Fields of LOTUS!

Cycling is hot work in this country - so I set out at 6.30am to see where the river went!  Houses of various shapes and sizes (from brick built 3 floors, to corrugated iron shacks or bamboo homes) line the road and it was only after about 45 minutes that I could see the surrounding countryside.  Up a sandy track, a brief meeting with 3 buffalos and then..... the LOTUS fields!

I went back to the main road and continued towards the south and arrived at Phnom Krom (phnom means: hill) where I climbed up the steps to get a great view. In the rainy season, most of this area is flooded and really green I've been told.  (I thought it looked pretty green now!)  By this time I was really hungry (no breakfast) so I bought a wicked chilli flavoured sandwich from the market!

Looks pretty green to me now!

Chilli and pork and various vegetable sandwich

On the way back, the Lotus Handicraft centre was open and I watched as the women took the filaments from the stems and created thread which is then woven to make (very expensive) material.

Weaving the lotus threads

These kids see you coming!  

Flock of "Lesser Adjunct Storks" flew in

Fish drying at the side of the road (very smelly)!

Il fait très chaud pour faire du vélo, donc je suis partie à 6H30 pour voir le paysage au bord de la rivière.  Des maisons de toutes sortes (faites en brique, en tole ondulé, en bamboo) bordent la route et j'ai du pédaler 45 minutes avant de voir la campagne.  J'ai pris un petit chemin ensablé, rencontré 2 buffles et puis... les champs de LOTUS!  

J'ai repris la route vers le sud et je suis arrivée à Phnom Krom (phnom veut dire: colline) où je suis montée les marches pour la belle vue.  On m'a dit qu'en saison de pluie, la plupart de cette region est inondée donc très verte. Moi, je trouvais c'était déjà assez vert!  Comme je n'avais pas manger avant de partir, j'avais très faim donc j'ai acheté un sandwich avec chilli sauce au marché!

Au retour, la centre d'artisanat des lotus était ouverte et j'ai pu observer les femmes prendre les filaments des tiges de lotus et créer les fils pour fabriquer (tisser) un tissu très chèr.

Escaping the crowds - échapper à la foule!

In English below!

Aujourd'hui je suis partie pour un tour avec guide pour "échapper à la foule" - bonne idée car en semaine la ville est bruyante et bondée de monde.

D'abord un petit arret au bord de la route pour "sticky rice" - traduit comme "riz qui colle" qui est cuit sur un barbecue dans un bout de bamboo avec quelques morceaux de mangue et quelques lentilles de ??? et un peu de sucre.  Délicieux!

Sticky rice cooked in a bit of bamboo on a barbecue

Premier temple: Bakong Temple, construit à la fin du 9ème siècle, avec ses 2 crématorians, un pour les hommes et l'autre pour les femmes.

2 cremetorians

Bakong Temple

Le prochain temple était vraiment incroyable, il a éte repris par la jungle et étranglé par les racines des arbres!  Un endroit magique, pas possible de le restorer, mais avec un vrai sentiment d'age!  (presque mille ans!)

Beng Mealea - work in progress!

Beng Mealea

Beng Mealea

Beng Mealea

some roots are more organised!

2 beautiful children to add to the art of nature

Le troisième temple était  vraiment le bijou de la journée: Banteay Srei - qui veut dire en Khmer "citadelle des femmes" car ils croient que les reliefs sont tellement détaillés que seulement les femmes auraient pu les faire!

Banteay Srei

OK so the hat is ugly but it was 36°c!

Banteay Srei monkeys

This "Shiva" is 8cm high!!

OK, so here is the ENglish version, even though no one complained!  Perhaps no one is reading it!  I went on a guided tour called "escaping the crowds" which seemed a great idea as during the week the town is really busy and noisy and I needed to get away from it all!
First stop was a stall on the side of the road selling "sticky rice" which is a mixture of rice, mangoes and some sort of lentil cooked in a tube of bamboo on a barbecue.... it's really yummy!
First temple stop was Bakong Temple built at the end of the 9th Century with 2 crematorians, one for the men and one for the women.
The second temple was really incredible.  Beng Mealea temple has been completely taken over by the jungle and the tree roots that are gradually strangling the stones!

Quite an amazingly magical place, impossible to restore but it had a real feeling of age (!) almost a thousand years old!
The third temple  was really the "jewel of Khmer art" of the afternoon.  Banteay Srei which means in Khmer "Citadel of women" as they believed that the reliefs were so detailed that only women could have carved them!

Cambodian cooking class

I would thoroughly recommend this: www.beyonduniqueescapes.com !  I was picked up from my guesthouse by a tuk-tuk driver and driven 20 minutes out of town to a hotel. The cook then took us to a local house where we compared kitchens (!) and saw many vegetables and herbs growing in their garden.

Grinding soaked rice with turmeric

Khmer kitchen

Pumping water from their well (filter on right)

Pineapple

Typical Khmer house in a village

The cooking class was great!  We prepared the special Kroeung paste by chopping then grinding the ingredients in a mortar - then made the Fisk Amok dish with coconut milk.  Then we made a dessert with glutinous rice flour (sticky rice flour   balls) and palm sugar candy in it, and finally we made the Green Mango Khmer salad.

Fish Amok 

lovely girls!

Private dining room!

Prek Toal Floating Village and Bird Sanctuary

Another really interesting weekend.  On Saturday I went to the Khmer Ceramic Centre and had a go at turning a small pot on a foot-driven wheel!  Really hard work, so then I made a little elephant!

Foot driven wheel

Should have thought to cut my nails first!

Then I cycled back to town and visited the Angkor Museum - which was a little expensive at 12$ + 3$ for the audio headset BUT it was really good and I wished I'd been there before visiting the temples - oh well, I'll just have to have another trip to Angkor Wat to see what I missed the first time.

Sunday was a long day!  Picked up at 6am and driven for 45mins in a minibus to a man-made canal where we picked up a boat and were taken to the Prek Toal floating village.  About 5000 people live in this village and there are about 170 villages (smaller) on Tonle Sap lake!  We were then transferred to a smaller boat and continued along the winding waterways to the Bird Sanctuary to see all the pelicans, egrets, oriental darters, painted storks, cormorants....  so many and very impressive.  

Cormorants perched

Pelicans and egrets

No fishing or bird hunting is allowed here, so the birds are really thriving

Back to the village for lunch on a little floating restaurant (set up by OSMOSE - see website : http://osmosetonlesap.net/www/english/ecovisites.php) then into little boats paddled along by a few women and kids to visit their village!  I was very ill-at-ease to be taking photos of their houses and life-style as I felt like an intruder but the guide assured me that they didn't mind and were now getting used to making money from the tourists - nonetheless, as much as I love taking photos, this wasn't easy and I didn't feel good about it.

I wonder if she can swim yet?

All the little children waved at us!

This little girl even blew us a kiss.

View from the observation tower on the Environment building (which isn't floating!)

Little girl helping her mum by paddling at the rear.

Small fish paste industry, the women were cutting off the fish heads.

You learn to walk and then swim!  Little boy holding his little brother.

Fish traps.

Great day out.  We got back to the minibus by about 4pm and enjoyed the air conditioning for an hour as it had been really hot out on the water.  Once away from the lake flood zone, the coconut trees and paddy fields of rice once again dominate the horizon and we came across a farmer herding his ducks!

Lotus flowers, rice fields, coconuts!

Herding ducks.