7-29 Siem Reap - Day 3

We met Vanny at the painful hour of 7am. Instead of seeing more temples without a guide and endure another day in the hot sun & humidity, we decided to go 30km SW to Lake Tonle Sap and see a floating village. The 45km trip there was pretty interesting. We got a good look at rural Cambodia. We walked a short distance from the road to check out fields loaded with lotus flowers. Chris was wearing flip flops, so he slipped & fell in the mud, getting it all over his side and butt. At least he didn't smash his head open like in Chiang Rai. We got to the shoreline and dozens of longtails were docked at a pier. The Cambodian gov't has created a monopoly on tourist trips to the village. Instead of $2-$4 for a guided longtail rental, they charge $20 per person! We'd come this far, so we paid the highway robbery and jumped into a longtail captained by a 10yr old local kid named Vet. He was friendly & talkative. We soon learned we had fallen into a full-blown tourist trap. Large boats full of Asian tourists steamed past us, taking photos of everything in sight, including us. During the dry season, the village moves as the shoreline expands or recedes. This entire massive lake is only an average of 3 feet deep in the dry season, but is still the largest body of freshwater in SE Asia and is a major source of food for the Cambodian population. We counted six floating elementary schools/orphanages, but there were only a couple hundred floating homes, most being large boats. It appears they have a racket going. Once on the boats, the tourists then get bombarded with requests to donate to the needy schools. Despite our objections, we got dropped off at a floating shop loaded with junk food & supplies next to a Cambodian orphan school. They try to make you feel guilty if you don't buy anything, but at the same time, the shops here all prey on the altruism of the naive tourists. They wanted $15 for a stack of 5 cheap notepads that would cost just $2 back home. I instead spent a good chunk of money on a ton of beef jerky and later gave it to a teacher to distribute. Apparently the kids don't get much protein and by now they've got stacks of notepads. A person who makes a huge profit by aggressively using a person's altruistic nature as a weapon against them (these supply shops), is a very low form of scumbag. 30mins was plenty of time to wander through the two canals that comprised the floating village so we got back on solid ground and drove back towards Siem Reap. Vanny dropped us off near Ta Prohm, which is the "jungle temple" where parts of the Tomb Raider sequel was filmed. It was quite a different experience to see a temple that is still overtaken by the jungle, Ta Prohm. Massive 100ft tall trees were growing on top and all around the temple complex. Stone blocks were strewn around everywhere as if the temple exploded. Massive roots from the trees have wedged stone blocks apart, which has destroyed many parts of the temple.
For sunset, we went to the most popular location: Phnom Bakheng. It's a 10min hike uphill overlooking everything. We arrived 90min before sunset and grabbed seats on the ledge of the top terrace. Within an hour, the top terrace had filled with 300+ tourists waiting for sunset. Unfortunately, a massive storm was moving in from the West, blocking the sun entirely. We later had some awesome pizza, spaghetti, and ice cream at a New York themed restaurant on the busy restaurant row. A couple beers and games of pool capped off our last night in Cambodia.