Siem Reap Floating Village, Farm and Silk Factory

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Things I saw from the bus between Phenon Phen and Siem Reap
- Bicycle with hammock for a child
- Small pickup full with 1 people on top
- Men breaking concrete with a pick
- Cows on leashes
- Families on motorcycles with babies (sitting or standing)
- Many people with masks
- Fruit piled in triangles
- Children going to school in blue and white uniforms
- Boys with no bottoms
- Girls with no tops
- Miles of green - trees and fields
- Horse-drawn cart pulling a man and bricks
- A wedding
- Colorful laundry drying outside
- Naked children playing in the dirt
- Food drying on mats in a front yard
- Very old people riding bicycles
- 4 dressers on a motorcycle
- Lilly pads
- Wats
- People sitting in doorways with no doors
- Palms drying
- Monks
- People sleeping on roofs of trucks
- Dogs eating out of trash piles
- Tourists taking pictures
- Gas in liter bottles
- Squealing pigs tied to the back of a motorcycle
- Men playing cards
- Women washing clothes
- People seeding fields
- Burning trash
- Boys washing water buffalo
- Women carrying water
- Kids playing sey (similar to hackysack)
- Women carrying things on their heads
- Construction sites with pullies to lift buckets
- Drying fish
- Child scrunched in a basket on the front of a bike
- Motorcycle wash
- School with uniformed students
- Children leaving a wat not wearing uniforms
- Spirit houses
- Stones being carved
- Moving day - an entire house in the back of a truck


SIEM REAP
Jesuit priests and brothers are engaged in ministries in 112 nations on six continents.They are best known in the fields of education (schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, theological faculties), intellectual research, and cultural pursuits. They are also known in missionary work and direct evangelization, social justice and human rights activities, interreligious dialogue, and other 'frontier' ministry
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From: HERIBERTUS PARDJIJO BRATASUDARMA
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2008, 7:38 PM

Dear Jackie,
Greetings and Love from Siem Reap. I hope that this email will find you well. Where are you now? Whereever you are, I hope and pray that you will be Okay, happy and healthy . I am writing to thank you for your short visit to us. It is short, yes, but it is very meaningful for us. I hoep it is also for you. In this world, we are juts passing through. But your short passing through Siem Reap has meant a lot to us. Please keep us in your prayers. I will keep you in mine.
May God continue to bless you jackie, as you go around doing good. I remember how Jesus also went around doing good every where. I went to teh farm two days ago. They were so impressed wit your short visit. Thank you.
With Every Blessing,

Heri


FLOATING VILLAGE
We contacted Father Heri by email to see if there was anything we could do to help while we were in Siem Reap and he emailed back inviting us to go to join him Sunday to attend mass on the Floating Church. What an unforgettable experience it was. First we drove out to the river past many houses on stilts on dry land with many, many children. We got on a boat owned by the church and made our way out to the first church where we dropped off 2 young girls to teach Catechism. While crossing the lake we hit a powerful thunderstorm and had to put pull the plastic down for windows. After passing through the storm we came upon a village where we climbed aboard the other church. We played with the children, then Father said mass, feed the children, sing some songs and then taught Catechism class to the mothers. When it was all done boats began appearing to pick up the mothers and children and then we boarded our boat and returned to pick up the girls. Father had received a call that the truck may not be able to get back to the dock due to the weather and that we may have to stay at the first church. This could even get more interesting, but as it turned out the driver was able to meet us with a bigger truck as we had brought several additional people back with us. One woman who was due to have her baby any day returned to stay at the church for a few days with her family before returning to her floating home with her new child. I can not even begin to explain the poverty we saw and the way they lived, I hope the pictures help.

Cambodia's Great Lake, the Tonle Sap Lake is the most prominent feature on the map of Cambodia. In the wet season, the Tonle Sap Lake is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia, swelling to an expansive 12,000 km. During the dry half of the year the Lake shrinks to as small as 2,500 km, draining into the Tonle Sap River. But during the wet season a unique hydrologic phenomenon causes the river to reverse direction, filling the lake instead of draining it. The engine of this phenomenon is the Mekong River, which becomes bloated with snow melt and runoff from the monsoon rains in the wet season. The swollen Mekong backs up into the Tonle Sap River at the point where the rivers meet, forcing the waters of the Tonle Sap River back upriver into the lake. The inflow expands the surface area of lake more than five-fold; inundating the surrounding forested floodplain and supporting an extraordinarily rich and diverse eco-system. More than 100 varieties of waterbirds including several threatened and endangered species, over 200 species of fish, as well as crocodiles, turtles, macaques, otter and other wildlife inhabit the inundated mangrove forests.

