Day 244 (February 21): Nature Day

After a long day yesterday, exploring temples and trekking in the jungle heat, today was relatively slow and easy and very focused on nature, which always brings joy to this crowd. Our guide took us to the Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity. This is an animal rescue facility near Siem Reap. They collect animals that have been hurt in the wild or abandoned as pets. To the extent possible, they use breeding pairs from this population to help repopulate endangered or threatened species in the surrounding territory. If you're inspired, you can donate to them (for context, their requested donation for visitors was $5 each).

After our tour, our teacher shared some turtle shells and other specimen while discussing how certain animals are hunted (sometimes aggressively) for their medicinal benefits. 

Just add water! Snake-infused water is believed by some to have powerful healing benefits.

From ACCB, we drove about half an hour to the Bantrey Srey Butterfly Centre. The thing about this placed that amazed me was their business model: the buy pupae from locals, whom they teach to recognize, protect and nurture the animals, and sell them to zoos and collectors. Then they use the proceeds to create conservancy jobs, including the operation of the centre itself. They don't seem to accept online contributions, unfortunately but if you feel inspired enough to track it down, they have contact information on their website.

While I was being amazed by the business model, the rest of the gang was being amazed by the butterflies themselves and with good reason.

This is the hatchery. Plenty of opportunity in the span of five minutes to watch the creates emerge, dry and/or fly off. Some were willing to begin (this phase of) life on Ali's finger!

The gardening/horticulture is a significant part of the enterprise.

Hard to see but these are stick bugs. The smaller one was about a foot long!

After lunch and swimming back at the hotel, we headed into town for dinner and the night market. The ten of us split into two tuk tuks and bumped our way into town. (I'm writing this a few days after the fact in Vietnam, where the traffic makes Siem Reap look pastoral, and it's hard to see this with the same shock that I felt at the time.) Here are two videos of our rides, the first one into town and the second one back to the hotel.

In between, we visited Pub Street, which is an obvious tourist trap but a good place to take our gang to dinner, since we were able to order everything from butter noodles to local Khmer specialties. There was also a terrible band and the opportunity to order 3 litres of beer for about $20 (it came with its own tap - we passed).

We were drawn to a nearby intersection by the promise of fried ice cream, which I still don't really understand, but the show was stolen by the adjacent stall, which featured fish massage. If you don't know, that's when you put your feet into a large tank and dozens of small fish nibble away dead skin. According to Elise, it tickled a bit.

We've even got some footage for you to enjoy.

Then it was off to the market. The girls (Ali, Cate and Anya) bought dresses, Lily bought some super comfy and lightweight pants, Enzo bought a Paris-St. Germain jersey and Henry got a woven bracelet ("Cambodia") that he momentarily prizes above all else.

After all of the day's excitement, it wasn't hard to get the kids to sleep. Not for nothing, but it wasn't hard to get Elise to sleep either: she fell asleep in the middle of a sentence to me!