Cambodia is really fun. It does have some downsides, like how many mosquitos there are. Overall, I think it’s great.

One day we took a boat ride to a floating village with some other kids that live in Siem Reap. It was exactly what it sounds like. It was a whole village floating on the water. I liked the boat ride but I loved swimming. We didn’t know until afterwards that there were crocodiles in the water. The people didn’t have a lot of stuff but they seemed happy. I think these people could survive global warming the longest.

We went to a silkworm factory that makes silk from worms. We got to eat a silkworm pupa. It tasted a little bit like Fritos. The first room we went into had huge trays full of worms. In the second building, they were making thread from the silkworm cocoons. There were people in a different building weaving the silk into fabric. It sounded like an instrument and had a beat going on.

We had a birthday week in Cambodia with four birthdays! The first one was Wren’s 10th birthday. We went to an aquarium. My favorite things there were these giant catfish they called “dogeaters.” We saw to y fish with blue fins called “blue finned fish.” That’s really how they name things in Cambodia. Next, we went to see bomb sniffing rats. There were two men holding like a leash on a rope and pulling it back and forth to get the rats to check an area. The rats are faster because they smell the bomb smell in the landmines not all metal like a metal detector.

On Nora’s 12th birthday we went to a butterfly garden. It was beautiful. My favorite thing there was an Atlas moth. The Atlas moths only live for 2-3 days as moths to lay eggs and then die. They don’t even have mouths and they can’t eat. I got to hold one and it was huge. It laid eggs on me. After that, we went to an animal conversation center. There were lots of animals. We saw a lot of different kinds of birds, gibbons, monkeys, and so many turtles. My favorite things there were the apes doing parkour. The otters were also really cool.

Terrell’s birthday was the next day. We went to a lot of temples. A really funny thing happened in one. I’m afraid of monkeys and outside one of the temples there were a lot of them. Once we walked inside, our tour guide said, “They are out there. We are in here. We are safe.” Only right when he said that, a big fat gangster monkey walked in. The guide said, “Oop, here they come.” The monkey had a game of tug-o-war with Nora over her water bottle. The monkey won, unscrewed the cap off like a human, threw it on the ground, chugged the water, threw the bottle down, and then walked off. It was hilarious, too bad we didn’t get a video. We went to three temples that day. The first was Angkor Wat. It had a huge moat around it. It used to be the center of a giant city. The coolest thing about it is how humongous it is. The next temple they call the jungle temple. There were giant trees growing on top of the walls. I thought it was amazing. Some of the roots even made little huts. The last temple was the four faces temple. That’s where the gangster monkey lives.

For Micah’s 14th birthday we went to a cat cafe. There were a lot of cats and kittens there. There were ones with really stubby legs. My favorite part was when the kittens were playing with my hands while laying in a plastic bowl cat bed. After that, we went to an inflatable floating parkour place. The best part was the giant airbag that you lay on and someone else jumps on it and shoots you into the air. I got launched like 20 feet in the air. It was fun until I hit the water.

There was a cat at our hotel that we named Stump. He had a little cut off tail that was like a stump. He was a very friendly orange tabby cat that always hung out by the pool. I learned to dive in that pool.

I would go back to Cambodia.