Crocs in Cambodia

Before we left Phnom Penh we had asked our hotel staff about their other hotel in Siem Reap. They said that they would have a tuk-tuk driver from the hotel pick us up at bus stop when we arrived later that night and take us to their hotel. That sounded pretty easy, so we gave the hotel Keiran's name and went out to catch our ride to the bus station. At the bus station, our tuk-tuk driver took Laura's name and said a friend of his would pick us up in Siem Riep at the bus station and take us anywhere we wanted to go. Ok, two tuk-tuks had our names, but how many would really show up?

The ride to Siem Reap was beautiful. Lots of great views of the country side, the homes, and the farms. I believe the distance between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was about 200km, but it took 5 hours to cover that distance. I guess the windy roads and random stops for cows on the road didn't help. The bus arrived an hour earlier than we were expecting, so we thought there would be no way the tuk-tuk drivers would be waiting. Wrong. Pulling into the station we saw one sign for Mr. Keiran and one for Miss Laura. We decided to go with Laura's name and made sure not to say Keiran's until we were driving away. The driver asked us where we wanted to go and we said - "a place with a pool?" He repiled - "how about a crocodile farm?" Why not? So off we went to our hotel.

We dropped off our stuff and had our drivers take us to a restaurant we had heard a lot about called "Dead Fish". Dead Fish Restaurant was pretty amazing. From the outside it just looked like any other restaurant, but inside it was like a treehouse. They used the bare necessities to create many platforms on 4 different levels in the place. To get to the levels you would climb by stairs or ladders. Since getting to the levels was a little dangerous they used a pulley system to transport food and drinks from the main floor kitchen... sooooo cool!

The place had a great live band playing, so we stayed until they were finished. Quite a few pitchers of Ankor beer later we decided it was time to check out the crocodile pit. Yes, that's right, there was a crocodile pit right in the restaurant. We payed a couple bucks and got some fish to feed to the crocs. Check out the video ....

After dinner we went with the band members to another bar called Angkor What? We didn't stay too long since we had a very early morning the next day. Back at our hotel we set the alarm for 5am to give us time to get ready before meeting our drivers at 5:30 for a full day at the temples of Angkor.