‘Worthy doesn’t mean dull’: Biggest misconception about a ‘holiday with a heart’
When you think about it, holidays are a pretty selfish idea. Selfish in a good way.
We are doing something for ourselves. We work hard and every now and then deserve a holiday, a treat away from work and other pressures of our hectic, modern lives.
Siem Reap in Cambodia is a tourist hotspot. Getty
But what if a holiday could be selfish and selfless at the same time? What if your holiday could make someone else’s life better. It’s a win-win. It’s just a matter of choosing holidays that makes a difference.
Holidays with a heart
There are plenty of them out there. It’s just a matter of landing on something that fits in with your idea of a holiday.
I went to Cambodia to check out local tourist enterprises that empower communities in a country that sits on the UN’s list of the least developed nations.
All of these businesses are supported by tour company G Adventures and its non-profit partner Planeterra.
Planeterra helps these enterprises on the ground develop to a standard that adequately accommodates foreign visitors and G Adventures puts these places in their itineraries. Talk about a win-win.
Travel that empowers women
There is no better example of this than the Tuk Tuk Lady of Siem Reap. Kim Sokleang found herself a single mother with two sons to support after a divorce in 2013.
She decided to take up tuk tuk driving in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh at a time when it was an exclusively male occupation.
“But no one wanted to get in my tuk tuk because I am a woman,” she told me.
John Walsh with TukTuk driver Sunleang in Cambodia John Walsh
So Kim moved to Siem Reap in 2015 where there were more foreign tourists because of its proximity to Angkor Wat.
She persevered and started to make a good business for herself.
But she also wanted to empower other women and in 2022 she started the Tuk Tuk Lady Drivers Association.
She now has 55 drivers with 45 more in training. I took a ride with Luy Sunleang, one of those drivers.
Large tree growing over the top of a temple in Angkor, Cambodia iStock
“I decided to become a tuk tuk driver because I wanted to earn an honest income to support my family,” said the single mum.
“The work has changed my life and my family’s future.”
All the women have their names and photos on the back on their tuk tuks with QR codes for easy connection.
This is a business model that works and just by booking Sunleang or one of her colleagues you are making a big difference to a family and a community.
But back to the holiday. Sunleang dropped me at Angkor Wat, 20 minutes from Siem Reap, Cambodia’s most popular tourist attraction.
From a western point of view the temple complex was “lost” to the jungle for 400 years. However, it had never stopped being a place of worship for local monks and villagers.
Every day life at rush hour in Phnom Penh. Getty Images
It was built as a Hindu temple around 1150 but in less than 100 years became a Buddhist shrine and is now regarded as the largest religious structure in the world.
Best time to go is sunrise. The early start is worth it to see the sun come up over the temple’s five lotus towers.
Depending on what season you’re there you may be competing with hundreds of other visitors for a viewing spot, but there’s enough room for everyone.
The lifeblood of Cambodia is the Mekong River and on a place called Silk Island women are working to maintain a tradition of silk weaving that dates back centuries.
Silk weavers in Cambodia John Walsh
I took a ferry ride from Phnom Penh for an hour or so to the island then boarded a tuktuk for a rainy 10-minute drive through villages and rice fields to the weaving centre.
The bright lights of the city draw a lot of younger women upriver to the capital Phnom Penh but the collective of 330 weavers (30 on the island and 300 in surrounding villages) is hoping to create more business and more incentives for the next generation to stay on and maintain the tradition.
That’s where Planeterra enters the picture again.
They can’t teach the women anything about weaving, but they can mentor them in business and hospitality and have paid for things like new toilets and a restaurant to make it more tourist-friendly.
And, of course, again its placement on G Adventures itineraries delivers the customers. The husbands drive the tuk tuks that transport the visitors, so everyone is benefiting from the enterprise.
I spoke to Madame Kaing, a local weaving legend who has been working at her craft for 30 years, since she was 15.
Watching more silk weavers in their element. John Walsh
“I have two sons. One is a tuk driver and one is still at school,” she said.
Her husband is sick and stays in the village, so the income from weaving is crucial to the family’s livelihood. Despite that she now takes time out to teach the next generation and has now taught 10 per cent of the current weaver workforce.
