Spiders and crickets!!! Cambodian tasty food!!!

I want to let some nice pictures of our last week’s adventures in Phnom Penh!

Of course for all my team and friends here I let you the photos you were asking for. Here you can see me eating fried tarantula and crickets!!

Crickets even it will sound strange are good! Tarantulas dont taste much but the feeling is just very strange! I can say I tried once as most of the brave cambodian team as you will see Christian and Rolland going for it too!!

Does someone in Budapest or Madrid want to try one?

The floating villages

Thanks to Cameron, owner of Angkor Spirit Hotel in Siem Reap, the team visited the floating villages. It was just another world!

On our way we stopped to try the best Cambodian food for me until now, which is sticky rice with beans mixed with coconut milk. Really good and tasty although you will need instructions to open it!! :D

 

 

Continuing our trip we got close to the floating village. A lot of poor people in Cambodia don’t have even land to build their houses. Many Cambodians and Vietnamese live nowadays in the water. Some of these floating villages are accessible by land only certain times of the year as when the flow of the river or lakes goes up during the raining season boat is the only way to get to them.

The view from the van, looking at the river it is just unbelievable. The street is full of wood made houses in the sides of the river which are constructed several meters above the water in the dry season. When the rain comes they will appear to be in the water!!

I let you here some photos that will describe more this area and you will be able to see how people survive in this villages based on their fishing skills!

At the very end you will see part of the team in a farm, looking something behinds us. Looking some of their faces you can realize that when they showed us a crocodile farm close to the river we started to be happy of having finished our boat trip over the river without having to swim!! :D

After that we went back to Siem Reap had a nice lunch in Cameron’s restaurant and visited an artisans house with the Cambodians working and showing us all the production steps for Buddha figures in wood, silk scarf’s, metallic boxes… all handmade in front of us! What a patient!

Angkor Wat visit

We just come back after having a nice dinner at Bruce’s amazing house. We were all dead today after having visited during all day Angkor’s Wat temples!

Day started very early at 6am to be able to buy the visit tickets and have time for seen as many temples as possible. It was built by King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city.

As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors.

We started visiting Angkor Thom with an entrance in elephant through the main gates. A really nice experience from my colleagues that I will for sure take when I will be back in April!   Angkor Wat translation means "Great City" and was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire. It covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several monuments from earlier eras as well as those established by Jayavarman and his successors. At the centre of the city is Jayavarman's state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north.

It is curious that they have two roads of exit from Angkor Thom the Victorious road and another really small, hide and dirty road (for use in case of losing the war). It was soooooo hot that we were melting and it was only 9am!!! We visited several temples in Angkor Thom and went up through several thousands of stairs. My training in my Budapest flat without elevator actually was a great help for me!

We visited also the Ta Phrom temple where Angelina Jolie was playing Tomb Raider where the amazing roots of the trees cover the temples in a spectacular way. They are huge!!

After we had lunch in a restaurant inside Angkor and we went back to the hotel to rest a bit for the afternoon as it was practically impossible to walk under the intense hot. We went back around 15 pm to see Angkor Wat the most famous of the temples as our guide recommended us to visit it in the afternoon to use the light of the sun in our backs for better pictures!!! It is amazing and I think the pictures describe the environment better that what I could do with words. I catch even some young monks in the right moment! So enjoy the amazing views of Angkor Wat!!

 Dinner at Bruce´s house!