Blogs from Kampong Cham, East, Cambodia, Asia - page 3

And thus begun our experience of local buses. We took a six hour bus from Siem Reap to Kampong Cham. All the seats on the bus are assigned by number. Luckily we were placed near the front of the bus where the air conditioning was working really well. About one hour into the journey however, I was willing to be hotter higher up the bus to get away from the bus horn. The driver blasted the horn for 30 seconds any time a bike came into sight ahead of this and on the main roads this happened every few minutes. There were a couple of stops along the way for toilets but there was no where really to stretch our legs until I got off the bus. I was ready for some exercise. We were given ... read more

Kampong Cham the third biggest city in Cambodia although you'd be forgiven to think that it was no more than a large town. This was an overnight stop between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap and whilst the town itself had no major sights, a bicycle trip to the island of Koh Paen was especially enjoyable. Access to the island was via a temporary bamboo bridge which is dismantled when the water level rises during the monsoons. Cycling over the bridge was a bumpy but great experience. The bridge would give Megastructures a run for its money. On the island we cycled along greeted by the village children giving high 5's and getting a glimpse of everyday life. Karen got to check out the working conditions of her Cambodian counterparts when we visited the local school, it ... read more

Thok Narith live in the Center for Children's Happiness... read more

Day 40/41/42/43/44/45- Kompong Cham We made our third trip back to Phnom Penh from Kampot. It was an uninteresting day. We picked up our passports from Myanmar Embassy, stocked up on food at the grocery store (they had Cheetos's - so we were in heaven), watched "Knocked Up" and went to bed. The next day (Wednesday - Feb. 18th), we hopefully said our last goodbye's to Phnom Penh and headed to Kompong Cham, which is about 3 hours north east. We had the usual rest stop along the way but instead of kids in our face trying to sell us fruit there was a huge pile of fried black spiders. This one Western guy got off the bus, went straight for the spiders and popped one right in his mouth. The two of us just stood ... read more

Yesterday, I had to meet with the partner in Kampong Cham which was a really beautiful town along the Mekong River. All the French colonial architecture, wide boulevards, and pleasantly calm streets somehow free of the millions of mopeds that every other city seems to have. The drive there was out of some National Geographic show with water buffalo and cows working the fields, farmers hunched over rice paddies, and low flat lands of rice paddies extending onto the horizon with only a few palm trees to dot the landscape. But after the meetings, I went to visit two of the schools and it was just the often repeated scene of development tourism. All the Cambodian school children came running into the school yard when the big car with the foreign guy pulled up. So of ... read more