TRAVELMAN in CAMBODIA: I Took a Boat Ride to Siam Reap and We Collided With Another Boat!

“You should take the boat.”

“There’s a boat?” I replied, surprised that I had this option as a mode of transport from Phnom Penh to Siam Reap.

“Yeah, “ He reiterated. “It’s really cool. I took it down here. You can sit on the top deck and watch all the scenery go by, fishing villages, boats, farms. It’s more expensive than the bus but it’s worth it.”

I thought about it and took a bite of my omelette sandwich. I chewed the thought and the omelette. “How much is it?”

“Thirty-five dollars. The bus is like, sixteen.” He said. He was from Arkansas. He was in his twenties. He wore a new Columbia brand button up shirt he’d bought in Siam Reap. I was thinking about buying the same thing when I got there.

“How long is the ride?” I asked, more intrigued.

“Like, six hours. Shorter than the bus ride, but not much. I think the bus is seven.”

“Thanks, I might do that.” I said, wrapping up my inquiry.

The conversation changed. We talked about the sad state of American politics. We mentioned to one another how often Trump comes up in a negative context when we mention we’re from America. Columbia shirt guy from Arkansas grew up Republican. His views changed and he became a democrat after college. He studied political science.

I asked him what made him change his views. He said that as he got older, read more, and experienced more, he began to disagree with the Republican platform. He said that travel to different parts of the world was a big factor. Visiting and meeting people from different cultures opened his eyes. He said that if Republicans from states like his traveled to at least some of the other parts of the world they’d change their views as well.

I nodded. I would bet that there were a few defining moments in his life that made him flip. I was more interested in what those moments were, but like so many people, he couldn’t consciously identify them.

I would’ve been equally as interested if he’d gone from Democrat to Republican. Changing a belief happens quickly, but it’s not easy. Beliefs are powerful, and they only get stronger once we’ve established them as our own. People kill each other over beliefs.

Studies have shown that when our beliefs are challenged, our natural inclination is to dig in deeper and search for anything to justify standing by them. Our beliefs make us who we are. If our beliefs are faulty, our brain fears this correlates to us being faulty. It’s the open minded person who identifies the false correlation and evolves as they obtain new and challenging information. Then again, it could be devolution. People take on faulty beliefs and join cults. Maybe the people who change their beliefs are simply people whose beliefs aren’t providing them with the peace they’re seeking, so they’re open, or vulnerable, to change. I don’t know, who you gonna believe?

I gained respect for Columbia shirt Arkansas guy as we talked. It was a short conversation, he and another guy he’d met had to catch a tuk tuk to one of the local sites.

The next day I bought a boat ticket. A pleasurable tour to my new destination would be better than a cramped bus ride. (...So if you look at it in a predictably irrational way, I was actually SAVING money. Right?)

My tuk tuk picked me up for the boat at 7:00 AM. It was a two minute ride. I could have walked to the dock. The ticketing office changed my hostel boat ticket into the boat company’s ticket and the travel agent offered me a pre-arranged tuk tuk ride from the Siam Reap boat docks into the town of Siam Reap. It was a 13 km ride. He said that paying $6.00 now would be cheaper. It was early, I was about to get on the boat, I had little reason not to believe him, and little risk, so I bought the ride. He instructed me to hold my ticket in the air when I get off the boat. I doubted it was going to go smoothly.

I walked to the dock and saw the boat. Wow cool!

That’s not my boat...

This was my boat...

I boarded the cramped and enclosed space. It sucked. My seat number was back by the toilet, my legs barely fit in the seats...

it was claustrophobic, and it was difficult to see through the scratches and dirt on the windows.

I thought about trying to get my money back. Columbia Shirt Arkansas Guy must have been on a different kind of boat. I’d heard you were subject to the luck of the draw with boats in S.E. Asia.

I figured I was dealt some bad cards.

I looked at my ticket. As I suspected, it was non-refundable. I was a wee bit unhappy. The boat was about two-thirds empty and it was about time to leave. I figured I’d at least be able to move to another seat. Man, if they shut that cabin door this was going to be one long ride.

The engines started, the boat began to move away from the dock, the doors were still open. I saw a couple people go outside. Maybe they do let us stay on the little poop deck on the front of the boat?

I went outside. Sure enough, there was a crowd of people sitting and standing on the front of the boat. I secured a spot at the front. There was nowhere to lean. It was cramped and uncomfortable in the front, but the scenery was fantastic. This was going to be a good ride after all.

—Me doing my best six million dollar man opening title card impression—

I was wishing I’d secured a better spot earlier. After motoring down the river for a bit, people began to sit on the roof of the cabin. That was a good spot as well. Instead, I moved to where I could sit on the railing on one side of the boat. I was mildly surprised that life jackets were nowhere in sight. We were free to walk along the railing-less edge of the boat, and free to fall into the Mekong. ...Ahh Cambodia.

I took pictures non-stop. As usual, only less than a tenth of them were worth keeping.

I ended up talking to a married couple from Minnesota. They’d done a lot of traveling in their lifetime. In conversation, it came out that I was a nurse. They said that it must be great to know what to do and how to help if there’s a crisis. I said, really, there’s not much more that I can do than anyone else.

They told me a story of some old guy needing stitches on a bus ride in some third world country, and this medically trained woman stepped up and stitched him right up!

