Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I confess to knowing very little about Cambodia but in a few short hours I learned a lot. The country is officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia and it is a constitutional monarchy. Phnom Pnen is both the capital and the industrial and cultural center but as it was a 4 1/12 hour drive from where we docked we opted for a local tour in the Ream National Park which included a cruise on the Prek Tuk Sap River and a hike through fields and local farms ending up on a beautiful white sandy beach.

Cambodia has a very different mentality and work ethic than its neighbor Vietnam. Here there is a sit back and wait to let others take care of things. While jobs are very hard to come by the people are largely interested in just earning enough to buy food and beer and not interested in getting ahead. It is a largely agricultural country with rice as the main crop. You often see wooden poles with white plastic bags in the rice paddies which are there to attract grasshoppers which fly onto the sticks and then fall into the bags where the villagers collect them and eat them for breakfast. Yum!

There is a large Chinese and Russian presence and they have bought up most of the property making it both difficult and expensive for Cambodians to buy housing. It is a very dirty country with trash everywhere. Apparently there has been a concerted effort to try and get people to dispose of their trash responsibly and bins have been provided but the people use them to store water or other purposes. It is particularly a problem with older people who have never been taught to use containers to dispose of trash.

We docked early in Sihanoukville and boarded a bus for a short ride to Ream National Park where we boarded boats and sailed up the wide Prek Tuk Sap River, bordered on both sides by thick mangrove forests. We passed many fisherman along the way to our destination a few miles down River.

 At the dock we saw shrimp laid out in the sun in a 2 week process of drying them out. The resulting dried shrimp are sold for $10 per pound at local markets - a very expensive luxury.

From here we hiked into farm country, stopping at a local farm village where we were treated to local fruits and waffle like goodies. The houses were incredibly primitive but the people welcoming and friendly.

School children, almost all girls, came out to see us as their teacher, who mixes teaching and fishing and was apparently fishing today, were engrossed with a cell phone.

Leaving the village we hiked up over a hill to a local beach for a seafood BBQ and dip in the ocean

Our final stop for the day was a visit to Meditation Mountain considered a holy place for many locals.

Many young boys choose to study Buddhism as a way to get an education. Few remain monks but it is a way for them to escape poverty and gain a quality education otherwise not available to them.

Back at the ship we were treated to a performance of Cambodian folk dances by the Phnom Penh Fine Arts dancers in spectacular costumes.