Scott G Trenorden

I recently had the opportunity to go on a “Day in the Life” village tour. It was very much as the name implies; a day travelling around a local village, helping them with their daily chores, exploring the surrounds, interacting with the locals.

Of course, we travelled in air conditioned comfort and ate a Western lunch, which is hardly surprising if not inevitable, but the experience was nonetheless very worthwhile.

The van arrived at 7:45am to pick me up, after which two more Aussies joined us, Andrew and Tiff.

We travelled to a nearby village and had our first introduction to village life by gaining our “Cambodian licence”… This was done by taking a long and painful ride on an ox-drawn cart.

The locals were waving, smiling, giggling as we trundled past and I got the distinct feeling we were being treated to a similar inside joke as our beloved “Yeah, we ride kangaroos to school while dodging Drop Bears!” stories. The fact that old ladies were zipping past us on scooters didn’t help any.

If nothing else, it gives me an opportunity to post a photo with me in it. There you go mum and dad!

We rattled our way out to the local rice fields and had a look around. The vast greenness was in stark contrast to the dry, yellow and orange landscape that surrounded us on the way to the village.

The ever-present thick haze (It’s not pollution apparently, depending on who you ask.. Uh huh.) added a nice backdrop to a photograph of a young boy leading to oxen and a calf through a field.

Upon returning from our back and butt jarring ride, we were greeted by some local ladies sewing palm leaves to make roofing for a new couple’s house. The wife herself was hard at work too, regardless of the fact she was eight months pregnant and straining just to move around.
When she gives birth to the baby, she will lay in rest in her house for one week, with warm coals laid beneath her bed to stream and relax her body. During that time she won’t change clothes, brush her teeth or bath.
Come the end of that week of rest, she will emerge from the house, wash, put on clean clothes and clean her teeth, then cook food for her husband. From that point on she will move back into daily life once again.

Meanwhile her husband is working in the city to supply them with whatever money he can earn.

Palm leaves are folded over long stretches of thin bamboo and then tied on using the thick centre string of the palm leaves.
Tiff is demonstrating the procedure below. Thanks Tiff!

Between the three of us we knocked up seven or so full sections for the couple’s house.

The palm leave roof is replaced annually and the walls last up to four years. Most people seem to prefer the leaf roof over a tin roof as they are a lot quieter and cooler – though they do not last any where near as long.

Finishing our palm leaf twining lesson we then moved on to cooking. Andrew took over most of the duties and Tiff and I stood back and watched in horror- erm, gave instructions. The base for both the dishes prepared was ‘fish paste’; whole fish that are mashed up and mixed with a very healthy dose of salt and other goodies… It smelt like very disgusting burly.

Apparently one jar of the stuff can last for a year or more, even several. Healthy we said!

A soup was prepared using fish paste, small fish (similar to sardines), Chinese cabbage and a few spices.

The second dish was what our guide termed “Monster food”. It was a mixture of a lot of fish paste, a ginger-like root, garlic, several very small red chillies, a couple of other things I can’t remember, but one I certainly can. Red bull ants…
It is usually served raw, but for our benefit it was steamed in banana leaves over a coal fire.

Yes, I tried a very small amount of it with some rice. It was very hot, but strangely enough, very tasty too.

This is the pre-steamed concoction:

Once lunch was prepared, we made our way over to the shade of one of the houses. The mother and father of the bride owned a hectare of land and when their daughter was married, they gave the newlyweds some of the land. Mum and dad had a much nicer wooden house on stilts, while the newly married couple lived in a small palm leave hut.

It was under mum and dad’s house that we sheltered for lunch, surrounded by seemingly the entire village, complete with five dogs, a couple of cats, four chooks and a dozen chicks.

One dog was very feisty indeed when compared with the others; a scruffy, dirty puppy with an overshot jaw and a loud bark named Tony. Yep, Tony.

I couldn’t not take a photo of him, he was so adorable!

Oddly enough there was another dog floating around that when all three of us Aussies saw it, we instantly said “A dingo!” in unison. It was smaller and shorter of nose, but it had a very distinct dingo look to it.

Oh, we were supplied with sandwiches, fruit on skewers and banana cake for lunch, thus not needing to play the “Sorry, we’re vegetarians!” line.

The locals certainly enjoyed the concoctions Andrew had prepared for them though.

Once lunch was done with we went for a walk around the village and then over to the village centre. Pride of place was a big Buddhist monastery, with many stupas erected nearby for housing the ashes of the dead.

Moving past the monastery we arrived at the local school, complete with seemingly a hundred little, loud and laughing children.
Each class contained at least fifty children and there was one teacher between two classes. There appeared to be five classrooms in the main building, with one going on in the large hut we were heading towards.

One consideration I have been making is actually putting my CELTA course to use and coming back here to teach English, but after this experience I’m not really sure I’m up for the task..!

We were given the task of teaching children the English names to some of the fruit and vegetables they have in their gardens. The names were written on the board with a hopefully-description picture next to them, and after the kids had tries at saying and writing the words – and guessing what they were – they were then supplied with the Khmer word to put the object into perspective.

It was a fun hour I will admit, but I can imagine doing it day after day would be extremely draining. I’m not sure if I’d be up to doing that really…

Mum and dad, you’ll be proud to know the Leatherman came into good use as I used it to sharpen the pencils for some of the children, rather than them trying to scrawl hard enough onto paper so that it pushed the wood back on their pencils.

After a loud and tiring hour, we headed back to the van and made our way to the local Artisans de Angkor silk factory.
We had a short and very insightful guided tour of the premises and the production line, after which I have a new found respect for the quality of silk items and their cost. It of course puts into question the hundreds upon hundreds of ‘silk’ items in the various markets being sold for $5 each…

As we three were all very tired, we were quite relieved to be in the van on our way home.

We said I goodbyes and I made my way back to the guest house for a rest. The walk home was consumed with thoughts of what the villagers here live through, how resilient they are and so extremely self sufficient.
The way they use plants and fibres to such excellent effect; the amazing and at-times outright scary things they eat; their closeness and compassion.

It was an enlightening and very rewarding experience, but I was left feeling a touch hollow as I headed for the comfort of my lavish-in-comparison guest house.

It did, however, leave me with the notion of “What can I do to help out?” which I am guessing was the primary idea.

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