Cameron and Meghan's BIG adventure!: Boat Ride to Battambang

Meghan and Cameron, Christmas 2010

At 5:30am on Christmas Day we awoke to the sound of our little watch alarms. Not to open any Christmas gifts (otherwise Meg would have been at it by 4 of course) but because we had a boat to catch. After cycling fairly rapidly for half an hour (and saying "hello" to the local kids, of course) we arrived at the boat launch and with relief found that we were on time and in fact were some of the first people there.

The boat was taking us via a river to Battambang (pronounced Battambong) and had been reported by many people to be a highlight of their Cambodian trip (next to Angkor Wat) so we were pretty excited. Our excitement dimmed a little when, in order to leave the dock, the driver threw the propeller in reverse and floored the gas making the engine, which was about 6 feet behind us, scream (I guess reverse must have been pretty low geared). This process was repeated every time the driver had to back out. At first I figured backing out was probably pretty rare as we were basically traveling in one direction so I wasn't too concerned. As it turns out though another peculiarity of this boat was that it was very heavy and thus had alot of momentum while at the same time not having the best maneuverability. This became an issue as we made our way upstream and the river became more of a snaking creek. Soon we we were careening off or into the shore while narrowly avoiding other vessels and houses (it was the first time I actually observed a Cambodian get angry when we almost drove over a small fishing boat). One of my favorite parts of the trip up was actually after one of our many crashes into land with the boat screaming along in reverse when the fellow in the seat across from us turned to me and with a calm face asked "Why?"

Anyway enough about the crashing into things and loud noises. Actually one more thing about crashing into things. Early in the trip it appeared that the best route to take was actually through a bunch of trees so we went plowing through this forest and because the boat had open sides all of their branches came smacking in and hitting people in the boat, it was quiet the ride with everyone leaning towards the center, trying to escape the forests barrage.

Even without the crashing, loud noises and tree attacks the trip would have been good though. The country side was beautiful and there were many villages along the river with houses either on stilts or floating on the river itself (some people were actually just living in boats) which was really neat to see. The lake the river was draining into, Tonle Sap, and probably the river system itself play an integral role in the Cambodian story. The lake acts as a huge reservoir during the dry season, when it can get as low as 1m deep and then refills during the monsoon season getting up to 9m deep. The land which goes dry during the dry months are used to grow crops on the new rich soil and the lake provides 60% of the Cambodians protein intake!