Cambodia, Continued

I need 75 hours of continuing education and decided that taking a 4 hour class on Khmer cooking was a great option. I really liked Khmer meals, they were tasty without burning your entire mouth out like Thai food.

Here I am grinding up some tasty spices to make Amok, a famous dish, not so much having to do with things going badly. 

Fabric was really cheap at the market and everyone loved our girls. I'm not sure if they gave us a bargaining edge, but the kids insisted on quick negotiations. 

 Here is a fine selection of fast food, complete with tails.

 Vegetables, pickles and crabs, oh my.

I've never seen fruit kept cold with such large blocks of ice, and you will be happy to know that even though you can't drink the water, all the ice is factory made and safe.

 Here are some real live fishmongers, getting all the fish ready for your delight on a table a little above waist high so that you really aren't safe from the scales.

We learned the silk making process at the Angkor Silk Farm.  First the tiny silkworms are fed a diet of mulberry leaves.

The silkworms are fully grown after a few weeks of eating. The girls and I had a great time playing chicken and touching the worms. They didn't get very big before Jane checked out of the competition.

Here we are learning the life cycle of the silkworm.  The woven baskets hanging on the wall are covered with little yellow silkworm cocoons.

The cocoons made of silk fibers are dried in the sun.

The cocoons are then boiled and small fibers from 20-30 cocoons are pulled together and spun into silk thread.

 Silk thread is then dyed Jane's favorite color (and a variety of others as well).

Silk thread is then woven into cloth by young ladies distracted by 3 little Hackett girls running around.

Next in our "How Stuff is Made" series, we visited Senteurs d'Angkor, where we saw the manufacture of finely scented soaps, lotions, candles, as well as hand-crafted baskets and boxes all made from local materials.

One of the girls' goals on this trip was to ride a baby elephant.  Here they are living their dream  - on a very safe and stationary cement baby elephant.

Apparently, in tourist locations in SE Asia, these little fish tanks are set up so you can effortlessly remove hardened skin from your feet while feeding your dinner (I don't actually know that they use these fish in their seafood dishes, but it seems economical to me). I thought it sounded like fun and we had to wait for dinner at the restaurant behind me. Little did I know that the gentle nibbling touted actually feels like walking on lava rocks. Once again my mom was right, beauty hurts.

You might think this is a refreshment stand.  It's actually a gas station, with recycled bottles full of gasoline for your motorcycle.

This is the view along the road on the way to Thailand, when one must stop for one's children. I'm sad we didn't get a water buffalo in this picture (they were everywhere), but at least no land mines went off.