Day 68, in which we follow in Lara Croft's footsteps

The hotel served us breakfast at 9:45am sharp this morning, although we were not as sharp and we turned up to find a plate of fried eggs and toast sitting unattended on the roof terrace, drawing the attention of some resident ants. Still it was very delicious, and thankfully it was only after we had eaten that we checked out the view from the rooftop. The yard nextdoor is strewn with rubble and used toilet paper, with a direct line of vision into an open-air toilet beside a water pump where a lady was filling her washing bucket.

Panha picked us up and drove us out to Phnom Krom, where in the dry season one can catch a narrow motor boat along a canal and out into Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. We drove along a raised road through paddy fields filled with rice and lotus plantations, which in the rainy season are completly submerged by the swollen lake and their soils refertilised with alluvial soils. Leading off the road into the fields was a long series of wooden platforms standing on giant wooden stilts, which during times of highwater are popular picnic haunts for the locals, who come here to fish.

The process for hiring a motor boat was somewhat complex. Although there was a row of neat glass-fronted booths, tickets were purchased from a fat man sitting behind a makeshift trestle table who was in the process of eating red gunk from a plastic bag. Once we had the tickets in our hands another man rushed over and snatched them from us, belched in my face, enthused "Let's go!", then climbed onto a scooter and drove off into the distance without us.

I figured we'd been duped and our tickets stolen, but we wandered down to the docks anyway and it seemed all was in order as a couple of guys invited us onto their boat and we soon found ourselves motoring down the canal, passing little fishing huts, boat construction yards and children variously fishing, swimming and pootling in their canoes to school. The boat itself seemed quite makeshift - the hull knocked together with planks of wood between which I could see the surface of the water, the steering wheel salvaged from an automobile and the speed controlled by a piece of string around a pulley which the driver pressed with his foot. We were sat in rattan garden chairs which were lashed to the hull, and every so often the boat would roll over a wave and lean dangerously to one side, splashing us with water. As the water here is a yellow-brown colour and smells of sewerage we learned to keep our mouths shut.

We powered out of the canal and into the Tonle Sap proper, which stretched off into the horizon and looked more like a fully-fledged sea. Almost immediately we came across the floating village: dozens of individual homes built on floating rafts of bamboo which are moved every two months or so according to the seasons to take advantage of the best fishing. Other amenities floated alongside them, including floating churches, floating schools and a floating fishfarm. Children as young as three or four were pottering around in their tiny homes, half a kilometer from dry land, and children only slightly older were swimming around fishing and clambering around on tiny platforms made from bamboo poles. Panha had explained that most of the villagers are ethnic Vietnamese, who are impoverished and own no land in Cambodia and so are forced to live offshore in common waters.

We felt a little uncomfortable peering into strangers' houses - however unusual their houses might be - but our next stop was more tourist friendly, being a combined catfish farm, crocodile farm, restaurant, gift shop and begging spot. We were hounded by two tragic little girls with snakes wrapped around their necks, who kept shouting "One dollar!" after I had taken a photograph and, although I quickly agreed to their terms in the name of charity, it sadly took more time to find the dollar than the girls seemed to think reasonable and their screams for "One dollar!" only grew more hysterical. A boy also joined in - who I hadn't even photographed, thank you very much - and we realised they wouldn't stop until we handed them the moon, so we headed further into the floating market to look at the crocodiles to get away from them. Even then, children with various reptiles wrapped around their necks swam under the floorboards shouting "One dollar!" up through the cracks.

I can see their logic - here are two westerners who earn thousands of dollars a month just to sit in an air conditioned office browsing the internet and chatting with their friends, so why can't they spare just one dollar - but it was loud, hysterical and interminable and you simply can't give out a dollar to everyone who asks or, eventually, everyone asks. I would have much preferred them to adopt the approach of those African children who ask for pens, or they could even try to sell us something (I might at a push have bought a postcard). Anyway, the guide later asked if we wanted to visit the floating school and we both immediately said no. The idea of the whole of Class 2a chasing after us in rowing boats screaming for money was too much, so we simply returned to the mainland. Here a boy did try to sell us something - two plates with pictures of our faces glued to them - but this was a somewhat doomed attempt to make money. The primary error had been forgetting to mention that they were taking our photograph, which appeared to have happened as we were boarding the boat and - since neither of us was looking at the camera, and the heat was unbearable and the water smelt like sewage – the end result was two ugly-ass plates of us scowling into the distance.

We returned to the cool, air conditioned interior of Panha's car and drove back to Siem Reap for beer and a burrito.

Our next destination was Ta Prohm. a twelfth century Buddhist monastery which – thank goodness – was abandoned to the jungle in the fifteenth century when the king moved his capital south and was not seen again until Victorian explorers stumbled across it among the trees and vines hundreds of years later. Ta Prohm is one of the most iconic of the Siem Reap temples because of a strategic decision not to clear away the vegetation which has colonised it, and so huge and twisted trees remain there today, their roots entwined into the stonework, several towers destroyed by the vegetation and several others only held together by it.

The approach through the jungle to the temple gates was relatively sedate – the only highlight was meeting a hen and her chickens on route – but once inside the structure things became very exciting. Tourists are given free reign to clamber where you wish, climbing over collapsed stone work, crawling through doorways and windows, racing up and down corridors, and when we got far enough away from the clouds of Japanese tourists it felt like we might almost be living out a game of Tomb Raider. It's difficult to describe the temple without overusing the same set of words - stuff about entwined roots, crumbling edifices, eroded carvings and dimly lit chambers - so I'll let the pictures do the talking:

The main compound inside the temple (Lara Croft in foreground)

Paul poses in front of a collapsed tower.
Does a dark opening behind portend disaster to follow? (A: No.)

Happily strolling through the ruins...


I done found a tree!


Broken remains of an Apsara, one of the temple's many 'celestial nymphs'

We went home to clean up and, although we had intended to go out for dinner, it had been a long and hot day and by 5pm I was unable to keep my eyes open. We stayed in to watch several episodes of HBO's superb Bored To Death with Ted Danson instead, and ordered room service,which comprised a delightful collection of noodles, chicken & lemongrass soup and red beef curry. Cambodian food is yet to let us down.