Cambodia Day 3

Sleeping in just a bit over 8 plus am

Then going out to enjoy fabulous breakfast

With hot chocolate, sandwiches, western style set meal and apple-honey pancakes

That's just damn awesome!

:)

Scenes from the streets of Siem Reap while on the way to Tonle Sap

for our river cruise

My boss paying for the boat tickets

I dont know if it is me or what

But the ramp down is freaking steep

Like you can slip and you may probably reach terminal velocity

before you crash to the bottom

Busy day at the docking area

Even during a non-tourist season

To be honest

I have my reservations about this young man before we board the ship

I was like "Wah lao, 年轻人会懂什么?"

But then

It was all gone in a matter of minutes as he started his introduction by showing

how deep the water level was when he measured with the bamboo stick

And you looked at the other boats and not ALL of the boats have guides on it

So yup, it was actually a bonus for us

To have a guide, and a local boy who have actually stayed at the floating villages

And is still staying there now

I think the locals are very good in the tourism industry

They always never fail to offer to help tourists like us take group photos

Below would be pictures / photos of the whole river cruise

Some with captions

Some without

So yup, generally the place was a very great eye-opener for me

It was not the city's hustle and bustle

But just the laid-back feel

With many interesting sights and sounds of the place

How you see the locals get about their life

On top of wooden villages which were somehow constructed to be able

to last the distance by still standing tall after all these times

Where locals go about making new boats

With plenty of help from the Korean government too!

Floating petrol station

This is 1x skilful auntie who rides her boat with no handlebar

You just see her wheezing by

It's the zen look on her face

Our guide taking a short break

After all the Q&A from us

The fruit-seller auntie

She can ride her boat with 1 hand

I just thought all these wooden boats are damn classy from outside

The design and shape and stuff

Simple yet beautiful

You can be simple, yet eye-pleasing

Doesnt have to be all gungho with the big and loud engine

The police force patrolling on the sea

Trading going on

Mechanic

Indoor basketball court cum street soccer court

The man trying to get maximum reception

How you sun your clothes

Mother with kid bathing in the water

Yup the mom was not wearing anything btw

LOL!

Flower shop

The Cambodian and Vietnamese school

The only school around on the water

I thought this shot above was not bad

The mama-shop auntie with her floating mama-shop

We decided to get some drinks for the kids in the school while we were there

I mean no harm also

And seriously they are in a situation which is not very ideal

So getting some stuff for them isnt that bad I guess?

Our guide insisted that we took a photo on the floating mama-shop

Haha!

Very OCIP feel

Which is like too fake for me

I thought this looked great too!

Got Nat Geo feel also

This lady

I just dont know how how she got up there

But with the antenna behind her

Definitely looks like she is trying to get maximum reception too

After the floating mama-shop visit

We went to a place where there were souvenirs being sold

And there was this cat-fish farm and crocodile farm

It was like nearing the open sea already

Whereby there wasnt anymore floating villages around

So it was like nearing the end of the journey

Before we go tour the floating school that is

The cat-fish were humongous!

And all the ships that came by, the tour guides would proceed to feed them

So it was like seeing the cat-fish getting fed so much that they decided not to eat anymore

Crocodiles........are immobilized creatures

They just dont move

And yup, non-moving things are boring

The only shot I got of the cat-fish that surfaced

So this is the view of how things looked beyond the place we stopped

There were many plants and stuff beyond

And ours being a small boat, cant afford to have the engine tangled up

Thus no big open sea for us then

This is the view of how the floating villages looked like

Kinda crampy from this view

But its actually not that way

With the big river in between

Separating both left and right hand side houses

What I meant by the tour guides kept feeding the fishes

Korean tourists

They are everywhere in Cambodia

So as we are about to go off

We were still wondering what's there left to see for us

Then we saw 2 kids behind a big cylindrical bucket

They were smiling at us

Then suddenly......the little boy held up a water snake!!!

I was like going nuts and about to jump off the platform anytime

Then the boy's sister came over and scolded him

Before she held up her own water snake!!!

