Boat people

Against all good advice we travelled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap by boat today and sizzled on top of a convex-roofed narrowboat for 6.5 hours. I made pleasing progress into one of my sister's books - a biography of Freddie Mercury.

The communities who live alongside the Tonle Sap Lake and surrounding rivers are fascinating for the sheer differences between their lives and the lives of the boatload of mostly Western tourists who chugged on by.

I don't take to Siem Reap in the same way as I do Phnom Penh. Transport providers are more aggressive and I've been offered heroin here. In Phnom Penh you are coerced into organising a tuk tuk in advance for the journey from the boat dock (muddy slope) to Siem Reap town. When we weren't in a position to sign the tuk tuk driver up for tomorrow's visit to Angkor Wat, I was called a 'bad man'. I hadn't raised my voice, which is normally a way to damage relations here, but something in the cross-cultural ether had annoyed him because rarely do you see Cambodians expressing anger in that way.