Siem Reap, Cambodia: travel tips, itinerary, culture, food, accommodations, circus, temples and beyond

Steve and family head to Siem Reap and find more than temples: hard history, true art, and everyday resilience. Between jeep tours, hero rats, and student-run kitchens, the city shifts from chaos to compassion in real time.

• visa prep tips for Cambodia and arrival logistics
• first impressions from Pub Street to quiet side roads
• Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and Bayon highlights
• guides’ personal histories and unfiltered context
• pacing kids through heat, history, and long days
• where to eat with purpose and why it matters
• Apopo’s landmine-detecting rats and impact
• the Cambodian circus as art and recovery
• revising snap judgments and embracing nuance
• links and recommendations for tours and food

http://www.evisa.gov.kh   (get you visa ahead of time!)

http://toursbyjeeps.com

https://apopo.org/support-us/apopo-visitor-center/   (heroic rats)

https://share.google/DQ5KlKZ1xcwa760qa  (Street Three Eatery) 

https://www.spoonscambodia.org/   (5-star restaurant school)

pharecircus.org  (Cambodian Circus)

If you like the theme song check the album National Treasure by The Most Famous Steve Webb anywhere you stream music. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/0boqNyhBk1U1sww21uEWaD?si=RRG2ZItGSImrpIN14t_c2g

https://themostfamousstevewebb.bandcamp.com/album/national-treasure

Some of the drumtracks on the interstitial music were originally derived from the Pocket Queen’s New Breaks Vol 1

https://www.thepocketqueen.com/

If you haven’t followed the podcast yet, please hit the little plus sign in the top right corner of Apple Podcasts, or the follow button on Spotify or whatever platform you use

For pics of the fam on their adventures follow on Instagram @wwggwithstevewebb
 

Contact Steve:

stevewebb0201@gmail.com

Transcript

Setting The Scene: Why We Travel

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Here we are to talk about travel. Specifically, how my wife Christy and I lead our three teenagers and an old guy, her dad, through all kinds of adventures. I'm gonna tell you where we went, what we did, and show you how we paced ourselves to avoid meltdowns and mutiny. If you're trying to plan a trip anywhere with your family or alone, this show will be helpful. If you're looking to stay at home and let us do the traveling for you, that works too. Basically, travel is good and we do it well, and I want to share that with you. This episode takes us to CM Reap Cambodia. We spent about three and a half eye-opening days exploring the area and discovering some great surprises. Don't worry if you don't remember everything I talk about. I'll provide links to our favorite things in the show notes. My name is Steve Webb, and this is where we're gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

We wondered where we're gonna go, we wonder where we're gonna go, we wonder where we're gonna go. We wonder where we're gonna go, we wonder where we're gonna go, we wonder where we're gonna go.

Arrival In Siem Reap And First Impressions

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Sunday, August 4th, the gaggo was on the move again, leaving our Zen Garden hideout in Chiang Mai, jumping a flight to Bangkok, then to see him reap Cambodia. Cambodia requires a visa to enter the country, but thanks to the ever-diligent Christie, we had ours set up ahead of time. We flew by those Christie list people as they read the signs with a bewildered expression and submitted to the long, sad line of the visa list. If you want to be smart like Christy and get your visa ahead of time, go to evisa.gov.kh. I'll put a link to everything down below. Fill out an application with some passport information, upload a digital passport photo, and pay a fee online. I think ours was like 30 bucks each. The approval usually takes about three days. Just print off your approval letter and present it upon your arrival in Cambodia. It kind of felt like we were the first customers at the large airport. It was perfectly clean and very efficient, but other than the Visa line, it was eerily empty. Our bags were out in no time, and we were out the front door looking for our driver that we'd arranged with the help of our Airbnb host. There were no people and no cars. I wondered if there was another lockdown that nobody told us about, or if we were part of a strange experiment, and this wasn't an airport at all. It was in the 90s, but it felt a little less humid than Thailand. LL said it reminded him of Florida, and I agreed that it did feel a little like that. We were way out in the flat agricultural lands with no other buildings in sight. The emptiness of the landscape around the airport matched the airport. There were neat rows of things growing for miles in every direction, like a simulation farm with a mysterious lack of human activity. We saw a lone minivan approaching on the brand new road from what seemed like miles away. It was easy to assume that that was our ride.

