Market

Our first excursion from Siem Reap was to the Tonle Sap lake with its floating villages.  On the way, we stopped at a village market.  We'd seen several exciting markets before but never had the opportunity to take photographs, so I made up for it here and have included lots below to give you the flavour.  This market wa primarily fish, because it was near the lake, and vegetables because every Cambodian market (and meal) is big on vegetables.  Food only lasts about a day here, so it is picked, taken to market and eaten very quickly.  Some things are dried to make them last longer.  Even in the poorest villages and road-side stalls, everything is always beautifully presented and this market was no exception.  Enjoy.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Claire was chased by a catfish that escaped from its basket and flapped along the ground after her.

Transfer to Siem Reap

After our exertions in the jungle, we made the long drive from Banlung to Siem Reap. About 600km and a ferry crossing, another crossing of the Mekong.  However, the road was good and so we made much quicker progress than on many of our other drives.  To break it up we popped in to a temple on the way and had lunch nearby.

At Siem Reap, we said goodbye to Ra, our jolly companion since Phnom Penh, and checked into our hotel for the rest of our stay in Cambodia, Sojourn.

This is the perfect hotel for the latter stages of the holiday.  It is an oasis of calm and beauty just outside the town.  The rooms are chalets again, 9 of them set in wonderful flower gardens around a gorgeous pool.  The service is fantastic, with an army of friendly people to help.  This is exemplified by the turndown service where 3 of the girls in special uniforms come and prepare your chalet for the night, turning done the bed, lighting the mossie repeller and leaving lovely chocolates.

We submitted a load of laundry and hit the pool.  Here are some pictures of our chalet and the pool, with swim up bar.  There is also a covered area with the restaurant which is open to the gardens as well. 

Gibbons In The Jungle

After our day with the elephants, we drove up to Banlung ready for our gibbon trek.  Here we stayed at the Terres Rouge hotel.  This is a beautiful old colonial building using a lot of hard wood.  It had lovely grounds with flowers, trees and statues and a great pool.

Here's our room which also had a huge bathroom and private terrace.

Here's the dining room/bar.

And here's the view from our table.

After a swim and a great meal of Khmer food cooked by the French chef, we got an early night before our two day adventure in search of gibbons.

The next morning we were met by our guide for the trip, Mr Lina, and his team.  We checked out our mountain bikes and piled in to a 4x4 for a 45 min drive to the Sesan river, a tributary of the mighty Mekong.  At the river, we got in to the boat below for a trip to a village of another minority tribe.

The river was quite quiet on this trip, although those mopeds do get everywhere.

On arrival at the village, we first saw some women and children washing themselves and clothes at the river.

And then some people cooking a pig for a funeral.

These people lived in more traditional style Cambodian houses.  The floor is raised on stilts to provide a shady place beneath out of the sun, provide protection from dangerous animals and keep the house out of the water in the rainy season. The priority of these reasons varies by area of the country and season.  Here's a general view with Claire and Mr Lina.

After a tour of the village, we returned to the boat and further travel on the river.  There was a lot more life this time, including water buffalo.

We continued on the river until we reached a town with a ferry crossing, where our bikes  and the rest of the team were waiting for us.  We had a good packed lunch from the hotel overlooking the river and then set off on the mountain bikes to cycle to the gibbon research camp.  This was very hard work with  a lot of tricky bits that we struggled with given our lack of recent bike familiarity, but we got there in good time despite a few tumbles on the way.

The camp is home to a group of researchers and protectors and a menagerie of animals, this time including geese and turkeys as well as the usual cats, dogs and chickens.  They'd built 3 big structures from local hardwood, one of which contained some guest rooms.  Here's a general view.

And here are our trusty steeds, well, not that trusty, the gears were unreliable and mine lost its chain.

After a rest to recover from the cycle ride, although I never did really stop sweating, we went off for an hours hike in the surrounding jungle to have a look round.  We saw some bird life, including hornbills, but the most striking factor was all the signs of illegal logging to extract the hardwood trees.  Then dinner and early to bed because we were exhausted and had to be up at 3:30am to hike to the gibbon area for sunrise.

We slowly roused at 3:30am and after some sweet coffee, hiked for about an hour using torches in the dark until we reached the gibbon area.  There, we sat and waited for sunrise listening to the sounds of the jungle.  It's very noisy in the countryside, and it seems the more remote the noisier it is.

As the sun started to come up, we heard gibbons getting louder and louder.  Claire has put a recording on her Facebook, if you want to hear.  Then suddenly we were off. Our local expert guide from the camp led Mr Lina and us off into the jungle in chase of the gibbons.

And we found them, a group of 4, 3 black ones and a yellow female with a baby in tow.  They were bigger than I expected, maybe 5 foot tall I guess, and boy were they impressive swinging from tree to tree with such power, speed and athleticism.  Unfortunately our group were determined to demonstrate this ability to the full.  Apparently, the gibbons usually stay in one place for most of the time of the trek and you can watch them fairly easily, but our lot kept moving pretty much all the time.  This meant we spent the three hours moving through the jungle after them, following our local guide who sliped through the jungle as if it weren't there while we extracted ourselves from thorns and roots.  It was all worth it though for being able to see a lot of these gibbons in action, playing, feeding and flinging themselves around through the tree-tops.  You had to watch out for falling fruit and had a sore neck by the end, but they were great.

They were almost impossible to photograph with the movement and leaves in the way, but here is a couple of shots that came close to being alright.

Eventually, it was time to call it a day as the gibbons moved into very thick jungle and we hiked the hour back to the camp for breakfast.  Here are Claire and Mr Lina at breakfast.

As always, Claire had made new friends.  Here's one of them.

All too soon, it was time to head back to the river.  Claire decided the back of a motorbike was a better option, but I hit the pedals again and although too tired to do the tricky bits well, did the ride in about an hour.  Here's Claire looking much fresher than I did at the ferry place.

And here's the excellent ferry across the river which we took with the bikes before lunch on the other side. 

The lunch spot seemed to be a hotspot for dodgy dealings with all sorts of Chinese coming to do deals and officials coming to make notes on something. Finally, it was back in the 4x4 to the hotel to collapse, extract ourselves from the very muddy and sweaty clothes that had stuck to us and relax in the pool.

This bit of the adventure was really hard work for us, not being as fit as we were, but was well worth it for the experience with the gibbons.  We were also cheered up by hearing all the stories of people who had coped far worse than us.  Turns out we did pretty well.

Royal Palace

After our morning of genocide museums, we went to visit the royal palace and silver pagoda.  You can't take pictures in the main rooms unfortunately, but you can see the type of buildings involved below.

The main room we saw in the royal palace was the throne room, which was all gold and red with a fantastically painted ceiling and a huge gold throne.  Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy, and so has a king and a prime minister.  This room is where coronations take place.  There is a waiting room next door, from which the garbed king and dignitaries mount elephants.

The silver pagoda isn't silver as you can see from the shot of it with the monks in front above, but gets its name because the floor is made from solid silver floor tiles.  They weigh a lot.  This room has lots of Buddha statues and, in particular, a jade green one raised on a high gold plinth.

The next day was a travelling day up to Kratie, further up the Mekong river.  We met our guide and driver for the wildlife part of the trip, whose name is Ra. He's great fun and very young.  More about him as we go, no doubt.  Here's a picture of him and his mini-bus from later.

Our overnight hotel in Kratie is an atmospheric old French colonial place called Le Bungalow. 

It only has two rooms and we were the only guests.  We had some beer on the balcony watching the sunset on the Mekong. 

It also had a good French restaurant and some cats, one of which obviously ended up in Claire's lap.

The wildlife part of the trip starts now with dolphins, elephants and gibbons.