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Things we noticed about Cambodia- written by Chelsea, Nathan and Parker

By Nathan
We only spent 4 days in Siem Reap in Cambodia but wanted to share a few things we noticed:

  • Lots of fried ice cream stands
  • Pub Street in Siem Reap is alive at night- live music, food stalls and restaurants everywhere
  • Lots of restaurants that serve a variety of international food: italian, mexican, tex-mex
  • Tuktuks are more like motorized horse carriages - nothing like Thailand
  • Cambodia uses 3 separate currencies: American dollar, Cambodian riel and Thai baht
  • Cambodians speak Khmer 
  • When tuktuk drivers take foreigners to Angkor Wat, they set up a hammock in their tuktuks and lie in the shade waiting for their customers at each temple
  • Grocery stores have more international variety as compared to the stores we went to in Thailand and Japan 
  • People are kind
  • Lots of violence in Cambodian history
  • We saw lots of landmine victims who are now amputees - lots
  • Some of these amputees played in music bands with signs saying that the government allowed them to play at tourist sites to earn money in order to prevent them from begging on the street 
  • Cambodia felt safe
  • Lots of markets and street food
  • We learned that primary schools have classes with 50-60 students
  • School runs from September to June
  • Primary kids go to school for mornings only
  • Two main khmer food dishes are: chicken/fish amok (curry stew served in a banana leaf) and beef loklak (stirfry with a special sauce)
  • We saw lots of people in the street selling roasted insects on skewers.  We identified scorpions and big spiders.  These people carry a sign saying that they charge for photos but if you buy an insect you get a photo for free.  We weren't brave enough to try the bugs.
  • Like Thailand, there were lots of scooters on the roads.  We saw a family of 5 on a scooter and only the dad was wearing a helmet.
  • We didn't feel like gullible tourists in Cambodia - no scams
  • We saw people carry come pretty crazy things on scooters, like 15 dead chickens on a special dead chicken rack, a load of sugar cane, a clothes washing machine, etc.
  • We opted not to have fish eat dead skin off our feet

Sugar cane dude

Safety is not job #1

Horse carriage like tuk tuks (and our awesome driver, Mr. Ky)

Dead skin eating fishes - bigger than the ones we saw in Thailand

 Pub street, Siem Reap


Cobra in a bottle, anyone?

We met and supported this kind man - the Khmer Rouge history is recent and you can see the damage done to the Cambodian people

 Amputee musicians


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