BOATING

As is the problem with staying up all night, you tend to sleep all day. although to be fair given half a chance I'd never get out of bed. I got up at about 2pm, and remembered that we wanted to do one more cultural event before we departed the next day. There was a floating market down on the river by the lake which looked like fun, and for $30 you got a tour of the market, and taken to a moored cruise ship where you got a meal, unlimited drinks and view of the sunset over the lake. Nothing sells a cultural excursion to a group of english people like unlimited drinks. At this point we'd picked up another stray, Lee, he was American but despite this was a nice bloke. Incredible. He just got into town that day, had seen the temples and was ready to move on, so he was going to come on the train with us.

The taxi picked us up at about 3.30, drove us to the floating market, about 30 mins away. Turns out it doesn't float that much in the dry season, but was still really impressive. It's more of a floating village than a market, it had a few bars, 4 schools, and various shops and eateries. There was a crocodile farm we stopped off at as well. If we hadn't seen the ones the night before this would have been more impressive. There were some kids with snakes draped over their shoulders inviting you to take photos, for a price of course.

As we motored down through the markets, the kids would wave at us as we went by, one little girl gave us the peace sign. The kind of sign that any little kid would give, and I know she would have been too young to know anything about the war and the genocide, but in a country with as turbulent history as this one, that peace sign carries a lot more resonance than usual.

I got to drive the river boat! only for a short while, but it was still quite fun, we'd not got to the cruise ship yet and people had cracked open the beers, I thought it best not to be intoxicated whilst in charge of a naval vessal, I didn't want a mutiny on my hands and I'm sure both of my Granddads would have been very disappointed in me. Unless i had been drinking rum of course.

We got on the ship and we were the only ones there, I dived into a hammock at the back of the ship where i rested for a few minutes, the captain needed his rest. As there were unlimited drinks stevie had the great idea of doing shot guns. in hindsight not such a great idea! we had mediocre fish and chips and then sat on the top deck to watch the sun go down, quite a nice moment in between all the downing of larger and shots.

The river boat back to the bus was decidedly quicker, maybe because we were all so drunk and were sitting on top, or maybe because they were eager to get rid of us.

Getting back to the guest house at about 8pm i needed to get into the pool to try and sober up before we went out for the night, which considering the state i was in was quite sensible of me.

I had a bit of an argument with the staff at the place as I got my laundry back and they'd ruined 2 of my shirts, i wasn't happy. and i was drunk and probably complained a bit more than i would have done normally, which was just as well as I got 2 free earthwalkers t-shirts and 50% off the room bill. result.

Mona, Matt and me met up with everyone else at about 9.30, stevie and lee were well away, and didn't last much longer, and the three of us were on our own again. I met Christian the nice german again, with his swedish girlfriend. we showed him the 'karaoke' bar for a laugh and then went for another drink.

Not sure what time we got back but i know that Matt and I paid the tuk tuk driver an extra dollar to have a go at driving it, I did quite well, Matt almost crashed into the wall.