Stung Treng

Monday, March 17, 2014

Guitar Milk Garden Cafe.

The hotel selection here was very limited, so that made it easy to find the best hotel in town, Gold River Hotel. Tripadvisor recommended a cafe located on the outskirts of town, and that is where we had lunch. A very cool garden cafe/pub/restaurant ‘Guitar Milk’, lovely spot to unwind. Pity they started to play corny old music followed by rap music, no doubt to ‘please’ us Westerners, but not too sure why they would think two older people like us would enjoy that…

Just relaxed in the afternoon before taking dinner in town. The town is not the prettiest thing around, as is often the case for these border towns. So we were very pleasantly surprised to find ‘Ponika’s Place’ which serves very decent food in a clean and welcoming environment. The Khmer ‘amok with fish’ was probably the best local meal I’ve had in Cambodia; Stephen loved the ‘green curry with chicken’. During our 2 days in Stung Treng we had all our meals here (breakfasts, lunch and dinners), except the one lunch at Guitar Milk.

We purchased some Laos Kip (currency) from a traveller who had just come south and was forced to exchange a large US note into Kip, which he was now trying to off-load. Needless to say we got a pretty good exchange rate and will have Kip when we cross the border in a few days. So, all good.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Last full day in Cambodia. We got a bit of a late start but had a good day. First up we headed to Mekong Blue Women’s Development Center where they grow silk worms, extract and spin the silk, wash and dye the silk and then hand weave the silk into items for sale. All very impressive really. More importantly the project has been set up to help ‘vulnerable’ women by teaching them skills so they may be able to provide for themselves and their children. Alongside education the project also provides housing and medical care from the proceeds of the small shop (offering gorgeous handwoven silk products) and foreign donations. The project does not get assistance from the Cambodian Government. We picked up a very nice cushion cover for not a lot of money considering how it came to be.

28 day old silk worms ready to cocoon.
Cocoon produces silk on the outside (not so good stuff) and the inside (good stuff)
Hand weaving on a wooden loom.

After a late lunch, and as the heat of the sun was starting to fade, we took the ferry across the Mekong to visit a 7th century pre-Angkorian Khmer ruin. It was nice to stretch the legs, something we haven’t done much of late. We had to ask several locals (with sign language) how to find the the temple, but it was not long before we stumbled upon it. A small but nice temple ruin. And much older than most of the temples we had seen in Cambodia. It seemed fitting to visit just one more before we left the country. As part of the process we sort-of got our own private self-guided village tour as we wandered around getting lost and talking to locals who didn’t speak any English except “hello”. It was fun. We returned via a very over-crowded ferry as the sun was setting over this massive river.

Prasat Preah Ko. 7th Century.
Our ferry, with cars, motorcycles and people. No chickens.
Is that the Google Car with the camera thingy? I do believe it is.
Magical sunsets.