One big turnout for one big, green clean up

Many hands make for light work.

via CAAI

Friday, 17 September 2010 15:00 Post Staff

Having just organised another Siem Reap Green Day Clean Up, Victoria Angkor Resort and Spa’s general manager Hanno Stamm is now gearing up for the Big Sit.

On Saturday the hotel held its annual Green Day.

Here in Siem Reap, the hotel organises an annual clean up, and in the past it has always been at Angkor Wat.

But this year Stamm wanted to do something different – spruce up the downtown environment by cleaning the area surrounding the central park and the banks on both sides of the Siem Reap river.

Stamm said the decision to move the cleaning from Angkor Wat came about because he felt the authorities did a pretty good job of cleaning the famous temple.

“It makes a lot more sense to do the cleaning in the local community,” he said.

Also, this year the hotel recruited local high school students and the turnout was impressive – 300 people.

“We don’t have a count of what we collected,” Stamm said, “but it was a lot.”

Now the energetic chap is organising his next volunteer event – the Big Sit.

As a hardcore bird watcher, the annual Big Sit appeals to Stamm greatly. This year it will take place world-wide on October 10 and involves people sitting in a circle from midnight to midday counting the number of birds they see.

But Stamm will modify the Siem Reap version so it doesn’t become a marathon bum-number.

“We’ll sit from just before day break until night fall,” he said, “with just a little bit of time spent in the dark to see if there are any owls around.”

The venue will be the little known local bird paradise, the Ang Trapaeng Thmor Crane Sanctuary.

For more details email: gm.angkor@victoriahotels.asia