Yeah, um... That’s not me. I told them that as a nurse, I can remove stitches but I can’t give somebody stitches. ...I can give them Tylenol, if it’s prescribed by the doctor.

I would soon regret having let out that I was a nurse.

We passed a lot of floating fishing villages...

Eventually the river widened to the degree that it looked like we were in the open ocean. No land was in sight. This section of the Mekong was more than 15 km wide. There was nothing to see, I was burning under the Cambodian sun, and tired, so I went in the cabin, sprawled across three seats, and drifted into a semi-conscious state.

I awoke to a clatter. It ‘twas not the night before Christmas, so I didn’t know what it could be! It was more of a KAH-CLANG, actually. It felt and sounded like we ran over something we shouldn’t have.

The boat continued on for a few moments, but then began to slow. I got up. The boat dipped to one side, we were turning around sharply. I went outside. I asked the couple from Minnesota that I’d met earlier what happened. The guy, Ron, said we hit another boat.

Huh!!!

“Yeah, I was out here and I could see it off to the side.” Ron gestured to where the boat had come from. He said, “I started yelling at the captain, and pointing and yelling- Boat! there’s a boat! But the driver kept pointing forward. He didn’t get it- And then they just broadsided us!” Ron’s adrenaline was pumping.

First of all, how could this happen? It was like a mid air collision. The river was clear of anything for miles, nothing around, and we collided with a boat?

It was a small tail boat, a fishing boat. The passengers consisted of a family: two grown men, a grown woman, a little girl, and a woman who was apparently the grandmother. The front of their boat was destroyed. Their boat wasn’t sinking, but it wasn’t operable and it may have eventually sank.

We floated up alongside them and moored ourselves to them. The grandmother had been thrown across their boat and smacked into ours. She had blood under her lip and looked woozy. The younger woman, probably the mother of the child, was screaming at our boat crew and crying. The women came onto our boat. The men opened their giant cooler and began throwing the fish they’d caught onto a tarp in their boat. I don’t know what they had planned.

I stood looking at the scene from the cabin door. A French couple who had parked themselves at the prime spot on the front of the deck at the beginning of the trip were involving themselves in the situation. It was a crisis situation in which people jump to take action, more action than is required of them.

—Screaming woman from boat wearing green at very front of our boat—-

The Frenchman began speaking loudly and emphatically to someone, whoever would get on board with him. “We must collect all the money everyone has and give it to them! This was all they had!” He went on and on about how they had nothing and would now have less. I don’t know how he knew they had nothing. It bugged me that he assumed they needed saving by the westerners with money in their pockets.

I was not keen on giving them any money. I was keen on the boat company taking care of it. I was keen on staying out of the way and letting the locals handle it as they saw fit. I thought the Frenchman was taking the role of the hothead that assumes because of where he was sitting, he is now our de facto leader. “This boat is their livelihood! It is all they had! We have money, it is not a hardship for us! Everyone must give them all their money!”

...Uhh, great, dude. You have money, be the western hero and save them. Tell me-Exactly, how do you know they need YOUR help? The rest of the passengers were much more reasonable, sit back and let the people who own the boats and LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY take care of it.

Shortly after this, the woman from Minnesota asked if I could take a look at the grandmother. She said that the woman had fainted previously. “Could you bandage her up, maybe?” I told the woman from Minnesota that there’s not much I can do (I left my Nurse-man cape at home). I went and looked at the woman anyway.

The grandmother had no wounds to bandage. She was conscious, sitting on the deck, leaning against one of the men from the tail boat. Her grand daughter was stroking her. They’d taken off her shirt, she was in her bra. I don’t know why they removed her shirt. They’d rubbed some ointment on her chest, possibly a Vick’s menthol type rub.

I felt the woman’s pulse. It was normal. I inspected her head as best I could by giving it a look. They hadn’t invited me to care for her so I didn’t touch her other than feeling her pulse on her wrist. She was speaking and conscious, she wasn’t bleeding, that’s all I could assess. Maybe if I hadn’t left my giant multi-million dollar MRI at home I could have scanned her.

She may have passed out from a temporary drop in blood pressure, mild shock. I told the Minnesota lady that she looked like she was going to be okay and I couldn’t tell much more. I said they may want to encourage her to lay down inside the cabin with a blanket. That didn’t happen.

The crew of our boat inspected the damage to the side of our hull. I went back in the cabin. A passenger pointed to the floor. Water was leaking into the cabin from where we’d been hit. It was minimal. It looked like someone had spilled a cup of water. The amount wasn’t increasing and neither were my concerns. At this point, I felt it was merely a matter of time before we were on our way again. The only thing I feared was having to wait for another boat to pick us up, but I doubted that scenario coming to fruition.

After about an hour delay, another tail boat came along and picked up the stranded family and their boat. We started our engine and went on our way.

—Goodbye family that broadsided our boat—-

And that was it. A little extra excitement. We went through the Siam Reap floating village to get to the dock.

Once at the dock, the tuk tuk driver found me and another guy who had bought the same ticket as me. The other guy was from London and was also traveling for a year. He’s also heading to Nepal in December and then India in January. I told him it was likely we’d cross paths again.

Another day, another Travelman adventure. Ho hum.

!steemitworldmap 13.2093 lat 103.9739 long I Took a Boat From Phnom Penh to Siam Reap and We Hit Another Boat, Cambodia, d3scr