The Driver’s Story And A Jolt Of Reality

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A clean-cut, smiling man with young Mr. Rogers vibes was there to pick us up. His name was No Lie. He started to talk about the fields we passed on the left and on the right, the rice, the rubber trees, and the mango plantations. Cambodians were great growers and exporters of these products. He asked us how long we were in town and offered us a tour, but we respectfully declined, having already set up a tour for ourselves. LL asked him a question about customs, as in customary culture, like bows or handshakes or how to ask for the check at dinner, but no lie flashed a look of indignance over his previously unbroken smile. How much did they charge you? He asked. I tried to correct the course, and together me and LL got him back on track. Smiling again, he gave us the word for hello and thank you. LL, Christy, and me practiced aloud while the kids stared at their phones. His face in the rear view mirror was proud of our progress. After driving for five or ten miles, we turned onto an older road and began to see more life. We passed shacks and food stands with meats on sticks. There were some motorcycles and dogs and old beat-up trucks along the road. It was still rural, but it felt more like real humans going about their day in little farming villages. LL asked what do Cambodians think about Americans? And he said they liked Americans. But then he was off. It was a monologue about the Cambodian people's fight for democracy. According to Nolai, anyone that talks badly about the king or the government would be arrested and maybe not seen again. And with that, he was no longer the same Mr. Rogers guy that picked us up. He tried to recover. There's not enough time in the drive, he said, trying to find his smile, but it was gone. It was almost as if he was asking us for help, but with his eyes, hoping his captor wouldn't notice. In spite of himself, he went on, tortured by smallness, wanting to fight something big with no weapons and no voice. He tried to point out where the night market would be in the middle of his oration, and it was a sentence that did not fit. We got to our place and he said, sorry guys, with shame in his face. We all assured him that it was okay. Some nice ladies met us at the gate and showed us around the home. There was a beautiful oasis with a natural pool in the backyard and enough rooms to go around. We got it all sorted and then Christy, DJ, and I set out to get snacks and drinks for the place.

Night Market, Pub Street, And Mixed Vibes

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We walked about four feet and found a family selling stuff out of their garage, which we realized is a thing happening everywhere around town and was pretty great. As we learned from Bob, our Bangkok tour guide, spending your money at these little family stands goes a long way in supporting the community. With our mission accomplished, we headed back to relax by the pool oasis until dinner. We walked to a half touristy place about a block away. In general, the spirits were up. We all had food that we thought was good but not great, Thai food being a tough act to follow. I was doing my best not to judge a whole country based on one restaurant. The kids in LL got dessert, mango sticky rice with ice cream, which seemed to be a home run and saved the country from a medium food score. After dinner we set out to explore, passing a hard rock cafe, which I thought was a weird sight and would never in a million years want to enter it. Not in America, and especially not in Cambodia. But the kids got all fired up, confirming again that I don't know anything. They begged us to go there for dinner the next night. I was confident and stubborn, knowing there's no way that we flew 24 hours to the other side of the planet to go to the Hard Rock Cafe. But Christy saw it as an opportunity, employing the proven parenting technique of bribery. She said that if they were good on the all-day tour we were taking the next day, then we would go. I could respect her move, but it didn't mean I liked it. We walked through a night market and stumbled onto Pub Street. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the chaos. LL was filming stuff, DJ and Z were dancing while Ro was trying to score some more dessert from a street stand. It was a combination of every tourist street ever, hopped up on speed, lit up like Vegas, and desperate like lust. I wasn't about to be a party pooper, so I walked on with the group and thought about a cold beer in our quiet oasis back home. Bates was pumping from the buildings out onto the streets, and everyone was coming up to us, trying to get us in their nearly empty club or restaurant or bar or massage parlor, revealing that there was a lot more vultures than fresh meat. Z was fired up. It's like pop-ups, he said. You just gotta X them out. Thought that was a great way to look at it. Still, the street was crowded and wild, and I was getting a vibe that there was darkness about. Men were augoing DJ. I felt like I was getting sized up by dudes that didn't seem like good guys, and there was a police presence that I hadn't yet seen in Southeast Asia. It was probably just me, a little tired, with no lies voice in my head, and a completely unexpected crowd. It threw me. I was back to circular thinking, trying my best not to judge a whole country based on one stretch of street. In the midst of a rocky first impression, with the unfair but understandable tendency to compare the place with its neighbor, Thailand, I was spiraling. Luckily, the street ended and the crowds thinned out. Just a few blocks from the spectacle, the side streets were dirt roads with potholes. And just a few blocks from that was our home. Gratefully, it wasn't long before I achieved my dream. A cold beer in our quiet oasis!

