No man can FIND the island

We started the day off with a beautiful sunrise, breakfast and a tuk-tuk ride to the Japanese bridge over the Ton Le Sac River. Our goal is a 30 km island within the Mekong River that boast of artisan shops and a few beaches. We walk across this large and long bridge with scooters, bicycles, cars and trucks all competing for the same spaces. We are off to the side and for 15 minutes we are being buzzed by the traffic next to our footpath. 100 feet below, long primitive fishing boats are casting their nets for small anchovy-like fish glistening silver in the light. Not sure I would eat from this river. Great pix though. We stop and have a tart from a roadside bakery and are approached by some young boys ...we take and show them photographs of themselves. Always a sure-fire laugh and mini bonding moment. A monk shows up in the usual Saffron robes and workers come out from behind their counters to bring him food in exchange for his chanted blessings. This seems quite routine in and around Cambodia.

We are to walk 2.5km beyond the bridge, find a Chinese Temple on the right, walk through it, turn left to the next road, another right and we should arrive at a ferry crossing to the island.
We try several machinations of the above to no avail. But... we did find ourselves inside a remote Buddhist monastery/school with classes in session, and the most surreal ceremony of a monk purifying a woman by splashing dozen upon dozen bowls of water onto her kneeling body while another monk nearby sang and chanted aloud while burning great amounts of incense. This was right out of a dream... and later, Bob speculated one possible scenario was that perhaps she was recently divorced and needed to be spiritually rebooted. Not a bad theory... but only a theory. Though we are not finding our destination point, we are getting some terrific shots of not only the life inside a Buddhist temple but also of village life as we walk about a mile down a dirt road right through a large extended village of poor Cambodians.

It is a pleasant enough day. This can be a very hot area and was, in fact, the hottest location on my trip here in '04. But even though it is not oppressively hot, one does get sweaty and tired walking for long. We decide to find something cold to drink at what looks to be as close to a Chinese temple as we are able to find. We approach and meander through the maze of large spaces to be seated under a palm gazebo by the rivers edge. This giant facility can easily seat a thousand people at the unending numbers of dinner tables in front of a stage. We are the only customers here at 11 am. It is Leap Day! The menu is equally unfamiliar and the soft drinks they bring us are equally foreign. We are in the twilight zone... I'm sure.

We order off the menu anyway and when the food comes, my dish is a sort of ground beef soup with egg whites swimming among hundreds of tiny wormy looking half inch long dark thread-like "things". We conclude they are probably some kind of sea grass (since nothing moves on its own power). To be honest, it was decent and tasty though I might not order it again first chance possible. We decide this place is a sort of night club and as we are leaving, a young couple enter with family to go through what I imagine is their rehearsal for a wedding. Clearly a wedding. They pose for a picture... we take it.

We never did find our ferry terminal nor our island but this is what sometimes happens when just striking out. You may find other things that are equally interesting ...just not what you intended. ""Same, same but different" as they say in many parts of SE Asia. We catch a tuk-tuk back to the hotel and conclude this was worthwhile indeed.

The afternoon was spent at the National Museum in Phnom Penh where the sculptures were very nice... lot's of Buddhas and Ganishes and stone figures from the Ramayana... but all second place to the delightful Siam style building constructed in 1904 that they were housed in. Nice sienna color that compliments the greens of the abundant foliage in the courtyard. Nice.

For dinner we try a rooftop garden where we meet the proprietor... and ex New Yorker who married a young Cambodian woman. Two children later, he and her family live in this beautiful restaurant and home complex they built on top of this four story building with views over the juncture of the Ton Le Sap and the Mekong Rivers. He had a very high end European menu with very high prices to boot. We were his only customers and we indulged only in some very cold Belgian beers (can you believe it?). The proprietor is the kind of person whom you must not ask questions of... unless you have a lot of time and want to hear a travel weary string of complaints that may or may not have anything to do with the question asked. We bid goodbye, and say goodnight. Tomorrow we catch a six hour bus to Siem Reap for access to my favorite worldly architectural wonder... the Temples of Angkor Wat and the 100 square miles of more ruins surrounding it. Even after Machu Pichu... this is still the most dramatic place to me.
Haven't had time to try posting pix... but think I may have a chance now that I have burned a CD of the photos on the chip and reformatted the chip. We'll see. Until then, Mark