Silk and serenity

Today was marked on our cruise schedule as ‘serenity day’

We left Phnom Penh for the island of Okna Tey to see how the village cooperative produce and weave silk artifacts.

We drove through the village in what can only be described as a 14 tuk tuk caravan… you could follow our progress from the hello hello hello’s of our welcoming party of kids along the way.

We stopped at one of the biggest temples in Cambodia to see the prayer hall, school, monks living quarters (only the outside) and multi-story dining hall before traveling past extensive farmlands to the cooperative.

Sam explained the various stages of the silk worm life cycle and the ladies were busy spinning the silk tread – one the outer “raw” silk (stage 1) and the other the inner layers of the cocoon, the finer,softer “fine” silk. These golden treads are then used as is or dyed different colours.

Looms are set up around the site and various women spend their days weaving scarves and skirts that are either sold in the shop on site or sold to vendors of the various markets.

Back on the ship we had a short lecture on the history of Khmer language, basic Khmer – they count to 5 and then start over with 6 being 5 +1…. and sixteen being 10 + 5 + 1…. Their alphabet has something like 76 letters…

We also had a discussion and demo of traditional dress and the extensive use of the traditional checked scarf (Krama).

The boat travelled up the Mekong to Angkor Ban where the afternoon excursion included a walk through the village and attendance of an English class for the local kids. The feedback from fellow travellers were very positive, I decided to stay onboard as tomorrow required extensive walking, up/down a flight of more than 300 steps and a bamboo bridge and I wanted to see if I could eliminate as much of the lower leg swelling I could before then.

Following dinner (ended with Khmer surprise dessert – streamed pumpkin slices with some form of creme caramel, met with mixed reaction and reviews) we watched an interesting documentary on Angkor Wat.

It provided some interesting insight into the language barrier issue. The documentary was narrated in english by a native english speaking gentleman. There were english subtitles, but it was typed by a non-native english speaker and gave me some idea on how the locals experienced English. Almost like asking someone to write down the lyrics of a song they have listened to and thought they understood and then comparing it to the actual lyrics… a lightbulb moment. Like my brother’s preschool teacher taught them a song about hills and valleys “op berge en in dale” and the first time they sang it without her… they proudly sang about the uncle wearing sandals “oom bertus dra sandale” – not even a hint of hills or valleys in sight.

Tomorrow two temples, monks visiting the boat and the bamboo bridge. The evening – farewell dinner and a slide show presentation of the photos taken by the crew during the cruise – available on dvd, of course.

Good night….