Laundry local style and a temple off the beaten track

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Through our guest house (Siem Reap Rooms - we highly recommend it) we'd organised to meet with a family in a nearby village to check out how laundry was done in Cambodia and also to demonstrate how the Scrubba wash bag works. It would be interesting to get a local's opinion.

Our TukTuk driver, Perry, drove us about 50 minutes from Siem Reap to the village where his sister lives. Perry also spoke a good amount of English which helped us explain why we were there. Nevertheless, Perry's sister appeared a little baffled that a couple of tourists would be interested to see how she does her laundry. We were shown a simple washing process involving a hand water pump, a plastic washing basin and a scrubbing brush. While effective, it appeared to be a time consuming methods of washing clothes.

It was then Ash's turn to demonstrate the Scrubba washbag. After scrubbing one of her husband's shirts, there was a lot of laughing and a bit of embarrassment as the heavily brown muddy water was tipped out. She was impressed! Perry's sister then gave the Scrubba wash bag a go. From the look of glee on her face and from the results, it was a more effective and easier method than her old washing method. This was confirmed by Perry's translation. As a token of our appreciation, we left her with the Scrubba wash bag which she very happily accepted and started using again immediately.

We jumped back onto Perry's TukTuk and headed a further 40 mintues away from Siem Reap to Beng Meale Temple. Unlike most of the temples of Angkor, Beng Meale has more or less been left to the jungle. As it's a bit off the beaten track (~70km from Siem Reap), there were almost no other tourists. The result being that you you can wander and crawl about the pile of ruins and feel like one the first explorers to venture there. A truely magical experience and by far my favorite of all the temples we were to visit (sorry Angkor Wat, you get second place)!

Returning to town, another delicious dinner and drinks were on the cards.

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Photos

The Temple of Boeng Mealea
This was by far my favorite of the temples near Angkor. Little restoration has been done and the jungle has been allowed to do its thing. On entering a young kid asked me if I liked to climb. Like that we were off, climbing over rubble, along walls and roofs. It was so much fun and I couldn't help but think of Indiana Jones and the kid (Short Round). Lost in the fun, I ignored my normal instincts not to encourage children to work for tourist dollars and the fact that we probably weren't allowed to climb all over the temple, but, hey, it was so much fun.

The Temple of Boeng Mealea
The trees seem to grip the temple like a fist