I stayed in Siem Reap, Cambodia for five and a half days as planned. Three of them are visiting Angkor Wat, one day visiting Tonle Sap Lake, one day visiting the surrounding countryside, and half a day shopping.
Cambodia is a backward agricultural country, but I was surprised to see private cars in Phnom Penh. Lexus, BMW, Toyota are everywhere, as if this is the origin of The Lexus car, all kinds of styles are available, stunned.
But on the bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, I saw the poverty of the Cambodian countryside, the simplicity of people's lives, crumbling houses and almost primitive land. This is supposed to be the real Cambodian, and I was curious and wanted to go and see it.
However, due to the poor children in the water school after playing in Tonle Sap Lake, they added another day to "help students", which squeezed out the time to go to the countryside. I consulted with the hired "Tuk Tuk" driver, can I take me around the surrounding countryside in half a day? He agreed.
I went to Cambodia this time on a completely independent trip, from Vietnam to Phnom Penh first, only to meet The Dandong fellow country, he led me to Phnom Penh after playing to buy a ticket to take me to the bus, get off the bus to Siem Reap.
At the stop, four or five "Tuk Tuk" cars gathered around, scrambling to pull me, while a black-faced man greeted me in English and said, "Hello, see if I don't respond." Haha, will Chinese, just use you...
Later, I knew that his Chinese would say a few words, and it was still very difficult to communicate, but his English was very good, and I downloaded the translation software on my mobile phone and could still deal with it.
We negotiated to pay $15 a day and then used his car at will, for an unlimited time, on call.
The driver's name is "sunset-saying" (sunset), and he is an extraordinary simple and generous man. I bought a three-day Angkor Wat Pass, which departs early in the morning every day, one of which leaves at four o'clock in the morning to shoot sunrise, and at night it is completely dark to come back, basically the last person to go out of the scenic spot.
The early departure and late return of the Angkor Wat tour is for the light of photography and to avoid the strong sun and heat at noon. In general, I go back to the hotel around ten o'clock to rest, and then go at three o'clock in the afternoon, basically running twice a day, each time about fifteen kilometers round trip.
He didn't complain a little, whenever I came out sweating profusely from a scenic spot, he greeted me with a bottle of ice water in addition to a smiling face, it turned out that his Tuk Tuk car had a "thermos fridge" under the seat, always stocked with large pieces of ice, was an attentive person, the service did not say, I was very satisfied.
Due to the language barrier, we did not communicate much, but intermittently we knew some of his situation.
He is thirty-eight years old, a former boxer in Thailand, and when he is old, he returns to his hometown to drive a Tuk Tuk car, and can earn more than $300 a month. But he didn't dare to spend it indiscriminately, and most of it was mailed to his wife and children who worked in Thailand. He said that Siem Reap's consumption is high, everything is expensive, he saves money, usually reluctant to eat meat, and buys some cheap fish when he is hungry.
But he loves meat, and when we eat together, we give him some meat dishes to see if he eats very well.
This muscular man, with an extremely peaceful temperament and a smile on his face, how can you not associate a fierce boxer with him, it is definitely the image of a good uncle next door.
Not only is there always a smile on his face, he is also very accurate in doing things, he picks me up on time every time, once I went downstairs ten minutes early, and he also waited there early. Driving is also extremely civilized, do not rush the road, and obey the traffic rules.
It is not easy to communicate, and it is impossible to know more about him, but it feels like a person who has experienced vicissitudes and has a story.
Sunset-saying came to pick me up early in the morning, to take me on a country tour, in fact, only half a day, in the afternoon to rush to the airport to return home...
The car drove out of the city of Siem Reap and soon entered the countryside, where the countryside is different from the country is too different from the town, not only the houses are old and simple, the most direct impression is the road, completely dirt road, there is no domestic kind of "village to village" cement road ah.
The first few cows that entered the line of sight, a few very special white cows, slender, large legs, a bone beauty, absolutely different from the common domestic cattle, buffalo, yak, seems to be a model gene of the performance of cattle.
Entering the village to see a lot of children, the houses here are built along a road, in fact, they are very simple, and even can not cover the wind and rain, there is a primitive desolation.
There were a lot of kids, all very small, who liked to run around naked, and we beckoned them over and gave them some candy.
There are exceptions, the child is very well dressed, but what about boys or girls?
We went to visit a family he knew, but there were only small children, and the adults went to work in the fields.
The children of the family saw that the elderly were busy getting dressed, and there were basically no decorations in the "room", and the household appliances were old TVs and fans.
In fact, other families are also about the same, and the farmers here are still very poor, and they can only be said to be barely surviving.
At the mouth of another village, I met a country freighter selling ice cream. An "ice cream" car modified from a motorcycle may be a symbol of childhood, allowing children to immediately gather around.
Cambodia was once a French colony, European culture has a deep influence on the folk, not only ice cream, but also different European ways of eating, such as wrapping ice cream with noodles, and the most obvious manifestation of daily life is eating with knives and forks, sunset-saying is not likely to use chopsticks.
Ice cream trucks lead out the children of each family, and such a childhood will leave a deep impression on the memory.
Further on there was a beautiful house, sunset-saying to go down and look at it, indicating that there was no one, and later understood that this was his sister's house!
I kind of don't understand, what does his sister do? The house is so beautiful, and the car.
There was no one in the house, so I didn't put the Fa into the house to see, but my sister's house was undoubtedly the most beautiful house I saw in the morning, and it also showed the wealth of my sister's family.
Cambodia has been in war for many years, in recent years, it has finally calmed down, but the life of the people is still very hard, looking at some information, many people have not yet solved the problem of food and clothing, but there are also some rich people, sunset-saying sister's house let me see the gap between rich and poor.
Since there was only half a day, I hurried back. Although the countryside in Cambodia is still very poor, I think the folk customs are good, and the people I see, whether adults or children, are very enthusiastic and have a hard time, but the belief in life has not been lost, and may slowly change.
What I envy the most is that they also have clean skies and rivers. We're losing this resource...