Cambodia day 3
Kampoung Phluk floating village

Postcards

Today we had a leisurely start, after a lie in, we went for breakfast at Asagohan Cafe. Then back at the hotel Susan went swimming and I walked back to the post office to get some postcards. No matter where I'd been in Siem Reap, including Angkor Wat there were no postcards anywhere, but I remember the lady at the post office tried to sell me some. It would seem that sending postcards, since the advent of smart phones, are no longer in fashion.

Floating village trip

In the afternoon we took our second trip of Cambodia, Kampong Phluk Floating Village Tour by Boat. Our tour guide today was Tears, but he called himself Happy Tears because he didn't want to be known as being sad. Once all the guest had been picked up from their respective hotels Happy Tears introduced everyone on the bus and explained where everyone was from, this was pretty impressive and everyone applauded.

Kampoung Phluk

Our first stop of the day was to get a boat to tour around the floating village Kampoung Phluk. As the wet season had just ended the village was still flooded, all the buildings were on stilts. As we cruised through the village certain buildings were pointed out to us, the school, the hospital with ambulance boat, the shops. We also passed some building that appeared to be sunk, Happy Tears pointed out that these were the tourist shops during the peak of the dry season and as the wet season had just ended these were just dormant.

Canoes

We stopped off at a jetty and we were transferred to a small canoe and a lady rowed through the mangrove forest and then up the, equivalent of the village high street. We got to see peoples houses, shops and the floating Buddhist temple.

Back at the jetty there was a shop and a crocodile farm. In the shop you could buy local crafts, crocodile products and drinks. We had two of the biggest Gin & Tonics I've ever seen.

Sunset

Back on the boat we were taken out into lake Tonlé Sap, the largest fresh water lake in Asia, to watch the sunset. I went out to the back of the boat to record a time-lapse of the setting sun.

Food and drink

French Restaurant

After two weeks of eating rice and noodles Susan said that she's like to eat something more western. We searched for something in the area around the hotel and the brewpub that we'd spotted just around the corner. We found Graines de Piaf, which was actually nextdoor to the brewpub.

I ate the beef bourguignon with mash potato, the taste and flavour of gravy was just incredible. I had 2 beers Kingdom India Pale Ale and Gancore IPA.

Homebrew

Once we'd finished our food we went nextdoor to Homebrew brewpub, it was a great little venue and we got to meet the owners and the brewer. We'd already had one of there beers Homebrew Hazy Ipa at embargo, that was so popular that they sold out. The first beer I had was The Boss IPA from a Lion Brew co in Singapore. I then had their own beer Voss pale ale. Finally I had Apsara gold by Himawari from Phnom Penh.

While we there, a man came in with an accent from somewhere in England, I couldn't place his accent. Susan went and asked him, he was from The Wirral as soon as Susan told me it dawned on me where he was from. He had been to Vietnam and gave us some recommendation, especially Hoi An.