Visit to fishing village

Last week I went on a 3 day “exposure visit" to another province with a group of fishing people. The trip included an overnight stay in a remote riverside village – a real adventure! We were all put up in the house of one of the villagers, but there was no toilet (find a bush outside; if necessary take a spade with you!!!), no bedrooms (rush mats on the floor of a wooden house with 20 other people, male and female), no shower (go down to the river and sit on a bamboo boat wearing a big elasticated skirt to cover yourself, and scoop muddy water over your head) and no electricity (although car batteries were used to power the lights). There was no road to the village; access was by boat. Against my better judgement, I drank some of the tea, which was made with river water - still brown, although boiled for a long time. Fortunately, it had no adverse effects! We held our meeting the next day in the village school room (mud floor, palm leaf walls and roof), while the children were busy cutting down the tree outside with ferocious looking saws. The tree was being taken down because for some mysterious reason locals believed this would stop fires coming to the village. While my experience was great fun and quite amazing to me, this is how the majority of Cambodian people really live. Makes you think!