Saturday, August 21, 2010

Four Seasons

AUTUMN
After spending almost two weeks in Siem Reap the urge to move struck me again.
It was still dark when I woke up and a light drizzle came down while I waited for the bus to take me to the boat landing at Tonle Sap.

WINTER
The choises on the boat to Battambang are simple sit inside and loose your hearing from the noise of an unshielded diesel engine and loose your lungs to the diesel fumes or sit outside, that is on the cabin roof, and take your changes with the elements. I climbed on the roof.
The drizzle steadily turned into rain and the number of people on the roof dwindled until there were just two of us left braving the weather. Although I had my raincoat on I still got wetter and colder by the minute. My watch has a thermometer and it revealed that the temperature had dropped to 25 degrees. I felt hypothermia was close.

SPRING
We left the lake for the river leading to Battambang, the rain slowed down to a drizzle and occaisionally the sun came peaking out from behind the clouds. A few not so hardy souls started to venture out from the cabin and return to the roof suitably amazed that two of us had stuck it out there the whole morning.

SUMMER
Finally the rain stopped and the clouds disappeared. The roof top got busier all the time and people started breaking out the sun screen. An English couple went from pasty white to lobster red in about an hour and I dried out and warmed up again. The mercury rose to forty degrees and after twelve hours of travel I was happy to arrive in Battambang.




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