Jeep Tour Kickoff And Angkor Wat

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Monday, August 5th. Sorfi and his crew were there at 8 50 a.m. As with every Southeast Asian driver we've encountered yet, they were 10 minutes early. Everyone was up and ready to go. Sorfi was our guide on a Jeep tour of Anchor Wat, the Taprom Temple, and the Bayon Temple. I was under the impression that we'd have a Jeep, but we had three. And these weren't just normal jeeps. They were actual Vietnam-era US military jeeps. So we were about to roll around town in a military fleet. One, I never thought I'd be in Cambodia. Two, I certainly never thought I'd be rolling around in a military fleet to explore ancient temples in Cambodia. Roe and Christie jumped in the first jeep. Roe is open about his vacation dreams. He'd prefer to be in his air conditioned room watching shows on his phone. A seven-hour tour of ancient temples was bordering on torture for him, so Christie needed to do some coaching. To be fair, he's always a good sport at the end of the day when we let him have it. In the family pictures, you'll find the amalgamation of human suffering in the boy's expression, which is a great source of entertainment for the rest of us. Z and LL were in the second Jeep because they're besties. I had no idea, but Z was up there getting fired up about the Jeeps. He thought they were the coolest thing ever. DJ and I hopped in the third Jeep. For the 15-minute ride, we talked about culture and how different it is on the other side of the world and how different it is from Cambodia to Thailand, even though they're so close. It made sense, I admitted. Even the difference between Southern California and Northern California threw me off for a couple years once. When you add colonization and war to the mix, it's a whole other universe. We arrived at the front gate of Anchor Wat, and it was pretty awesome. It stretched for acres. It was such a cool gate that Zee and I thought it was the temple until Sorfi set us straight. He was a professional for sure, and very serious about his job. He was serious about Cambodia too. Cambodia was there before Thailand, he said, unprovoked. And Thailand may have even copied Cambodia on a lot of things, he followed, green with Thai envy.

