An early start today to meet our local guide for a bicycle tour of Silk Island. The Island is just a few kilometres from the Phnom Penh, and we had to get a ferry to get to the Island.
The Island is known for its silk and farming products. One of the first places we stopped was a silk farm where we learnt how they produce silk from silk worms. How they extract the silk from the cocoons and how they weave it into the final products. A few interesting things we learnt:
1. Cambodian silk is golden in colour vs the lighter yellow/white for Chinese silk
2. Cambodian silk is weaker than Chinese, and hence it can only be hand weaved rather than machined weaved. They also stiffen the silk to help them with the weaving, which makes the final product feel stiff at when bought. However once it is washed, it becomes silky soft.
3. The silk cocoons are first boiled in order to extract the silk from them. The remaining worms are then eaten by the locals, providing a great source of protein.
Our tour of the island showed us how the locals live, and how they arrange their houses. Typically the houses are built on tall stilts. These are to protect the house in case of flooding, and also from animals. There are cobras in the area, apparently. We saw the locals use the area under the house as a living room area / work area, and would move upstairs into the house at night time.
We had lunch at a local restaurant by the river, and had a lovely feast. We loved our guide today, as he was not only full of information but also a very colourful individual.
The last stop of the tour was a "Tofu Skin" factory. After making soy milk, they evaporate the water from the milk in huge pans to create the skins. The only issue was that the weather today was around 36C in the sunshine, and when we saw the factory we thought we would be able to cool off inside. However quite the opposite, it was cooler outside in the full sun than in the roasting oven inside!
After the tour ended, we chilled for a short while back at the hotel. This of course included a swim in the pool, it was so refreshing!
The rest of the evening we was spent in town. We unfortunately did not get to see everything we wanted as it was a public religious holiday and some of the attractions were closed. However we did to see the Buddhist temples celebrations Buddha's birth and his ascension to Nirvana. We also very randomly got interviewed by a Vietnamese TV station whilst at the temple as part of the S.E.A Games that are being held in Cambodia this year.
We did finish the day with another round of cocktails and then ice cream at the night market.
Tomorrow we are off to our homestay, and will likely be off grid for the next couple of days.
Comments
Post a Comment