Siem Reap-Sen Sok 1/21

Pierre emailed me in the morning that he will pick me up at 12:30 to go to the villages in the Sen Sok commune. So after a healthy (fruit and yogurt) breakfast, I decided to explore Siem Reap for a couple of hours. I stumbled upon a big temple called Wat Preah and I walked in. I was talking to a young Cambodian man when another tourist approached and joined the conversation. He turned out to be Czech, a young man from a small town near Hradec Kralove. He got interested in Buddhism and now spends 6 months out of the year in Thailand studying Buddhism and meditating and comes to Cambodia to study, too. In the summer he goes back to the Czech Republic. He knew a lot about the temple and its history. Behind the main Buddha statue was another statue of laying Buddha – 500 years old. He told me to touch it and feel its energy. I did and I swear I felt a transfer of energy from the statue. Amazing. At 12:30 Pierre came with the CFI driver and coordinator and all 4 of us drove to the villages about 25-30 km away. I was really impressed with the roads—brand new and in very good condition. We saw a lot of nice, new homes along the way. Big improvement since 5 years ago. The last part of the drive, however, was on dirt and very bumpy and dusty roads. And the villages were very poor – mostly traditional wooden houses on stilts with thatched roofs, no electricity or running water. Pierre showed me the changes that CFI made --- community wells; renewable energy (biodigesters that use cow manure to produce methane gas that is then used for lighting and cooking); cisterns to collect rain water; drip irrigation system; community center, garden and fish pond; sewing center; and also first toilets ever in these villages. After visiting the villages we stopped in a country wat, which had nothing of the beauty and opulence of the city wats. In fact, the prayer room was made of corrugated metal and very simple inside. Pierre took us behind the buildings, into the field where he showed us remnants of stone structures and statues probably dating from the same time as Angkor Wat. We also saw several small wooden structures with stone statues inside, possibly also from that time. Nobody guards these treasures and if we wanted to, we could have easily taken a few with us. On the way back, we stopped at the CFI office, a three story building in a new part of Siem Riep.