History, Myth, And Heavy Truths

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The massiveness of Anchor Wat was hard to wrangle. Construction started in 1110 and took six thousand elephants and two hundred thousand men thirty-seven years to complete, resulting in the largest religious construction on the planet. There are carvings on every wall. There is a story everywhere. Sorfi was great at his job. He'd get us in the perfect spot and take some great family pictures, and then he'd sit us in some shade and tell us a mythical, mostly Hindu story. And then he'd walk us around the corner to see a mural carved with immaculate detail and sandstone, fifty yards long, that represented the story he just told. It was fascinating, hot, and a little exhausting, but we knew we were in it for the long haul, so we pressed on. Z and DJ were doing great. Ro was rolling his eyes and mumbling expletives under his breath. LL and I were sweating like dogs if dogs could sweat, and Christy was doing great too, listening close to Sorfie while ignoring and coaching Ro intermittently. Our final story in Anchor Wat was the Hindu mural depicting the 37 levels of heaven and the 32 levels of hell. A real pep talk for being a good person. The depictions of hell were actually pretty disturbing. One of the final levels showed a man bearing a cross and then suspended upon it. Now Hinduism predates Christianity by nearly 3,000 years, so the image had me wondering if the Christians owed the Hindus any royalties. The final level of heaven depicted people singing, dancing, and playing music around a fire. The achievability of that was comforting. We walked out the back door of the temple and down a long dirt road on the way to the Jeeps, and Sorfi started talking about the Vietnam War and the government and spies and puppets, about the civil war that dragged on for years after Vietnam, about the Cambodian genocide where nearly a quarter of the entire population, up to three million, were murdered only one generation ago. Surfi, just like Nolai, had gone dark. But unlike Noli, he was not apologetic. My father was a professor. He loved to teach history, said Sorfi, and they killed him for it. What's next? The tour guide. We reached the jeeps to find that the guys had cut up some fruit and fresh coconuts to drink. It couldn't have tasted better. As we ate, standing in the shade on that quiet dirt road, he told us about his childhood in a rural area. He and his brothers and friends would always play in the abandoned jeeps, tanks, and crashed helicopters that were fixtures overgrown in the jungle around his home. Other than the active landmines that occasionally took someone out, he spoke as though it was idyllic. It was actually his childhood dream to own a U.S. military jeep. And now he has three. In the telling of this story, the serious man Sorfi was smiling, possibly for the first time of the day. Everyone called me crazy, he said, when I told them I wanted to start a tour company with military jeeps. And look who's laughing now. And it was us, all laughing right along with him. Our snacking had attracted a visitor. I thought my first wild monkey sighting was going to be really cute and cool and that we'd probably be friends. But this dude's vibes were off. Like one of the not good guys from Pub Street, he sized us up and snarled his teeth. He was doing the math and seriously considering just taking our fruit. But the driver happened to have his monkey slingshot right there, ready to go. He didn't even need to fire it though. He just showed it to the monkey and the dude scooted off into the trees, proving that it was nobody's first rodeo except mine. Z asked Sorfi how he got the Jeeps, which was cool on a lot of levels. Sorfy said that Cambodia acquired them from the US as aid to help defeat Vietnam

Taprom’s Ruins And Living Jungle

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guerrillas that had camped out in Cambodia. Which wasn't quite the answer Z was looking for, but still pretty interesting. We moved on to the Tapram Temple, that's T-A-P-R-O-H-M, made famous from the Tomb Raider movie. I'd never seen the movie, but it didn't matter. Still half in ruin, having been abandoned for centuries during its 900-year history, it was a clear and impressive display of the interaction between humans, nature, and time. There were giant trees growing out of and around the temple with anaconda roots constricting stone. Some sections had fallen, some remained intact from the original construction, and some had been recently rebuilt. It was as if humans and nature were taking turns with this one. On the way to a highly anticipated lunch break, Christy and I were in a Jeep with Sorfie and the driver, and he offered to let us drive after lunch. We were surprised by the offer, but respectfully declined. Then they took us to an air-conditioned restaurant. Everyone was happy for the break from history and heat. In Thai cooking class, we learned that there are a lot of hidden ingredients that the average person might never guess were in there. Palm sugar, fish sauce, and other stuff I can't remember that make it pop with flavor, complexity, and joy. I'm judging too early here, but I can't help it. It seems like the Cambodians took all the ingredients you can actually see and put them in without any knowledge of the invisible magic. So, my hot basil and pork came out looking beautiful and tasting like nothing except for the occasional hot pepper punch. While we were eating, the kids reminded Christy of the hard rock cafe deal. We had both completely forgotten. I was so annoyed that I started rolling my eyes and mumbling expletives under my breath. Then I looked at Roe. Unfortunately, he cheered up over lunch. I told him I'm gonna need him to double down, tantrums, crying, call your mother a b. Don't let me down, kid. And they all laughed at me, which I did not appreciate because I was serious. Z kept talking about the Jeeps while he chewed on his deep fried pork ribs, a smarter choice in Cambodia, but also kind of cheating. How could deep fried pork ribs not be good? Christy, being a step ahead as usual, whispered to me, Should we ask if Z could drive the Jeep? We ran it by Sorfie after lunch and

