Palm Sugar House

This guide to the Palm Sugar House in Preah Dak, near Siem Reap, follows the twice-daily climb up a sugar palm to tap the sap that has fed families here for generations. It walks through the tapper's route up a bamboo ladder with no harness or net, the fresh tube tied beneath a cut flower stalk, and the hours-long boil of raw juice into syrup in a huge clay pot over a wood fire. Along the way it touches on the Khmer belief in neak ta, guardian spirits said to watch over old palm trees and the harvest taken from them. Listen for the rope groaning against the bark as the climb begins before sunrise.