Cambodia motobike tour - Day 1

Finally in Sisophon. Heang overslept and didn't meet me until 8 am - we were supposed to leave by 6. All good, though. We stopped at a market on the way and bought notebooks and pens for the village school kids and a krama (cotton scarf) to keep the sun and dust off my neck. Over breakfast this morning, we started talking about our earliest childhood memories. I told him mine was when my sister was born (I was about 3 1/2). His first memory is of being in the hospital in Phnom Pehn in late 1979, after the end of the Pol Pot regime. He told me that his mother worked in the rice fields, and they were only allowed to eat rice soup - basically a little of rice in the cooking water. His mother would smuggle small bits of rice home for him, and she would have been killed if she was caught. He said he was skinny and malnourished with the pot belly that you see on photographs of starving children. After that, we headed off to the "Killing Lake" which I don't remember the name of. It's this huge irrigation project developed by the Khmer Rouge to increase rice production in the region (rice that was sold to china and thailand for profit). The entire enormous lake was dug out by hand, and somewhere between 2-3,000 people died there. While we were there, a man drove up in a Lexus SUV with his enture family. He'd been one of the workers digging the lake in the 70s and wanted to show his family.

From the lake we went to a silk faming village - so cool! I spent about $50 on two scarves and about 4 meters of beautiful ruby-colored silk. I'm going to have mom make pants for me (plus a bunch of other things, I'm sure). It's incredible fabric, and it's really strange to buy beautiful 100% silk from people living in wood shacks amongst cows, chickens, pigs, etc. The houses are basic stilt houses with palm leaf walls and grass roofs, and the fam animals live beneath the houses, then there's this amazing silk. We got to visit where they raise the silk worms and see the cocoons. The woman who I bought the scarves from was pulling silk - they boil the cocoons, then spin the silk thread from the surface of the water. So there was this basket of beautiful yellow raw silk. Then I stood for awhile and watch two girls weaving some amazing pieces. It doesn't get more authentic than this - and you know that the money is going to the people who need it and deserve it rather than to 5 middle men for profit.

For about half of the day, I really needed to pee, but couldn't quite bring myself to squat along the road in front of everyone. So once dark came, we pulled off, and I crept off the road a bit in the dark searching for a bit of privacy and promptly fell into a hole full of water up to my waist!! Turns out it was someone's washing hole, so while I was covered toe to hip in muddy water, at least it was soapy muddy water!