Siem Reap - Day One (Cont)

The Floating Village of Chong Khneas

Day one stop number two was the floating village. It is a village that lives in the middle of a lake on house boats. To get to it, you have to take about a thirty minute boat ride to get to the middle of the lake. But it was definately a site to see.


We went to Siem Reap with two other people from the Phnom Penh church, Gerlinda Lucas and Will Goodwin. The guy in the very back was our tuk-tuk driver extraordinaire Phirun.

The village is made up of a couple hundred house boats. They also have a couple of restaurants, stores, gas station, basketball court, a clinic and a school. There are several hundred people that live in the floating village.

 

We ate at one of the restaurants that also had a crocodile farm, fish farm and some kids with snakes.

 

The guy on the right looks very hungry!!

 

This was the BIG DADDY of the gators!

 

Tod let them put one of the snakes around his neck, but Michelle wasn't going near them.

Look at that smile.

That's the sign of insanity...someone puts a snake on you and you smile.

 

That evening, we went to a photo gallery exhibit that several Ex-Pats were holding of life around Cambodia. It was very impactful to see some of the the horrendous mistreatments that the Cambodian people are suffering. Many are taken out of their homes, put in trucks and dumped into a field and told to live their because the property their home was on is needed to build somthing commercial.

Here we are with one of the Photo Journalist, David Belluz who was displaying his work.

 

To finish our night, we went downtown Siem Reap for dinner and watched a live band.

 

The best part was they had generators so had electricity and internet so everyone was able to update their facebook pages and check their e-mail. How did we survive without technology???



Siem Reap - Day One

The Silk Farm Tour

We spent three days in Siem Reap this past weekend. We saw a lot during that time, met some wonderful people, made some new friends and had an overall great time. The unfortunate thing for the town was a truck hit several electric poles on Thursday pulling down 20 poles total, so the town was out of power for over 5 days. This meant only people who had generators had any power or electricity. Thankfully our guesthouse, the Traveler's Inn (www.siemreaptravelersinn.com) had a generator so we had running water and ceiling fans to sleep at night. The hosts are members of the Siem Reap church and we felt very welcome there. So on to our sightseeing. We are going to break these into a couple of blogs so we can show more pictures.

Our first day, we went to a Silk Farm. It was amazing. The silk farm is located about 20 minutes from down town Siem Reap. It was put into a rural area so they could have plenty of space for the mulberry trees that the worms eat from. It also created over 1000 jobs for those people living on the outskirts of Siem Reap. The free tour they have is very informative and fascinating.

 

When we got there, they walked us through the entire process of how they cultivate the worms and gather the silk thread from their cocoons.

These are moths that have mated (some were still in the process) and are now laying eggs.

 

 

 

 

They have them on papers so that they can see the eggs as they hatch. 

 





 

Here is a picture of some of the worms right before they start their cocoon process. When they turn yellow that means they are ready to cocoon.

 

And then they cocoon.

 

They then spin the silk separating the raw and fine silks. The raw silk comes from the outer layers of the cocoon while the finer silk comes from the inner layers. They gather it by putting the cocoons into water and pulling the silk that way.

 

They then dye the silks using various natural elements (leaves, bark, berries, etc) to make the dyes. That is why unless you get the silk from the same batch you won't be able to match the color because it is not an exact science.

 They then spin the silks onto spools and use the silks to hand weave fabrics out of them.

 

Then they use the fabrics to create beautiful clothing. Like these traditional wedding clothes. The entire process was fascinating and we enjoyed it very much.