After three straight days of being roused from sleep when only bats and meth addicts remain awake, it felt indulgent to wake up Thursday to my cell phone’s jingle at 7:30 a.m. I showered merrily, prepared a daypack, and found Cico waiting in his tuk-tuk outside my guesthouse at 8 a.m. as planned.
We were headed to Kompong Phhluk, a floating village about 90 minutes from the town of Siem Reap, at the northern end of Tonlé Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. To get there, we’d take a tuk-tuk as far as the boggy dirt road would allow, then hop on a longboat to make the rest of the way by canal.
Our boat captain couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, but he wore the look 
of ease and experience, as if he’d been born in the boat and never crawled out. He nonchalantly steered us down the canal, turning the wheel with his left forearm, maneuvering the stickshift right-handed without glancing down, and controlling the throttle with his bare left foot on the pedal below. Every now and then he would switch feet, letting the unoccupied one rest on the steering panel so the wind could tickle his toes.
For most of the year, the waters of Tonlé Sap Lake funnel down and join the Mekong River in eastern Cambodia before spilling into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam. During the dry season the lake covers an area of about 2,700 square kilometers and is just one meter deep. But during the rainy season, from June to September, the water level of the Mekong rises so dramatically that the flow of water actually reverses back into Tonlé Sap. Its area nearly sextuples, to 16,000 square kilometers, and it reaches depths of eight or nine meters. Outlying villages whose abodes spend the dry season towering above the ground on seven-meter stilts are brought within a toe-dip of the water at the lake’s midsummer peak.
These unique seasonal flows drag sediments up from the Mekong and enrich the floodplain with nutrients, so that during the rainy season the fish stock goes bonkers, making Tonlé Sap one of the most fertile lakes in the world. More than 3 million Cambodians live in countless tiny fishing villages like Kompong Phhluk and are sustained by their catch. And the nation as a whole gets 60% of its protein intake from Tonlé Sap. If the lake weren’t there, Cambodians would all be two-and-a-half feet tall and Angkor Wat would be in miniature. Tonlé Sap’s important, is what I’m saying.
Twenty minutes after our longboat hove into the narrow canal, the dense mangroves lining either side of the waterway finally receded, opening up into the heart of Kompong Phhluk. We were suddenly loomed over by stilt houses, where whole families sat on their front porches, weaving baskets, their infant children clinging to the railing and staring out at us as we passed. One or two boats were 
tethered to the ladder of each house and filled with reels of fishing line and stacks of handmade, bamboo fish traps.
To our left a woman crouched to slide a tray of rotten vegetables into a floating pen, stirring the lolling pigs inside it to attention. To our right a fence of vertical, tightly bound bamboo rose two meters out of the water, inside which the villagers raised their own fish.
A woman and her child rowed out in a flat boat with a cooler full of cold water and soft drinks for sale. 
Kompong Phhluk, because of its relative inaccessibility and distance from Siem Reap, is less frequented by tourists than Chong Kneas, but tourism is still an important source of income for the villagers. Although I was the lone tourist in our boat, I got plenty of attention from paddling peddlers. Several boats zoomed alongside ours, the women and children laying down their oars to latch onto our rails, offering me refreshments, colorful children’s books, and even pencils and pens.
The village itself is fairly small, perhaps thirty stilt houses altogether, and in a couple minutes we passed beyond it and into the flooded forest. The forest was too dense for the longboat to pass through, so Cico and I climbed onto a smaller flatboat piloted by a local mother and her son. She sat at the bow, pulling us deftly between gaps in the trees only an arm’s length across with strokes of her thin oar, while her little boy manned the rudder in the back of the boat, dragging his oar on either side during particularly tricky maneuvers.
The only sounds in the forest were the burble of the long, thin oars agitating the water, the chirping of birds and crickets, and the plopping of frogs into the lake. Fist-sized tree frogs leapt constantly from positions of concealment on limbs, alarmed by our passing. The little boy pointed out several camouflaged ones that crouched in wait only a short distance from our boat, but I was hopeless at spotting them unless they jumped. Luckily I was equally hopeless at spying snakes. The mother said that there were plenty of them in the area, and that it wasn’t uncommon to pass beneath one coiled on a branch or to have one swim right up to the boat. It’s better not to think about what might have happened had we been approached by a snake, though it probably would have involved my “accidentally” falling into the water later on to hide the wet spot.
We piled back into the longboat and reversed back down the route we’d come, through Kompong Phhluk and down the tight canal to the waiting tuk-tuk.
Cico dropped me off at the guesthouse in mid-afternoon, and I spent that evening walking around Siem Reap. After a fantastic dinner of amok fish at Khmer Kitchen, I got an iced coffee from Joe-to-Go — 100% of whose profits go to the Global Child, an organization that sets up schools and safe houses for Cambodian street children — and buzzedly perused the night market and a few nearby handicraft shops before retiring to my room to pack. I was sad to be leaving Siem Reap after an unforgettable week, but the next day Whitney and I would reunite in Malaysia to begin a new adventure together.
The river rocks are engraved with wonderful images of Hindu deities and animals, and Sanskrit inscriptions. Somehow they remain well defined and vivid despite being run over by wind, rain, and river water, not to mention the sediment it carries with it, for hundreds of years. The area isn’t very well marked, and I would have missed most of the carvings had not a guard volunteered to show a few of us around, offering what information he could in broken English. Thanks to him, Kbal Spean was one of the highlights of my trip.
