Kampong Tralach & Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia
The conversations were already at full swing by 6:00am today as guests went out on deck to catch the sunrise. There were frequent exclamations of wonder at the scenery as the Jahan pulled away from the new concrete buildings and the density of Phnom Penh to sail pass sparse stretches of the Mekong where low bushes and occasional cotton or palm trees grew from the arid looking embankments into the golden sky. The breeze kept us cool, and was helpful as our minds wandered back to the day before with the somber reflections cast upon the recent history, and the moments when we confronted physical spaces that had been used by the Khmer Rouge to carry out their mad and brutal acts.
That history will probably come back to haunt us in months to come, but after breakfast, we set that horrific time aside to disembark the ship and switch modes of transportation: now it was a rare chance for guests to find a comfortable enough position on ox carts for a ride on a dirt road into Kampong Tralach, past endless rice fields, a few lotus ponds, and the occasional groupings of village homes – traditional wooden structures raised off the ground, where local farmers were resting and hiding away from a hot sun.
Kampong Tralach, like countless villages throughout the countryside of this kingdom, remains poor. But we were also surprised to find children were able to attend school, and were also learning English through special programs. You can’t help but wonder what the English would do for them, unless they leave the village. Still, guests were delighted to see the students stand up in unison to show respect to the foreign visitors, or to hear them sing in English. One guest perhaps spoke for the group when she commented that the villages seemed to have a cohesive community, inhabitants obviously poor but content and calm with their lives which, by any standards, remain difficult.
We returned to the Jahan to enjoy a few moments on deck, a glass of iced tea or a soda to help us hydrate ourselves while we soaked in more of the scenery. Along the river, large trees were blossoming with pink flowers amidst the surrounding green, and occasionally, a few palm trees would rise, reaching toward the clouds up high. Here and there, a wooden house, a stack of hay, a wooden sampan pulling a fishing net: signs of human life, and an insistence to make a living from this otherwise deserted stretch of land on the sides of the river that reaches into the massive Tonle Sap Lake, the biggest in Southeast Asia.
Just before lunch, we gathered in the lounge for a thoughtful presentation by Ambassador Gordon Longmuir. The talk was aptly named “The Mighty Mekong” and traces the challenges the river had presented to French explorers from the 19th century, to more modern concerns, hopes, the livelihood and potentials the river has provided to the millions of people living in the six countries that are host to this forceful waterway. It isn’t easy to find common solutions in the face of efforts by various governments to maximize their use of the river.
In the afternoon, it was time to board small covered boats, gliding toward Kampong Chhnang. A short drive away from the dock and we arrive in a village that specializes in growing rice and palm trees. These are supposedly the oldest kind of trees in Cambodia and in this village some are over a hundred years old. We meet a local man, wiry and youthful at 61, who showed us how he climbs up these trees twice daily, once in the morning to hang bamboo or wooden tubes to collect the palm juice, and once in the evening to bring the tubes down. He and he wife also showed us how the juice is baked to make a kind of sugar that tastes like sweet butter. Guests also sampled a wine made by fermenting the juice with tree roots.
The word Chhnang simply means pottery, and indeed there was a cluster of homes that serve as pottery “factories.” Some are mere workshops run by family members, mostly women who, to our amazement, walk around a small stand to mold, pat, and smooth mounds of clay into vases and containers to sell to markets in larger towns. It definitely doesn’t have the efficiency of industrial conveyor belts: here, it is more a craft, bound by traditions. It’s low-tech, low-production, but it also affords the villagers a bit of income, and also time to tend to their families, their dogs and chickens, and other daily chores. It’s a leisurely pace even if resources are still limited. A bit more energetic are the workshops where young men and women produce clay cookers encased in tin sheets, also destined for the markets in nearby towns. The clays are pounded in molds, padded, dried, then painted a blood-red color. It’s all done by hand, one by one, with nothing but a few rudimentary tools. Already, there are signs of changes – when not working, many of the youths were engrossed in their cell phones, texting and playing games and listening to music, just like teenagers in New York or Tokyo.
