Cambodia: Circus, Siem Reap, Rats, Kampong Phluk

After our four days in Thailand, we flew about five hours to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  I felt that Cambodia today is a country built on a history of suffering and trying to recover.  One of our activities that we liked so much we did it twice was to watch the acrobatic circus Phare.  The performers are graduates and students of a school that was originally founded for returning refugees from the Khmer Rouge and has since progressed to training poor, socially troubled and deprived youngsters in the area according to their promotional materials.  Their stated goal is providing the acrobats a place to hone their craft while earning a decent wage to lift them out of poverty.

I thought it was interesting how short they all were - our kids were taller than all of them.  Their diminutive stature is beneficial when doing their flips and tricks.

We were all very impressed with their skilled performances.

They were so strong to be able to hold these positions, to say nothing for their sense of balance and fearless approach to be doing this without any nets.

 

The high flying flips done cheerleader style were impressive and a crowd favorite.  Their performance told a story - the first night was the story of the founding of the school and the art teacher who mentored the youth.  The second night was titled Influence and included fun puppetry to go with the dancing and acrobatics to tell stories about competition and collaboration.  But at least Derek didn't really understand there were stories being told - it was more interesting to just watch the action.

 The smiles on the kids' faces are an indication we enjoyed the show.

We made heavy use of tuk-tuks - here in Cambodia, scooters attached to or pulling a trailer with benches for passengers to sit on.  Tuk-tuks seemed to be how the majority of people who didn't have their own scooters or rarely cars got around.  Tanja had researched and downloaded an Uber style app for reserving rides, and whenever we needed to get around, she scheduled a tuk-tuk, and we knew right away what the fare would be.  It was much easier than hailing a ride and then haggling over prices.  We usually needed an extra large tuk-tuk to seat all five of us.  You can see our driver in front of Lydia and me.

Then I took a picture of Tanja with Karina and Derek out the back of the tuk-tuk.

Our hotel had a pet dog that roamed freely around the property along with her puppy.  Our kids halfway adopted the dogs every morning at breakfast and when we would swim in the hotel pool.

Karina spent an hour or two on the huge porch chair reading.

We wandered through a downpour of a rainstorm through Siem Reap's night market.  The kids were excited to find an Italian/Mexican restaurant in the market with enough familiar food to eat (and it was fairly tasty).

In another example of Cambodian suffering, we learned about Apopo, an organization that is helping to clear landmines from mine fields using dogs and African giant pouched rats.  The animals are trained to sniff out explosives and mark them so they can be deactivated or neutralized.  The rats were particularly well suited to this work with a keen sense of smell and a small body that is too light to set off landmines designed for people or vehicles.  A trained rat is able to clear an area of around 200 square meters in about 30 minutes; a human with a metal detector would take several days to do the same.

Cambodia has the highest ratio of landmine amputees per capita in the world and is estimated to have more than 1,000 km² of land surface still contaminated by landmines.  We got a demonstration of one of these affectionately and appropriately dubbed Hero Rats as two handlers slowly moved across a field with the rat running back and forth tethered to a horizontal pole sniffing for explosives and then getting a reward when it found the inert explosive that was planted for the demonstration.  It was very interesting to learn and heartbreaking to think about the suffering here.  Cambodian children are taught about the dangers of landmines and wandering around in uncleared fields or forests the same way our children learn about seemingly more mundane dangers when doing fire safety lessons in school.  After this experience, we had to reassure Derek and Lydia that the sidewalks and roads that they were walking on in Cambodia were safe as they had long ago been cleared of landmines.

We then got to hold these Hero Rats.  They were actually kind of cute.

We also took a trip to see Kampong Phluk, a so-called floating village of Cambodia.  The village sits along Tonlé Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.  The houses in Kampong Phluk (which means Harbor of the Tusks) sit on large stilts to keep them dry during the rainy season when the lake can get as deep as 30-46 feet (9-14 m) vs. the dry season when the lake is only around 3-6 feet deep (1-2 m).  We were there during the dry season, so the houses were sitting high above the ground as our boat tour drove past them.

We went past a mangrove forest.

We stopped at a tourist attraction with crocodiles in a pen.

Eventually we got out on the lake where the locals make their living fishing and pulling in shrimp.  I noted how muddy and brown the water was as I guess all the rivers that empty into the lake were bringing in all the sediment.

After a relaxing time sitting in the lake, we turned around and headed back.  Derek had to lean over to put his hand in the water.

Some of the houses we saw on stilts.  Cambodia is a poor country and I wondered how these residents felt watching comparatively rich tourists boating through what amounts to their backyard just to see how they lived.

Our small boat for the trip was very basic but did the job.