So this was an interesting day to say the least. The night before, we had reserved a tuk tuk to take us to kampong cleck. It took almost two hours in the rain on a tuk tuk to get there. That place is famous for the local floating village, aparently a very nice place to go.
The problem is that since its a floating village, it is only reachable via boat. When we got to the "harbour" of boats, we asked for the price and they said it costs $30, which in Cambodian standards is just ridiculous. According to the internet, at most it should cost $20. While we were discussing this, they saw that we were hesitant, so offered a $5 discount each, at which i was thinking, oh good, its the right price. But it turns out they wanted $30 EACH ...with a five dollar discount. $50 for a boat ride? Insane. I think thats the one thing i absolutely hated about cambodia. Everyone tries to scam tourists. Just leaves a bad taste in your mouth and makes you just not trust anyone there. ULTIMATE SCAMMERS. Even though we spent two hours getting there, we decided to leave beause it was just not worth it.
We headed to the closer kampong phluck, which is not quite a floating vilalge, but a village on stilts. Also only reachable by boat. Once again, when we got there, they asked for $20 a person. We managed to find two oer tourists and bargained to $40 for the boat but we still felt super scammed. When we got our "tickets" for the boat ride, the ticket said $1usd. SCAMMED.
After forty minutes on a wooden boat with a car engine attached, we reached the village.
The living conditions were quite shocking. It was raining a bit, but i cant imagine how their homes survive ithe heavy rain.
All the kids we passes by would wave and say "bye bye!!" ..quite cute
School started for a lot of kids already...sad that all these kids werent in school learning, but instead, working to help earn money.
Another famous item for this area is the "flooded forest". Since its the rainy season, the water levels are very high, making trees and forests look like they've been flooded.
On one side, there was a buddhist temple that was built on a sturdier foundation than the housing we saw prerviously.
Sadly, like everywhere else in siem reap, kids were asking for money
People ask tourists to purchase pens and books for the kids to go to school, but what the tourists usually dont know is that they take the pens and books "purcahsed" for the kids and just resell them again.
There was baby coming around harassing this man with a camera making angry faces and pulling on the mans pants. Lol this kid made me laugh.
Overall, this might have beened the worst day of my trip thus far. Not because it was raining, not because there was not much to see in the village, but because we got so tired of people trying to scam us in this country. Everyone just seemed like money-grubbing-horrible people giving us a horrible impression of some of the people here.
After a crappy day at the river, we headed back into town, took a tuk tuk and had some good ol italian food.
The pizza was massive, but delicious. Mmm...pizza
Afterwards, we headed for the night market that sold things from t shirts to massages to snakes in a bottle.
All in all? I rate this day the worst of my trip. Crappy weather, crappy people, crappy sight seeing. Its ok tho, because its still not as crappy as work :) annnnd day 41 will be better.
Up next? Exploring, tomb raider style!
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