towards the bat with a roar as if being transported on 18 wheels. You look up to see the rivers surface pebbled with rain drops, and half a second later the rain passes over the boat, from toasty and bone-dry to sticky and drenched. The day after we arrived was dedicated to Angkor Wat, a testament to religious diversity without the tolerance. In the early 1100's, when self-titled god-king Suryavarman II began building Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat and the dozens of other wats in the ten or so square kilometers north of Siem Reap, the religion was Hindu. Later, with the throne being passed over the 30 or so years it took to build the ancient city, the fad of Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu passed on to Buddha, and rather than tearing down the partially constructed temples, the reformed god-king of the moment had his builders build Buddhism honoring structures on top of the Hindu bases. Cicadas scream as we tuk-tuked through the leafy pathways. We pass frogs abandoning the walkway and buskers rendered disabled by land-mines, my favorite temple is the Ta Phrom, proof that nothing is more powerful than nature. The temple is being slowly swallowed up by armies of dipterocarp trees, tangle of roots that bulge with powerful muscles and tall buttresses that support their huge bases. Remove the tree and the building collapses, and invariably, dismantle the building and you strangle the life out of the tree. The next day, we have since lost Raf and adopted John the Brit, we rented bikes and rode out of Siem Reap, stopping for a drink and a hammock, the lake splashing below the slatted floorboards, a permanent rainbow slung above us, evidence to the immense amount of rainfall of this saturated country. We are currently in the east, I decided to skip the party location of the southern beaches, and tommorow we see the famous Irrawaddy dolphins.