I wandered around the village of Preah Vihear this morning by myself while Heang was getting himself up and around. It's funny - he's really not a morning person at all, and until he's had his first cup of coffee, he has great difficulty with English. Makes it fun to taunt him ;) I kind of enjoy the curious stares from the villagers, especially the children. I played a good game of kick the can with an adorable little 3 year old boy - with about a dozen pairs of eyes on me.
The road from Preah Vihear to Tbeng Meanchey is the WORST road on the planet - hands down. It started with us having to go back down the mountain the way we came, and in the process I got glued in mud up to my ankles. Heang had to come pull me out. I was walking across a rough spot so that he could pass easier on the bike. I sloshed through a stream to clean myself up - big waste of time since I was 50 times worse in about an hour. We had maybe 10 kilometers of mud to drive through - potholes the size of a volkswagon bug full of water from the storm the night before. The only people who seemed to be having an okay time of it was the family in the ox cart - I longed for an ox cart about then.
Some of the drive also took us through a wild life preserve that was full of amazing tropical birds - these little green guys with bright red heads, and dozens of different sorts of brightly colored butterflies. After many attempts, I have decided that butterfly photography must be one of the most difficult tasks in the world - thought I guess it would help to have better than 6X zoom. They tend to take off when you get too close.
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