Village Days

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We just spent the last 4 days in a remote village in Cambodia which Dana had randomly wanted to go to in order to get out of the touristy area. We recruited a young Swedish couple with us and had such a wild time.

They are planning to develop this community for eco tourism but so far just have mountain bikes and kayaks for rent. It took a day of travel each way as after a long bus ride you have to take a boat up the river through the sweltering jungle. We stayed with this really nice family while we were there and the daughter even spoke a bit of English. We spent our first day kayaking around the river and fishing (no catches) and the second day biking through the jungle. On our bikes we found this incredible waterfall and spent the day lazing around in our hammock and swimming and fishing with the Sweds. Monsoon season started on that second day while we were biking and went from a dry dusty road to a knee-deep river in 10-20 minutes. It was insane. On our ride home the massive thunder storm began and instantly we were biking though the muddy river-road. This may have been one of the best days of my life. So relaxing and so exhilarating. It was raining so hard and we were soaked but the temp was in the high 30s so it was warm and so fun to ride though the river. Since it just started the ground was still hard underneath making it possible to bike through the water even though it was 2 feet deep - a good workout! We have some good photos and a video of it but I have to wait until this couple emails it to us, so could be awhile. That night, millions of frogs came out of nowhere and were everywhere. As we walked down the street they would jump into us and we would step on them. Even the house and our rooms which were locked had frogs jumping around in them. It was so bizarre! I thought it was one of those signs that the world was ending, but the daughter assured me that it happens at the beginning of every monsoon season. Since everything was flooded we left the next morning and now we are in a beach town and are going out to an island for a few days to finally relax and celebrate Dana’s b-day. As we left the next morning I happened to notice pales full of squirming frogs - mmm to bad I missed the communal dinner that night!

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