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Published: March 24th 2007
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Silk Farm
Silk Worms eating Loe variety of Mulberry leaves, in around 10 to 15 days they will be put on a Mulberry branch type maze where they start to spin the silk cocoons. Fri 23rd March: Met our tuk-tuk driver at 9am outside the hotel, he was far more friendly than yesterday's driver and spoke really good English and lent us some cheap sunglasses so that we wouldn't get dust in our eyes on the 7 or 8km drive to the silk farm.
The Silk farm was our first stop. The road there was stupidly bumpy, as the Tuk-tuk driver explained :
The Thai governemet pays the Cambodian government to keep this road (Route 6) in bad condition so that more people choose to fly. The only company that offer flights are Thai airways, of which both the Thai King and the Cambodian King have money invested. Unfortunately this is the raod we have a 10 hour journey on by bus the day after tomorrow. Although once we cross the border into Thailand at Poipet the road becomes smooth all the way to Bangkok.
So arriving at the silk farm Our guide there talked us through the silk making process, starting at the life cycle of a silk worm with real worms, moths and cocoons for us to see. We saw the diferent types of leaves they are fed to make
Dying in patterns.
Sometimes they tie plastic on certain bits so that they can dye in a pattern, they used to use banana leaves. For more expensive items they weave in seperately dyed threads. different silks. How the silk is made into strands, loomed, dyed and then weaved (by hand).
Good silk in it's natural state has a nice yellow colour, if it's brown, ornage or white it's second grade and if it's lumpy it is either re-spun and stretched or used as second grade.
Good silk is smooth without lumps, consistant in it's weaving, and the true test is this...
Get a tiny bit and burn it with a lighter. If it burns not melts, smells like burning hair and gives off black ash like a cigarette or charcoal when you burn it, then it's good silk. 10 kilos of silk is needed to make 1 metre square of silk and can take around 8 hours for a four metre roll! (machines can do it faster, but by hand is still better.
We then went into the silk shop which was very nice, but very expensive.
Everything was around $50, I (Matt) saw a great shirt, 100%!s(MISSING)ilk, hand weaved and stitched with 100%!g(MISSING)rade A raw silk. But it was $60! Oh well.
West Barays was our next stop. The West Barays is a giant man-made lake 8km long and
West Barays
You can just make out the 12 towers by Angkor Thom in the distance. 2.2km wide. It's to the west of Angkor Wat and is believed to have been used for religious purposes and as a symbol of the kings power, it also helped to make the surrounding land very fertile. In the distance across it you can just make out the 12 towers by Angkor Thom. It was prett cool. Our driver gave us some of his pineapple because he had bought too much.
The Landmine museum where we learnt about mines, how demining is done and read lots of personal stories from landmine victims, all of which were quite sad. We bought two T-shirts at $3 each, which they said was enough to take 3 mines out of the ground. Every little helps (No this is not Matt's Tesco plug.). If you get time, or can be bothered you should look at thier website:
www.cambodialandminemuseum.org Miniature Angkor Wat We stopped at this artists house/studio and saw his mini sculpture of Angkor Wat, Bayon and Bataey Srei as well as many other replica religious artifacts. The mini temples he sculpted were to perfect scale and were truly amazing. His grandson was there making wax moulds for a Buddha head and
Leanne and landmines.
she's reading one of the tear-jerker true life accounts. his Grandaughter was watching, whilst his daughter or daughter-in-law showed us to a balcony where we could see down onto the sculpture, she kept saying "Like helicoptor, same, same.". Apparently not many tourists visit it, most come to Siem Reap just to see Angkor Wat.
Crocodile Farm: Where they had over 1000 crocs' ranging from eggs in the ground to being 50 or 60 years old. They even had a 'handicaped' section with crocodiles that had been born without tails. This was where Matt found out Leanne had a dark-side.
Leanne:
I like watching the crocodiles fight, it's funny.
next she'll be watching bare-knuckle fighting.
It was a good day, and the tuk-tuk driver for $15 was well worth it, not only was he a good laugh (a bit too pro-america though) he was a good intepreter and had great local knowledge. I suspect though that part of his incentive was to get us to buy the bus ticket through him, but he was still a really great guy.
Later had mexican for dinner and went back. We only meant to have a quick drink at the hotel but it went on a bit longer than
Landmine museum Fashion Designer
This little girl's Dad was killed by a mine. Then her mum abandoned her, so she begged. Then she was maimed by a landmine. She heard about the museum and joined. Now she makes and sells all the clothing there, including the 2 T-shirts we bought. She wants to be a Tailor when she grows up. anticipated. We were talking to the family that ran the hotel and...
Leanne taught the 11 year old girl (Moy Jayne) how to play O's and X's and then snap (although she was more interested in the pictures on the Hello Kitty cards themselves.)
Matt talked to the guy that had been our driver today, didn't realise he lived at our hotel. His father works in the United States Peace Corps. and he went with him to the Phillipines as a kid, he dislikes the current Cambodian Government and his corruption. He also explained all about Nod Nol, Pol Pot, China and USA, including the stuff we never hear about back home. After that, while Leanne was still played cards with Moy, Matt was taught how to count to 100 in Khmer and how to write 'Matt' and 'Leanne'' in Khmer by the 16 year old lad (Moy's brother).
Luckily draft beer is only 50 US cents a glass here.
Sat 24th: Nothing day. We got up an ordered breakfast, however. It started as an ordinary breakfast on an ordinary day... and then, due to a communicative error, ok. Starting from the beginning, we ordered 2
Mini Angkor Wat
Leanne stood like a giant. cups of Tea. whilst drinking them we decided we wanted 2 English breakfasts. The English breakfast comes with Tea, so Matt tried to explain that we didn't need the additional tea that comes with the breakfast. So far, so good ?
As the temperature started to rise, and the baked beans that were served cold began to get warm we both began sweating, it literally dripped off our chins, arms, everywhere. Then for no apparent reason we were suddenly given 2 big mugs of coffee (Khmer coffee is very rich, strong and sweet) and an additional pot of tea. You get 4 or 5 good cups out of one pot. At the time we decided to drink them because we didn't want to appear rude, although both of us were dreaming of Fanta, Ice, McDonalds milkshake anything cold. The caffiene and heat of it all gave us the giggles which in turn made us sweat more.
After that we just went and did souvinir shopping and bought the bus ticket for our 10 hour journey to Bangkok tomorrow.
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