I had already begun to rethink the ferry ride when the boat’s small diesel engine choked for a moment. The boat was like a long, narrow bus on the water. A bus that had seen better days. Apart from the captain and my guide, Josh, there was no one else aboard. Did other passers-through know something we didn’t? In my mind, I was already making for the exit when, with a puff of black smoke, the ferry sputtered again to life.
We had just put out from shore on the Tonle Sap River, a waterway that flows south through Phnom Penh and on through Vietnam before emptying into the South China Sea. It was a six hour ride to Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world, a dreamscape of Hindu devatas and temples dating from the 12th century. The captain told Josh, who speaks Khmer, that we’d be there by sundown.
With little to do but take the man at his word, I spread out and tried to make myself comfortable. The boat rocked through downtown Phnom Penh, the shadows of apartments and factories making the brown water a darker shade of brown. Scooters, mini-buses, and tuk tuks added their growls to the drone of the boat’s diesel engine. The noise faded as the city faded from view. The landscape became a landscape again, with open fields and farmland aplenty.
The Tonle Sap is an artery for local agriculture. Smaller crafts laden with crops, likely en route to market, passed us by. The shores were dense with rice patties and corn stalks. Small villages and homes dotted the river bank. As we moved further upstream, houses, people, and other boats disappeared.
Restless, I asked if I could climb to the roof. The captain seemed hesitant. But after I offered him some rice pudding wrapped in banana leaves, he consented. Josh and I climbed up the narrow ladder. From up there, we could see for miles, across expansive fields to small villages and temples in the distance. I lay back and watched the clouds that looked, from that vantage, like aerostats.
I was a little seasick. I was more than a little sunburnt. I was right on the cusp of falling asleep when the boat, all of a sudden, jerked to the side. We had been floating for five hours. By and by, the river had narrowed and gone shallow as we neared Tonle Sap Lake. The boat scraped against tree branches hanging out over the water and, burrowing into the foliage, ran aground.
Almost immediately Josh and I were covered in ants. Bright red ones. Little antic shards of fire. They had fallen from the trees above, an infestation burning down on our heads. We must have looked like madmen convulsing on the boat deck. Josh thrashed and swatted. I felt the ants all over my skin. Then they started biting. I tore off my shirt, cringing in pain. In a murderous rage, I tried to smash as many as I could.
By the time we reached Tonle Sap Lake an hour later, the captain having coaxed the vessel out of the trees and back into the pass, the anticipation for Angkor Wat had been eclipsed by something like world-weariness. I didn’t care about arriving so much as disembarking. Skin smoldering, head still whirling, I wondered whether they sold anti-itch cream alongside Vishnu figurines in the gift store.
This is Jason La Farge’s first piece for EthnoTraveler.
