Tourist time

We are in Siem Reap. This is the tourist Mecca of Cambodia, primarily because of the Angkor Wat temple complex nearby. And the town is like any tourist town. The prices are higher simply because of the location. Our day Sunday was a busy one, but I would like to recount it in reverse order.

The team attended the Cambodian Royal Dance and dinner at the Kulen Theater. It is essentially a dinner show, but the show consists of young men and women dancing traditional Cambodian dance. And the only response is wow. The costumes are elaborate and the dance grace filled. Some dances celebrated rituals, like the coconut dance for youthful relationships or the fishing dance for the tradition of fishing (and youthful relationships), while others told complex stories or fables. Although the dancers moved relatively slow, it was difficult to get good images because they were always moving.

Earlier in the day we had gone to the Silk Farm. This is a program to train young men and women different sustainable crafts such as silk weaving, stone carving, and silk printing. Our tour started with a visit to the mulberry bushes where the food for the worms was grown. But these are special worms, they don’t come to the plants, the plants are brought into them. We were then taken through each stage, from cocoon to string, to raw and fine silk, to weaving, to finishing, and of course, terminating in the store. Because it was Sunday there were only a few workers present and their primary duty was to be available to show tourists the production, so it was a privilege. And yes indeed, we impacted the Cambodian economy.

But our day started in worship. We went to the first Methodist church in Siem Reap, built in 1995. However, that congregation has already outgrown that structure and they are in their new building, which by the looks of it they need to head towards two services or a bigger structure. The old building is now the children’s wing, which also serves as a classroom for preschool children through the week. The music was all played with gusto on traditional Cambodian instruments. Our challenge for the day was crossing the flooded out drive to the church. The Siem Reap area, and nearby Thailand, have suffered very serious flooding this year due to unusually strong monsoon rains. Only last week the Night Market had been flooded. Many of the smaller rivers in the city are still well out of their banks. Getting into worship meant going through about 20 yards of mid calf high water. Solution. Moto.

Much of Cambodian gets around on Moto’s. Scooters. Men and women hire themselves out as mototaxies. You hop on the back and they will take you where you want to go. In Cambodia, it is more economical to travel by moto. So it is not uncommon to see as many Cambodians as possible on a moto. Our record this trip is seeing seven Cambodians on a moto. That was four adults, one child and two babies.
But we had a church member on a moto, who agreed to ferry us in one by one, through the water. What a way to get to church! And what a way to eliminate excuses. A packed church that had to wade through a flood to come to church.

This is a thin place.