Phnom Penh and eastwards
After leaving Otres beach near Sihanoukville, we returned to Phnom Penh by bus and spent three nights there.
We stayed at a nice little place near the centre of town and poked around seeing things. I'd been a bit off-colour before heading south to Sihanoukville and on arrival there it turned into a full-blown fever, so my time there was spent sweating it out in a dingy, windowless room for a few days, so the change of surroundings and slow return of health in Phnom Penh was welcome, but unfortunately I was still pretty below par.
I did manage to catch up properly with Viva, who'd helped me on the way through to Sihanoukville get some shirts and a pair of pants made up by a tailor. He'd borrowed his brother's tuk-tuk, so the three of us went and say some sights. For those who don't know what a tuk-tuk is, it's a covered, two-wheeled little carriage pulled by a motorbike. I first met Viva in 2009, when he himself was a tuk-tuk driver, and we kept in contact and I caught up with him again two years ago when I came through on a bike tour, as have a few friends who've visited Phnom Penh.
The plan was to go out to Koh Dach (or Silk Island), one of the islands on the Mekong - Phnom Penh sits strategically at the junction of the Tonlé Sap, a huge watercourse that starts beyond Siem Reap and forms a massive lake to it's south, before flowing out as a river to Phnom Penh, and the mighty Mekong. Coming from the driest inhabited continent on earth, rivers are bound to impress me, even allowing for the fact that I live in the tropical north where the rivers are, seasonally, pretty elemental, and the Mekong certainly does. Even way upriver at Phnom Penh its hundreds of metres wide, dotted with large islands and providing huge amounts of food, not to mention rich soil, to populations along it. By the time you get to the delta in Vietnam and the Nine dragons, or branches of the Mekong, it's awe-inspiring, with each branch flowing with boundless water, a km or more across, supplying endless canals and irrigation ditches and supporting a density of food production and human habitation that takes your breath away. It's easily the most verdant place I've ever been.
Anyway, back to Silk Island. Well, almost. On the way there, we stopped for a quick look at Wat Phnom (Wat being 'temple' or *'monastery'), which marks the mythological foundation of the city of Phnom Penh, when a woman, Phnom, found four statues of Buddha inside a tree floating in the river and made a small hill to house them in - that's the short version anyway! Phnom is Khmer for 'hill', so Phnom Penh really means 'Penh's Hill'.
We then headed through Phnom Penh's traffic-choked streets, across an even more choked bridge and, after a fair bit of exhaust fumes, left the main road, got on a small vehicle ferry and were on Silk Island, with fresh air and greenery in abundance. We went to a house where a family wove silk cloth and sold directly to the public - with Viva's help they told us all about how silk is woven, how to make patterns and the different types of weave. The amount of work that goes into it is phenomenal - it takes 2-3 days just to make 2 metres of plain cloth and much longer to make patterned cloth. The video below gives an idea of how it's done - and how painstakingly slow it is!
Then we went down to the river and had a swim along with a small herd of prize buffalo, a rest in the shade, then along to a silkworm farm where a very determined guide told us (again!) how silk was woven as well as how it's made - each cocoon has 100 metres of silk in it!
After getting back from Silk Island we had a breather then joined Viva and his wife Sopeap for a dinner of Khmer barbecue - I in one of my flash new shirts!
The next day was another rest day for me, while Niamh went and explored some of the horrors of Cambodia's recent history - after my first trip here, I read lots on the broader and more recent history of Cambodia, so didn't want to delve back into that very disturbing subject this time. For anyone who does want to read more, I'd strongly recommend anything by either Michael Vickery or David Chandler.
Two sides of Phnom Penh
The next day we headed off at noon, getting a boat that through sheer luck was absent of any other passengers, so we had it to ourselves, able to spread out as we liked or wander onto the tiny deck and take in the sights. We headed down the Mekong to Chau Doc in Vietnam, a very pleasant 4 1/2 hour trip along glassy water, arriving late in the afternoon.