Travels with Hayley

So I miraculously made it through the night unbitten although it was not the most restful nights sleep ever, what with the roosters, screaming cats and the communal snoring of 12 people in one space! Up at about 6.30 I leapt straight into the shower – it may have been cold and somewhat basic – see picture below – but I’ve never felt so grateful to be clean, I felt like a brand new woman!

The family served us breakfast – rice, fried bananas, 2 kinds of fried donuts with some kind of bean paste inside (fried food here tends to be very heavy and oily – and cold, which doesn’t help it much) crispy fried eggs, rice and fresh bananas.

We set off at 8 on our next adventure, past all sorts of fascinating tableaus such as a guy riding a motorbike with dozens of chickens hanging all down the side around him and another guy fast asleep in the back of an open bed lorry – whether he was working with the lorry driver, had just hitched a ride or had fallen asleep in the wrong place and was off on an unexpected journey, who knows!

We stopped along the way at a little roadside hut selling the normal snacks, fruit and veg and random assorted oddities but this one also had an ingenious contraption out the front they were using to pop and pound rice – which is then eaten as a kind of popcorn equivalent (it’s ok, could do with salt and because it’s so flat has an annoying tendency to stick sharply between your teeth!)

There was a motor at one end running three separate machines – one was rotating palm frond brushes to stir bowls of rice on top of charcoal fires until the grains popped. Then they were transferred to the bucket which sat under a huge log that the motor thudded up and down to flatten the grains. Thirdly the grains were put into a sieve which the motor vibrated to sift out any stones etc. It was so ingenious!

They were also selling some other snacks we hadn’t seen before – the tiny polystyrene pouches on red string are balls of raw sour fish – Kom advised that maybe our tummies wouldn’t like these so much 😬 same with the big tubs of assorted pickled fish…There were also round discs of palm sugar wrapped in palm fronds – these tasted just like condensed milk fudge but are apparently just pure palm sugar. It’s so fun trying everything!

Kom told some lovely stories about his family along the next leg of the journey, he talks about his grandparents a lot – he was telling us that in the region that they lived, the coconuts are so big that Grandma had the shell of one that her teapot would fit completely inside to keep the tea warm – a coconut cosy!

We had a quick rest stop at the most beautiful building, I think it must have been a wedding venue or conference centre, it was lovely. More snacks – here I bought slices of sour green mango that you dip in a mix of salt, sugar and chilli powder. I’d had this in Thailand years ago and loved it and it’s still so good – bright and refreshing. I also saw how yesterday’s caramelised banana snack is made – somehow I’d assumed it was more complicated than stick them in a bowl in the sunshine but evidently not!

Back in the bus travelling through this ever alien landscape, we went through a run down looking village and then out of nowhere was the biggest brightest gold arch/gateway I’ve ever seen, it was so gaudy and huge, stretching across a dirt track which drifted into the horizon seemingly leading to nowhere. What’s it for? Who paid for it? Why?!

Quick stop for lunch – banana blossom salad with prawns and a passion fruit soda – and a lay down in a hammock (either it was tied too low or I’ve put on a significant amount of weight in a week because my bottom kept bopping the ground in it!) and off to the next adventure!

Next up was a boat ride down the Mekong river. It was lovely and so peaceful – we had the boat to ourselves and we cruised down the quiet river , passing the occasional other tourist boat and a few local fisherman.

We passed through a large village of local fisherman – I can’t fathom how people live in these houses, they seemed totally open to the elements and so ramshackle that surely a strong wind would carry them straight off. Their main source of income is fishing but they also have fields along the banks where they grow rice, corn, sesame and peanuts. In a very progressive system, they don’t bother themselves taking this produce to market to sell, they have, in Kom’s words, a middleman, that meets them daily to take whatever they have off their hands and deal with the unsavoury business of flogging it.

Children were diving from the deck of their house into the river to swim (bearing in mind the sewage system is just a pipe that leads directly into the murky brown river, this didn’t seem the wisest course of action but they seemed healthy enough!) and others were just zipping around on their own boats – seems boat captaincy age limit is even lower than that of moped rider around here!

I had a real moment of just – wonder I guess would describe it – that this is my life. In the last 8 months I’ve cruised down a river to a village only accessible by boat in Costa Rica and now along the Mekong river. I never imagined in a million years I would do things like this – I am so, so lucky.

