Cambodian Countryside

Like I mentioned last time, we went to Siem Reap primarily to see Angkor Wat, but getting into the countryside outside of town ended up being my favorite part of our time in the area.  A small tour company called Beyond Unique Escapes offers tours in rural areas near Siem Reap (and in other parts of the country), and we ended up doing two of their tours.  They pride themselves on showing the “real” Cambodia, and, to their credit, we were the only people on both tours and never saw another foreigner during either one.  We definitely got to see places we never would have seen on our own, and got a small taste of what a Cambodian village is like.

Our first outing into the countryside was on a day-long village tour, called A Day in the Life.  Though we only drove about twenty minutes out of Siem Reap, the area felt very rural and like it was worlds away from town.  Suddenly, the roads were dirt, the houses were bamboo, and electric wires were non-existent.  And the scenery was gorgeous, wide-open spaces and very green, with palm trees everywhere.  After stopping to greet the village chief, we set off on an ox-cart ride, which was really fun and allowed us to see houses and fields way off the main path through the village.  We spent the rest of the morning at a family’s house in the village, learning about their daily activities.  First, they taught us how to thatch, and we wove together dried leaves to be used for roofs or walls of the houses.  Thatching was actually easier than I thought it would be, and it was a lot of fun.  Then, we prepared lunch, which took quite awhile.  We started by mixing together some spices and vegetables, but, instead of stirring them together in a bowl, we chopped everything on a cutting board until it was all ground together.  Then we added prahoc, a salty paste made of fermented whole fish (bones, fins, and everything) – prahoc is unique to Cambodia, and probably not something that needs to be exported!  Lastly, we added red ants – yes, ants, a whole pile of them with their legs all tangled together – to the paste.  The ants were alive when we added them, but most got chopped up while mixing them into the paste.  Cambodians eat this fish/ant paste either raw or cooked, and we cooked a portion of it in a banana leaf over charcoal.  Once the cooking was done, we had lunch with the family, eating the paste (full disclosure: I didn’t actually have any, more out of repulsion by the fish paste than the ants) along with rice, chicken, and mango.

After leaving the family’s house, we visited a local monastery, which had beautiful buildings and dozens of small shrines holding the ashes of deceased Buddhists.  We learned a lot about Cambodian Buddhism during the visit.  One of the things I found particularly interesting – while a small number of people become monks for their entire lives, much like Catholic priests in the U.S., most Cambodians stay at a monastery for a week or so as young adults to experience living as a monk.  We ended our time in the village by visiting a primary school nearby.  Most students in rural Cambodia go to school six days a week, for either the morning session (7-11am) or the afternoon session (1-4pm).  Students try to get into the morning session if possible, because everyone knows the afternoon sessions are not as good, since most teachers don’t return from their lunch break on time.  We arrived at the school around 2:00pm, at which point there were no teachers around, and all the children were playing outside.  Seeing this obviously raised the question of how the government or school administration could better motivate teachers to show up on time – but that’s a big question for another time.

The following morning, we set out early on a sunrise bike tour, which offered not only beautiful views but also another chance to see village life.  We left town on our bikes at about 5:00am, and it felt very rural again within about half an hour of riding.  Just outside of town, we stopped to watch the sun come up over a rice field, which was beautiful.  We then climbed to the top of a small hill, considered by Cambodian Buddhists to be sacred, which offered great views of the village below and the lush countryside.  This stop also gave us an opportunity to talk more to our guide, and he told us more about Cambodia’s history and societal norms.  He talked a lot about marriage in Cambodia, and said that arranged marriage exists but is becoming less prevalent, and that dowries are always paid to the woman’s family.  I also found it interesting that, after the wedding, the new groom typically leaves his family and moves in with the bride and her family.

Next, we biked over to a monastery, similar to the one we had visited the previous day, where we met some monks and nuns, who gave us delicious dried mango and told us about life in the monastery.  One of the nuns said she moved to the monastery when she started getting older, as there are no nursing homes in Cambodia, to become a nun and focus on finding enlightenment.  Our last stop on the ride was at a local market, where our guide treated us to a typical Cambodian breakfast of rice pudding, which was pretty good.  It was like a clear porridge with rice and pieces of chicken, as well as chunks of what I thought was tofu covered in something but turned out to be congealed cow blood mixed with an unknown solid.  It was fine as long as you didn’t think too much about what it was.  Regardless, we were pleasantly shocked that, as the only foreigners around, we were able to look around in the market and sit down to eat at a table full of Cambodians without anyone hassling us at all.