A combination of us feeling ‘templed out’ and the temples yet to be seen being too far away, and thus too expensive to get to, saw us hanging around in cafes and internet places once again today. Between our extensive ‘research’ on restaurants, cafes, internet shops and hotels (we are now on our third in Siem Reap) we could probably, by now, compile our own version of the Lonely Planet for this area.
The highlight of the day was a pre sunset quad biking trip through the Cambodian countryside. As we vroomed our way along dirt roads, seeking out the puddles for that mud splattered look (until I burnt my leg on engine splash back! – Si), we found ourselves attracting quite a lot of attention from the local villagers. In fact a bit of skillful, one-handed driving was called for to steer around whilst waving to the children who came running out into the road to shout hello. It was nice to see the children showing so much interest in us and I soon realised that their enthusiasm was partly (entirely?) fuelled by the lead quad-biker handing out sweets!
Just as we were getting the hang of child waving/swerving through the villages, the road opened out to reveal the countryside proper. Suddenly we were surrounded by acres of swampy green fields – rice paddy fields. It being almost sunset by now and therefore the end of the working day, this turned out to be the busiest stretch of road as lots of workers young and old, their bikes, tractors and cows were obviously making their way home.
Another sunset bagged and we began making our way home. Trying to navigate around the cows and ‘hello’ shouting children was even more tricky in the dark, plus now we also had to try to avoid running over the many frogs jumping across the road.
Our last supper in Siem Reap was a Cambodian BBQ, basically a DIY meal consisting of a clay pot of burning coals placed in the middle of your table alongside your choice of raw snake, ostrich, crocodile or kangeroo which you cook yourself. Very tasty but a bit too much like hard work.