Kulen Falls

 Today we were up at the “crack”of 7 AM. LOL

Our driver for our private trip to the Kulen Falls showed up at 8 AM. It became apparent very quickly that his English was almost non existent. We had paid a lot of money (probably double the rate of a Viator trip in a van with others) so this was very disappointing. To make lemon aid from the lemons, I was able to learn, and apply easier, the translation software from Google. It is also really neat and amazing that on our hour long ride to the base of the “mountain” (at least by their standards) and in many locations going up to the top I had 4G cell strength so I used my e-sim data plan to connect with home (and got the information that perhaps something has gone sideways regarding our sidewalk and driveway snow removal). Thank you Lisa for looking after this potential mess.

The first stop was at the very top of the mountain where there is a sacred Buddha. Here all Buddha’s are sacred and we had to remove our shoes to climb the ladder up to the Buddha.

I guess some idiots did not get the memo.

After visiting this small temple we headed back to our car and then down the mountain a bit to the falls. They are quite pretty and consist of an upper falls of about 5 meters and a lower falls of about 25 meters. If we had wanted we could have gone swimming there but we chose not to.

There were over 100 steps down to the base of the lower falls.

We had a 45 minute wait (until noon) before the road down the hill was reversed. This road has some intense switchbacks so even though it is “supposedly” one way there were traffic control men at various places to let us know there was no one coming the other way in the switchbacks. It was actually quite a neat ride.

We stopped at a fantastic viewpoint and got a couple photos. This is not Canada. If you are stupid enough to get too close to the edge and have a fall it is your own fault!

We were back before 2 PM and spent the rest of the day either walking in the streets or figuring out what our next plans are. We have booked a hotel in Phnom Penh for three nights starting on Thursday and we will be booking a shared van ride tomorrow ( a 6 hour drive on truly awful roads).

It is quite overwhelming to figure what to do after Phnom Penh. We want to go to Phuket but beach hotels are out of our price range. After a short non-beach stay in Phuket we may be heading by ferry across the bay to Krabi.  Mark and Kristyn told us about a nice beach there. It looks promising at this point.

We had a great meal at a small restaurant across the street. Check out the prices for a plate of food or the cost of a beer (all US dollars)