Bayon’s Faces And Quiet Awe

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he was totally down. Zee couldn't believe it. He was lit up. On the way to the third temple, we pulled off onto a dirt road and Z took the wheel. Christy got her kids out of the Jeep and made me ride with them even though it was her idea. Wow, Christy. The kid did great in the mini tank of a vehicle. We bounced and climbed through potholes and roared down the dusty road. We paid a quick visit to the gate of the dead, the back door to the Bayon Temple. Three headed elephants flanking the gate on each side of a jungle wooded trail extending beyond into the distance. Z drove again back out the dirt road all the way to the front of the Bayonne Temple. The highlight of his day for sure. The Bayon Temple being mine, and Christie's, and DJ's, and maybe everyone's. I didn't see the faces in the rocks at first. Then I saw one. Then they came out everywhere. It was some psychedelic shit, man. Sorfi led us inside to a dancing hall. He showed us the actual dance depicted in a carving on the wall and what the moves meant. Besides the couple moments I mentioned, Sorfi was pretty serious. So seeing him do the actual dance was unexpected, to say the least. I gotta hand it to him though. He committed. We took our last family picture of the tour. Every picture from the day seemed superimposed. An American family pasted in front of some otherworldly famous scene brought to you by National Geographic. I walked away from the Bayonne Temple last in the group. There was something special about all of them, but this one was extra. I wanted to take a moment to remember that I was actually there. We learned so much from our guide on the long day, and I wouldn't trade the experience in the stories for anything. But the one thing that was missing was the open, quiet wonder that you feel when you wander through something stunning at your own pace. I could have taken a whole other day just to do that. One day of stories, history and context, and one day of wandering might be the perfect formula for a place of this magnitude. The only problem with that it might land me in the Hard Rock Cafe for two nights. Roe had been a model citizen since lunch, which sealed the Hard Rock Cafe deal. I found his behavior inexcusable. If you'd like to go along with Sorfi and his crew, check out Cambodia Jeep Adventure Company. All the links for all the things are below. After a much needed afternoon swim and a surprisingly engaged family talk about the history of World War I, II, and Vietnam while standing in the pool, what can I say? The topic was in the air. Christy and I took a quick nap, which makes any resistance to anything impossible for me.

Reconciling Expectations Over Hard Rock

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The evening came on and we were off to the Hard Rock Cafe in Cambodia. I had expected it to be packed, but it was crickets, just like the airport. But the emptiness here made me feel not alone. I wasn't the only one who did not want to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in Cambodia. Apparently, everyone felt the same way except for these three lovely children. And what can I say? They're usually gonna win. Here's where it gets better. The wait staff was attentive and perfect, the drinks were great, and the food was the best thing I'd had in Cambodia. It hurts me to say it, but it's true. I don't want it to be true, but sometimes, when nothing else is working food-wise, maybe you have to go eat a burger next to Bon Jovi's guitar while Madonna's hat blooms overhead like the faces of the Buddha. Tuesday, August 6th. In general, we try to eat and spend our money at locally owned establishments. We don't get annoying or religious about it, it's just a healthy lean in that direction. Now, up to that point we had misfired on Cambodian food, and our best meal came from the Hard Rock Cafe, so Christy knew she had to dig a little deeper. She noticed a restaurant just a block down the road from our home, the Street Three Eatery on Wat Demnock Road and CM Reap was established to help disadvantaged Cambodian youth find work in the restaurant business and related trades. They used food sourced from local farmers and did their best to involve the community. The woman who started the restaurant was a transplanted Australian, and the food was a blend of local and westernized cuisine, but it felt good there, and our breakfast and coffee were great. In the afternoon,

