Cambodia: Kampong Pkluk Floating Village

After our long hot bike ride, our tour guide, Kamsan, picked us up directly in front of the Off Roads building.  We took a super long drive to the Kampong Pkluk Floating village.  It took a little less then 2 hours to get to the village.  He drove directly where the little boats are and we were able to get directly out of the car and onto a longboat.  I was so grateful because Little Monster had fallen asleep and I didn't have to carry him very far.  M&M was exhausted from the bike ride and was feeling little carsick, so she was grateful she didn't have to walk far also.  Kamsan really was an amazing tour guide.  He was always going above and beyond for us.  

When we first got on our longboat, I was a bit nervous.  The boat was very old and ropes were all over the inside.  The steering contraption had me in awe as I was able to see ropes tied to the steering wheel, go along both sides on the inside of the boat, then attach to the rudder.  As the driver turned right, the rope would pull and in turn pull the rudder left, causing the boat to turn right.  I suppose this is how all boats work, but not so elementary.  It was neat to see something so simple in action.

We had a little ways to go before we got to the floating village, so we learned a little history on the way.  We learned that the king ordered the people to move to this village to provide the fish and other river food.  We also learned that it wasn't until recently that the village got electricity. This particular village still holds its authenticity as a floating village.  The tourists are asked not to stop but to quietly pass through and observe only.

As we rode on the water through the village, we were able to behold these spectacular stilt homes with our own eyes.  It was something else to see an entire village up on these tall thin stilts.  Old rickety boats rested between the homes.  

The village has a church, a school, a courthouse and is home to about 3,000 residents.  There were babies, and children just right on the edge of a walkway, or even in boats and hammocks.  The elementary kids would jump in boats and drive themselves to the school.  The inner mom in me was just cringing at the repeated thought of a child falling and drowning.

We went all the way through the village and found ourselves on the Tonlé Sap Lake.  About this point on the longboat, Kevin and M&M started to get super motion sick, so we turned around and made our way back through the village. Kevin and M&M put their heads down, while the rest of us were able to take one last look at the enchanted village.

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We passed through mangrove trees and got out of the clear blue water, to the mucky brown water of the channel.  We passed by all the longboats tying to get a hired job from all the tourists. And made our way back to the dock.  It was another fun day in Cambodia, seeing things our children will never see in the United States.  Its also a good opportunity to be ever more grateful for all our blessings.

Cambodia: Country-side Bicycle Tour

Hello there, it's Big Sis and I am going to tell you all about our experience in the Country-Side Bicycle Tour. We took a taxi to the building that we would rent our bikes from, but our taxi driver misunderstood us and dropped us off in a weird and creepy alley. We had no idea where we were so we just wondered a little and eventually found the bike tour shop. 

Since we knew that Cambodia was so poor, mom did her research and found a company that takes all the money for the tour and gives it to a local school.  The bike company was called Off Track Tours.  We got our bikes and we drove off to the starting point of the trail with our tour guide. We each got our own bikes and Monster was on the back of Dad's bike.

The road was a bright brown, almost like an orange, and it was often loose dirt in some places. When we would hit the loose dirt, our bike tires would slide all over the place.  I think all of us slipped at least 2-3 times on our bike on these slipper loose dirt places.  It was super hot that day and there wasn't that much shade. After getting everyone situated, we set off to the first portion of our tour. 

The first part of our tour was seeing a little elementary school. It was cool seeing how schooling works in foreign countries. This school was the school that our tour money was going to help.  A few kids were playing in the yard.  Some of the kids didn't have shoes and they didn't have any play equipment.  It sure made me thankful for what I have.  After seeing the school, we rode off to go see some farming lands. We got to see lots of animals, crops, and farmers. 

We really liked to see all the animals. We took a quick break and then set off again to see the real country-side of Cambodia. 

We weaved in and out of large alleys, long roads, and lots of houses. We stopped in the shade of a tree for a while because our tour guide left his pack at the farmers trail, so we just hung out and cooled down until our guide came back, after that, we made our last stop. 

After about 15 minutes of riding again we reached our last stop, the mushroom farm. We had our bikes turned in and we had a tour of a simple families business of mushroom growing. It was a very interesting process and we got to see all the mushrooms growing. It was really gross but really cool at the same time. 

We saw a couple clumps of mushrooms that had about 10-20 little mushrooms popping out.

After learning and see all the mushrooms and the process, we went back to the hotel to enjoy some time cooling off in the pool. It was very interesting and very cool seeing the way of life in the country-side of Cambodia. 

Cambodia: Prean Khan & Neak Pean

Prean Khan was the most deceiving temple we visited.  I wish we had more time because this was such a super neat temple.  When we first arrived at the temple, we had to walk a little ways on a dirt path to get to the actual temple.  We didn't have a tour guide with us today, and had just taken a tuk tuk around for the day.  I didn't know anything about this temple before we arrived, so we were expecting this to be a quick look around and return to the tuk tuk.

