Although centered heavily around tourism, we were able to gain some perspective into life in Siem Reap and Cambodia. Over 90% of Cambodians are Khmer, the main ethic group and 95% are Buddhist. When walking through the temples of Angkor, we would often see the local Khmer people making offerings of fruit or incense to the various Buddha statues.
Cambodians make, on average, slightly less than $2,500 a year. As we drove past the many small creeks, we would see the men and children out casting nets trying to catch fish or leading the cattle around. We also saw some rice fields and got to try rice right off the rice plant! After farming and the textile industry, tourism is the next biggest market. Almost all of the people that we have come in contact with were in the tourism industry. At each temple there were groups of children selling various trinkets and women selling scarves that would swarm around you trying to get you to buy whatever they could. It would have been nice to escape the touristy areas, but we just didn’t have time for that during this trip.
The pictures below are from around town and of a traditional Khmer music and dance show.
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