But let me return for a moment to my planned last installment of the Siem Reap experience:
A "Floating" Village: I debated with myself whether to try to visit one of the so-called "Floating Village" -- after reading very mixed reviews. But my conversation with my daughter who had visited here and motivated my trip -- prompted me to try to retrace her and her husband's travels there 6 years ago. To be sure, I was told that there are 4 such "floating" and the one they had visited isn't currently shown as the most popular -- but when my tuk tuk driver explained that the most popular one is farther away and requires a van rather than a tuk tuk, the decision was easy. Going by tuk tuk -- at tuk tuk speeds -- allows a unique experience as I have written about previously in this blog. It turned out to be another amazing experience -- as I was moved by the same happiness of life that was displayed by Cambodian's living out their lives along the way. In addition, I happened to connect with a group of 7 volunteers who added to the fun of the adventure and expanded my knowledge of the volunteer world. More about them at the end of this post.
The "floating" village is actually a community of houses built on stilts accessible only by water -- and while the experience does render a feeling of a tourism invasion of private life, it is also clear that the community has encouraged, and takes advantage, of that exposure for their financial benefit. On balance, I thought it a pretty fair trade-off -- but I can also now better understand the widely disperse ratings. I'll live it to future visitors to make their own assessments -- but for me, and given my connection with the volunteers it was both a fun and interesting adventure. However there should be no doubt that the best part of the adventure was the tuk tuk ride through the country-side coming and going. It is that "tour" that tugged at my heart-strings to see such happiness amongst the impoverished and was another reminder that "things" don't buy happiness.
My daughter and son-in-law had to endure a long, interesting motorcycle experience to get to the launch area of the tour boats (see their blog link) -- but because I was visiting in wet season, we enjoyed a speed boat ride to the staging area of larger, tour boats:
Other tourist stops during my visit to Siem Reap included:
Angkor National Museum - an excellent overview to the temples and the culture/religion that inspired them.
Cambodian Landmine Museum - while the museum was junior grade bulletin board displays, the free audio guide and the happenstance opportunity to watch as local police were being trained to recognize landmines created an interesting hour along our tuk tuk journey.
Volunteers I Met: This is what I wrote to my own kids about the volunteers and their program:
Yesterday I spent few hours with 7 “volunteers” working with this program: https://www.volunteerhq.org/It’s essentially a pay to volunteer program –but they each (from around the world) spoke highly of the program. Seemed to be a mix of privileged kids (parents paying) and adventurous kids (paying themselves as a cheaper way to travel – the ones in this category were traveling for shorter length of time). I bonded up with 20 something Bryan [pictured waving in photo above] when he was trying to fill boats with eight seats and only had 7 participants — and he encouraged me to join them. I did. Later they invited me to dinner with them at a local NGO that trains restaurant staff (not my fav meal but I definitely enjoyed questioning each of them about their plans/program/intents). Seemed like a great ‘gap’ year experience. Oldest in this group was 29 but they said there were older in their program (in Phnom Penh – they had taken overnight sleeping bus to explore Siem Reap for the weekend). They each spoke glowing about affordability of the program, their housing and experience.
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