Cool (but hot 🥵😭) Cambodia

On Saturday we arrived in Cambodia. We are staying in a city called Siem Reap. It was late so we did't do anything fun. The next day we went to 3 temples though I'm only going to talk about 1 of them because it my favorite. The temple is called Bayon and it has 216 smiling faces on it!

Each column has 4 smiling faces. Can you find all of the columns? Comment your guess of how many columns there are and I will reveal the answer in the end of the next blog post.

This temple was built by Buddhist people a long time ago. Then Hindu people took over the temple and destroyed all the Buddhas. For example, there were carvings of Buddha praying with his knees touching the ground. That is how the Buddhists pray. Hindu people pray with their knees up so the Hindus changed it. You can still see the Buddhist praying knees a little bit.

It was so fun walking through the temples even if it was super hot. We are in the northern hemisphere so it is cooler than Indonesia. Mom took this photo of me pointing at smilling faces and it's really cute.

On Monday, we drove to a place called Apopo that had hero rats. Hero rats are rats who sniff out land mines and bombs in the ground.

Hundreds of thousands of landmines were buried during the Cambodian Wars. The hero rats are trained by sniffing out teabags with a little bit of TNT in them. When they find TNT their trainer makes a click and then gives them a treat. Their favorite snack is a banana or peanuts.

We got to see a hero rat in action. There was a sand pit that had a metal container with 1 tea bag of TNT in it and then 1 with no TNT in it. The rat didn't even stop at the one that didn't have TNT in it. But it found the other one right away! They are way faster than a metal detector because a metal detector picks up all kinds of metal. They also are better than dogs because dogs are heavy enough to set off the old landmines.

It was sad and hard to imagine living somewhere where there are so many landmines. I wanted to be a rat trainer and help find mines but then I found out they get up at 4 in the morning. Decline! I am happy other people and rats are working to find the landmines.

After Apopo we went to another temple. It was pretty destroyed so it was't that interesting though it was pretty!

This temple is called Beng Mealea. At the end there was this tree that did't look very sturdy but turns out it can hold 200-300 kilograms. That is 440-661 pounds!!!!!!!!!!!!! I sat in the hanging branches of the tree and it held me up!

Yesterday we flew from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. We went straight to bed. Today we drove to Phnom Tamao Wildlife rescue center to spend a day with Free the Bears. It is an organization that rescues sun bears and moon bears from bile farms and other bad situations.

This is a sun bear. It is called a sun bear because of the markings on its chest. If you look at it upside down you can see that it looks like a rising or setting sun. Not all the sun bears have that shape, some can look like this!

We got to make their treats and stuff it into bamboo chutes that were clogged at the end on purpose. First we put in a peeled banana, then we added some fruit that we had cut up, then we mashed it all together with a stick, then we put a little bit of jam inside the bamboo, and finally we shoved morning glory into the top like a bottle cap.

We also put this food into hollow basketballs. Then we took it out to feed the bears!

Here I am giving treats to one of the sun bears. After they got the food they rolled over onto their backs and held it with their hands and paws so they could shake it into their mouth. It was soooooooo cute!!!! Here is a moon bear eating one of our bamboo treats.

His name is James. You can see that his left paw was cut off in a trap so he uses his stub to eat. The bears get the food out by biting the bamboo and pulling it apart with their paws.

Before leaving we did something so fun. It was the sun bears dinner time so the zookeeper put them all into their dens so we could hide food in their enclosure. Here is the enclosure.

We hid sweet potatoes, more bamboo treats, and guava. Then we left and the keeper RELEASED THE BEARS!!!!!!!!!! They ran out and it was so fun watching them look for the food we hid.

We are leaving the day after tomorrow. We are going to Vietnam. Cambodia has been fun. I wish we spent longer in Siem Reap because I liked it there.

Love GINNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ps. I miss you Lourdie!!! I can't wait to babysit you when I get home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!