The temples are done and we decide to take a few days to enjoy the city. On most evenings during our 10 days in Siem Reap we eat in the old market area which spoils us with its huge selection of restaurants - Italian, Indian, burgers, breakfasts. We order the best deals possible, but it can get a bit pricey. We try to offset these meals with visits to the cheaper streetside Khmer foodstalls as well as cheap breakfasts at home in our guesthouse's courtyard. Everywhere we go they serve baguettes, which still surprises us after several weeks in Cambodia. Large, freshly baked, dirt cheap baguettes: one of France's lasting colonial footprints.
We decide to visit the Artisans D'Angkor silk farm in the afternoon of Day 93. The Artisans D'Angkor is a training program that revolves around reviving (and selling) traditional Khmer handicrafts. The number of aid organizations in Cambodia is staggering, and many of them seems to train people in traditional handicrafts. The giftshops in the tourist areas of Siem Reap have shelves loaded with scarves, spices, pots, plates, placemats and general knick-knackery. The quality of the stuff made in Cambodia is far better than what we saw in Thailand, and Artisans D'Angkor stands out for the best quality of all the crafts we see during our trip.
Earlier in the week we visited the Artisans D'Angkor workshops (and guestshop) located a few metres from our guesthouse, and checked out the workshops including those for wood and stone carving.
The program lasts about a year, and the training is rigorous with an emphasis on flawlessness. There's an intense screening process to choose both disabled and 'abled' young adults that they take on to learn specific trades; the students bike to the city every day to train or move to the city if they're from a remote area. The program seems to have a system for assigning people to certain crafts - silk painting, for example, is strictly reserved for deaf and mute trainees.
The Artisans D'Angkor silk farm is outside town, about a half hour drive from city center and we catch the free shuttle bus with a few other tourists.
The tour starts with the fields of mulberry trees.
The trees are kept short so that workers can easily pick the medium-sized leaves and deliver them to what the French signs call the "magnanerie" where the silkworms live. The legs of the worm-trays stand in pots of water to keep the ants out.
There, they worms eat leaves until their skin changes colour from light green to yellow, which means they're ready to spin their cocoons. A worker hand-separates the yellow worms from the green ones and lets them loose on the cocoon frames so they can do their spinning:
Once the cocoons are done, the cocoons are carefully picked off the frame and taken to another building for processing ("Bobinage"). Handfuls of cocoons are put into 80 degree water where the outer raw silk (about 100 metres long) is unwound carefully by hand using a natural fibre whisk, and wound around a wooden wheel. Once the raw silk is unwound, the cocoons are passed onto a second person who unwinds the fine silk (300 metres long) in the same way.
The worms, it turns out, are still in their cocoons and are destroyed during this process. Our guide mentions that of each crop of worms, 20% are allowed to completely transform into moths - the silk from these cocoons is unusable because the threads are cut when the moth emerges. The remaining other 80% die during processing.
The silk is naturally a yellow colour - the silk is bleached white...
...and then boiled for two days to re-colour them with natural dyes. For example,
- lychee wood + rusty nail: = black/deep brown
- "garcinia vilersiana" + rusty nail = olive green
- coconut bark = copper
From here, the silk is further died with patterns and/or goes directly to the weavers, who work on looms in a separate building.
The shuttle bus home drops us off in the middle of town and we enjoy our final night. The streets are filled with the usual mix of tourists, tuk-touts, peddlers and people asking for change.
The tourists are easy to pick out: a) due to their non-Khmer-ness (mostly Caucasian and Japanese) and b) due to their appearance. Some are tanned, some are burned. Many wander around in fresh-pressed light-coloured cotton clothes while others wander around in inappropriately skimpy spaghetti-strap tank tops and short-shorts. I have a soft spot for the ones who dress in a goofy fashion-pidgin that's particular to budget travellers in warm countries. It leads to combinations like: recycled-tyre flip flops from Vietnam, baggy cotton Thai pants, checkered krama scarf from Cambodia, woven bag from Peru, an Indian charm anklet and a red and black Haida tattoo. And that's just one tourist.
Gift shops are the great equalizer - we all wander in and out of them, regardless of our dress. Everytime we leave the guesthouse we notice how very many aid societies there are here in Cambodia. They advertise on signs, in magazines and in stores and restaurants, all of the information directed at tourists. It gives me the impression that Cambodia is a country still loosely glued together by foreign aid and tourism.
The biggest gaps I see involve kids. So many aid organizations are aimed at helping kids and their families, but we still run into so many kids every day who aren't in school and asking for change or selling whatever goods they can carry.
These kids are bright. They have a number of tricks to get you into a conversation, the best of which is the "capital city" ploy. "Where you from?" is the most common question we hear from English-speaking Cambodians, but it's only the kids who follow up with: "The capital of Canada is Ottawa." Over dinner one night, another traveller mentions that most of the kids can tell you the capital for almost any country you say. "I asked one of them the capital of Korea, and he said 'North or South?'."
Since almost every kid salesman between the ages of 5 and 12 seems two know the capitals off by heart, some kids find new angles to get a charming edge on the competition. "The population of Canada is 37 million," one boy adds as he keeps pace with us on Bar Street. "Minus two, because you are here."
We rarely need anything that they have to sell; we try not to give money because it encourages begging. We donate a lot of money elsewhere in the world, so in Cambodia we just try to shop in a way that supports communities and individuals and do our best to not encourage begging. Still, there are moments when we're at a loss.
One day we meet a girl near one of the temples whose face and body have been badly scarred by fire. We say no sorry and keep walking when she limps next to us on our way to the washrooms. At the restrooms, we discuss what to do - between us all we have on us are large US$ bills, 2000 riel (50 cents) and a half eaten bag of cashews. On our way back, we see the girl sitting at the edge of the road so I stop. I say hello, give her the riel and the cashews, notice a rubber band wrapped around her forearm that's cutting off the circulation in her skin, point to the rubber band, remove it and put it in her hand, try to gesture that she should be careful not to put rubber bands on her arm. She says thank you in Cambodian, a small head-bow and we leave. Later we read in a book that she fell in a fire when she was a child and her parents send her out every day to beg. Give money or not? I don't know.
In Siem Reap, the sidewalk cafes are fair game for panhandlers, and on our last day we get cornered while waiting for our meal at the Khmer Restaurant in a narrow alleyway.
A woman stops at our table and says hello sir hello and shows Pierre the baby in her arms. Her young daughter is up the street walking around with another of the woman's children in her arms. Pierre says "sorry, no"and turns to me. The woman continues asking with a question that's not a question, hello sir hello hello sir hello, again and again, and she continues for almost 5 minutes while we talk and wait for our meal. We feel gross while we sit and talk as though there's a glass separating her from us when she's close enough for us to feel the air move when her baby swings its arm. It feels ugly when we change seats to move inside the restaurant where we can get away.
Giving money encourages her to take her whole family out to beg. What aid group should be helping her so she can stop doing this and why doesn't she have any help yet when she's so easy to find?
Give money or not? I don't know.
Photo credits: D, P, P, P, P, D, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P
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