Four artisans and a wedding

Ah. Khmer cuisine! But this time, it was I who did he cooking. The intense day in Siem Reap and surroundings started with Val, Kim and I heading off to cooking class. Chopping and strirring, woking and frying, and I had cooked myself deep fried spring rolls and chicken amok (amok is a traditional khmer dish and is a sort of stew with coconut milk, veggies, spinach, currypaste and egg, plus your choice of meat, fish or chicken). It turned out fairly decent, but with a full schedule ahead it was time to get moving.
Siem Reap is home to Artisan school, in which talented people can train their skills in stone carving, silk weaving, lacquer painting and so forth, while getting an education. Some of these shools were visited before taking the longboat to the floating village in Tonle Sap.
Unlike other floating villages (the reed island villages in Titicaca springs to mind), there are no man-made islands to speak of. The people simply build their houses on rafts made of bamboo and go with the flow.
And the flow goes vertically; the water level of Tonle Sap varies from roughly 1-2 metres in the dry season, and reaching ten metres higher than that after the rains. There are floating schools, floating churches, floating stores, floating basketball courts and floating whatnots, and besides fishing, the locals live off crocodile farming and tourism.
A rather laidback town, Siem Reap naturally offers relaxed bars, such as The Hammock Bar, with a stunning sunset view of the rice and lotus fields. A local beer in the hammock was accompanied by a selection of snake, frogs and snake eggs, all of which were quite edible, although not much meat on them.
The relaxing sunset beer was the perfect setup for the night's main event: A fellow Intrepid tour leader, as well as a friend of Alann's, was getting married, and so we all went to attend a genuine Cambodian wedding. Eight course dinner, on-stage entertainment and all the beer you could get your paws on was on the menu, and my handy combined ring/bottle opener went warm.
As the wedding ended after having been going on for two days, we trotted off to the local karaoke parlour. Unlike western karaoke bars, in South East Asia you get your own room for your company, thus only making a fool of yourself in front of people you already know, not in front of complete strangers. Thida and Alann sang popular Cambodians songs, I sang the Beatles and suchlike, and somee of the rest, well, sang as well.
And thusly ended a most eventful day, with an early rise the following morning.