The Lake is also an important commercial resource, providing more than half of the fish consumed in Cambodia. In harmony with the specialized ecosystems, the human occupations at the edges of the lake is similarly distinctive - floating villages, towering stilted houses, huge fish traps, and an economy and way of life deeply intertwined with the lake, the fish, the wildlife and the cycles of rising and falling waters. This unique process makes the Tonle Sap one of the world’s richest sources of freshwater fish - now that’s a reversal of fortune.

Chong Khneas is the floating village at the edge of the lake closest and most accessible to Siem Reap. You will find differing Khmer and Vietnamese floating households and the floating markets, clinics, schools and other boatloads of tourists.

Kampong Khleang is located on the northern lake-edge about 35 km east of Siem Reap town, more remote and less touristed and is the largest community on the Lake.


FARM

We stopped to see Fr Heri and return his computer. We also wanted to finish the transfer of his photo’s to the drive he had provided if he could get the computer unlocked. Mom had been able to finish 90% of the typing, but we could not get back into windows to finish up. I finished the transfers using another laptop. A young couple showed up while we were waiting to see Father. We found out that she was from Singapore and he was from the states and that they were in town for a couple of days and had emailed Fr to see if there was something they could do to help out. When Father arrived he talked with them and invited them to “see The Farm", of course mom and I chimed in, can we go too? It had started raining and the two of them got into the front of a big, heavy duty four wheel drive truck with the driver and mom and I climbed in the back where there were the usual bench seats. The man in charge of the farm had left earlier on a dirt bike with huge shocks which was unusual, although I had seen a few others. He drove through town and out toward Angkor Wat and then turned on a dirt road. The road got worse and worse and mom and I were hanging on through the bumps and ditches, at one point we looked at each other and one of us asked "Who’s idea was this?". Finally after about an hour we arrived at a beautiful piece of land that had been cleared and now had a garden, the in charge guy had been raised on a farm and had studied a lot of different organic farming methods. He was from the Phillippines and had a two-year commitment. He was quite excited to be involved in a vocational training center from the ground up and was very happy to show us around and tell us all about his plans. The couple helped plant a few trees. We all thought there would be some work to do, but Father must have just wanted us to see the place so we can share his dream of how this will benefit the local people.

Silk Factory is Artisans d'Angkor
Cambodian silk is renown for its high quality and gorgeous colors. Visited a silk factory where local youth learn the process of weaving, with the intention of working in the silk industry, ideally opening businesses of their own.
- It takes 1,000 cocoons to make a medium-sized sweater!
- The weavers at this particular silk factory make each piece of cloth the traditional way, with a loom, by hand. The actual weaving is amazing to watch. The weaver runs a piece of wood (called a shuttle) with colored thread up and down between a base layer of threads to create a pattern. The weaver has to remember exactly where they are in the pattern or painfully unweave if they make a mistake.
The quality of the silk made from this process is very high and it's easy to understand now why quality silk can be so pricey.

In 1995 Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles (IKTT) began a five-year project for the revitalization of traditional textiles, which were nearly destroyed during the 20-year civil war in Cambodia. The first step of IKTT’s work was to try to find experienced weavers in villages renowned for fine textiles. In the past, practical knowledge was transmitted from master weavers and aged villagers to the younger generation. However, during the civil war many skilled persons passed away which made it very difficult to restore some processes. IKTT also tried to revitalize the traditional sericulture that produces yellow silk yarns. IKTT changed the aim of the project to supporting woman’s self-reliance. We recruited trainees from rural areas with the first priority given to those from poor families, and orphans. After a trainee completes her intermediate level training she can start to work on her own in her village. IKTT currently has about 300 trainee’s aged from 15 to 70 years old and pays salaries to the trainees as is done at other working places.

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Floating Church #2
This was one of my most memorable days