We got to the hotel where I dumped my stuff in the room and made my the first and most vital stop the laundry next door with a bulging carrier bag full (2USD to wash, dry and fold everything including pairing your socks within an 18 hour turnaround – how good would it be to have that at home!) and thought maybe I’d have a 5 minute wander up the street…2.5 hours later! I walked though town, looking in a few local clothes shops (avoiding the small children just laying on the floor) where I bought a couple of lightweight long skirts which will be really useful for travelling – and for £3 each and with pockets (pockets!!) I couldn’t say no. Walked past what I’m going to call mystery pavement bread as I really couldn’t figure out what it was or who it belonged to.

I carried on across the bridge, watching the stall holders setting up the night market. There were a few stalls open so I got a sugarcane juice (it’s monk approved now, even more important to get them in) and stumbled into what I think was a race or time trials of those long boats we saw in the sheds the other day!

Every couple of minutes another one would come past with the crew shouting – there’s a very short video below but it reminded me slightly of the NZ Haka. The guys were working so hard (some had to strip to the waist they were exerting themselves so much, it was awful…) and there was such a party atmosphere!

Hundreds and hundreds of families lined the banks to be close to the action, chatting, watching the world go by and in the case of the small child next to me, dropping their pink ice cream all over themselves. Fortunately I had tissues in my bag – we may not share a common language but I knew grateful when I saw it from her mum!

There was a confusing encounter with a stall holder that only hit me what had actually happened slightly after the fact… Now people speaking much English here, bar a couple of words, is quite rare unless they work in hotels or are pretty young. So you have to do a lot of sign languaging and holding up fingers to indicate amounts. I was trying to indicate to this old man that was selling fruit that I would like 1 green mango (I’d got the taste for it earlier!) He kept adamantly shaking his head and saying two, two! I really didn’t want 2 mangos, what would I do with the second mango, I frankly wasn’t sure I’d make it through one and I don’t like waste so I stuck to my ‘one’ gun! Well we reached a Mexican standoff and I regally took my leave and swept off – you can’t force this farang (white foreigner) into something she doesn’t want, thank you kindly! It was only about 10 minutes later that I realised he was saying two, as in 2,000 riels which is the equivalent of 50p – I’d been vigorously trying to barter the poor man down to 25p! The shame 😂 I couldn’t bring myself to go back!

I started back to the hotel, passing all sorts of interesting foods for sale – at one point I thought a guy was selling skewers of prawns and then looked more closely – sign language and pointing confirmed that yes, they were indeed skewers of kidneys! One stall had a kind of diy meal kit ready to go – the plastic bag had rice noodles, herbs and a little pouch of sauce all ready for you to combine at home, the banana leaf parcels are packages of cooked sticky rice. All for about £1 – I would be sooo lazy if I lived here, I’d most definitely never cook or do my own laundry that’s for sure!

I passed a old lady on her bicycle with the front basket full of what I recognised as lotus seed pods – a young guy sitting on the bank flagged her over and bought a bunch of them – they were tied together in bunches of five like weird alien flowers. I asked the young guy what he wanted them – he spoke a little English and so showed me – they’re a snack! You break open the pod, inside are green seeds which you pop out and peel off the outer layer (like taking the skin off a broad bean) leaving a white bean that you eat raw, just as it is! I’d had lotus beans cooked in a dessert in Vietnam but I didn’t know you could eat them raw – every day’s a school day!

Off for dinner, Sarah wanted to try somewhere called Pub Street which she said all the reviews mentioned (I’ve done zero research for this trip, if it isn’t on the Intrepid itinerary basically I don’t know about it) so we went there.

Ooh my. It was – let’s say inauthentic shall we 😂 Blaring neon, guys offering you shots for a dollar, pizza parlours (interesting toppings, see photo below), dozens of souvenir shops selling fridge magnets, elephant pants and all the essentials. It was pretty chaotic!

We walked the stretch of it pausing for a restorative roll up ice cream (of which there were at least 15 stalls selling them, same same but different!) and then stopping at a bar for a plate of £2 prawn noodles and a passion fruit juice, both of which were very nice. At my instigation we then escaped back to the hotel – the difference between being 25 and almost 43 is somewhat glaring at times 😂

On the way back we passed a very important religious icon, meeting the real thing rather than all the statues was very exciting but as he was busy with his phone we decided not to rub his tummy for good luck and just let Buddha have a night off…

Off to see some of the temples tomorrow, I know shamefully little about them to the point I don’t think I’ve even ever seen pictures so everything will be brand new!

Hope everyone is well, lots of love always xxx