And both of them started laughing

That's just not correct

Snakes are the most evil creatures in the world

We need to eliminate every single species of them

Put them in a chamber and gas them all to motherf***ing hell

Like really

Token of appreciation for the kids in the school

The little boy in the background is half-naked

LOL!

I realised it only when I came back to Singapore

The children having fun opposite on the bank

Its actually quite slippery and dangerous to cross the thin wooden frame

And somehow they have mastered the skill needed to go over

Without the need to give way to either side too

This little girl is actually quite friendly

Keep pushing this little kitten over to us

And this kitten is well, so puny that you may not realised you have stepped on it

Just a figure of speech

Describing how tiny the kitten actually is

And it's really very cute in fact

But yup, the mom is somewhere there

Because we can hear 2 different kinds of meow-ing going on

Going about doing her homework

Meal times consist of plain rice cooked in a uber huge cooker

With some plain sauce and little or no meat

That's the life

Sad to see

Thus I didnt want to stay and see them have their lunch

Kinda unbearable for me to watch them eat

So after bidding farewell and stuff

We proceed to go back to the shore

This is cool!

Convoy!

Only the first boat needs to use power from the engine

This is actually how our boat looks like

A similar one moving on for the river cruise for other tourists

End of the Tonle Sap river cruise!

Tonle Sap is pronounced as "Toon Lake Sup" btw

So the next program was to move on to the Silkworm Farm!

And so we began a long tuk-tuk ride

And I finally mastered how to sleep on the tuk-tuk without grabbing

onto any handlebar

Now.......that's skilful!

:)

Of padi-fields and aeroplanes

So after a 20+ mins ride later

We reached the Silkworm Farm

And just ventured in

Taking a look around

So we were standing near this machine

And thinking whether is there any guide or what

Out pop a lady asking if we know how to speak 中文

Now that is a familiar feeling!

The lady was the tour guide of the place

And she proceeded to bring us on a tour of the entire place and

started to introduce and brief us on the whole process of rearing

the silkworm and how the products are formed and stuff

The leaves the insects eat

Like Digimon or Pokemon like that

Keep growing bigger and longer

LOL!

Or like something else too!

Larvae become pupa

Pupa become cocoon and stuff

Then out it pop out from the cocoon

Becoming the moth and whatnot butterfly lookalike

Hahaha!

Sounds kinda bimbotic or ''himbotic" for that matter

The male and female moth

And yes, in the insect world, the female is GODDESS!

They are so damn bigger size than the males

Looks damn yucky

And they keep on moving about

Spewing off those silky web

There's a difference between thick and fine silk

And these cocoon being boiled are separated as such

Our guide was explaining how you can use your hands to feel the difference

Somehow the cocoon feels the same to me

No matter if it is thick or thin

And the sweet smell coming out from the boiling bot is kinda distracting too

But it looks kinda tasty btw

Hahaha!

And as we move along

We start to see how the final product would actually look like

The tedious part of dying the silk

How different colours are painstakingly separated by fine dividers

How different spices are used to churn out the dyes

How work is actually going about

The ladies that have undergone a 6-months probation training course

Before becoming fully-fledged workers

And looking at their tireless hands working the wooden machines

And then looking at the beautiful silk products

One really wonder........

The traditional Cambodian royalty clothings

Just by touching the material you know its good stuff

I realised we have a lot of those group photos with our guides

Friendly to the max we are

After the Silkworm Farm tour

We have some time to kill before we can catch our midnight bus to Phnom Penh

And it was a few hours away before we can have our dinner

Thus we contemplated where we should go

And actually based on our itinerary

We should go for a war museum tour

Oh well

"Should have would have could have" were always the last words of a fool

The war museum was a mosquito killing field

And we were the damn victims of abuse

But nonetheless

It was an experience to see the old vehicles that were actually used in the Civil War

And the weapons and guns and mines and stuff

In the recent years of 1970s too

So below are some of the photos of the military stuff we saw

There were things like anti-air, tanks, airplanes, choppers and many more

MK with his favourite old school one-cock one-shot rifle

I think its the M1 Garand

Its so old school that every boy who plays war games knows it

And in those games, the M1 Garand is the killer rifle

The one-shot is almost always deadly

Me with the Tommy Gun!

