Thieu and I are back in Phnom Penh, having flown from Ban Lung in the North of Cambodia, this morning. The guy behind us on the plane leans forward and says:
"You know, the moto of this airline is 'We may not be the best but at least we try.' It used to be printed on the tickets, but they don't do it anymore, for some reason."
I'm wondering if it's because they've stopped trying.
However, the flight is fine and it only takes us an hour to cover what took us three days overland on a variety of vehicles.
We even had to pay a rice truck to take us when our moto broke down one day. Rice trucks are very slow. They are so slow that when an overhanging tree snatched Thieu's scarf he was able to climb off the rice truck, walk back to the tree, unhook the scarf and amble back to the rice truck, 20 metres up the road.
We were up very high, perched on top of all of the rice sacks and waving to all the locals like the harvest King and Queen on the last float of a parade.
Fast boats are the way to go, we decide. No bumps, you see. Little kids jump on and off at the ports and sell you a weird selection of snack food:
boiled eggs chewing gum lotus seeds corn soya bean juice in a chilled can.
We sit on the roof and watch the river.
Worst of all the transport options is the pick-up truck. We catch it from Stung Treng to Ban Lung and there are 25 people on it. 18 in the back alone. Our grandmother used to say to her daughters, when something was difficult or painful "Offer it up to God." So we offer and offer. He doesn't seem to want it, and I perfectly understand, as neither do I.
It is blissful to arrive, however. Ah, Ban Lung; the dustiest town in the world. It is so dusty that Thieu and I make up a song about it:
This dusty town, It's our dusty town. To visit is a must If you have a thing for dust.
We sing it alot, this ode to Ban Lung and its dusty, rutted roads. There is an item on the menu at our guest house called Rutty Chicken. Another guest points to it and says: "You know what that is? It is a chicken that has become imprisoned in one of those road ruts and lived its whole life in there."
From Siem Reap, we head north, up to Ratanakiri Provence where Thieu hopes to see one of the 15 or so tigers left in the country. I am hoping, equally hard, not to see one. We catch a bus to Kompong Cham and stop at Skuon, where I try to not make eye-contact with the women selling fried spiders heaped high on plastic platters. The spiders are about the size of Huntsmen but blacker. The vendors pour a sweet-smelling syrup over the spiders to keep them moist. I see one guy from the bus staring at them curiously, obviously not initially aware what they are. He leaps away in fright when realisation finally hits.
We stay at Kompong Cham for the night which is a blissfully un-touristy town and even get chatting to a couple of young girls who are very excited to be trying out their high-school English as our bag of jackfruit slowly becomes putrid.
Our hotel room has cable tv and Thieu and I shamelessly wallow in it. We watch for hours. We even watch "Surprise Wedding", where the unsuspecting boyfriends of the contestants are lured to the studio to be confronted by their girlfriends, fully decked out in wedding dresses, proposing that they marry them then and there.
It is hideous, but we love it.
We especially love it when the light-dazzled grooms meekly agree and a celebrant appears from behind a fake marble pillar to perform the ceremony. He even has a Bronx accent:
"Look deep in to each others ice and repeat after me"
We have dinner in Siem Reap with C, who is working there for the local council. Part of her job is to keep tabs on the cow bank initiative. The council buys a group of cows, then local farmers rent the cow for the year. They pay to have the cow sent to a stud farm and hope she gets pregnant. If a calf is born, they get to keep it.
C tells us about a cow that escaped soon after being rented to a farmer and then wandered back a few days later, knocked up. The farmer, of course, was delighted as this meant he didn't have to pay for the stud.
"Now everyone wants the slutty cow" C tells us, rolling her eyes.
