Cambodia - off topic

I still have some good stories to tell about my trip to Southeast Asia.  If you missed my other travel stories, you can find them by clicking this link to the list of my past blogs. Then scroll to the bottom of the page for the Travel section.

We wanted to go to Cambodia to see the historic and beautiful temples, the most famous being Angkhor Wat, pictured above at sunrise.

Just being in Cambodia was pretty unbelievable for someone my age, who remembers the war images on TV as a kid.  But, Cambodia had so much more to offer than I imagined

The temples were astonishing. I will probably write a blog just about them at some point.  Some were neglected for hundreds of years and trees grew up around and through them.

And, of course, there were signs that brought a smile to my face.

But, I want to tell you about one special place we visited. Look at the map below and find the city called Siem Reap. That's the town nearest all the temples and the silk farm I blogged about a couple weeks ago. You can see there is a really large lake just south of the town.  Our guide took us there one day.

After driving for almost an hour on roads that got smaller and rougher as we went, we then boarded a very loud motor boat to go out to the lake.

Driving down the river towards the lake we saw several groups of kids jumping out of trees into the water to swim.  And, who can blame them, everyday was 90 degrees or more with very high humidity.




But, then an entire village on stilts came into view. They had everything, a school, a town hall, a couple restaurants and even one hostel.  But, mostly there were many families living there.

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Our guide said he would take us out to the lake first and then we could get a better look at this village.

The lake was beautiful and the sky was filled with white puffy clouds.

On the way back to the village we passed a mangrove forrest.

Our guide told us we could take a ride on a flat boat around the village and through this forrest and we did!

We were first taken along a "side street" full of homes.

Where the family car is one of those flat boats.

And kids have tin tub to get around instead of a bike.

No surprise that fishing was the main industry here and mostly fish farming. There were cages of many different styles everywhere in the water.

But the most beautiful and interesting part of the boat ride was being taken through the mangrove trees.

The people who rowed the boats were mostly women.  And when we got into our boat, we heard a baby crying nearby and soon found out it was our driver's baby.  She paddled over to a group of waiting boats, picked up her baby and placed him in between her folded legs.  I can barely sit with my legs folded, much less paddle a boat that way.

She was amazingly strong!! As she pulled us through the water, she juggled her baby from one knee to the other, nursing him when he got fussy.

It was so peaceful and quiet. A nice break from the very, very loud motor boat we took to get here.

What's funny, too, is at first I couldn't believe our bad luck to get the one boat with a crying baby.  But, my husband and I had so much fun making faces to distract the baby and exchanging smiles and laughs with this woman we, otherwise, couldn't communicate with.  I will always remember that boat ride and especially that baby.


Next week, as soon as the Edwardian Dress is released, I'm preparing some blogs to show how I made my pattern, how I sewed the dresses and how to do your own custom variations.


Bye!