Purposeful Eating And Street 3 Eatery

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we headed out to the Apopo Visitor Center. That's A-P-O-P-O. It's an organization that trains giant African rats to sniff out landmines and explosives left over from the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. It was an hour-long tour that took us from war crimes to cute and fuzzy. Cambodia has more amputees per capita than any other country in the world. The number of landmines and undetonated submunitions still scattered throughout the country are staggering. The US alone dropped 26 million explosive submunitions during the Vietnam War. An estimated two to four million are still in Cambodian soil, undetonated. Farmers and children are the most frequently injured or killed. Our guide, who grew up in the rural country and lost friends and pets right in front of his eyes, was a smiley, friendly man despite it all.

Apopo’s Hero Rats And Hope

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Was it resilience, toughness, choice, purpose, cute rats? I have no idea, but it was admirable. I'm ashamed that I didn't catch his name, but he had the most unusual accent I've ever heard. He must have learned much of his English from an Australian source, and circus music. It jumped all over like a bird or a busy jazz horn. The Apopo organization was the real deal worldwide. They not only trained the rats to smell for landmines, but they also trained them to smell for tuberculosis, the world's deadliest infectious disease. That is, when detected, completely curable with antibiotics. Our guide explained how they trained the rats, which was pretty straightforward. They love bananas, so it was a bribery-based system. Then we got to see a new addition to the team. Nina put on a show for us. They planted a non-explosive mine and an explosive one. Nina started out slowly but picked up the pace right away. And sure enough, she ignored the dud and scratched away at the live one just as trained. It was cool and cute and kind of amazing. The family vibes were high. Now you may ask yourself, why rats for this job? Well, it's a simple answer. They've trained dogs to do it, but dogs are too heavy and they'll set off the landmines. Rats are light enough to safely glide across and smart enough to still get the job done. Next we got to meet everyone's favorite rat, Valerie. Valerie was friendly and patient as we took turns holding her, but she really just wanted to be with her trainer, and after a couple seconds in each person's hands, she reached for Daddy. We concluded the tour with a couple videos filmed out in the field with a call for support. Then we sat and drank smoothies and coffee drinks in the Apopo Cafe, all profits going to the organization. It was a great experience. Short and sweet and devastating and inspiring and totally worth it. We haggled some tuk-took drivers and got a great price for the 10-minute ride back home. Then we gave them the original price they'd asked for after feeling guilty, realizing we'd just made a big deal about a dollar or something. Some swimming, mostly rowing me, with Christy and LL dipping their feet. Christy was in a research zone about where to go for dinner. We'd decided several times on several restaurants, but I could see she wasn't quite satisfied because she wasn't putting the phone down. Her sixth sense, her Thai food radar, wasn't working in Cambodia, but the day had given her and all of us a different perspective. She found a program that trains chefs,

Spoons, Best Bite, And Family Joy

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bartenders, and wait staff to work in four-star restaurants. The school has a four-star restaurant called Spoons, so they can practice. It was perfect. We walked up the road for ten minutes and found the place. The menu consisted of dishes from all 24 provinces of Cambodia. The setting? A very pretty bamboo structure. They did the whole fancy put the napkin on your lap experience. They were young, nervous, and shy, but they did a great job. The food was excellent, the setting was beautiful, and the family was feeling good. When Roe got his entree, he took a bite and he said, This is the best beef I've ever had. His expression froze, a purse-lipped smile of joy. He stared at us, his eyes got a little wet, and the rest of us could not stop laughing. After dinner, we caught a couple of tuk-tuks for the 15-minute ride to the Cambodian circus. If you search things to do and see them reap, it will most likely come up third, just behind Pub Street in Anchor Wat. After seeing it though, I think the circus should be a requirement for entry. Our tuk tuk drivers offered us half off on the ride home if we paid ahead. Now this sounds like an easy idea for a scam, but the driver had a warm, honest face, so we went for it. The circus was a little outside of town, so it was nice to know that we had a ride all set up after the show.

