MMMM... FISH & CHIPS!

17/09/07 - 18/09/07 Mekong Hotel - Intrepid Tour

Took the public bus to Kompong Cham which took around six hour and only one flat tyre on the way! The buses are pretty comfy with air con and play what I imagine are Cambodian Karaoke classics on a screen on the front. No-one seemed that interested in the karaoke though as everyone had personal stereo's or mobiles blaring out there own music, so it just sounded like some mangled stuff that only dogs should be able to hear!

At one of the stops on the way you could buy delicious bags of fried spiders (big tarantula sized things!) which looked awful... but are apparently delicious. Needless to say I didn't sample one and actually had to run away while Con ate his as the whole thing just freaked me out (it's gonna be a while before I get rid of my fear of spiders). The scariest thing is the number of the spiders they have available to buy... the town must be completely overrun with them for people to be able to catch so many!

Anyway... moving on from the spiders as I'm now frantically checking around my feet to make sure there are none there! ...Our hotel in Kompong Cham was really nice and along the bank of the Mekong River. Went for lunch in a cafe further along the bank run by an English guy and his Cambodian wife. All the group are still trying to sample all the local dishes... whilst our Cambodian tour leader ordered fish and chips (see us brits obviously can get some things right!) it looked amazing though so we all made a pledge to go back there for tea.

We went our seperate ways in the afternoon... some of the guys went on a bike ride to an island and the rest of us took a tuk-tuk ride to two local temples where we were able to meet some local kids and feed the monkeys that hang around out there. We had a great tuk-tuk drive/tour guide who told us everything we needed to know. His english wasreally good and he also spoke french. He told me how he'd studied for years to becoma a doctor, but as education is so expensive in Cambodia he eventually had to give up his dream. it was such a shame as he is obviously super-intelligent and would have made a great doc.

We climbed the 217 steps up to the top of the womans hill and got to the top around 60 seconds before the heavens opened and made way for a massive tropical style thunder and lightening storm with pouring rain. We hid for a while.. then finally made it down the waterfall of stairs back to the tuk-tuk... which we then walked behind for a while as the road was too slippy and steep to make it up with us in it... not that we're heavy y'understand!

Kept to our plan and went back to the same place we'd had lunch for fish and chips in the evening... they were awesome... although this is the first time that after hearing the kitchen staff screaming because there was a rat running around I have gone ahead with my order and ate it so enthusiatically!

Still raining (you'd have thought I'd expect this what with it being RAINY season... d'oh!) so we darnk more beer and played pool (me and Raj won of course!). I attempted darts but had to stop as I was in danger of taking someones eye out. Then we played cards and met the couples 14 month old son Alex (what a cutie) who couldn't sleep so decided to hang out with us for a while... and that was Kompong Cham!