River Ferry

My second day in Phnom Penh started with another tour that was organized by Envoy Hostel. Today we were taking a look at Wat Phnom, and then heading out of the city to visit a village where they produce silk products.

Wat Phnom, literally translated as Hill Temple, is, shocking no one, a temple on top of a hill in the city. When Siem Reap was still the capital of Kampuchea (Cambodia’s original name), Old Lady Penh found a floating Koki in the nearby river, and inside its hollowed body there were four buddha statues alongside one Vishnu statue. This discovery was seen as a divine blessing, and Old Lady Penh raised a small hill nearby upon which she built a temple to house these items; the temple was named Wat Phnom and the surrounding area came to be known as Phnom Penh. The blessing was further taken to mean that the city would one day become the capital.

Woman Weaving

As our guide told us the tale, we explored the temple and its grounds, before heading back to the tuktuk to venture to the “silk village.”

The village itself was… honestly a bit touristy but I still learned quite a bit about the silk production industry and the cambodian women who are a part of it. I’d recommend going to one at some point during your Cambodian travels, but also be prepared for the hard/guilt-sell at the end to buy some of their products.

The most interesting part for me was chatting with the local teenage girl who guided us around the facility. She told us about her family and her education (spoiler alert: she was working as a guide to fund her grade-school costs), and of course how the women of the area functioned overall. As far as the silk production and product creation goes, the main takeaway for me was how EXPANSIVE the process is – these facilities do everything from breeding the silkworms to creating the thread to dying it to developing patterns to weaving scarves or skirts over the course of DAYS. It definitely gave me a deeper appreciation as far as what and why these items, when legitimate, fetch the prices that they do.

After the silk tour, we hopped back on the tuktuk and returned to Siem Reap. I neglected to mention earlier, but we took our tuktuk on a ferry to get to the island. It was another very “local” experience in that there were zero other tourists with us, just what looked like regular people who were commuting from the mainland to the island.

River Sunset

After dropoff back at the hotel and some downtime, I ended up back out again in the evening with the same tour guide. We stopped off to see Wat Phnom in the dusklight and ended up getting pulled into a local couple’s engagement photos (because of course we did), and then we hopped on a boat for a sunset river cruise (cost, $5 and included my delicious Pocari Sweat).

The sunset was pretty damn gorgeous, and after we had docked we checked out the night market. This is one thing that, if you’ve been to other night markets before and there’s nothing that you actually need to buy, I’d frankly recommend skipping. Every 3rd booth had the same items and unless you need a Cambodia souvenir, there wasn’t much of interest, at least in my opinion.

All that said, the day was another great success in my opinion! I ended up catching a rickshaw (difference from a tuktuk being it only has one bench to sit on, and three wheels) back to the hotel after, and again showered and knocked OUT.