Last weekend Kira and I took a trip to Siem Reap for a little vacation. It was amazing!
It all started with a 6-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The bus ride consisted of air conditioning (very important), movies (John Carter, a movie called Mr. Bones which I am going to nominate as one of the worst movies ever made, and Rio), a nice British girl as a seatmate, a lot of horn honking and near misses with motos on the road, and a beautiful countryside. Kira was in another province all week so we met up at the guest house that she found in Siem Reap. Both of us exhausted, we sat under the fan updating each other on the week we spent without each other. After gaining our strength back, we decided to explore the city.
Our first stop was The Artisans of Angkor. This is a really cool place where they train students for three months in different artisan skills: wood carving, silk screen painting, oil painting, silver and metal work, and stone carving. After the initial training students can become a professional in one of the skills areas with six more months of training in that area. When we arrived, a tour guide gave us a visitors' badge and showed us around each of the workshops. We got to see different steps of the process as well as some of the artisans working.
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| This shows the different phases to create this wooden statue. They even add something at the end to make it look old. |
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| Paintings in different phases. |
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| Small stone sculptures in the workshop |
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| Kira trying out her sanding skills. |
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| Stone sculptures. |
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| Wood carving. Beautiful. |
After our tour we found a place to eat dinner. Then we walked to the Night Market. Holy Tourists! There were so many tourists there and the shop sellers are even more pushy than in PP. If you even start to glance at something they have for sale they will bombard you with questions and prices and special deals. We bought a few things, and then decided to get an hour long foot massage for $3. We got some ice cream on the way home, made our plan for the next day, and then off to bed we went.
Tomorrow: Day two in Siem Reap, and more importantly, Day 1 at the temples of Angkor!
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