To break up the trip from Battambang to Phnom Penh, we thought we'd go with the advice of Lonely Planet and stop off in Kompong Chnang for a night. Three things in particular were highlighted to us: a trip on the river, a visit to the nearby village devoted to making gold-speckled pots, and a sunset tuk-tuk ride up some non-specific road to take in the view. Our overly-friendly tuk-tuk pimp (the only man in town who spoke English) seemed to appear around every corner to provide suggestions on how we could be separated with our money! After some (rather poor) bargaining, he offloaded us to his non-English-speaking relation, who made excellent money from the limited time we spent with him. Our trip to the riverside finished abruptly when we got sick of the incessant offers for non-specific boat rides for indeterminate lengths of time to unknown places for dubious amounts of money - all this coming from 7-year-olds got a bit much! Exit stage left! We then hoped things would improve with a trip up the much-hyped mountain. 5 minutes' ride later (up a mild incline) we had supposedly reached the 'summit'. Having come this far we figured we'd climb up the rocks at the top to check out the view, only to find our wonderful 360 degree panorama was totally obscured by the tree line. Trying to explain to our driver why we were somewhat dissatisfied with the trip so far proved futile - but we cut our losses for the day and told him to take us back to town.
Thankfully there was at least something interesting for us there: the local football derby (Kompong Chnang vs Kompong Dalai) was taking place, and half the town had turned up to watch.
Despite the home team winning by what must have been a 7-goal margin, the crowd seemed a bit subdued. The highlight on our side of the pitch was when a lady turned up on her scooter, forgot how to apply the brakes, and rolled off, onto the pitch.
Where we felt most let down by our guide book was the recommendation for the Holiday Guest House, which reads as follows:
'Bending over backwards' does not half describe the efforts here: free pick-up, bike hire, Khmer lessons... Internet available, and restaurant recently added on-site.
In reality, our experience was that on arrival we were ushered into the reception area by the girl from the next-door gas-bottling business (see the photo below) since we couldn't find anyone in the hotel itself who seemed to be running the place.
The reception area was a dirty, junk-filled room with an empty fishtank on the counter, and the upstairs lounge area was full of broken furniture. I asked about their Internet service, and was told they didn't have it - despite me pointing to the sign out front. The restaurant didn't even exist (unless you consider the next-door snack stall), which shut promptly at 9pm, just as I went over to grab a bite. :-(
Anyway, the spartan room was only $5 a night, and since we were too tired to look elsewhere, we took it. I was proud of my determined DIY efforts to put up our mosquito net for the first time on our travels - and it worked a treat! It's just a shame it wasn't able to protect me from the flea-pit of a bed we had to sleep on - the majority of my insect attacks were received on that night... Pesky critters!
The following morning, and we're still waiting for someone at the reception to even show up, let alone 'bend over backwards' for us! Things got so bad that Hazel made 3 attempts to pay some money to the not-so-helpful people from next door (who, I should add, woke us a 6am by unloading their exceedingly noisy bottles from the truck, mere feet from where we were trying to sleep.) Being honest folk, we left the money for the room on our pillow, but based on the non-existent customer service we received, we think they were lucky to get anything at all.
Note to self - don't believe everything the Lonely Planet tells you!
Namaste!
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