{"id":2993,"date":"2026-03-12T14:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T14:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=2993"},"modified":"2026-03-16T03:07:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T03:07:42","slug":"thur-12th-mar-kratie-to-siem-riep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=2993","title":{"rendered":"Thur 12th Mar – Kratie to Siem Riep"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Another long car drive. Again, after Laos, this is like Moo Moo Meadows. There are two seconds of unsealed road that causes mild bumps and I hear  echoes of ‘oh oh’ cascade through the bus. Ladies, please. This must be what Declan feels when I dig my fingers deeply into his arm during ‘turbulence’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tour group is super easy. I shouldn’t complain. But…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That one Canadian who used to work in IT and in her retirement volunteers with dogs and cats (I ran out of interest to inquire what exactly about dogs and cats…). If you were to write off someone based on those two facts I would say: efficient use of your scarce resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is one Australian woman who cannot for her life comprehend information. Poor soul means well and wants to be liked but her brain is leaky. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the other Canadian, who reminds me of Pearl in appearance so commands much of my respect, keeps wanting to know how genuine her experiences are. These people are dirt poor, don’t worry they are cutting the coconut and serving it to you – just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it is a scam! Honestly all these people do all day is cut open coconuts. What grand scheme do you think they are concocting? I want to shake her and say, “stop asking how these goods are made. It’s exactly what you want but it is actually really sad when you see it. It’s a human doing labour you don’t want to, why are you expecting them to be proud of it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly they are fine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s just a long bus ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I feel guilty that I took four hours off yesterday while I was… dealing with issues. To extend apologies to Kratie I wake up at 5.30am to check out the morning market. I successfully ordered one of these doughnuts in Khmer. I think they’re meant to be take-away to serve with a soup-based breaky though. I personally was craving a little saucer of pandan custard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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These fish were still alive and flapping, fresh from the Mekong. Fish out of water, literally.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Like any poor South East Asian nation, Cambodia is not free of the ubiquitous rubber tree plantation. The concentration though is nowhere close to the domination of the crop in Malaysia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Driving break was Silk. Watch four old ladies, previously worried that they were getting ripped off 1usd on their laundry, spend upwards of a hundred dollars on silk scarves. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Are you happy now old ladies? Is this authentic enough for you? Do you also want to see where your Uniqlo shirt gets made? That’s also authentic Cambodian production.
I buy a scarfy-thing too. Support the women, and all.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Siem Reap’s cultural heritage: Pub Street.
We all know who fed a bear for two days in the group.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Amok curry is a national Cambodian dish. This is reliably underseasoned, as expected in the tourist centre of Siem Riep. Progress in this sector has been made. The battle for Caitlin’s bio flora has seen a victory for the good guys. I am ready for more exciting food tomorrow.
Next to the restaurant a female massage touter weakly greets guests with a “Sabidee”. This is Laotian for hello. She’s understood tourists don’t care what Asian language you speak so may as well make it easy for yourself and revert back to the home language.
Coincidentally, the Austrian tourist next to me has just come from Laos.
“How did you find it?” I ask.
She shuffles in her chair so that she is looking me dead in the eye and says, “I was so relieved to leave.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Writing this blog over a delish cocktail off the main drag. An eight year old takes my order so you know it’s a quality, family run bar. These two in the bar opposite are doing karaoke (Spotify and a microphone). The best track is a Wombats song that is weirdly a deep cut from a few albums ago that I don’t even think was made it as a single. They really stumble through that one but I appreciate it. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This proves to be one cocktail too many. When I get back to my hotel I realise I’ve left my bag of shopping behind. Thanks to the fact I know exactly where this bag is, that it’s only 1km away, and to the extremely effective tuk-tuk system, I am able to collect it and be back in my hotel within 14 minutes at a tuk-tuk cost of A$3.50 (including tip).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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As promised, I reached the gold. Would have been a crying shame to leave this bad boy behind.
I’m excited to see Angkor Wat tomorrow. I rewatched Placebo’s Angkor Wat set on the bus today in preparation.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2993"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3025,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2993\/revisions\/3025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}