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Published: January 17th 2008
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Hello hello. Thank you to all of those that continue to send comments, they are much appreciated. If you would like responses though it would be easier if you e-mail me, because if I respond on the blog I don't know if you will get it or not.
Alright, so the day after arriving in Phnom Penh we took a 6 hr bus ride south to Sihanoukville where we were greeted to the strangely comforting words of "moto" yelled from all directions. We gave in and took a couple motos to a hotel within walking distance of the beach, had lunch and perused the beach front.
I was a little appaled at how touristy the beach looked. I mean I can understand that people like the comforts of travelling because that is what they are used to, but I just didn't enjoy seeing endless white people baking in lounge chairs with their margaritas. It is a bit of a generalization, but it just seemed....so much like any other incredibly touristed beach in the world. There was no character to it. So we walked away from that area and got to a nice stretch of beach with only a couple
people. It was very relaxing and refreshing to swim in the incredibly warm ocean. I think it was even warm enough for you dad 😊
I got some great sunset shots, or I should say I got 30 great sunset shots. All of them are different, I swear. The sunsets here have created some of the most red skylines I have ever seen in my life. I'm not sure if it is the tropical environment or the smog, but whatever it is I like it.
We had a candle light dinner on the beach, (we are getting so close 😊, which included a "bucket" of Mekong alcohol. It was more like a small pitcher with a little vodka and a lot of lime and ice, but still tasty.
The following day we took a boat tour through Ream National Park. Which is one of seven national parks in Cambodia and was declared a park as recently as 1993. We heard that there were tigers and monkeys in the park, but unfortunately, and to my Grandmas' sigh of contentment, we did not see a tiger.
The boat first took us along a wide river by many a
mangrove which are really cool trees that grow by the waters edge. It looked to me as if roots grow out of the branches into the water to get more nutrients. We passed many fishing boats where the people were sometimes in the water catching fish with their bare hands! That has to take lots of patience and dedication. Some people were collecting oysters as well with what seemed to be their feet and then bringing them up to their hands and into the boat.
We passed what appeared to be empty bottles and styrafoam floating aimlessly in the river, until our guide pulled one of them out and we saw that a rope and a cage was attached to the bottom. In the cage was usually a small crab with a fish head that had attracted it there in the first place. Very clever.
Oh yeah and we saw some "normal" salt water dolphins, not like those lame freshwater ones, but again no Marine World backflips. Weak sauce.
Then we got to relax on a beach for about an hour, wading in to the lapping ocean water and seeing small fish darting around my intruding form.
We continued on through the jungle for another half hour, which was not quite as enjoyable as I was hoping. Mostly because I was hungry, but also because I was hoping our tour guide would tell us some things about the jungle. We arrived at a small village which had some of the only people living in the park and had some delicious barracuda for lunch.
According to our tour guide there are about 50 huts in the park that are inhabited, but no one else is allowed to move into the reserve. What is troubling for the people living there to is, if they do want to move, they wouldn't be able to sell their house to anyone. However, our guide said all of them were making a living by being fisherman on the river, which appeared to be somewhat succesful from the short time we spent there. We then headed back to our dock on the river watching sea eagles and kites flying around us.
Later that day we headed back out to a secluded section of the beach to get even more sunset pictures. I even tried to mix them up by getting a jet
ski skirting the water in front of the sun. I think I have one to post.
Today we caught a boat to Koh Kong which was about a 5 hr ride north of Sihanoukville on an angry sea. We were keeling so much that I thought we might actually flip over at one point, but I reassured myself by thinking that these boats travel this route everyday in even worse ocean conditions without incident. Actually I didn't know if they did without incident, but that is what I told myself and it seemed to work at the moment 😊
We arrived in Koh Kong and walked around till we found a nice cheap hotel complete with mosquito nets. The first line of defence to preventing malaria. After settling in we walked along a somewhat busy dirt road with stalls and kids yelling "hello" and waving to us every five seconds. It was nice 😊
We were looking for a beach as we walked along the road and found ourselves in a village with dirt pathways winding off left and right between the huts, the smell of Khmer cooking, chickens clucking, and kids waving to us. We didn't
find the beach, but we had found something even better, a very alive and vibrant Cambodian village. And to make things even better we were stopped by a local English teacher and asked if we could stay for an hour and teach the kids. We readilly accepted and I mentally marked one of the highlights of the trip then.
The three of us stood in front of a room of about 30, 7-15 year old Cambodian children and taught them English. Each of us would take turns saying a letter and then a word starting with that letter from their school book. Such as "A is for Apple" and so on, with them repeating it back to us. Then we helped them with their lesson for the day which was learning how to say, " Are you a boy/girl? I am a boy/girl." We wrote the sentences on the board and they would repeat what we said and come up to say it themselves.
Upon leaving the room I felt like I was on drugs because it had been such a powerfully enlightening experience for me. I was teaching kids English in a third world country, which will
hopefully help them live in a better economic environment in their future. It was an incredible experience that I will never forget and may even have influenced me to consider something in the line of work. We shall see.
After my mind was blown we headed back to the hotel and now I am writing this. I am very hungry and am looking forward to a bed without Kam in it tonight.
Daniel
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Mom
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Awesome photographs
I'm repeating myself here but your photographs are awesome and I love your compositions. I laughed lots at "Kam explaining nuclear physics."