from a bus window (that we nearly missed)
by Rachael, who was actually wondering what the H’s were noticing
Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, Cambodia
It would seem it doesn’t matter how many bus/train/boat rides we make, each one is different. Distinctive features of this one from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh include huge haystacks in front of houses, wooden carts under houses, massive ceramic pots beside houses (I presume for water – there does not appear to be running water – I’ve seen wells with pumps and women with buckets by ponds).
There is grass grass grass around houses (and perhaps that explains why there are so many more cows and oxen and buffalo than anywhere else we’ve been), and pond after muddy pond, many with pink or purple flowering waterlilies, between the road and houses, and there are hammocks, so many hammocks hanging in and under houses.
There is the usual mixture of concrete, timber and bamboo houses with roofs of thatch or tile or corrugated iron. Most of them are up on stilts, accessed by a steep bamboo or wooden ladder or occasionally a substantial flight of concrete stairs or perhaps a wooden ramp.
Plodding along the road are yoked oxen pulling carts piled high with hay. At the side of the road are women pouring rice from a bucket held at head height into a tray and then throwing it all up in the air to separate off the chaff. And working much more efficiently are bright blue threshing machines, making those huge haystacks…at one village a dozen of the monsters sat in a line, ready for renting. There are also mounds of rice drying on the roadside and in front of houses. But instead of being spread on sacks or tarpaulins as we have previously seen, these are on woven bamboo mats.
Other piles include tied stacks of firewood, some nude and some charred black, gigantic sacks of rice, orderly stacks of russet-coloured bricks, and litter – piles of rubbish and uncountable individual pieces scattered everywhere, absolutely everywhere.
And there are pigs. Live ones in a rattan basket laid sideways across the back of a motorbike, dead ones piled up on their backs on the tray of a ute, and processed ones hanging as strings of sausages over stick frames, drying in the sun.
There are also a lot of schools. The dates on the buildings indicate many of them have been built this century – perhaps some headway is being made with the high illiteracy rate. While there may be a profusion of schools, there is a striking absence of temples. Although there are over 2000 in the country they are not sprinkled through every community as they are in Thailand and Laos. This does not mean the people are any less religious; there is an altar outside almost every house.
Other random sights:
- * hundreds and hundreds of palm trees poking up from rice paddies, looking like
toothpicks in the distance - * free-range duck farms
- * trucks piled high with goods……and then with people stacked on top
- * small brown working horses
- * rows of chimneys from the brick-drying-kilns
- * kites flying above the bright green rice paddies
- * a motorbike with so many baskets attached it was wider than a car
Tags: housing, postcard: Cambodia, transport
rayres
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