In & Around Siem Reap

After just a 10 minute walk from downtown Siem Reap, you find yourself on little clay roads, some not even wide enough for a car to drive down. In these residential neighborhoods, it is not unlikely for a party with loud music to begin at 4 AM and continue all dayto commemorate weddings, birthdays, etc. In fact, it's happened three times since I arrived on Sunday night...at least I don't need to sleep with an alarm.

I've spent some time volunteering with the Trailblazer Foundation, an NGO here in Siem Reap, to help build and distribute water filters to a number of families. On the first day, we sifted and washed gravel, mixed it with cement and water, and then poured and scraped the wet concrete to make the foundations for the water filters. Today, we took a pickup truck out about an hour outside of Siem Reap to delivery and install five filters. It was interesting to get a taste of the real Cambodia, where the vast majority of people live out in the countryside, and all of the kids that we met were really excited to see us and joke around with us.






At Trailblazer, if you stand on a crate and look over the wall, all of a sudden there are all these crocodiles right in your face. In town, you can eat crocodile in a restaurant, and then walk next door and buy a crocodile leather wallet.

Pub Street...home to a good amount of the Siem Reap nightlife. Most are little cafes and bars with good food (a bowl of gluten-free Amok...mmm) and cheap drinks that come in buckets with five straws.


There's a bunch of cool architecture all throughout Siem Reap, like this cathedral. Because of all the clay and dirt roads, everything has sort of an old world feel. Sometimes it feels like you are walking around in a Western. But what stands out most about this place is the people: everyone is SO happy and SO friendly. All of the time. It's really indescribable. I guess that's what happens when your country is plagued by genocide and murderous regimes for so much time...you get freedom, you get peace, and that's all you need.