Today saw us leave Phnom Penh behind and head out towards Kampong Thom. The guide tells us that today we will; Gaze out at the lovely Cambodian countryside as you travel north and see traditional rural scenes of farmers driving oxen through paddy fields. Along the way discover a local silk farm and see traditional methods of weaving. Try the fresh fruit from local market sellers, or brave the local delicacy – fried spiders. Explore the ancient ruins of Sambour Prei Kuk, dating back to pre-Angkorian times.
The bus ride was good, Nara was telling us about Cambodian culture as we travelled as well as regaling us with jokes and stories. As with any tour the guide can make or break the journey, Nara and Adam are definitely in the make class.
The roads vary from bad to worse, with the occasional good thrown in. Traffic is chaos, there seems though to be a civility that doesn’t exist at home. For all the various vehicles and speeds we have yet to see any road rage at all, everyone just gets on with their own thing at their own pace. The Chinese Cow is a versatile farm machine it then doubles as the family car, a truck or any other motorised transport you can imagine.
We stopped at a local roadside market where we sampled such delicacies as fried spider, toasted crickets and other local delights, just couldn’t go the water bugs though. The kids here attach themselves to you as you hop off the bus, all trying to sell you bags of fruit or scarves. Everything is a $1US, the local currency is hardly used, youdefinitely don’t try to take it home with you as no one outside Cambodia will take it, you can’t even exchange it.
From here we headed up the road a few hours to a silk farm run by by an American expat. He imports the raw silk as if can’t be grown locally due to lack of water and then uses locals to clean and process it before weaving it into beautiful scarves. He pays the girls well above the local rates to ensure they do a good job, they get a range of benefits as well so they in turn make sure they look after him. The process is quite amazing.
After this we headed to the first of our temples, these deserve a post all of their own, I’ll add this tonight when I can get images to upload as well.