“Everybody can come to me to learn, it doesn’t matter. I want to keep this tradition going forever,” she said.
You can experience the whole process of weaving here from the silkworms to the silk scarves.
The silkworms thrive on a constant supply of mulberry leaves and can produce 300 metres of silk filaments from a single cocoon.
After you’ve seen the various stages of production you can buy the finished items in the gift shop ranging from around $14 for a simple scarf through to $280 for an elaborate ceremonial piece.
A snack seller in Cambodia John Walsh
Travel that helps young people
You’ve got to eat somewhere so why not eat where you’re making a difference.
Spoons in Siem Reap is a restaurant and training school preparing disadvantaged youth for a career in hospitality.
Many of the trainees have come from poor rural communities that offer little career prospects to young people and others come from broken homes or single parent households.
The non-profit has a phenomenal success rate of placing 100 per cent of its graduates in paid hospitality jobs.
I managed to get a few minutes for a chat with Lina and Thanut, both 18, who are nine months into their year-long training at Spoons. Both came from rural villages 300km from Siem Reap.
Spoons restaurant trainees in Cambodia John Walsh
“My family is poor, and we don’t have any money to study after high school,” said Lina, who is from a family of seven.
“When I finish here I want to work at a hotel as a chef and support my family and myself.”
Both girls said without Spoons they would be farm workers or have no work at all.
“I came here to improve my English and learn about my favourite skill which is baking and I would like to be a pastry chef,” said Thanut.
Travel that empowers whole villages
Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm (the “Tomb Raider” temple) are about the only two temples even regular visitors to Cambodia could name.
But about halfway between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh is a temple complex that is not only off the tourist track, it’s off the grid and under the radar.
Sambor Prei Kuk is much older than Angkor Wat, about five hundred years older.
A large tree growing over the 12th Century exterior of Sambor Prei Kuk temple in Cambodia. iStock
It doesn’t have the grandeur of Angkor but what’s called its Core Compound still has a dazzling display of temples spread over a thousand acres.
The problem with Sambor Prei Kuk is its location. It’s three hours from Siem Reap and Phnom Penh with very little tourist infrastructure like hotels and restaurants.
So, in 2005 the Isanborei Community Tourism Project was launched which now provides homestays, meals, arts and crafts, temple guiding, and cycling tours.
A homestay in Cambodia John Walsh
There are seven villages involved in the initiative, and it’s now estimated that about half of the 2,000 families here derive direct or indirect benefit from the program.
There are 12 registered homestays across the villages numbered one to12 with the numbers proudly displayed out front.
To make sure everyone benefits equally from the program bookings are rotated around the homestays. I had a delicious lunch at Homestay 5 and the day I was there women from other homestays volunteered to help prepare the food because of more guests than usual.
The accommodation is very basic, but it’s clean and neat. You don’t have to stay to eat at the homes and most people will just want to drop in for lunch after a temple tour.
For me, a highlight to finish is a boat ride through the floating village of Kampong Phlouk on Tonle Sap lake about an hour from Siem Reap.
Traditional Kampong Phluk floating village with multicolored boats and stilt houses, Tonle Sap lake, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia iStock
Three communities of villagers live in stilted houses on the lake with a fully functional neighbourhood that includes shops, medical centre and police force.
If Hollywood wanted a location to set a Jason Bourne jetboat scene through an exotic looking Asian village this would be it.
The locals operate the boat tours through the village and an enterprising group of women called Kampong Phlouk Women's Boat Community paddle tourists through the flooded forest at the back of the village in wooden canoes.
You’ll also find other industrious locals in speedboats coming up to your tour vessel to sell snacks and drinks.
This was the most fun activity I had during my week in Cambodia and was further proof that worthy doesn't mean dull.
I’m not suggesting every time you take some leave you have to save the planet.
Lie by the pool in Fiji for a week, take that spa tour of Italy but if the opportunity comes up dive in and discover that you can help change the world one holiday at a time.
John Walsh travelled as a guest of G Adventures. John was Executive Producer of the TV travel series Getaway from 1999-2024. You can follow John on Instagram @thegetawayexpert.
