Day 238: Vespas… Again!
We loved our “Vespa Adventure” in Hoi An so we added it to our Siem Reap itinerary.
Really fun time.
Headed out to the countryside at 9am, making several stops throughout the 4 hour experience.
Our tour stops:
APOPO Headquarters for Mine Detecting Rats
These not-so-little guys are born and trained in Africa, then brought to Cambodia to sniff out land mines.
Local market
We picked fresh fruit for a future snack and then walked through the market. This was the real deal: pig heads, dog heads, sausage stuffed frogs, every last piece of the cow, live fish, countless veggies, and about 45 billion flies. Many shop keepers had built little contraptions to keep them away. Others had just given up the fight.
Working Buddhist Temple
We found ourselves here despite Margaret’s very risky “last temple” promise made yesterday as we were leaving Ta Prohm. It was a very short visit. Margaret, Willa and I got a personalized “good fortune” blessing and yellow bracelet from a monk. James stayed outside with one of the vespa drivers.
Sticky rice family
A mom and her sister were sitting by a fire cooking 12 – 18 inch stalks of bamboo filled with pre-soaked rice, coconut milk, sugar and black beans. It’s called Kronan and it was warm, sweet, filling and delicious.
As we got the description of the process for making these things James killed time bowling coconuts into empty 2-liter soda bottles.
The home of a family that weaves baskets
We met this nice lady named Hope, who spends all day either collecting straw or weaving it into baskets. (The word “Hope” in Cambodia refers to not having any teeth. This woman apparently ate a lot of candy as a kid so her parents called her Hope and it stuck.)
Willa wanted to help with the baskets. James preferred to kick a coconut around with his new bff driver. It poured rain while we were there and we hung out with Hope under her little metal roof — it was about 5.5 feet all so I had to sit. We bought a handmade basket for one US dollar.
Khmer rice noodle family restaurant
A couple sisters were working (and sweating) their asses off in this popular little roadside shop. We got a quick walk through of the process for making rice noodles — from harvesting right there on the property to this clever technique in which one sister hangs a water bucket on a big lever and then sits on it to push noodles through a sieve-like contraption. 60 seconds, a few veggies and some chili sauce later we were digging in with our chopsticks. We washed it down and cooled our lips with fresh, super-sweet sugar cane juice. Each bowl of noodles costs between $1 and $1.50.
Last stop: a local family’s house
We got a warm welcome from the friendly family dog. Willa was obsessed. We ate the fruit we picked up at the local market earlier in the day. Once again James found a coconut to kick around — this kid is desperate.
It was raining on and off most of the morning. On our way back into Central Siem Reap the skies opened. We pulled out the ponchos but it was almost no use. We were soaked, but it actually made the tour even more fun and memorable.
After the tour we had lunch at the tasty-but-touristy The Chanrey Tree restaurant, then headed home for a swim, school and room service dinner.
Kids were in bed by 8pm and Margaret and I were lights out at 10:30. Crazy Labor Day Saturday Night!
Several random, unrelated insights, quotes and other misc thoughts from today:
Loving the Motorbike Tours
We’ve had three motorbike tours recently: two on vespas and one in the sidecars. I’m a bit of a safety freak who believes motorcycles are suicide machines so my January 2019 self would have been shocked by this choice of activity. Have I / we really changed that much this year? Our advisors at Small World Travel urged us to do the first Vespa tour in Hoi An. We had so much fun and felt totally safe the whole time so we were cool with doing two more.
There is something intoxicating about traveling through Vietnam and Cambodia on a motorbike — or even in a sidecar. It sounds like a cliche or marketing pitch but it really is the best way to experience these countries. Needless to say, the combination of sights, sounds and smells can’t penetrating the windows and walls of a van or bus.
Of course a Vespa tour with four drivers is far from Real Life in Siem Reap. But beggars can’t be choosers — it’s certainly closer than being in a chauffeured, air conditioned van stocked with wet wipes and cold bottled water.
To Remember
I want to always remember the feeling of riding through the countryside in a light drizzle, exchanging smiles and waves with locals working their shops or resting in a hammock, my lips still burning with the taste of chili sauce.
My bike was last in our group. I also want to remember looking ahead and seeing Willa, gangly legs and sandals dangling off to the sides of the bike, helmet a slightly askew, pony tail flopping in the wind as she hangs onto and chats with her female guide named Rasthma (?). Margaret followed Willa, riding with James right in front of her — but I can only see James’s forearms and little nail-polished hands patting Margaret’s thighs as we zoom along.
Barbara
We walked into the demo of mine detecting rats with a New Yorker named Barbara. She’s a child psychologist living on the Upper West Side. Super friendly and nice. Traveling by herself. We exchanged emails and sent her a note asking her to dinner this weekend.
Deep Thoughts by James
James is learning to read. Riding through the countryside he said to Margaret:
“Mom, if you flip around “dog” does it sound like….”god?”
Just a Frog in a Well
Every family we visited has chickens, a dog and a water well. We checked out the well at the basket weaving family’s home. There was a frog swimming around — apparently they smell the water, jump in and can never get out. Poor guys. Anyway, our Vespa guide said that in Cambodia there is a phrase, “You’re just a frog in a well.” It’s used when someone is too proud and oblivious to the big world around them. It’s kinda like a derogatory version of our “big fish in a small pond.”
James Checks Out
I mentioned above that James found ways to entertain himself today. After 8 months and at least 150 guided tours / sites / activities James’s patience for Tour Guide Grownup Talk has decreased to exactly… zero.
It’s gotten to the point where if a guide stops in front of something, anything — historical site, agricultural point of interest, food-production process, anything — before the guide has even opened their mouth, James has walked away to find a stick, play in the dirt, kick a coconut, whatever. He knows what’s about to happen and this five year old boy wants none of it.
Sexism
Today we had yet more sexist commentary that we are glad our kids didn’t hear/register. During the basket weaving, Willa was having fun learning from the woman. She yelled to James saying he should come check it out. He was kicking a ball (coconut) with a guide — maybe his favorite thing on the planet to do so he decided not to weave the basket. Our Vespa guide made a comment to all of us like, “the boy doesn’t want to do the women’s work hahaha.” Seriously.
Thoughts from Margaret: We have a long way to go, but America — especially NYC — is a hell of a lot more progressive when it comes to gender equality than most of the places we’ve been. Even if the biases exist, at least people at home know they’re harmful/offensive and keep their mouths shut. We are constantly trying to offset ignorant or outdated comments and influences about gender out here on the road. Nail painting, Willa’s weight/looks, James’s toughness, pink and blue, femininity and masculinity stereotypes, etc. Killing me.
Vespa Adventures Guides
One of the reasons why we’ve loved the Vespa Adventures tours is that the guides are just… chill. They are supportive and helpful but they aren’t overbearing or up in your shit all the time.
The Vespa guides took us to a roadside noodle shop — vetted, but still authentic. Other guides point us only to tourist restaurants and have told us we shouldn’t eat anywhere else.
We got completely soaked from monsoon rains on our ride. We were offered ponchos but guides didn’t treat it like the end of the world.
Easy on the Caffeine
In yesterday’s post Margaret wrote about Willa having tea during school and then struggling to get to sleep last night. Today as she was heading off for school she yelled back to her brother: “James, don’t have any earl grey tea or you’ll stay up to 10:30 like I did.”
