Cambodia Day 4

A bus ride through spider town

A young local family watching"the white men" getting on their bikes

Today we had the chance to give our bums a rest.  A very early start, as usual, to get to Phnom Penh past a school Exodus is supporting; a lunch on a lake and a short stop at a village where the speciality is deep fried TARANTULA.

Sounds like a lovely itinerary, doesn’t it?

Cathrine is enjoying taking photos with the school kids

About an hour outside of Siem Reap we had the choice to get off the bus and cycle 10km down a very dusty, potholed road or to stay in the air-conditioning to get to the school.  Alex and I decided to miss out on the dust and sweat so as not to be two stinky people on the bus for the next 5 hours.

At this school, which is just 4 walls and a roof on top, about 20 kids were running around, half of them orphans, some shy, but all in all they seemed happy.  Another experience to put everything into perspective again, we learned that it costs 360$ to sent a kid to university for a year.  Considering how much money and food gets wasted in the rest of the world that was quite shocking and if we all would share a bit the world could be a better place.

lunchtime view

The rest of the day was just sitting on the bus, reading, sleeping and watching movies.  We had lunch at a lovely place on a lake and then moved closer to our aim.  Just one little stop was left… Spider town yuk!

deep fried tarantulas anyone?

I knew this was coming from the day we booked this trip and I really tried hard to prepare myself.  In my head I’ve considered getting off that bus and letting one of those kids put one of those tarantulas on my clothes but everything happened a little differently…I didn’t rush off the bus of course, I was the last one leaving and as I had a look outside I saw two of our fellow travellers having huge black Tarantulas sitting on their FACES…yes FACES ..so here comes the panic attack ..little “wanted to be so brave” Julia run to the back of the bus rocking back and forth crying her eyes out!!! What’s wrong with me I thought but I just couldn’t stop it.  The worst bit was that I really had to use the bathroom so I had to get off the bus.  Nee our leader handled the situation wonderfully and managed to get all of the spiders and their fans away from the bus so I could run around the crowd and run back without having eye contact with my paranoia.

A local commuter bus

Finally arriving in Phnom Penh, after driving through very dirty and littered suburbs, we couldn’t drive right up to our hotel as this was very close to the King’s palace where the old King’s funeral was held the following day.  All very exciting, we were holding on to our suitcases and belongings and walked about 5 minutes through all the chaos.

In the evening at dinner on the riverfront we got surprised by a very huge fireworks display in honour of the old King.  After dinner we had a little walk around to mingle with the locals and enjoy the atmosphere.

The Kings Palace