I only spent two separate weeks in Cambodia. It has lush tropical landscapes of rice paddies and palm trees as well as impressive ancient temples.
Banteay Srei is a temple close to Angkor Wat that has some great carving. It’s a smaller site so it was easy to explore.
One of my drivers / tour guides stopped by a roadside stall and showed how sugar palm sap is used to make unrefined sugar.
Above are some of the palm trees.
Above is the fruit of the palm trees. I don’t think the fruit is used for making sugar. I believe the palm tree itself is tapped with a special set of tools and the sap is used to make the sugar.
The sap is boiled down.
And boiled down more until it becomes a paste.
Then the paste is put into a cylindrical form and left to dry.
And the final unprocessed sugar looks like the picture above.
Another site I visited is the temple of Preah Vihear. It is located in a remote corner of Cambodia, close to the Thai border.
Below is a non-descript town that we passed through on the way from Siem Reap to Preah Vihear.
The temple of Preah Vihear is situated on a cliff on the Dangrek Mountains near the border between Cambodia and Thailand.
The temple itself was large and in a state of disrepair. I don’t know if seeing the temple was worth the four hour drive there and back from Siem Reap by itself, but could be combined with some other sites for a 2 day outing.
Time for lunch?