Day 239: Labor Day Weekend Calls for: Mini Golf. And Grilled Silkworms.
We didn’t have anything programmed today until the evening, so after breakfast we naturally ventured out to…Angkor Wat Mini Putt Golf.
This is so random, we realize, but in our defense, the NY Times did include it in its 36 Hours in Siem Reap writeup:
“For an initial, lighthearted overview of Angkor’s highlights, head just outside town to a crazy golf tribute to Cambodia’s national treasure. Opened two years ago by a former temple guide, Sopheap (Tee) Nheop, Angkor Wat Putt ($7 per adult includes hotel pickup and drop-off) is a 14-hole miniature golf course anchored by nine strikingly accurate scale models of Angkor’s major temples. Shaded by banana trees and serenaded with American rock classics, putt your way under Preah Vihear and the Bayon temple’s iconic stone faces to finish at Angkor Wat itself. Ring the bell at the start of each hole for fairway drinks delivery. A hole in one (no easy task; the course has a 51 par) earns a free beer.”
They did indeed send a tuk tuk to get us, and for $8 roundtrip, the guy drove us out of town toward the south, where the golf place was located on a muddy road in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
The spot has a chain link fence around it and the surrounding area was farmland, rice paddies, traditional homes and a few cows.
We were the only ones there, and had a total blast.
Willa at one point said, “I’m so glad I’m not tiny so I don’t have to tour these models.”
We had a super chill time, goofing off and making our way around the course. Seemed like a very fitting Labor Day weekend activity.
And Teddy got a hole in one! That meant a free beer! He got me one too. Cambodia beer in cans at 10:40 am. Also seemed appropriate for Labor Day weekend!
When it was over we tallied our scorecard (Teddy won), WhatsApp’d the tuk tuk driver to come back for us and signed the guest wall.
James was begging us all day to go back, so we promised him we’d find one in Singapore.
Back at the hotel we got on our suits and cooled off in the pool. It’s not as brutally hot as Vietnam was — they’ve gotten a lot of rain here recently so there’s cloud cover and a (very warm, sticky) breeze.
Out at the pool the kids played with their new staff buddies — including our new BFF, Satya. Satya’s in his early 20s (I think?) and basically a Cambodian Jonathan Van Ness. As I joked with Teddy, he’s the friend Willa, James and I didn’t know we all desperately needed. We’re all over this poor guy! Haha!
He and I talked hair and skin and makeup routines and Willa showed him her iPad game obsession (a silly thing where you can dress up and put makeup on girls) and James loved showing him his nail polish and telling him about NYC.
Next month he’s taking a bus to Thailand — his first time leaving Siem Reap. The main reason he’s going is to visit his dream, his Mecca: SEPHORA!! More on him below.
Willa and I did school up in our usual spot in the lounge (school’s been going really well lately – more below).
Here she is curled up reading for the last 20 minutes as it poured rain outside. Cozy.
At 5:30 pm we were picked up by our guide Virak (whose name rhymes with Barack, which is funny because he totally reminds us of Barack). He had two tuk tuks with him and we rode (grownups in one, kids with the guide in the other) to the local night market in town.
The night market is a locals’ destination of food stalls and shopping and picnicking, but tourists like us like to come and check it all out.
We saw skewers of all kinds…
Yummy fruits…and baskets piled with fried bugs and small frogs…
Willa ate a cricket, while Teddy and I both ate a silkworm. James passed (we’ll come back to this).
Silkworm wasn’t bad tasting actually — nutty — if you didn’t know what it was, it’d be something to try again.
Virak ate a few of the fried frogs. We passed on those.
Instead, we ate a lot of mangosteen and dried mango — maybe the best I’ve ever had? Dried mango’s always so tough and flavorless. This was soft and sweet.
We also saw someone selling what looked like a basket full of hard boiled eggs. Turns out they’re duck eggs that get boiled with the duck embryo inside! Virak bought one, peeled it and cut it open for us to see. Sure enough, a slimy brown dead baby duck, complete with wings and miniscule duck beak was inside. He ate it with some salt and pepper and lime while we winced.
At this point, about 15 minutes after the silkworm-eating session, James randomly blurts out: “I want to eat one of the cocoons.”
Come again?
“I want to eat one of those cocoon things.”
Silk worm?
“Yeah.”
Okaaaaaaaaay. Here you go bud:
This was just…baffling to us. What are you wearing?? Look at your hair!! How are you asking for this food?? WHO IS THIS PERSON???
Proof that you should never insist that you “KNOW” your kids. You don’t know them. Even when you live with them 24/7. We were floored. Can’t stop talking about it/laughing in awe about it.
It was getting dark, so we hopped back in our tuk tuks and went to see a dance/acrobatic performance by Phare, a non-profit arts school for disadvantaged Cambodian youth.
This was the scene as these rode in their own tuk tuk with our guide out into a busy intersection:
These signs were in the bathroom — fascinating and scary.
The show was staged in a small roundabout theater, and we were in the front row. It combined goofy slapstick with acrobatics, so Willa and James….thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Actual snorting laughter and belly laughs and oohs and aahs from them. So great.
We got to meet some of the performers afterward for a photo, and then drove back in our tuk tuks to home and bed. It was a late night and they were zonked!
MISC
Love Satya and his positive energy. He’s in love with America and so excited to chat about all things makeup and fashion and drag queens and “A Star is Born” and use his American slang he learned from YouTube (“cray cray” and “jelly”).
Talking to him’s been refreshing in the most surprising way ever: To have someone who just wants to immediately sit and excitedly talk about “silly” stuff like the best eyebrow pencil is …not something I realized I missed!!!! To my ladies back home: I can’t wait to come home and talk about superficial stuff!!!
As for school, Willa’s had a personality transplant ever since we introduced “rewards” (um, bribes). She has this “Peachy Games” dressup app she loves, and if she has a good week of school, we unlock some of the outfits and accessories for her to play with on the next flight. It’s worked wonders.
As a general update on her schooling, she can tell time, do US money, knows fractions, can carry numbers in addition and borrow numbers in subtraction and has multiplication tables down through 5. Her reading’s awesome, and she loves to read her Kindle in bed every morning and night, and often at the dinner table if the book is really good. Spelling getting better naturally the more she reads, though she still writes her Js backward.
As for James, he can read! He’s at the Level 1 reading level, having graduated from the first beginner “I Can Read” level. It’s astonishing.