The Cambodian Circus: Art As Recovery

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There was a courtyard outside the big crimson tent with warm lighting where they sold beer, wine, water, soda, and snacks. Inside, it had an intimate feel that seated about 300 people in a circle around the center ring. We were close to the front row, but even the back row seats weren't very far back, so everyone had a good view. The lights dimmed and the crowd chatter hushed. We had no idea what to expect. Then a band made itself known from a riser above the ring. A drum set and a bass, like you might hear anywhere in the world, kicked out a driving, dark funk beat while a Cambodian xylophone hammered out a hypnotic, multi-layered melody. The performers, maybe 20 men and women, flooded the ring and choreographed chaos. Flips, swirls, and kicks ran like currents of energy around the room. The athleticism was Olympic, and I found myself hardly sitting on the seat. My jaw fell off. I looked on the way to see a similar expression on the faces of the family and the strangers from all around the world. The culture, humor, and strength were undeniable. There were several acts depicting stories through music, acrobatics, and dance that are common struggles and triumphs for the Cambodian people. As a traveler, be ready to take the hit. Much of the humor is mocking the Barongs, which is the Cambodian version of the Farong, the pale-skinned pointy nose. But there's love there and more. Considering that most of the audience are Barongs, you see they have guts too. And consistent with the theme of the day, it's a humanitarian effort. The circus was established to help disadvantaged youth succeed through the arts. And this show couldn't have been a better example of turning distress and anguish into power and beauty. We were all completely engaged for the entirety of the show. The acrobatics continued to increase in daring. The artistry carried you further into abstraction with each movement, and the cultural commentary became more nuanced without any help from language. It was such an impressive show. The flow, the pace, the music, all unique and all stunning. I really couldn't believe what I was seeing. It's such a big thing to find yourself in the presence of true art. At the end of the show, the crowd from around the world moved out together in an energetic chatty herd. All the languages queued up for taxis and tuk-tooks, and sure enough, off to the side of the crowd were our guys, right there where they said they'd be. We skirted the crowd, piled into the vehicles, and sped off. The lit-up crimson big top shrunk away and got darker as the engine worked and the breeze made the night feel cooler.

Rethinking Cambodia Through Resilience

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Cambodians are people emerging from a very tragic, very recent history. The vibe I was picking up when we first arrived was not menace. I was wrong. It was a trauma that can lead to menace or a whole other thing. This is a country that had been at war since Vietnam all the way through till 1991. There was a genocide. Many people's parents and grandparents were killed for no reason. There are still explosions in the fields. But if you learn what to look for, you'll find people working hard to recover. It's barely a generation past, but the Cambodian people are doing all kinds of things to heal. The Street 3 Eatery, Spoons, Apopo, and the Circus are astounding examples of resilience. Thankfully, I'd never experienced anything like what these people have endured. And considering I did nothing to control where or when I was born, it's humbling to think that most of it is just pure luck. Your life is the product of a cosmic lottery. Understanding this as a way of evaporating judgment and leaving room to be impressed by all the people who refuse to resign to fortune.

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We're getting bigger.

Season Updates, Links, And Follow

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Only two episodes left. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, please hit the little plus sign in the top right corner of Apple Podcasts, or the follow button on Spotify or whatever platform you use. That way, when the new episodes arrive, you'll know it. Season two will drop as soon as I'm done with it. I'm working as fast as I can do it well, but I promise it's gonna be worth the wait. We start off with a little bit of London, a whole lot of Greece and the Greek islands, and cap it off with a visit to Switzerland.

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We wonder where we're gonna go. We wonder where we're gonna go.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Links to most of the places I discussed will be in the show notes. And if you want to see some pictures of the famine on our adventures, follow me on Instagram at wwgg with Steve Webb. This show is written, recorded, and produced by me, Steve Webb. With music by me, Steve Webb. If you like the theme song, check out my album National Treasure by the most famous Steve Webb anywhere you stream music. If where we're gonna go has been fun and informative for you, please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the trip.