Finally, after failing to make it through the gate the prior day, I rounded this day out with a stop at Ta Prohm. Just in case I ran out of time before I got a chance to go back and see it, I had belittled Ta Prohm in my head as “nothing special, just more crumbling stone blocks and some gnarly trees.” And I was right, except for the “nothing special” part. The place is instantly memorable. The trees are not merely gnarly, but the gnarliest – their gargantuan roots cascade like dam-bursts over the sides of meter-thick sandstone walls, which buckle and crack beneath their weight. If these trees could spring to life and do battle like J.R.R. Tolkein’s Ents, we’d all be doomed.
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The climbing left me hungry and in a lather, so I wandered over to 
Tourists weave through the narrow lanes between them, browsing and bargaining for handmade jewelry, silk scarves and tapestries, wood carvings, handbags, and of course, the ubiquitous “Same Same But Different” T-shirts and hats peddled all over Laos and Thailand. After an excellent dinner at Tum Tum Bamboo Restaurant — a perfect tomato salad followed by catfish stewed in coconut milk, a dish formerly prepared for the Lao royal family — I headed back to my guesthouse for a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow I was bound for Vang Vieng.
Ten hours after my bus left Vientiane, and with Luang Prabang mercifully near, there was an explosion in the undercarriage directly beneath my seat. “Was that a sniper?” begged the girl in the row ahead of me. Unless we’re all unwitting extras in a forthcoming Tomb Raider movie, it was probably just a tire blowout, I thought.
After a short tuk-tuk ride from the bus station, I set off on foot with my guidebook in hand to find a room for the night. The first three places I tried were full, and as the last traces of daylight disappeared, the rain started to fall. In another minute it was coming down with vigor. Getting doused and desperate, I ducked under the arch of the next guesthouse I found, sprinted up its open-air stairs, and put my name on its only available room, a triple that would cost me $30 for the night. More than I wanted to pay, yes, but worth it to escape the monsoon.
I found and crossed the gapped pedestrian bridge that straddles the mud-colored Nam Khan river, then pedaled out to a tiny village past the airport. The paved road gave way to a dirt path cratered with puddles and serrated with rocks. Fearing another tire puncture and a long walk back, I got down and pushed the bike on foot. A half dozen incredibly cute kids followed me down the road for a few meters, shouting “Sabaidee!” and giggling amongst themselves when I tried to reply in kind. I kept walking until the path narrowed and became thick with growth on both sides, when tomorrow’s newspaper headline flashed through my head: “Disoriented tourist, inexplicably pushing perfectly sound bike, gobbled up by jungle cat previously thought extinct. Town celebrates jungle cat.” So I turned back.
As I approached the Nam Khan again, I caught sight of a gleaming, golden-spired pagoda up in the hills and decided to pay it a visit. The sign spanning the entrance read ‘Wat Pa Phon Phao’. I rode up the driveway, parked and locked my bike, and removed my shoes before entering the wat’s Peace Pagoda. Inside I met a few Buddhist nuns who invited me to have a look around. The octagonal pagoda has four levels, each one smaller than the last as you climb, with walls covered 360° with vibrantly painted panels
Hanh arranged a bent iron rod over the fire to serve as a range, then filled the kettle full of water and the pot full of rice and water and set them on the rod to cook. Next he went outside to shave down a thick slab of wood with the machete; in a couple of minutes he’d fashioned a clean cutting board. Back inside he went to work on the potatoes I’d peeled, carving them into thin slivers while Khoa and the other hikers chopped vegetables and cut the beef into strips. My contribution was to shower their workspace with camera flashes in the dying light. I was invaluable.
Hanh had brought along some cocoa powder and made hot chocolate for me to fight the cold. Instead of a mug he sliced a water bottle across the middle and handed me the upturned, capped end. I thanked him in Vietnamese and he said something in reply that I didn’t understand, but it probably meant something like, “This is how Macgyver drinks hot chocolate.”
fantastic, and the from-scratch tomato soup was unbeatable. Even the mystery meat from the can was delicious — Khoa said it was pork of some kind, and I thought better of getting him to clarify any further — with a taste and consistency similar to goose pâte. We washed it all down with swigs of locally-made rice wine, the kind that tickles your throat, widens your eyes, and warms you up immediately.
Lonely Planet Encounters
Lest you think we here at The Flashpacker live in a bubble, we have indeed noticed that this isn’t the most awesome year to take that dream adventure vacation. The dollar was weak to begin with, making Europe barely a possibility. With the economy now in a downturn and few airfare bargains to be found, an international trip anywhere may be out of reach for a lot of frequent flashpackers. Where to now?
What struck me as fantastic about about the wineries was that the tastings were cheap ($4 for 16-20 wines on our visit!) and tours are often free. While you’re not going to see the scale of operations you’d come across in better established regions (or, perhaps, the most polished presentation for tastings), you can really afford to hone your pallet and get to know this region intimately (something you’d pay a pretty penny for elsewhere).
4) Ride in style — I got this idea from my friend’s wedding: rent a sporty roadster instead of a regular rental! 
It would be appropriate to mention Jules Verne here, but I never read 20,000 leagues. I’ve also never been to Dubai, but it seems that the closest we’ll get to the 20,000 leagues is probably being built in Dubai.
Or how about the 
