HOMESTAY ON A MEKONG ISLAND FARM

After lunch we again boarded a boat…. This time a ferry which took us over to Koh Trong Island for our homestay.  We had a very nice kid named “Sa” take us over to the island.  Sa was really working it and earned every penny of the $6 tip we gave him (that’s a lot of money in Cambodia!) as he spoke excellent English and shared a lot of the secrets of rural Khmer life with us as we bicycled around the island.  The islanders have developed a cooperative where they share in the profits of the rice crop, the fishing, and tourism.  Helped by some organizations like OxFam, the Koh Trong islanders have a community initiative to develop ecotourism.  This includes bicycle rental, which is really the only way to get around the island, which is about 12 kilometers (6 miles or so) around.  So, we took off on the bicycle while Sa stopped and explained the different crops growing like cucumber, lemon grass, pamelo, etc.  He showed us how to make a whistle out of a banana leaf and a trumpet out of a mango stem (well, I think it was a mango but I can’t remember – ask Jeff).  He showed us how to blow bubbles out of some other steps he picked for us, and explained more about rice cultivation to us.  He took us to a Vietnamese “floating village” – Vietnamese, as foreigners, aren’t allowed to own property in Cambodia so they live on boats. He took us to a local shop where we had “Cambodian Ice Cream” – shaved ice, palm sugar syrup, coconut milk, and fruit juice.  It was awesome – mostly so because by this time we were dying of heat exhaustion from cycling all over the island.  Seriously.  The banks of the Mekong were probably rising from the amount of sweat dripping off of us.  In addition to the heat, it was dirty!  The clay path was wet and it took a lot of concentration to keep steering to the dry areas to keep from wiping out.  As we cycled the local children were bringing the cows home from their day’s grazing, the teenagers were involved in a volleyball match (Sa told us there was money on the line!).  They had a pretty decent net and the lines were marked with strips of bamboo which, Sa explained, made it easier to determine when the ball hit the line because they could hear it smack the bamboo.  Their ball, however, was in some serious need of an air pump.  Watching the kids play gave us an excuse to take a break from cycling, but soon we were on the “road” again, to see the local temple and the tree filled with giant bats on its grounds. 

Ferry to our homestay island

Local volleyball game

This woman seemed to be the official island greeter.... she hung out at the ferry landing

Our homestay house

Our hostess

No motor vehicles on the island....

Floating village on the far side of the island

Some peeps we met on our bicycle journey around the island...

This woman was a godsend on a steamy hot bike ride... she had a stand selling "Cambodian ice cream"
(shaved ice with coconut milk and fruit syrup)

ahhhhhhhhh....

Checking out the crops with Sa

We left our bikes behind for a while to walk out into the rice paddy

We finished up our tour of the island with a quick glimpse of the guest house run by Germans and another run by French at the northern tip of Koh Trong.  T hen Sa took us to introduce us to our homestay family.  The lady of the hosue was named Suk Wan Ne and she spoke about as much English as I do Khmer.  She had a husband who didn’t speak at all, a teenage daughter who had learned some English phrases at school, and an 8 year old son who hadn’t learned any English yet.  I have to say that I’m glad we did the homestay, but it was really awkward.  The family had work to do and we were just sort of there.  Mom was busy in the garden, kids had their chores and dad wasn’t even around till dark.  But it was a great chance to kick back and unwind.  We tried to clean up our mud-splattered legs at their rain barrel, then Jeff relaxed  in a  hammock under their stilt house and I sat on the steps and watched the world go by.  Every time one of the family members came by we’d smile shyly at each other, but that was it.  There was no electricity at the home, but around sunset they did crank up the generator and got the pump primed so we could take a shower and mom could cook dinner.

Home sweet home

Relaxing in the shade under the house

The main room in the home

Our bathroom

Hanging out on the step, watching the world go by

A typical island home

I sat with Suk Wan Ne in the kitchen and watched her steam rice, chop garlic and greens, and slice pork for our stir-fry dinner.  She did have a beautiful teakwood table and chairs and Jeff and I sat there and sipped tea as she served us.  We tried to get them to sit and eat with us, but they preferred to eat in the kitchen (thus the awkwardness of the evening).  The meal was delicious, though, not made less so by the sight of two giant iguana type things that were venturing down the walls of the house as we ate.  Jeff unobtrusively scared them away and I just had to tell myself that once the lights went off they would no longer be interested in the inside of the open-air home.  Suk Wan Ne gave us some of her delicious home-grown pomelo for desert and then she cut off the generator and we hit the hay.  We actually did have a mattress and a choice of sleeping out in the big common room with the family or in a screened off room to the side.  Because we felt sort of odd we slept in the side room, even though it would have been cooler in the big open room.  Now I must make a short shout-out for the beauty of sleeping pills.  Actually, it was Benadryl, but the same concept held true:  If one must sleep in an open air hut with strangers, no electricity, and two 8 inch iguanas climbing around some kind of sleep aid is in order. And it worked!  We were asleep under our mosquito netting by eight o’clock.  Even when a rainstorm blew through and I had to get up once to go to the bathroom (yessss!! you could sit down on the toilet!) I was able to go back to sleep. 

The homestay program is run by an island cooperative

Our hosts' dinner table

Mom preparing dinner for us

Dad repairing our bikes before we  head back to the ferry in the morning

The island school.  Like all schools in Cambodia, it was closed due to the "mystery illness" that was sickening Cambodian children at the time

Our host - we showed appreciation for his hospitality by giving  him a Braves hat!

Taking the ferry back to the mainland

The roosters woke us at dawn and we hung out for a while, ate a delicious breakfast prepared by “mom”, thanked “dad” for fixing my bicycle tire which had gone flat and said our goodbyes.  We presented the family with Stetson bandanas and Chipper Jones Braves hats, then biked back to the ferry dock.  After a ferry ride back to Kratie with some interesting locals, we were reunited with Mr. Phuht who was waiting to take us to Mondolkiri.