We arrived at the front of the temple to see a small charming detailed temple. There were two huge headless statues guarding the entrance to Prean Khan.  We figured it was such a small temple we would be done seeing the entire thing in about 10 minutes, and told the kids just 10 more minutes.

We entered the temple and started walking straight down the only pathway.  It started out as a high entry way, with about every 10 feet or so a doorway down the same hallway.  After we went through our fourth doorway, we started to wonder how far this hall actually goes and where does it lead to?

We kept walking through doorway after doorway and started to notice that the doorways were getting smaller and smaller as we moved down the hall.  Kevin and I were having to crouch to get through the doors and it even got to a point where Big Sis had to duck to enter the next section of hallway. Despite the kids reminding me it had been 10 minutes, I was determined to see where this never ending hallway lead to.  We finally reached a four-way stop in the hallway with a large Stupa right in the middle.  

We had finally reached the center of the temple.  It took us about a 20-30 minutes to reach this point.  The area opened up all around the stupa and we were able to explore around the center.  While we were there, we stopped at talked to some Cambodia police that were walking around the central section of the temple.  We learned that this temple is referred to as the "Temple of the Father".  It is not referring to a Heavenly Father, but of the King's father. It was built in the 12th century in honor of King Jayavarman VII's father.  We asked about the doorway getting smaller, and they told us it was to force those coming to the center to bow as they entered the sanctuary.

At this point the police were commenting on how beautiful our family was and asked if they could help us take pictures.  Kevin gladly obliged, and we took the next ten minutes having the police move us all around the center of the temple to take pictures of us.  Now, I'm not new to this rodeo, so I knew they would be expecting money after they returned our camera.  Kevin hasn't experiences this before, so when the officer held out his hand, Kevin looked a little lost.  I explained that they were expecting money for their services.  Kevin said he didn't ask for them to take pictures, but they offered and took the camera.  I got some money out and thanked them for their help.  I have learned in my travels that when visiting other countries, especially poor countries, no one does anything just to be nice, they always expect money, even if they say free.  But, we did get some great pictures and they told us a ton of history about the temple.

The carvings and details in the center of the temple were so amazingly detailed and preserved for being so very old.  We learned from the police that the dimensions of the temple were 800 meters by 700 meters.  There were four halls that lead to the center and each hall faces North, South, East and West. The East entrance was the king's entrance. We had entered in the South entrance and had only walked 400 meters, plus the walk from the tuk tuk to the South Entrance. In order to get to the other side, we would have to walk another 400 meters, then 800 meters to get back to our tuk tuk, which would be be more then a mile.  Considering that the kids were starving, and we had to pretty much hurdle and crouch every ten feet, we decided for the sake of the kids, we should just go back down the south hall and make our way back to the tuk tuk.  

As we made our way back down to the South Entrance, we noticed a small archway that lead to a little courtyard.  The buildings were beautiful with some fun windows.  We enjoyed a few minutes walking in the sun and admiring the sculptures.

As we were walking down the dirt pathway to our tuk tuk, we stopped a tour guide and showed him our list of temples in the area.  Our kids were beginning to hit the point of no return, so we knew we only had about one more temple stop that we could squeeze out of them.  I asked the guide if he could pick only one temple on the list, which would he suggest we see.  He said to go to Neak Pean, because it was so beautiful and a very quick visit. We got back in our tuk tuk and requested our last stop at Neak Pean.

To get to the Neak Pean temple, you have to cross over a large marsh.  There is a long walkway that was built over the march to allow tourist to see the temple.  The marsh was one of the largest marshes I have ever seen.  There were a ton of mosquitos and so many people.  I kept Little Monster in the backpack because the narrow pathway was enough for only two people with absolutely no railing.

It was so very very hot.  Little Monster was done. D.O.N.E. and wanted so bad to get out and run.  The only way I was able to keep him content was to bribe him with suckers.  I walked as fast as I could over the walkway, since he was jumping all around in the backpack and vocally complaining quite loudly.

After walking for what seemed like forever, since I was carrying a jumping child on my bike while walking over a narrow walkway, we finally arrived at the temple.  I'm not going to lie, It was a bit of a let down.  I wasn't expecting to see something so small on a tiny island in the middle of a pond.

The sun was beating down in all it's glory, so we took less then a minute to take a picture, then turned around and made our way back over the walkway.  Perhaps if the kids weren't so tired and done, and perhaps if it wasn't so blistering hot, and perhaps if I knew we would walk the plank to arrive at a small temple only to view at a distance, we might have appreciated the beauty of the temple, but we can't live in a world of perhaps.  I could have skipped this temple and been just fine.  The walk to this temple, defiantly pushed the kids over their threshold, but promises of a swim in the hotel pool and an ice cream kept them at bay.