Sunday, May 31st: A Day on the Mekong River

Yesterday, (Sunday) we went out on the Mekong River, which is one of two rivers that runs through Phnom Penh. For a pictorial description, look at my album on facebook. Anyway, so first we stopped on an island where they make silk. Women of all ages sit under these stilt houses and work on

 the looms; they are each only paid two dollars a day. The silk is beautiful, unreal. I bought several (this is me, several is literal) pieces from scarves, purses, table cloths: all totaling $28. Of course, the Tom Handley in me was thrilled to get such a great deal, it broke my heart that for all their hard work, their manual labor, they get TWO DOLLARS. And that is double the international poverty line. Unreal.

That was just the beginning of the paradoxal hours spent on the island. We walked to their STUNNING pagodas that easily cost of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars. All the while, we were being mobbed by the most adorable, sweet, gorgeous kids I’d ever seen who were barely clothed. At first, they were all following us just begging for money, but slowly they warmed up to us and began playing with us, with our cameras. One guy who was about our age asked our professor if he could take a picture with our “Sri Lankan beauty” of the group. He groped her hind end, quite entertaining; we are pretty sure it made his life. She was horrified. The children were adorable. The crazy girl in our group, Alexis—more on her to come—adopted a boy named Saleem who is 12. She still insists she’s never going to get married but will instead come back to bring him to college. Lauren taught the 5 year olds how to “pound” fists, that we caught on film because it was too cute. Savannah was teaching the kids to count. The little boys were fascinated by my toe rings and kept trying to remove them, while asking the professor what their purpose was.  I could write about these children all day, but I am already behind on this blog, and each day brings so much that I am kicking myself for all I am missing.

At lunch, we had a traditional Khmer lunch (not with faces this time). We had several exotic FANTASTIC fruits including: lychee (personal favorite), full coconuts, mangosteen, lotus (weird), and five others that were probably just as delicious, but not as memorable I guess.

The rampant poverty everywhere just breaks my heart into a million indescribable pieces. Again, look at the album because words will not do justice to this.

For my own memory purpose, upon return, five of us went to a restaurant where we had smoothies, then took naps, then went out for Indian which 

was a long adventure, despite being down the street from the hotel. That was a great run on sentence.

All in all, this was a great day to begin our trip because had we just gone straight to the field, I think we all would have been emotionally drained and exhausted from the start and missed the true beauty of the people here. They have such big hearts and so much love, but their scars are deep. They do not, in any way, wear their hearts on their sleeves; they just wear love and compassion. It’s beautiful. They love and appreciate life and have reason to be glad because these days  are truly better than ones in their recent past.