Thanks to an afternoon spent on a slack line at home with John Hillis, Beedie thought it would be a good idea to buy one and take to a school in Nepal. However, as neither had appropriate support for one, he has been carrying it around for 2 and a half months. At 7kg you can imagine he was keen to get it off his hands! Delighted that there were two trees at the KidTea school Beeds presented the slack line to a bemused Sophara and explained what it was. However, the purpose of this strange piece of equipment was definitely lost on him and all the children, and four days was spent with the children bouncing on it, me panicking there was going to be a broken arm and Beedie running up and down trying to stop them falling off! Thankfully by the last day, one of the older kids was getting the idea and was actually pretty good!
This particular charity targets children from the poorest families, some of whom are orphans. Sophara explained that he wants to develop the charity to sponsor the families to be able to provide them with enough rice each month. On the face of it, and in the touristy areas Cambodia doesn't appear
to be a country whereby people cannot afford to pay $10 a month to feed their families with rice. However, like the rest of our time in Asia we continue to meet 20-40 year olds, like Sophara, who are keen to educate us about the corruption in their country and express their anger at their governments for doing nothing to stop it and benefiting from it. In Cambodia alone we have been told how wages are so low that teachers only earn $25 a month and doctors $75, forcing the employees in these normally trusted professions to earn money in other ways, which are often to the detriment of their students/clients. We were also told that middle management jobs are basically 'jobs for the boys'. If you aren't related to someone in the profession, or have a foot in the door, you can be asked to pay a full years salary to effectively buy a job despite qualifications. Of course, this is unmanageable.
After saying goodbye to the children in Siem Reap we headed to Battambang which sits close to the Thai border. Here we went on a bamboo train on a disused rail line, a total tourist attraction, but a lot of fun. We sat on a bamboo platform just wider than the track and 2 feet off the ground to travel through the beautiful flat landscape. Every time we met another 'train' coming our way, we had to disembark, take it off, let them pass and then get back on! It wasn't fast paced...
We visited another Killing Field site. This sat in a cave at a top of a hill and dropped around 100 feet into the ground. Truck loads would carry prisoners to the top, before they were bludgeoned and pushed to their deaths at the bottom of the cave. It feels quite strange visiting these mass graves, but as I mentioned in the previous blog, the Cambodian people want you to see it as they believe if they can educate about genocide then it might help prevent future atrocities, and of course they want people to remember these victims.
At night we went to watch a circus. This is another of many fantastic NGO projects here and this particular one targets street children, engaging them through theatre, arts and acrobatics. The performance was by young people aged 12-20 and was really incredible. Made more so, by the fact that you could see they were still learning and everything wasn't perfect. Some of the contorted positions of the girls was really freaky!
On our second day in Battambang we spent the day cycling around the villages and the outskirts. It was a lot of fun and everywhere we went children screamed hello at us. The little ones are particularly funny, they see you coming, run to get their friend, take a deep breath and scream 'HELLO' and then laugh when you say it back! We feel like celebrities here! During this cycle we came across a crocodile farm which we visited and Beeds held a baby crocodile (I chickened out).
They keep some crocodiles until age 50 and at a weight of 80kg before selling them off for leather to Thailand. The baby ones are often sold to Vietnam and China for medicine and food.
We left Battambang and heading back for a night in Phnom Penh to make our way to the east of the country. One really frustrating thing about Cambodia is the lack of night busses and we have wasted a lot of our days sitting on long, slow bus journeys. Most have been fine with big tourist busses and air con, but we have had a few with people crammed in and all sorts of animals aboard. The worst was when on a 12 seater mini bus they squeezed 22 in. One poor girl was actually sharing the drivers seat and had her head out the window, there was people on the roof and when we went to get our bags we discovered eels on the floor. We got such a fright thinking they were snakes! This particular bus journey was made worse for Beeds when an middle aged lady kept stroking his arm hair, being completely fascinated by it!
Next onto Kratchie and our attempt to cycle some of the Mekong Discovery trail. This area of Cambodia really is stunning, running alongside the vast Mekong river (we think 3 miles wide at points). Unfortunately, however, the Eco Tourism Mekong Discovery trail is still in its early years and information lacking. We had hoped to leave our bags, grab some bikes and cycle for three days staying at homesteads along the way. However, on arrival, with little English spoken, no one was able to tell us if this was definitely possible and one commented on the fact that you needed a GPS - not something we thought to bring with us on this trip! Anyway, scared we might get lost, or encounter an unexploded land mine if we strayed too far off the track (unfortunately a reality here - 5 famers were killed by this just yesterday) we decided to play it safe and do a day cycle instead. Again it was a lot of fun. Cycling is such a great way to stray away from the busy roads and interact with the small villages. The locals all seem delighted to see us, 'hello, hello' and provide us with plenty smiles. Stopping for a juice or something to eat at their little stalls is a must and amusing all round. They just seem to laugh at our presence and stare at our every move and we think its hilarious they are wearing pyjamas (I'm not sure they are aware they are designed for sleeping in) and are so interested in us! On this cycle we also saw some of the 69 endangered dolphins in the Mekong.
