Cambodia - Siem Reap What You Sow II

If you ever have the chance to go to Cambodia, you must take a day to visit Angkor Wat, one of the most awe inspiring temple complexes in the world. So much so that we were coaxed out of our beautiful beds at 4:30am to see the sun rise over it.

Angkor Wat is amazing. I won't go into the history but what I will tell you is that the Khmer architecture and the spirituality that exudes from every crevice is breathtaking. In addition to Angkor Wat, I also got to visit Angkor Thom and Prasat Bayon and after a full day of temple hopping, I was feeling oddly like Lara Croft! But nothing was about to prepare me for what I was about to see.

I was pretty tired so I wasn't too keen on taking a boat trip to see a floating village, but hell, Cambodia is a once in a lifetime opportunity right? I thought a floating village would be houses on stilts along a river, but I was mistaken. The houses are actually in the water and most aren't even high enough for a person to stand straight up in. The village people are incredibly poor, so much so that they send their children
out in soup pots to paddle around with snakes all over them begging for $1 to take a photo. It was unbelievable. We traveled around the lake (though it looked and felt like a river) in a small boat and watched people bathe and go to the bathroom in the same water. We got off at a store where they were breeding crocodiles to sell to China to make purses. It was all so sad - animals caged in such small confines, the children begging, the old people washing right in front of us. I suppose I've never seen poverty on such a massive scale and it's difficult to understand why anyone would choose to live on the water like they do. I guess that's just it - it's all they really know.