We visited the Vietnamese Floating Village in Siem Reap. These Vietnamese are refuges without land or identity in Cambodia . At the shore of the lake, there were many boats. Each boat had a captain and a kid. These kids are tiny, and yet they had to carry a huge boat paddle to start up the boat! The water in the lake was mud yellow, and had a toilet/ammonia smell to it. Xing said the people living on the floating village uses this water for all purposes, including cooking, drinking, peeing and pooing! How do they drink this water? They put the water in a container and leave it for a few days so the sediments would settle, and they drink the water on top! I also saw the floating petrol station, church, and several houses in construction. Suddenly, there was the sound of engine roaring, and several small boats started closing in on us! Each boat had a kid with a snake hanging on his/her neck. The kids jumped onto our boat to because they wanted us to give them tips! As soon as we give them the tips, they hopped back onto their boats. Then we saw a boy who was trying to catch some smelly fish from the lake. Xing says these people catch the smelly fish and use salt to marinate the fish and leave it for more than 6 months, until they become very smelly, sometimes until when they grow bugs, and then they cook it. Apparently the bad smell becomes a good smell after it’s cooked!! Then we saw some kids floating in a bath tub: apparently we need to give them a tip if we want to take a photo with them. Then we went on a floating souvenir shop and saw some lazy crocodiles. Then we returned onto the boat and saw a floating school, basketball court, and somebody cooking at the back of their floating house.
At noon, we went to a souvenir shop where they fed us coconuts and showed us jewelries. The shop had wallets made of crocodile skin. We had smelly fish as one of our dishes, and I must admit it wasn’t smelly!
Then we visited the Angkor school of arts and saw some silk paintings, sculptures, jewelry boxes etc. Then we went to Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. This was where the scene of Lara Croft parachuting was shot. At the bottom of the hill, there are black elephants for people to ride on. I bursted out laughing when I got to the top of the hill, because the monument was full of people, like a market! One has to climb a very steep slope to get on top of the monument. By the time we got down from the hill, the sky had turned dark. There was a bunch of children selling silk scarves. Each of them had a beautiful scarf in hand. My mom bought ten from one of them, and snatched the most beautiful scarf from the child’s hand. When we got back on the tour bus, we saw that eight out of ten scarves were different from the beautiful scarf! They were plain and not made of silk. These people are actually sly!
We ate buffet for dinner and watched Cambodian dancing, which looked similar to Thai dancing. Xing kindly bought a rabbit birthday cake for me. After that, I returned to the hotel and had a pleasant sleep.
留言列表
