Annika turned 16 today!  We started with a fancy lunch, then off to Old Market for some birthday shopping, then a bit of a break, off to the best burger place in Siem Reap, and finished with a movie!

Our fancy lunch 🙂

We didn’t go to Swensens, but took a pic

Annika modeling her dress she picked out for her birthday

Jungle Burger!

She got a free birthday dessert.

Some pics old and new.

Happy!

I love you!

We had a surprise dinner for Annika tonight with friends with strawberry cake. Annika ask for strawberries every time we go to the store, but every time but one I have said no.
A small carton of strawberries is $12 here. So getting fresh strawberries was a treat.

She likes people singing happy birthday to her just as much as I do.

Khmer New Year is coming up. April 14 – 16. It’s the biggest holiday in Cambodia. Looking forward to experiencing it.  Decorations are all over the city. Here are 2 pics from the resort next to our house.

Caesar with a banana leaf birthday hat!

My new “lawnmower”. I bought it at Old Market, which is near Pub Street and is a pretty touristy area.  Annika got a small ax.  When you carry something like this around the market and grocery store, you get a lot of looks.

Caesar!

A sample of one of our lunch bills.

Another planned power outage today.  This time was much longer than the last one.

Next time we will remember to eat all the ice cream BEFORE the power goes off.

The world’s greatest dog turned 7 on March 31. As always, he got a birthday party. Instead of cake, he had a piece of fried chicken from a street food vendor, which just happens to be some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever had.

Birthday Dinner

Caesar likes to take food to his blanket and eat it there.

Then he gets a birthday trim. I decided to do it myself after first attempt at grooming left him all fluffy.

I gave him a break before trimming his head.

Unrelated, but we got a wok today. Now we have 1 pot, 1 pan, and 1 wok. High Rollers!

We visited Angkor Silk farm today and took a tour.  As a side note, we have seen silk worms in the frozen section of grocery stores and also as a snack sold on the street. Our driver from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap stopped and bought some.  We tried them. They taste like boiled peanuts with a sour filling.

These are mulberry trees from all around the world. The silk worms eat the leaves.

The short life of the silk worm.

Silk Worms eating mulberry leaves.

The buildings where the silk worms lived were protected from ants by little moats around all points touching the ground.

To prevent most of the silk worms from completing its life cycle, they are put into the sun.

Putting the cocoons in boiling water to extract the silk thread.

Very tedious process of tying the pattern into the silk. This could be done many times. Tie the plastics strings around the silk, die, and repeat process.

Lots of manual labor involved here

Simple designs go pretty fast, more complicated designs are pretty slow.

Electricity was off last Friday. ALL DAY.  We knew it was going to be off, apparently some maintenance being done in Thailand. It went off around 6:00 AM and within an hour it was already hot in the house.  It finally came back on around 5:00 PM.

So our goal for the day was to stay cool.  Started off at an air conditioned coffee shop.

Then we finally went to a movie, which we have been planning to go to for a month. Really nice theater in Siem Reap and we watch Captain Marvel. Tickets were $3.50

The other night we heard something that sounded like rain. Rain this time of year is pretty rare, and we have seen only a few clouds since we’ve been here. So rain was a big surprise. It really cooled things off. Instead of 100 degree days, it was around 80 all day.  Of course, Phaedra is always prepared with ponchos.  Here is Annika modeling the latest model.

Walking around the other day, we saw a vet’s office that did dog grooming. So we took Caesar there and filled out form. I said trim him short! Even in the states, this gets misinterpreted, so I was wondering what he would look like when they were done.  He was fluffier than ever.  Not a great picture, because he was so excited when we got home, he would not be still.

Domino’s is half price every Tuesday.  Pizza here has been a lot of hits and misses, so Domino Tuesdays are nice.

Birthday sushi lunch

Beef lok lak – A traditional Cambodian dish

Street 60. We had noodles and rice from a food cart. Good, fresh, fast, and cheap.

We went to a friends birthday dinner and a lady we knew from the resort found it it was my birthday, and mistakenly put my name on the cake instead.

Channy’s, our Khmer teacher, dog.

I work at night and sometimes take a quick nap before starting. I found this picture on my phone.

Today we visited Apopo Vistor Center, a Tanzania based organization that trains rats to detect landmines.  Landmines in Cambodia is a big problem.  Cambodia has the highest rate of amputees from landmines than any country in the world.  Walking around Siem Reap you will see a many amputees that have stumbled upon landmines.

Apopo has been in Cambodia for about 5 years, and along with Cambodian Mine Action Centre, they have found almost 50,000 landmines.  When the rats were first used in Cambodia, they went through 3 months of performance tests to ensure they could do the work in Cambodia. They did not miss a single landmine during the 3 months of testing.

HERORAT DEMONSTRATION – Spoiler Alert: He finds an “explosive” at the 1:30 mark.

We visited Ta Prohm, also known as the “Tomb Raider” temple, today along with a few other temples.  Saw some really cool trees.

Find Annika

My favorite tree

Find Annika

I rented an electric scooter today.  It takes a little getting use to the flow of traffic and all of the unwritten rules, but it seems to work pretty well. It really helps that most of the time you are only driving less than 30 mph.

I took Annika across the street to a big open area to practice. It was a little more difficult that she thought, but she was excited.

Happy!

Phaedra’s turn

I took a ride out to Angkor Wat and around town. I wanted to ride through some traffic to get use to it.  Left turns and intersections are interesting here.

Right before my first left turn at a big intersection. The key is to get something bigger to block oncoming traffic.

Less than 2 weeks ago, Siem Reap got a Makro store. This is like a smaller version of a Costco in the US. Looks like the stores in Cambodia employee over 200 people.  Inside was a small pharmacy, a few other small stores, and some restaurants.  I believe this is the second one (the other in Phnom Penh) with plans for 9 total throughout Cambodia. Prices are similar to what you see in other markets, but it’s all in one place.

Shopping here can be challenging sometimes, so this was a bit of a relief.  We won’t shop here every time, but when we need an “at home” shopping experience, we know it’s there.  I bought a computer monitor the other day, visited 5 stores, talked to 5 different people with limited English and my 10 words of Khmer (left, right, stop, rice, dog, hello, thank you, etc. didn’t help buying a monitor).  Lots of pointing and just handing them more money than necessary and hoping you get change back. So far so good on that front.

Makro is a multi-billion dollar Thai based company. Lots of foreign investments are coming into Cambodia. Some are better for the country than others.  Just google sihanoukville chinese for other examples.

This is a very new shopping experience to Siem Reap

Large, new building. Lots of Cambodians with new jobs!

Stingray on ice.

Alaskan Crab for $135. We passed on this one.

Our second language class. We can now order fried rice and water without pointing to a menu.

Our landlords took us out to dinner last night at his favorite Indian restaurant.  Sahai was amazed when I showed him the Grab app for getting a tuk tuk.  He spent several years in the US while at Cornell in the 70’s.  Sreypeou is currently getting her Phd in Thailand.  Very kind couple who are always eager to learn about us and help when they can.