With the horse riding, I thought I’d seen just how bad the floods in Siem Reap were. I hadn’t seen anything yet. Later that evening, since I couldn’t do the microlight flight, I brought my plans for the next day forward. Every weekday, the orphans at a local Siem Reap orphanage, Acodo, perform traditional Khmer dances, I really wanted to see this and since I had time, decided to do it today. I had someone from the front desk of the hostel call to see if they were still open, they said that the street outside was flooded but that the show was still going ahead. They made it sound so minor. It really wasn’t. I had a guy with a motorbike take me most of the way, we went through the level of flood water I’d become accustomed to over the last couple of days, maybe a few inches here and there but when we got to the start of the road the orphanage was on he said he couldn’t go any further. The water was too deep for his bike. Shit, what was I going to do now? Luckily, the motorbike driver answered that for me. He wandered off for a little bit and when he came back, was telling me to get in a different ride. In this area, I’d seen these strange tractor-like vehicles driving around pulling wooden carriages behind them but had no idea what they were for. I later found that people were calling them tuk-tuks. I think mega tuk-tuk is more appropriate. They were way bigger than the regular ones and were so high above the water that there was no way anyone inside the carriage would get wet. That said, they weren’t exactly a smooth ride. The seats were made of metal and since I was already sore from all the horse riding earlier, the lack of suspension did not help.

As we headed down the road it became darker and darker, the power to the street lights in this area must have been damaged during the flooding because the only illumination was from the headlights of oncoming vehicles and the faint light a few people had coming from their houses. It was very dark and on many sections of the road you couldn’t make out anything. Walking here was dangerous because even with a torch you’d have no way of knowing what you were walking on or where the sudden drops in the road would be. And they really were sudden. I don’t know how bad the road looks when it’s not flooded but it must be pretty terrible. Numerous times, there were very sharp, sudden drops in the road for which there really was no warning at all, the water was deep almost the whole way. Despite these conditions, I could just about make out a few people that were braving it anyway and still walking through like they normally would have. They didn’t look like it but they were pretty badass for doing that.

I got to the orphanage in one piece, and thanks to the kind help of one of my fellow passengers, I managed to find it even without any lights. Everyone else on the mega tuk-tuk was Cambodian and I guess they were all headed in the same direction as me. The hard bit came after I got there though. The water wasn’t so deep as I first stepped on to the road, it didn’t go much above my ankles in the spot I was standing, but with each passing step I took towards the orphanage it got deeper and deeper. By the time I was inside the grounds it was knee high to me so it was at least half way up the thigh of most of the locals. Most of the kids at the orphanage would have been completely submerged if they’d attempted walking through it. The orphanage was mostly an outdoor complex but the stage had a large roof covering both it and the seating area. It was still surreal seeing any sort of a performance while there was knee high water everywhere. The audience seating area was on a second floor that as I mentioned earlier had been built under the same roof that was covering the stage. It wasn’t a proper second floor, it felt like more of a large balcony but it meant we stayed dry during the performance so I didn’t have any complaints. Even with that roof though, the orphanage was still all ‘outside’ .

I was expecting the performances to sort of be like the ones on those ‘8 out of 10 cats’ Christmas specials where kids from a primary school or nursery perform a scene from a well known film or TV show. Everyone loves the segment because the little kids are so cute and adorable but their actual performances are always shit. That wasn’t the case with these kids. They were just as cute and adorable but their performances were fantastic, they did a great job on everything and I was genuinely impressed. It was really cute when they made minor mistakes though :) It was funny when the kids back stage would peek through the stage door to take a look at the crowd too, they’d always try doing it discretely, thinking nobody had seen them but we always did. I think that made it even cuter. They performed 3 traditional Khmer dances; the monkey dance, the fish harvest dance and the coconut shell dance, I think that of the three, the monkey dance was my favourite. For each of 3 dances we saw, there were 12 kids on stage. They moved about the stage and interacted with each other in very interesting ways. I have to say, traditional Cambodian dancing is pretty cool.

Everyone gathered on stage at the end and all the people in the audience (there were maybe 12 of us) got some pictures of the kids before we said our goodbyes. I’m so glad that there were a good number of people in the audience. As I was entering the orphanage (and during the whole ride over) I didn’t really see many tuk-tuks going back towards my hostel. If I had been the only one, I would have had no way of back and may have even had to spend the night at the orphanage. Luckily, as there were so many of us, the guy running the orphanage came out with us and arranged transport to take us back. It was a truck with seats this time, and was much nicer than what I had come in on. The truck dropped us off at the Siem Reap Night Market. Apart from the fact that it was (surprisingly) very clean, it was more or less like any other night market I’ve seen in Asia. I still enjoyed it though.

With all said and done, Siem Reap was brilliant and I had a great time there. It’s a shame it didn’t work out with the microlight flight but I already knew that New Zealand has loads of them, I guess I’ll just have to do it there instead :)