During our time here we met a really nice couple and decided to head off on an overnight trek in the northeast of the country. We joined another 4 people and set off for a walk through the jungle to a waterfall where we were to camp for the night, amid fears we might get a leech or two, as how could we forget, we are in South East Asia in the rainy season! The trek was great and took us out to minority villages which are a world removed from the towns and cities. Even although it was only a 40 min drive, an hour boat and a walk away, Western civilisation has not yet reached these villages with ladies unclothed in tribal fashion and lots of naked children. Most children here were far more shy of us and stared from the buffaloes they were riding.
We visited a village cemetery and our guide explained the minority tradition which takes place when someone dies. This involves sacrificing a buffalo, by first slashing its legs until it falls down and then cutting its throat. After eating raw meat they cook minced buffalo meat with the buffalo shit. We of course, all thought we must have misheard this part and this led to a very funny conversation of about five minutes of us saying 'but are you sure they eat the shit, you know what shit means' and him saying loudly 'yes, they eat the shit, the locals eat the shit'! He then informed us tourists can pay $1000 to join in this ceremony...thankfully it is out with our budget!
After a hot day of walking we reached an idyllic waterfall and it started to rain! Quite used to these torrential downpours we decided it didn't matter and went for a swim to cool off. Beeds had brought a frisbee and one of our friends a bottle of whiskey! That night we enjoyed rice, veg and meat boiled inside a bamboo tree and slept in hammocks.
For some strange reason, during our trek, Beeds was very excited about the prospect of getting a leech. He demonstrated this by going against the advice of long sleeves and trousers to 'work on his tan' and I on the other hand was boiling in my trekking trousers and jumper. I bet you can guess who got two and who got none! They weren't too bad and so small as I caught them as they bit me. I would say just the size of a large ant, although the guide told us they can get very big!
We said goodbye to an amazing three weeks in Cambodia and set off for the Laos border praying it would go smoothly. It mostly did, until they wanted $2 to give us our passports back: b****rds!
In Laos we headed to the four thousand islands. Like the name suggests this is a set of islands which sit in the Mekong river. Throughout Cambodia and in Laos the Mekong has been incredible. So high and wide, with trees up to five metres only just showing out the top during the three month long rainy season. The island was lovely, although a little spoilt by the number of bars which have popped up. However, we slept in a bungalow on stilts for just £4, bliss!
Here we joined a fun group of 12 to kayak on the Mekong, visiting beautiful loud and ferocious waterfalls (we were on land at this point), saw two of the six dolphins in the region, and despite having to kayak against the current, made an easier border crossing back into Cambodia to enjoy lunch!
Following this we spent five amazing days with a Swiss and Israeli couple motor biking round the beautiful hills and visiting waterfalls in the south of Laos (a complete contrast to the flat lands of Cambodia). We of course had helmets, but with pigs, cows, chickens, dogs and goats randomly crossing the roads it was a sensible thing we stuck to a 100cc bike which struggled to go fast at any point! We stayed in a beautiful little village and homestead fashioned accommodation. Each night we helped the family cook and were spoiled with the most delicious dinner. Although saying this, one night they did give us a plate of fried locusts! We both tried it and it was OK but just felt too weird to eat, so we only had two to be polite!
During our time here we did another guiding walk visiting three minority villages. Each was only within 45 minutes of the next, but despite this they all spoke different languages. Our guide also answered our many questions about the different plants and foods and showed us the below plant whereby the leaves are used by women after childbirth to relief pain. With no painkillers or doctor, they give birth in their homes and then sit on them, he assure us it works!
Next it was my turn to get ill and it wasn't pleasant. I enjoyed 24hrs by the toilet whilst Beeds explored the local town, ate and caught some of the English premier league on the tv! Back to health we jumped on a very bumpy overnight sleeper bus to the capital, Vientiane, and currently in an air con cafe enjoying Christmas music, Boyzone and West Life as I write this.
Some more photos...
This lady is smoking one of their huge homemade tobacco cigarettes whilst picking chillies. (Laos)
Another Cambodian temple ruin.
The little children in the minority villages where desperate to get our plastic bottles.
Our guide carving a cup out a bamboo tree for our coffee in the morning after our night in a hammock.
One of many stunning waterfalls in the Tad Lo region of Laos.
Cambodia is so flat!
Sophara, the monk who set up KidTea charity in Cambodia. He has hair and normal clothing on as he is currently taking a break from being a full time monk to study.
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