Kampong Cham
After the ancient ruins we went on our way to Kampong Cham, the third biggest city in Cambodia. Right after check in the guide organized a lunch for us at a local home. It was a traditional house, built on high poles, the floor was woven from some sort of wicker, you could see the ground meters below.
There was a whole table laid out for us, by table I mean a linen on the floor, as traditionally you would eat on the floor. The food was fantastic. I don’t know what all the dishes were, but every single one I tried tasted amazing. After the meal the owner of the house, who was a friend of our guide, invited us to see the house and the kitchen. Luckily I’m not one of the faint hearted, as it turned out people in Cambodia don’t just eat sitting on the floor, they also cook on the floor. Most of the pots look a bit like a wok.
In the afternoon we made a one of a kind bike ride. Over the Bamboo Bridge on the Mekong river onto the Koh Paen island. The bridge itself was an adventure. It looked like it was about to fall apart and then, when we were right in the middle of it, we got overtaken by a car. As it turned out the bridge didn’t look entirely solid but it definitely was. It gets washed away every wet season and then meticulously rebuilt.
Thanks to the ride we were able to see a little bit of the normal Cambodia, not the tourist-ready one. We even sat down in someone’s garden and got invited to have some pomelo fruit. On the way back we just sat on the beach and watched the sun go down over the Mekong.
