Day 5 – Friday 2nd January – Siem Reap

Yay, a rest day. After all the walking of the last few days and the comparatively early starts (early compared to when I would have liked to get up), Friday was a rest day, so there was no organised tour and we could just hang out round the hotel and visit the market in the town centre.

After a leisurely breakfast we went for a walk along the river into town. The river is on the other side of the road to our hotel and for the first time in the morning we saw it flowing, so it is obviously controlled at some point. The regular flush through is good for keeping it clean and pollution free and is looked and smelt a whole lot better than some river we’ve seen in Asia.

We took some photos of people on scooters – it seems to be a constant fascination, although sadly I didn’t get a photo of the pigs being transported. Other than the pigs, my favourite scooter use is when someone wearing jandals, no gloves and no helmet has a surgical mask on to protect against the harmful air pollution.

At the market, we got stuck in the handbag and silver jewelry sections for a while, which was a productive use of time – for one of us anyway. Nice stuff and all at a very reasonable price. After that we went for a wander round the food market, where everything was for sale out in the open – meat and fish (both unrefridgerated) fruits and vegetables like we’d never seen before and best of all the marinated crispy insects (imagine prawn shells but no meat in Hoy Sin sauce) – big bastards too – cicadas, spiders, wetas, huhu bugs. They actually looked bloody good, but as we’d just had breakfast, it would be greedy to be eating again so soon.

We walked back to the hotel and then spent a leisurely afternoon enjoying the hotel’s tasting plates and beer by the pool.

Heading out for dinner back in town, we went to get a Tuk Tuk. “Good evening, Mr Same Same – still $2, you go to the night market” – smart bastard. The Tuk Tuk driver bringing us back was a bit cute though, he tried to get $3 for the trip and when I said “No, $2”, he said “$2.50”, “always $2, I said firmly. It should probably be about $0.50 for such a short trip because a Tuk Tuk driver earns about $7 for driving someone for a day – what the hell.