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My muscles were getting tired as the sun was sinking on the hazy horizon over the Cambodian Mekong River. I began to wonder where we were going to sleep. It’d been a rough and slow ride all day along the “shortcut” to Phnom Penh – a rocky dirt road following the snaking Mekong from Kom Pang Cham to Phnom Penh through a seemingly endless village of wooden houses raised 2 or 3 meters on stilts with overly excited children franticly yelling hellos at us. Not that I was worried. We could, if needed, ask any family if we could set up our two tents in their yard as Gael and Elena had done. However with 5 of us, we didn’t want to be imposing. Two foreigners who barely speak your language showing up unsolicited on your doorstep is one thing, but five foreigners with loaded bikes plus a Band Wagon can be a bit intimidating for anyone. A few nights before, we’d asked at the local Buddhist monastery if we could pitch our tents in their compound and they welcomed us with open arms, insisting that we sleep up in their large prayer hall. If we could find another monastery…

My whole body was sore and tired, but not as it usually is after biking 75km. After all, we’d only biked 50km today, but that was the problem. Going only 10-15km/hr instead of 20km/hr over rough dirt and rocks while standing up for much of it to cushion my poor road-bike wheels and trying to acknowledge as many of the children greeting us as I could was a new kind of stressful workout.

Winding around several 90 degree turns we came along a wall that looked promising. A little further we arrived at the decorative concrete gate with two nagas (snake-like creatures involved in the Hindu creation story – closely connected with Buddhism - who, according to the Cambodian creation story, compose half of the Cambodian ancestry along with the human half from India) indicating this was a Buddhist temple and probably a monastery.

We entered the gate and looked for the distinctive orange robes of Southeast Asian Buddhist monks. Spying a small group of young monks across the way, we slowly approached them and asked if we could set up our tents somewhere in their large yard and spend the night there - mostly using gestures and our badly pronounced phrase for camping in Khmer. They seemed to understand, indicating it was OK between several quick exchanges in Khmer and giggles.

We got to setting up camp. We were near the back entrance of the yard, which faced a small dirt road and the Mekong. A few people walking by noticed us and our strange equipment and stopped in to watch us set up the tents. This group then attracted other passers-by and soon there were 10-15 people watching us, as we were watching a dragon fly eating a fly on Jim’s tent (see Drew’s post). Rosa Srey Houch was one of the on-lookers.

Rosa had come by motorbike with her mother when she had heard from her neighbor that there were foreigners on bicycles down at her local Buddhist temple. Being an eager 16 yr old English student, she naturally wanted to seize the opportunity to talk with us. That opportunity soon turned into an invitation for us to move to her home. We at first told her we’d be too much trouble for her and her family, but she insisted and we finally accepted.

Her home, in Hancher Village, Kom Pong Cham prov. Cambodia, was just 200m down the dirt river road and was quite nice, elevated on stilts like the others, but complete with concrete walls on the basement level where we stored our bikes. Climbing the steep wooden steps to the living level of her home, I realized that this was my first time to enter a Cambodian home. It was beautiful, with its simple yet carefully crafted wooden slate floor and vaulted ceiling.

Rosa’s grandmother in their living room

We hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Rosa and her mother wanted to cook us dinner, but we insisted on cooking our own rice and eating the sweet bananas we had planned for our dinner.  I finally managed to at least convince them to use our rice as they proceeded to cook it for us. It was near 7pm, so her family (mother, grandmother, younger sister, and younger brother) had already eaten. They had some of their dishes left over and quickly put them before us to complement our rather simple dinner of rice and bananas. They arranged the food nicely on a cloth over the floor on which we sat. After eating, we tried to insist that we would do the dishes, but Rosa, along with her sister and mother wouldn’t hear of it. After putting the dishes in a big basin in the kitchen for later, we all sat down again on their living room floor to chat and play a little music.

Our music drifted through the wooden boards to the neighbors’ homes 10-20 meters way, attracting them to come over to check out the foreign band. As has happened elsewhere, some of the people were there more to check us out than to listen to our music, talking amongst themselves while we played. Rosa and her family seemed to enjoy our modest performance, though at 9pm kindly asked us to wrap it up since it was time for the neighbors to go to sleep.

They gave us a nice chunk of floor space with sleeping mats and pillows in their front porch/sitting room and also provided us with a huge mosquito net and a smaller one. I had a great night’s sleep.

Thanks to Rosa and her family for such a warm and hospitable welcome! It was one of my most memorable nights in Cambodia.

Rosa is the third from right and her younger sister is the second from right.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 2:31 am and is filed under Pete's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.