Family Thais: October 2014

Visiting Siem Reap Cambodia was an incredible experience where we explored many temple ruins, boated along the Tonle Sap Lake to a floating village, ventured out into the countryside in search of rice paddies and water buffalo, and tasted exotic foods.

To make visiting a bunch of temples sound exciting to our kids, we often hummed the Indiana Jones theme song and told them to pretend like they were looking for great treasures. They didn’t buy it, though they did explore some new foods.

Remember the scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they sit down to dinner, and they cut into the snake and eels come out? Or when they stir their soup only to see a bunch of eyeballs staring at them?

That was us, but on smaller scale.

We all expanded our pallet a bit on this trip and partook of delicacies such as quail eggs, frogs stuffed with curried pork (sounds fancy), and snake on a skewer (sounds better than snake on a stick). I took a bite of my first frog, which I swore I’d never do. This frog eating phobia goes back to a dream I had as a little girl where my mom made me eat a raw frog. The dream is still quite vivid in my mind. The next morning when I awoke from my dream, the cartoon Frogger was on and the bacon my mom cooked even tasted like the frog I had to eat in my dream. So this dream permanently ruined frogs for me, but fortunately not bacon. Though I caved on the frog eating thing, I will stand firm on leaving snakes where they belong, far away from me! No serpent is ever going to tempt this girl! The rest of my family however took the plunge and ate snakes on a skewer. Carston, who could be a restaurant pizza critic for all Southeast Asia since that’s all he ever orders, happened to love both quail eggs and snakes and couldn’t get enough of either one.

Caving to peer pressure

Gobbling up some snake meat

Unfortunately, this restaurant was closed.

But we got to check out the menu to see what we were missing.

And who doesn't love donuts!

And for those who are watching their weight...

Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, and Angkor Wat

We had a fantastic guide, Mr. Mony, who showed us around these temples. Over time they were neglected and completely buried under a jungle until they were uncovered and restored. Angkor Wat, initially built as a Hindu temple around 1100 over the course of 30 years, but later became a Buddhist one, is considered the largest religious monument in the world. Angkor Wat happens to be one of the 7 Wonders of the World; at least it’s on one of the lists since I think the lists have changed over time.

Exploring Angkor Thom

The girls try to blend in...

And Austin tries to blend in too. Part of that may be to avoid the Cambodian girls and monks that flock to him. He's thinking if I sit here long enough, maybe they won't pinch my cheeks, wriggle my nose, or take my picture.

Monks were fascinated with the boys, but are not allowed to even brush up against females.

Austin's fan club

Now he knows how Justin Bieber feels...(check out this video)

Angkor Ta Prohm, where scenes from Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie were filmed

Exploring Angkor Wat

A view from the top

As our guide explains the history between gods and demons, Henry contemplates how he can take one of these heads as a souvenir, though he wouldn't be the first as you can see from the statue below. Throughout the temples there were many headless statues from theft.

You can see the difference between the original heads and the ones that have been redone (and I'm not talking my head, though now that I'm 40, mine could use some fixing up).

Dancing Girls are all over the temples. This one even sports a see-through skirt. Legend has it that the demons were tempted by these girls, while the gods avoided this pitfall.

But how can you deny this dancing girl?

Hall of Judgement - Though our guide was a wealth of knowledge (after all, he was Hillary Clinton's guide when she visited these temples), it was hard to keep the kids' attention. You'd think that the carving of the person being roasted on the skewer eating too many animals would do it, but not so much.

Beng Mealea (Now this is more like what Indiana Jones would explore!)

These temple ruins were about an 1.5 hours outside of Siem Reap but definitely worth the trek! The kids loved climbing the rocks and hugging the wall of a tunnel while precariously trying to avoid falling in the whole 1 inch of water that ran through it. I was just waiting for a giant boulder to chase us to the end of the tunnel, but we made it safely through by the dim light of our guide’s cell phone.

Here we go!

And here we are safely to the other side...what you don't see is what we went through to get there.

Visiting the Floating Village

The kids were relieved to be done with temples and loved our next adventure visiting a floating village on Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.

On our second day, our tour guide Navin (pictured below) told us that when he was 5 years old (around mid 1970s), his parents and 2 siblings "went away," which I later learned meant they most likely were executed by a Communist group called the Khumer Rouge. I'm now learning that this group felt threatened by anyone who was at all educated or in the working class. There was mass genocide during this time and Navin escaped this fate with his grandmother as they pretended to be poor. A movie The Killing Fields tells of this history and I've recently started reading, Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs of Survivors, which shares experiences of kids who endured the atrocities committed during this time period.

Rules are a little different in Cambodia. In fact, there are none, so anything goes, which is how THIS happened.

Kids drive the boat

While driver takes a smoke break

And Henry does his own rendition of Titanic theme song "My Heart Will Go On"

Floating Village - You can really see the poverty in this village though they have their own school which children attend every day for a half day. Children all over Cambodia use the other half of the day to help their families whether it be fishing or selling items in the market.