Fishes

We decided to take the scenic route from Battenbang to Siem Reap on a boat. Yesterday, when we had the motorbike we went to the boat pier to buy a ticket but the only tickets that were being sold were for speed boats with companies that we hadn't heard of so we didn't buy a ticket from them. Instead we talked to our hotel who called the main boat company and got us tickets on the slower and more comfortable tourist boat.

When we arrived at the pier this morning the only boat that was going was a speed boat, we had been sold something different from what we wanted. We made a bit of a scene but the only option was to either get on the boat or wait another day and hope for a better boat to go the following day and get on that one. The boat we wanted should have looked like this:

Instead our boat looked like this:

We were also told the boat would be better because it would only have 9 tourists on it. This part was true but they neglected to tell us that there would also be so many locals that we couldn't all fit and some people would have to sit on laps or sit on the roof of the boat.

The boat ride ended up being not that bad, though my bum was really sore from sitting on a plastic bench for 8 hours. The scenery was amazing with tons of small villages all along the river.

We got to see how the local people live and had hundreds of happy children wave at us the entire way.

When the boat arrived 12 km's outside of Siem Reap the boat was met by at least 30 touts trying to get anyone into their tuk tuk. The touts even jumped on the boat and made it impossible to get off for several minutes. The touts are so aggressive because they want you to hire them to drive you around Angkor Wat for the next couple of days, that is where they really make their money. We shared a tuk tuk with a British couple that we met on the boat and then jumped out of the tuk tuk earlier than the other couple so they had to deal with the driver harassing them instead of us.

We walked around town and found a place that was doing fish foot massages and were able to negotiate the price down to $2 each with a can of beer included. I had never done it before and as soon as the fish touched my feet I started laughing uncontrollably loud at a decibel so loud that it was barely audible to the human ear. I'm pretty sure that I was embarrasing Janelle, but it tickled so much I couldn't help it. The fish loved my feet and pretty much left Janelle alone, as you can see in this picture:

Check out all of the pictures of the river ride in the slideshow below: