Hello all! It's been really fun here lately, today we went on a boat trip on the Tonle Sam River. We drove about an hour and a half to get to the river and on the way a truck had fallen off the road because it's axel broke and the driver couldn't steer. It fell into a swampy pondish body of water and it took a huge truck and two giant tractors to get it back onto the road. While they pulled it up the bank of the pond it almost tipped over and the driver who was stuck inside the truck looked terrified when it started tipping. Everyone that was watching when it started tipping all cried out and went whoaaaaa but then it was up on the road and everyone looked relieved. The roads are really dusty because they don't have paved roads up here, or at least most of the province, we're actually in the town of Banlung in the Ratanakiri province. Only the main road in Banlung has paved roads but all over there looks like progress towards paving the rest of the roads. During the rainy season the nonpaved roads are completely impassable. Once we got to the river we were put onto a long thin wood boat with our guide and boat skipper. Our guide was really funny, he spoke better English than almost every Khmer person that I know. He also had a really weird strong Australian accent even though he's never taken an English class and definitely hasn't ever been to Australia but it was easier to understand than the Khmer accent that most people have. When we were on the river the jungle around was beautiful with huge trees and a lot of big leafy greenery. The river was a murky green color that didn't make you want to really swim in but a lot of Khmer kids didn't seem to have a problem with it. I saw one kid with a bunch of his friends and or family who grabbed onto a thick vine and did a Tarzan like swing into the river. We arrived at a village of a minority tribe of people. The minorities in Cambodia often speak a different language and have a completely different language and way of life. Most speak Khmer though, we went into the village after watching girls filter water which they dug from the bank of the river. The water here isn't safe to drink so we have to drink all bottled water, we can't drink from the tap because of the recycled water. But these girls were digging water from the bank and filtering it for them to drink. One girl was pulling up water and pouring it into a gourd then pouring it out again. As we were leaving the village we saw a little boy who couldn't have been older than 5 carrying on his back a basket full of bottles of water and we tested the weight and it definitely was heavier than our school backpacks which was an accomplishment! We entered the village after watching the girl get the water but before we could enter the village we had to pay an entrance fee to be able to watch everyone at their daily life and take pictures. That day it was a holiday for the whole village because that morning a woman had given birth. We were allowed to enter the room that the baby was residing in with her mother. We took a few pictures then then because the flash was disturbing the baby we left. We also got rice wine but my brother and I didn't drink any, the tradition at the village was when a baby was born you got rice wine. We continued through the village, it seemed like a lot of animals had given birth recently also because there were super cute baby piglets who my brother was obsessed with and puppies that the mother dog had give birth to that morning, their eyes weren't open and they couldn't even stand or walk. We went to the school a little later and we saw that they were learning a little geometry also but they were also learning much simpler math and Khmer too. It was kind of funny though. Everyone in Cambodia is obsessed with volleyball, there are volleyball courts everywhere and you always see kids playing. But unlike in America only the boys play, it's not a girls sport here. After looking at the school in the village we went to the cemetery where they have very elaborate tombs. They were surrounded by fences and had carved representations of men and women around with curved roofs and dragon boats carved on the top. The guide told us that at every funeral a water buffalo was sacrificed and the bones are left in front of the tomb. After we finished looking at the tombs and receiving a couple more mosquito bites we left on the boats again. We went back to where we started and had lunch, I had fried noodles with vegetables and beef or chicken I'm not sure what it was. Then we went to the Crater lake, the lake was formed in the crater of a inactive volcano and at the center it was 70 meters deep. The water was perfect and the lake was perfectly circular and all together it was wonderful. The water was just like Hawaii, really blue and clear and warm. Then we returned to the Tree Top hotel where we've been staying; completely worn out.
Il y a beaucoup French personnes ici. Et tout le monde fumeurs c'est disguste! Ca odeurs tres mal! Il y a n'American pas ici! Je ne voit pas un American depuis nous avons quitte. Mais le Europeens parlent bien l'anglais. Il ya un petite fille qui est Francaise et elle est trilingue et elle est seulement 5 ou 6! Ca fait tu se sentent mal...
Ecrire plus tard!
Ming :)
Also I won't be writing for the next one or maybe two days because my parents are making me do a two day trek, which means a two day hiking trip in the blazing hot sun. So not my kind of thing.
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