Robby and I booked a local tour though the Eco Tourism company, “Triple A Cambodia”. We ended up with an extra day in Siem Reap and wanted to explore current Cambodian culture, rather than spending a third day at the ruins. Temple exhaustion is a real thing; all the magnificent ruins were starting to blend into each other and trying to navigate around 100’s of selfie stick, obvious tourists was grating on my nerves.
Since no one but Robby and I booked the tour, we ended up having a private tour in a Jeep, allowing us to drive the back roads to the villages, rather than be crammed in a mini bus and bumping along a main road. Our guide Chili (he likes spicy food), took us to the small village of Thnol Trong, where we hopped on bikes and pedaled along a red dirt road past mangroves, smiling school children, and small houses to arrive at a country street market.
Cute child at the market.
We wandered between the various food, clothing, and houseware stalls, learning that the villagers usually shop daily for their meals. The food stalls all looked like something out of medieval times - a pigs head sitting on a table, women gutting fish on newspaper, flies circling raw chicken, and people pointing out what they want before handing over money. My favorite thing I saw was a catfish having escaped its bucket and was flopping along the road to safety, but being scooped up by the shop owner and thrown back in the tub with its brethren. Poor little fishy, he tried. We stopped for sticky rice cooked in a banana leaf and fresh coffee before jumping back on our bikes.
Market veggies.
We spent about an hour driving through the countryside taking in the water buffalo bathing in the river, rice drying on the side of the road out front people’s homes, villagers swaying in hammocks inside their food huts, side street vendors selling bottled gas and liquid sugar cane oil, all the while passing up to four people driving on one motorbike while remaining perfectly balanced. I think the Cambodian people’s ability to maintain equilibrium on a flimsy motor bike leaden with heavy bags or numerous people, including up to 2-3 children, is amazing.
All the tuk tuk, motorbikes, buses, and cars weave in and around each other, all while maintaining some semblance of law and order, even if someone is driving the wrong direction or traffic lights signals are taken with a grain of salt. I’m truly impressed. In the country, even kids as young as 8 are driving their friends around on motorbikes, using platform shoes to reach the pedals. These are also manual bikes, so they’re switching gears.
We boarded a narrow river boat at Kampong Khleang, one of the three river stilt villages in the Siem Reap area. During dry season, which is November-April, the lower stilts of the homes are visible and kids can run around the streets creating mischief while the farmers rake the land for rice. During the other seasons the river level rises and the roads vanish. The villagers uses boats to get around and the fisherman start up their livelihoods.
Boating around town.
Robby getting the shot.
We boated past the permanent stilt homes rising out of the 9-foot deep river, in search of the floating village that moves with the tides. We found the village moored against the trees at the opening to the wide expanse of Tonle Sap’s 1600 km lake. The village is a mix of Vietnamese and Cambodian families that share a floating community and mostly fish for their livelihood. It looked like there were about 30 different house boats, two of which were a school, one was a store, one had four kids throwing a dance party, and a bunch had families going about their daily lives. It’s definitely a different way of life, but everyone seemed happy and a bunch of the villagers waved at us as we boated past. Robby was even blown kisses by a boat full of 9-year-olds.
Floating village.
Robby’s admirers.
Once back in town, we spent the evening relaxing because we had a 5am wake up call to catch a 6 hour bus to Phonm Pehn the following morning. There are numerous buses and minivans to choose from when getting about the country, but not all of them have the same safety records or style of comfort. Robby chose well when she booked us on the Mekong Express. A newer bus with Lazy Boy type seats, WiFi, snacks, and working AC (although it was chilly since it’s not hot outside). Our bus trip was smooth and efficient.
We booked one night at Manor Hostel since we arrived a day earlier than we had originally planned and we couldn’t stay at the hotel we originally planned for the next two nights. Manor Hostel is everything a hostel is suppose to be - people hanging out and talking to each other, a pool table, good music, a pretty pool, cheap beer at their bar, and clean rooms. Robby and I stayed in. 4-person women’s dorm with 2 Austrian girls, Katherine and Hannah. We played pool with them until bed time after having explored the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda in town.
The Royal Palace is a complex of various buildings, including the Silver Pagoda, that served as the royal residence of the King of Cambodia. The Silver Pagoda houses many small golden Buddha statues and a small green crystal Buddha, known as the Emerald Buddha.
The following morning, Robby and I had a sombering experience at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S21 Prison. During the Khmer Rouge genocide era - 1975-1979, more than 20,000 Cambodian’s were tortured at this prison, a once peaceful High School. The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, wanted to eliminate social order and create a society of farmers. If you weren’t sent to a prison, you were sent to the fields to grow rice and become farmers. But often city folks didn’t know how to farm and were worked 12-19 hours a day, so the crops didn’t grow and people died from exhaustion, malnourishment, and sickness.
