Cambodia Means Birthdays

After Vietnam, we went to Cambodia. That was where we celebrated four of our birthdays. It was awesome. We got to do a lot of different things. We got to see animals, temples, a water park, and lotus fields.

Silk is made from the cocoons of silkworms. We got to tour a silkworm farm that taught us all about it. First, we learned the life cycle of the silk worms. They start off as eggs, they hatch, eat a lot and grow really fast, then spin cocoons. Some of them turn into moths to lay more eggs. Most of them, the silk farmers put out in the sun to dry up and they die. Then, the farmers take the cocoons and put them in pots to clean them and unravel them. Then, they turn the fibers into thread. After the thread is made, they dye it with all different plants to make different colors. My favorite was the purple. When the thread is dyed and dry, they weave it into fabric using big looms. I got to try to work one of the looms, it was very hard, definitely a two handed job.

For my birthday, we got to see lots of butterflies at the butterfly garden. There were lots of different colored ones. We got to see the eggs, the caterpillars, and the cocoons. We even got to release some of the new butterflies and hold them. One even landed on my head! After that, we went to an animal conservation center. They had so many different animals. There were tons of different birds, lots of turtles, gibbons, otters, monkeys, tortoises, and even an Asian leopard cat(which was my favorite). It was a fun day.

In Cambodia, there are a lot of landmines left from the Vietnam war. It’s very dangerous to go into the jungle. If you step on a landmine, it will explode and you will get hurt very badly, you could even die. Kids are the ones that get hurt the most because they like to run and play. So, there are a lot of people working on clearing the landmines. They even use rats that have been trained to sniff the TNT inside the landmines. We got to see and hold some of the rats. They were huge! We watched them practicing. They are clicker trained and get fruit as a reward for finding the TNT.

Angkor Wat is the biggest religious structure in the world. We got to tour three of the big temples, Angkor Wat, the jungle temple, and the faces temple. Whenn we went to the faces temple, Jack is afraid of monkeys and they were all around the outside of the temple. The tour guide said, “We are inside, they are outside. We are safe….Oh! Here they come.” A big monkey came up to me and tried to take my water bottle but I fought him. My mom yelled, “Let go! Let go!” HE took the water bottle, unscrewed the cap, threw it down, chugged the water, then threw the water bottle down, and then walked off. It was funny, but I wanted my water back. I wanted to fight for my water but I didn’t want the monkey to rip my face off.

The Khmer people make a lot of things from lotus flower fibers like fabric, paper, and jewelry. We got to make thread out of the lotus fibers. You break open a piece of the long stem, press down, and then pull the fibers out. Then, you roll them together. We got to eat the green lotus seeds. They tasted kind of like fresh peas. I liked them. We also made bracelets with the dried seeds. It was pretty tricky. Mom was good at it though and helped a lot. We took a boat out into the lotus fields and the driver picked us necklaces and a bouquet.