Its just this fascination with the Tommy Gun

Or officially known as the Thompson Submachine Gun

I think its just this show called "The Mask"

By Jim Carrey

There was this scene in which he wore The Mask for the 1st time

And then he was entertaining the thugs and hooligans in the back alley

Doing some balloon tricks

Before finally whipping the balloon into a Tommy Gun

And that was why I have this fascination I guess?

Plus the Tommy Gun looks awesome in real life

Never seen all these weapons before in their "flesh" or metal in this case

And there was a huge load of them just stashed in the corner of this museum

Our war veternan - Adrian the RPG specialist

With his helmet on

SAF boy FOR THE BLOODY WIN!!!!

Most Singaporean boys have a weakness

That is you put a helmet (the military sort) onto their head

And somehow their intelligence will drop by 50 points

Their fighting spirit will reduce by 10-20 points

And their morale will go down also

This character will lose his value by quite a bit

With the helmet on

And that is seriously true

The anti-air, the machine guns, the mortars brothers and all

Hahahaha!

So familiar leh

Hush-hush

This 16-rocket demon is DA SEX!

16-rockets

16-rockets

16-rockets

16-rockets

Now I think that is damn awesome!

Wonder how was its fighting capability on the battlefield

Weird-ass bino

Strange thing was it actually worked!

Doing my bread and butter

Hahaha!

Some things never change

Limited collectors edition!

Woohoo!

So after the mosquito-infested tour

We proceed back to our guesthouse to look for food

And we bid farewell to Buffalo too!

He was one nice funny guy!

Who gives us high-5s and backslaps and all

Like a brother

And who doesnt complain at all

Goes about doing his job well

Bringing us to all the places

Finding us the Angkor Wat guide

Bringing us to get water and food and whatnot

Making us feel settled the moment we reach Molly Malone

Just a great guy for us in Siem Reap

:)

I forgot we have dinner or lunch then

If I dont remember wrongly

It should be lunch

As we were damn hungry by then

And this potato skins with melted cheese was better than the 16-rocket machine

This was the real sex!

And with (what else!?) Angkor draft beer

That was the superb appetizer to die for

Wah!

Wah!

Wah!

My lunch - Gordon Blu (spelling TBC)

It's.........just damn tasty la!

You dont need to understand how tasty it was

The picture dont really do justice to it

Every day we Blue Pumpkin

There were healthy drinks on the menu

Those specially mixed cocktails

With fruits veggie and the little dose of ice-cream

Plus this killer tri-flavoured biscuit dessert

Wootz!

Did I mention we went for a 2-hour massage after that?

You come out feeling like you can go for a 2.4km run!

But it would be a waste of that money then

Hahahahaha!

So..........we went for dinner!

Hahahahaha!

Pigging out is the life

"Fit times dont last, FATS do!"

Dinner was CUIZ!

The only saving grace were the drinks

I'm so not a soupy person

Soup is for the sick I feel

Like porridge and stuff

I dont like my meals to be soupy most of the times

So yeah, need lots of meat and unhealthy carbs and proteins and carbo and all

Just make you feel so fat and sick and all

Then after feeling sinful

I will go work out extra hard to burn it off

So I think thats vindictive of me eating unhealthy most of the times

After our meal

We went to a pub to catch the Wimbledon semi-final between Sharapova 

and the other lady

And we saw how Sharapova lost her poise

And then stormed back to crush her opponent

Now that was exciting stuff

1-for-1 cocktail is sinful

The menu is full of drinks that we could have tasted all night

"Angkor Sunrise" or whatnot

But yup, anymore alcohol and I think it would be the end of me

I was already gonna doze off

Managed to tahan until the timing to catch the bus to Phnom Penh

And the 6-hour trip conclude our 3rd day in Cambodia then

:)