Emily, who I’d met the night before, had arranged with our guest house for a driver to take her on a tour of the Floating Village at the Tonlé Sap River and was kind enough to allow me to join her. This was a nice change of pace from temple tours, and was an amazing opportunity to get a look at a unique Cambodian lifestyle outside the city. We appeared to be the only tourists visiting today which was especially nice because of the lack of pushy food and souvenir vendors that surround all the temples of Angkor. The rows of homes sitting high above the river on stilts were incredible, as were the floating homes on the river itself. As our tour boat passed by the homes, the children would run outside and wave a friendly “hello” and “good-bye.” We saw several fish traps along the banks of the river and eventually went out into the huge Tonlé Sap Lake where fishermen sell to villagers on floating markets.

Tonight Stephanie & Jenny, two friends traveling from California, joined Emily, Bruno and I for a little pub crawl in town that ended at the cleverly named ‘Angkor What?’ bar. All of us but Emily were planning to return to Bangkok the next morning, so we shared a taxi back to the border. It was a long slow journey back slowed by rainstorms and a flat tire but we eventually made it back to the city of angels. I was very happy to get back to our apartment with Fiona, who had just finished a busy week of work.

Here’s a link to the slide show of my photos of the last 2 days in Cambodia, or you can click the album above if the slide show doesn’t work on your browser.