Final day of temples, Cambodian kids performance

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I posted anything, I've been so busy for the last week or so! Mum has gone back to NZ, she left last Wednesday. I'm now living at the Siem Reap Hostel, a place much closer to Green Gecko where I'm volunteering. It's very nice - I have A/C and cable TV in my room, there's a swimming pool, TV rooms, day beds and buffet breakfast every day. Mint! I'll be living here until ~14 August when I finish volunteering and head to Vietnam.

Here's an update on the last few days that Mum was here.

Mum and I did a whirlwind - yet comprehensive - tour of the Angkor Wat historical park with good doses of Cambodian countryside thrown in for good measure. Last Sunday night we went to see a traditional Apsara dance performance at a kids orphanage (just around the corner from Green Gecko, it turns out), and since then I've been getting stuck into my volunteer work - more about that in the next post.
We hired a tuk tuk and driver for the day to take us to a few outlying destinations. Banteay Srei is a temple about 30km out of Siem Reap itself (compared to Angkor Wat which is 7km away). This temple is known as the 'jewel in the crown' because of its intricate carvings' also known as the Citadel of Women because they say the carvings are too fine to have been done by a man. It really does live up to its name, the carvings are so beautiful and really well-preserved. It definitely looks different to the Angkor giants, I can't remember the exact historical timeline but it was build during a different period to the big temples. There's a lot of reconstruction going on, they have restored some of the garuda/monkey/bird statues guarding the door (see below) but the doorway carvings are all original.





Just outside the temple we heard some traditional music coming from the forest. There are groups of musicians everywhere, it adds a nice bit of ambience when you're visiting temples and they're actually quite good. This guy was playing a tune on a leaf!!

Next stop was Kbal Spean, 'the river of a thousand lingas' (that's the cultural word for boy-bits). They often used a linga to represent Vishnu and how powerful he was. Typical. Anyway, Kbal Spean is a series of carvings in a riverbed about 2km from the parking lot. It was a very sweaty 2km climb to the site, but totally worth it. Gorgeous waterfalls and lush green forest (including hordes of giant red ants) and best of all, not crowded. Not many people can be bothered coming out this far, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

(turns out it was worth schlepping the tripod all the way from Chiang Mai)

On Sunday night we visited the Cambodian Children's House of Peace, a children's orphanage/shelter that puts on a performance every Sunday. The kids performed traditional Khmer dances for us, after which they invited us to join them on stage and it turned into a freestyle breakdancing session!!! An awesome night, and very impressive to see tweens performing the traditional dances flawlessly. Here's a link to the organisation's website and some photos & video from the performance.

Click on the logo to visit their website

Next post will be about Green Gecko. Stay tuned! And leave a comment!

Love
ML