Cambodia - Siem Reap 2016 Blog #1

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Hello everyone and Happy New Year! This winter found us on another G adventure in Asia, a 2 week tour of Cambodia and Laos.

We started our adventure in Bangkok where we arrived the day before and spent some time exploring China Town. We have been to Bangkok several times but had yet to experience China Town. Warren continues his adventurous spirit with the locals at a street kitchen. He quite enjoyed the liver, kidney and lord knows what else that made up the innards soup he had for lunch! It is very popular with the local people who are lined up steady to get a bowl of the delicious concoctio.

As usual we have an interesting group of people on our tour, various ages and personalities. We always enjoy visiting and learning about the different countries they are from. We have people from the U.K., Holland, Switzerland, The States and Germany. We are the only Canadians this time.

Our tour guide Jack is great! A local Cambodian he is lots of fun and very knowledgable about the country. He originally comes from a very poor family but was kind of rescued by an English lady who he calls his godmother who paid for his university so he has a B.A. and has worked for G Adventures for 6 years.

We have learned many interesting things about the people from Jack which really helps you appreciate and understand the country. The population is 15 million of which 80% live in the rural areas. The farmers grow mostly rice and you can see the farms and small villages as you travel from place to place. Many of the farm homes are built on stilts which I am assuming results from the rainy season. Most of the farmers can only grow one crop of rice per year as irrigation is too expensive. The government is slowly starting to develop irrigation but is very slow.

Most rural families have large families so they have lots of help on the farm and children to care for aging parents. Unfortunately some kids don't get to school because they are needed to work on the farm as most of the work is done by hand. Elementary education is free but parents have to pay for uniforms, book and supplies. As well teachers are paid very low wages so many families bribe the teachers to teach their children! How sad. Urban families have fewer children as it is expensive to have a large family in the city. Ten percent of the population is illiterate due to the fact schools were closed during the war.

Many Cambodians speak English especially in the tourist areas. Tourism is the #1 resource followed by textiles, clothing manufacturing and agriculture such as rice, rubber and pepper. Unemployment is prevalent and the average wage per capita is $2.00 a day. 50% of the population is under the age of 20 which is due to the 3 million that were killed during the civil war during the 70's.

The highlight of our first days in Cambodia was the city of Siem Reap and meeting up with our son Chad and his girlfriend Rachel. Rachel lives in Cambodia a few months of the year overseeing the manufacturing of her clothing line in Phenom Penh. (More about her business in a later blog.) Chad was visiting her for 3 weeks so they travelled to Siem Reap to meet us. It was great to have someone take us around to some fantastic Cambodian restaurants and to try the local cuisine. And to top it off she speaks fluent Cambodian and was able to speak to the locals and negotiate the price of a tuk tuk!

As many of you might know the famous Ankor Wat is located just outside Siem Reap so of course we toured it one morning. Rather than go with our group group we went along with Rachel and Chad which was great as Rachel was quite knowledgable about the impressive temple and other surrounding ones. Anchor Wat was built in the 1100's and I believe is the biggest temple of its kind. Honestly it must be at least 12 blocks square, absolutely huge, temple within temple within temple!! Apparently there are hundreds of temples throughout Cambodia. We visited two others. Our tuk tuk driver took us around from temple to temple. It is incredible in that the people transported the rock about 30 Kim's to the temple building sites. They must have used on carts. It is believed it took approximately 30 years to complete the main temple of Ankor Wat. The most outstanding and impressive feature of the ruins is the intricate rock carvings on almost every section of the structure. We got an early 7 a.m. start to beat the heat and by noon we had walked through most of the enormous temples.

After a tasty local Cambodian lunch including grilled tarantula for Warren we cooled off in the hotel pool and then had a relaxing massage. In the evening Rachel took us to a Cambodian inspired 5 course starting restaurant. We enjoyed marinated seafood salad, slow cooked beef cheek, poached Sanday fish, eggplant, green mango salad, Chinese celery and coconut baguette with banana mousse. It was delicious! After that we went to an acrobatic circus. It was fantastic!!

Siem Reap is a middle sized city of 300,000. The main focus is Ankor Wat so it is a touristy city with lots of beautiful 5 star hotels. There is a fun city centre called Pub Street with narrow streets lined with shops, restaurants and massage parlours. A pretty fun place. They have lovely lighting along the river and bridges so makes it kind of magical.

It was awesome to have Rachel show us around and suggest sites and restaurants, just like having a private tour guide! The next morning we flew to Phenom Penh which is Rachel's home base. Next blog will be from there. Bye for now. Thanks for reading!

Mallory and Warren

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Comments

[Linda and Maurice]

We've been to Siem Reap and were also impressed with the intricate stone work on the huge main temple. Nice to have your own tour guide and visit with your son, Chad. Say hi to him for me. (Linda)