Unfortunately it is quite a bit more expensive (38$ for the boat and 7$ for the bus) but you only live once and possibly only travel from Siem Reap to Phnom Pehn once. So I said, I'll take the boat.
Olga (the Brazilian) and I got picked up at the hostel by a Tuktuk and were dropped off at a travel office from where we took a little (very packed) bus to the pier on the shores of Tonle Sap Lake.
There she lay, our long tubelike power boat. A bit aged but afloat. there were 5 seats in a row and possibly 15 or 20 rows. It looked on the inside like a very old airplane.
Before we could set sail we were held up by a very load (and possibly confused) Thai Woman who claimed that someone stole 400000 Baht (about 10000 Euro) from here bag in the luggage compartment. So we had to wait until the police arrived an investigated the issue, no villain was found and we set out to cruise along a short stretch of floating village houses on the shore and then finally out onto the lake.
The best spot was on top of the tubelike hull from where we could see all the activity on shore and soak up the sun.
Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Cambodia and we took a bit more than two hours to speed right through the middle of it south at 50 km/h to where it narrows into the Tonle Sap river.
Here we passed by more floating villages. Sitting on the roof of the boat, Dead Kennedy's "Holiday in Cambodia" on my head phones looking at the villages go by was an experience not easily repeated.
Most of the time I spent exchanging stories with Jim from Chicago.
After only 5 hours and a bit we arrived at the pier in Phnom Pehn at 13:30. We got a Tuktuk driver to take us to a hostel we (Olga, Jim and I) had chosen but not booked. Unfortunately this one was full and they sent us to their sister hostel of which the receptionist did not know the address or phone number.
So we just walked along the road and took the next best hostel which seemd to have been a very local place.
Olga was going to leave early the next morning to go to Australia so she didn't care and Jim and I thought of moving to a proper hostel in order to meet some fellow travellers but in the end we just stayed where we were due to lack of enthusiasm of putting our bags back on our backs.
It was time to get some lunch and we quickly found a nice place called "Cheap and Best" which actually stood true to it's name. From here we walked around a bit and check out the area around the Royal Palace of Cambodia and the riverfront of the Mekong (the Tonle Sap feeds into this famous river at Phnom Pehn).
Sunset was enjoyed on the balustrade on the Mekong with can of beer and watching the ships and talking about past and future adventures on our trips.
We had a Pizza and some cheap cocktails before we all went back to our local Hostel in a pretty jolly mood which was a bit dampened by the fact that some beggars sitting down next to us tried to pickpocket some of Jim's money. Luckily he noticed it and we went off home with an extra injection of adrenaline in our blood.
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