The Friday night dinner at the guest house was a good opportunity for Bruce and Sadie to meet people and for us to say our goodbyes to Gill and Andy (building volunteers who left on Saturday). However we didn't stay too long after eating, as we'd arranged to meet up with Charlotte on Pub street after she had also finished her leaving dinner. Charlotte is Matt Gale's younger sister who is also volunteering in Siem Reap at the moment. So we headed off into town, nice and tipsy, about 9pm and went straight to Funky Monkey to play some pool. Charlotte met us in here later and we had a good catch up, compared volunteering notes and both got some advice about Vietnam from Sadie as that's where she is also heading next. In fact it looks like we might get to meet up with her, Matt and their mum there as our timings cooincide, which would be very fun.
After a fun and quite drunken night we jumped ship and headed home about midnight as we wanted to be spritely enough to enjoy our trip the next day.
Saturday morning we met for breakfast about 9am and spoke to Thom (Moy's brother) about doing a trip out to the flooded forest. Luckily he was free and happy to take us out in his Tuk Tuk. So by about 10am we were on the road and heading that way. It took a suprisingly long time to get there, especially as it involved nearly an hour on a very rickity dirt road. But eventually we arrived at the start of the river and got ourselves a boat to take us the rest of the way to Kompong Phluk village.
After chugging along for a little while we started to enter the village. All the houses in the village are raised incredibly high in preparation for the water to raise six meters in the rainy season. You could tell that village life was totally centered around the river as everyone was either fishing in, floating on or working nearby it.
In the village Thom chatted to a local guy and negotiated two little boat/canoes to take us further along the village and into the flooded forest at the entrance to the Tonle Sap Lake. This was quite a wobbly experience and I loved being in the same boat as everyone else was using. It also meant we were able to enter into the flooded forest and weave amoungst the trees with the sunlight streaming through, past all of the fishing nets
Back out of the forest we headed back to the village and jumped ashore to get some lunch. At this time of year there is dry land and a village street across which huge quantities of shrimp were being dried.
We had a yummy lunch of very fresh fish, a short explore of the village and then hopped back on our boat. On the bigger boat we went right along the river out onto the lake before turning round and heading back to where we'd left the Tuk Tuk to speed home.
Back at the guest house we treated ourselves to a little lie down before meeting everyone downstairs to head out for dinner and drinks. This weekend was Chinese New Year and so we went first to a Chinese run cocktail bar and indulged in some reduced price drinks while getting our fortunes told. The fortune of the group was very divided; some of us can look forward to a very happy year however Sadie, Claire and Sarah's don't look as good. Saide confirmed this by instantly knocking over her drink and breaking the glass, although perhaps her foruntes are changing as they gave her another drink for free. Tonight we headed to X Bar for after dinner drinks and pool and even some bar football. We bumped into Charlotte again, quite by chance, which was fun. At midnight though we headed home before turning into pumpkins.
The plan for Sunday was more relaxed as we wanted to take Sadie and Bruce into town in the day time. We visited the post office, bought guidebooks, had shakes at the Red Piano and explored the market - all before lunch. For lunch we ventured over the river for the first time and sought out the butterfly restaurant where a proportion of the profits are donated to charity. The restaurant is open-air and covered with a huge net. Then in the net are a huge amount of butterflies that fly around you whilst you eat. We had a leisurely lunch here and Rob and I tried some interesting dishes that we hadn't seen before so it was definitely worth the walk. Nevertheless we'd had enough walking so got a tuk tuk back and once again went off for some late afternoon quiet time.
As it was Valentines day we decided to treat ourselves to cocktails at Cafe De La Paix this evening and we even got to sit on the hanging table in their restaurant to have them. It was very exciting and certainly shows how the other half live. Needless to say after being billled for the drinks we didn't stay for dinner but went to a previously tried and tested place on the way intop town which do good pizzas. As is happened Claire and Aaron were already there drink 50 cent beers (as they had been all afternoon) and so we joined them for some food and raucous conversation. However we didn't stay late as everyone had work the next morning and I wanted to get ice cream on the way home.
On Monday we put the Canadian's to work. They were interested to come out to the village to see the project as so we got them an extra tuk tuk and they came and helped with floor boards and railings and even stayed to sample village cookery.
They headed back a bit before us to do some jobs but we were'nt far behind and then at 3pm Mr Wuthy came to give us a lift to the temples as Sadie and Bruce hadn't made it to Angkor Wat the other day. It was great to see it again, especially in the afternoon light. Then as the sun started to go down we went to a new previously unexplored temple to watch the sun set. The most exciting theing about this temple, however, turned out to be the elephants based here that you can ride up to the top on. The elephants that are used are treated extremely well so there's no worries about that kind of issue. We deliberated too long and then once we'd decided we'd do it we'd missed our chance and they were plodding up the hill with another lucky person aboard. Nevertheless we had wonderful time watching them and staring in awe. We even touched them! They were quite hairy and rough. They are so much smaller than African elephants. So cute!
As we'd missed the elephants we had to climb the hill ourselves which turned out to be a surpisingly longish climb. But the view from the top was worth it, you could even see Angkor Wat from here.
And the sun set was beautiful...
In the hazy light of dusk we followed the elephants back down the hill and hunted amoungst the hundreds of tuk tuks for Mr Wuthy. He delivered us home for our final dinner together for which we went to the Silk Lounge next door as we were all a little too tired to fight our way into town. We had another gorgeous chatty evening catching up and sharing travel advice for the next stages of our journeys. We left the goodbyes until the morning though as Sadie and Bruce bravely got up at 6am to have breakfast with us we parted ways for another year or so.
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