The regime was xenophobic, paranoid, and racist. During the Khmer’s hay day in the late 70’s, Pol Pot had his soldiers torture and execute over 3 million Cambodians that he believed threaten his idyllic new way of life: perceived political opponents, Cambodian minorities, doctors, artists, etc. 25% of the Cambodia population was murdered in 3.5 years.
Pol Pot and his generals trained teenagers in the art of torture, telling them that people confess the truth when they are in pain, and that all the prisoners are out to hurt the Khmer Rouge way of life, so they are not humans anymore. It was also believed that if one person in a family was in collusion with the CIA or KGB (determined through torture), then the whole family needed to die because there could be no survivors left to seek revenge. In saying all of this, the saddest truth was that the Khmer Rouge was backed by America, the United Kingdom’s, Germany, and many other powerful countries. They even held a seat at the United Nation’s table. Governments turned a blind eye to the genocide in order to push their political agendas forward.
If S21 wasn’t depressing enough for us, we tuk tuk-ed with Katherina, Hannah, and a German, Benjamin, to Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh. After the victims of S21 confessed to various crimes against the Khmer Rouge during their torture sessions, they were taken to what was once a Chinese cemetery inside an orchard and killed. Since bullets were expensive and nosy, the victims often got their brains smashed in with common farming equipment or rocks and then had their throats slit to ensure they were dead. Towards the end of the genocide period, up to 300 people were killed in this field per day. There were about 351 Killing Fields throughout Cambodia.
Luckily Cambodia is picking itself up and starting over fresh. The past is not forgotten, as these two memorial sites show, but hopefully it won’t be repeated ever again.
To make ourselves smile again, we booked a tuk tuk for the whole next day and explored the rural countryside of Silk Island - learning how villagers extract the silk from the worms and make beautiful scarves and tablecloths. Most of the weavers were taught by their mothers and grandmothers. We crossed the Mekong River on a small local ferry crammed full with loaded down tuk tuks, motorbikes, and cars. On the way back, we munched on homemade egg rolls the lady in the back was selling. So tasty.
Silk worms.
Drying silk.
Robby weaving silk.
We climbed the steps of Wat Phnom, located on the only “hill” in Phnom Pehn and also the namesake of Phnom Penh, to gazed at a beautiful Buddha statue inside. Afterwards we visited, Reptile Coffee, a cafe that lets you hold snakes, a kimono dragon, a tarantula, and other creepy crawlies. Robby and I held the dragon and looked at the other animals while sipping refreshing smoothies.
Inside Wat Phnom.
Robby’s new friend, from Reptile Coffee.
We ended our days tuk tuk ride at the Central Market; a large market featuring everything you could ever want, housed inside an old art deco building built in 1935. We wandered through the four main wings, browsing the sparkly jewelry (most of it fake), rows of electronics, lines of colorful scarves, stalls of smelly dead animals parts, and past numerous women getting their hair washed. The place was relatively clean, but stuffy and expensive for foreigners. Robby ordered a fresh coconut juice and paid $1, while the local paid 25 cents. Oh well, still cheap for us in retrospect.
Art Deco dome of Central Market.
Market vendor waiting for customers.
We ended our time in Phnom Penh by having a unique dinner in the Night Market. While a local sang songs on a public stage, Robby and I put random looking food sticks in a basket and pointed out a pile of noodles to a food vendor, before sitting on bamboo mats in the center of the food stalls. 5 minutes later, a young boy brought over our meal, piping hot. The random fried shrimp sticks were not just tempura shrimp, like we’d thought, but shrimp mixed with something grey and mushy. The veggie dumpling were also comprised of a unidentified mush paste, so not exactly appealing, but the noodles were tasty. The atmosphere was the key to the whole evening - many families browsing stalls, couples talking on dates, kids running about, and a few Westerners looking lost.
After dinner, we walked along the River, back to our hotel. The Tonle Sap Lake isn’t much to look at during the day, with its brownish rust color water and trash everywhere, but at night, the bars and shops along it, light up with vibrant colors that can be seen on both sides of the river and small river cruises lined with Christmas lights, float along the darkened water creating a serene view. The area is a hub of activity in the evening - kids were rollerblading or playing a short version of soccer, vendors sold meat sticks, people strolled while admiring the view, and lots of people just looked content to sit on the river’s edge and enjoy the cool night air. It was a perfect end to our stay in Cambodia.
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