Christmas Eve, Eve:
This day was our tour to Phnom Kulen, about two hours out of town. This was shared with two Brisbaners. Phnom Kulen is a temple build into the mountain and river, built by The Lepper King, to cure himself, part of this cure was the carving of 1000 Lingas into the bed of the sandstone river, thus making it rather holy, he died anyway. We however we able to swim in the down stream from these holy-water-makers at the base of a waterfall. There is also a rather large reclining Buddha with "real bïg"diamonds as eyes.
We had lunch here at a local resturant, shared with dogs and chickensm having passed local sellers offering ivory wares, tiger wares, bear gall bladders and landmined deer's skulls ( we had to explain that customs may look on this dimly).
Christmas Eve:
For mass we headed off the Catholic Mission church and enjoyed an English mass by an Indonesian Father, run by a Canadian Sister, with a Khamer nativity play. This lead for one of the more insteresting christmas church servicers we have attended, all the more so from the frerquent power outages.
Christmas day...
Merry Christmas, up at 0900, local timish, a late start. Father christmas got through customs, with slightly Cambodian-in-nature gifts. Over for ther usual breakfast of various egg dishes, coffee, baugettes and tropical fruits (without the suspicuiously eyeball looking ones, which turn out to be Lychees).
After refusing an man-from-the-street's half hour attempt to sell us honey (complete with bees and hoineycomb) and paying him for cleaning Dad's shoes (which were wrested from his hands), we hired bikes from the 70's all without boy bars, complete with dynamos and wire baskets.
On aforementioned bikes we rode a loop out of Siem Reap, towards the Airport along the road, another risky and scary business with the Cambodian traffic, coming back along the half built, but very much in use, Siem Reap bypass. About a 30 Kilometer trip.
Some of us got quite sunburnt, but we will not siongle out Saasha for not putting on sunscreen. For our nighttime entertainment we hired a Tuk-Tuk to the ACODO orphanage for a traditional Khmer dance put on by the whole 68 children. After this show the Tuk-Tuk driver returned for us and we (all five of us at 400 odd kilograms all up) travelled back to town, it was another of thoose scary experiences, which some of us express inwardly, and others not so much (see picture).In town we ate our 3400 Riel (USD$8.50)chirstmas meal
for five of us. This meal was cooked by the roadside in front of us and eated at tresstlke tables amongst the traffic.
No comments:
Post a Comment