Days 12-16 of Cambodia cycle

Sama:  Sus'dai

It's been a fabulous experience cycling along the Mekong, the villages are picturesque and everyone  is friendly with lots of smiles and waves.  After a few hours of all this waving I feel I need an automatic waving hand like you see on the rear windows of cars. The early morning starts at 5:30 each day have worked out well, the Cambodians are very early risers, normally up by 5am to get out into the fields by sunrise. Even in the towns large groups are up early doing aerobics in the dark in public squares, to a fast thudding beat, like a rave party.

We spent the last days of the cycle travelling to the Cambodia-Laos border, where we stayed at Ou Svay commune and visited Preah Rumkel commune by river boat.  They are both very isolated and up until a few years ago neither village was accessible by road, but now Ou Svay has a dirt road leading to the new Chinese funded super smooth highway and bridge.  Despite this, it is still very peaceful and simple. At the homestay there was electricity for just 3 hours per day. We fell asleep and awoke to the sound of the family chanting buddhist prayers.

Ferry across the Mekong

Mekong running high after the wet season.

View across the dolphin bay into Laos.

The two villages have only recently opened up to tourism, so it's early days with hardly anyone speaking even a little English, and as we had only a few Khmer words and phrases a lot of the communication happened by sign language and drawing pictures. A number of NGOs - including Australian ones - have done a good job in setting up  signs and an information website for any interested travellers. It is such a beautiful place with a huge potential for ecotourism.

Most of our rides have been on simple dirt tracks along the banks of the Mekong, so every morning our breakfast stops were incredible. One day, however, on the super smooth Chinese highway, which is an easy, if uninspiring, leg of the journey, we were in a very sparsely populated area and as there was hardly any traffic and we hadn't seen so much as a wooden shack for ages we decided to stop for breakfast at the side of the road. After 2 hours of cycling anywhere will do. After just a few minutes of tucking into our bowls of fruit and muesli, a large group of school children appeared out of nowhere and came running down the road towards us with smiles and shrieks of laughter and hellos.  Being a little concerned for their safety on the edge of a major (if hardly used) international highway we decided to round them up and go and find their school, which turned out to be an incomplete structure with no walls resembling the part underneath the house where you might keep the buffaloes. 


The teacher hadn't arrived yet and the kids were keen to show us their desks and blackboard and before we knew it we were running an impromptu lesson complete with counting and action songs in English until their bemused (but very friendly) teacher arrived on her motorbike. On reflection being a teacher has opened many doors both in Nepal and Cambodia and has helped me appreciate how important education is to people in both of these countries.


Sadly in Cambodia there are always some reminders of the armed conflict that took place here, still leaving its legacy with thousands of active landmines. Just days after arriving in Cambodia in a nearby village a tractor carrying 16 people ran over an anti tank mine, killing everyone. The land mine deaths are counted each year in hundreds, like the road toll in Australia, and its an everyday site to see a one legged land mine survivor on crutches.  It will take decades for this problem to go away.

A rural classroom gets an Aussie lesson.

Half the women in Cambodia seem to get around
in their pyjamas all day, which  adds to the
laid back feeling of the country.

Sean and impromptu English lesson student do their bro' thing



......meanwhile sama was occupying the rest of the kids.



That's all for now.  Stay tuned for our final post for the trip.

Best wishes
Sama (and Sean)
   

One more amazing Mekong sunset.