January 31, Saturday – Siem Reap – Optional Banteay Srei tour – Fly to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

Destination: Ho Chi Minh City – Accommodations: Huong Sen Hotel Saigon

This morning after breakfast, we took an optional tour to Banteay Srei one of the oldest and best-preserved temple sites in Cambodia. Built in AD 967, Banteay Srei means “Citadel of Women,” and is recognized as a tribute to female beauty.

Banteay Srei is mostly built of pink sandstone which was a medium that lent itself to carving the elaborate wall decorations which are beautiful and still in very good condition. The carvings were so intricate they almost looked three dimensional. The buildings themselves are miniature in scale and we had to duck way down to get through some of the doorways.

After we toured the temple, we met with a woman who makes sugar. We watched as she boiled the sap from the lotus flower and then she gave us a taste. It was very tasty. Then, we watched other ladies make rice noodles. First they soaked the rice in water for many hours. Then, they put the rice with a little water into a stone bowl and pulverized it until the rice starch came out. You can see in the photos the wooden contraption that they used for that process.. The rice starch is molded into a ball and pushed through a sieve with holes into boiling water Someone has to sit on one end of a long board to get enough power to push the rice through the small holes of the sieve. After the noodles cooked for a bit, they scooped the noodles out, drained them, and put them in a bowl with fish sauce for us to enjoy.

They get up at 5 am and work for about four hours to make about 100 lbs of noodles that they use for their own use and for sale. They also take large orders from people who are having celebrations and sometimes they could be making 400 lbs of noodles in a morning The ladies are hard working and the noodles were really good.

We went for another Cambodian lunch and then it was off to tour the Angkor National Museum where we were able to see the museum’s comprehensive collection of relics from many of the temples that we had already visited. It was nice to be able to see the relics up close and appreciate the workmanship.

We left around 3 pm for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The flight was only an hour and we breezed through immigration both upon leaving Cambodia and arriving in Vietnam. Our visas were perfect. We had a company prepare our visas for the countries we visited that required them, and everything went through without a hitch. Apparently Vietnam is very strict with the immigration process.

We met our new local guide James and we drove through the streets of Saigon to our hotel. Saigon is a happening city and even at 9:30 at night, the streets and sidewalks were filled with people. Everything is lit up and it looks like a beautiful city.

Our room at the hotel is spacious and it was good to get into bed for a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow is a busy day.