Week 3 of language training

No more learning words this week it's sentences and long ones! It's tough going but in a strange way we quite enjoy it.We had an amazing time on Friday when we went to the local Temple (Wat) for the PBen Chum festival which is the time to respect your ancestors and bring gifts of food and drink to the  temple. We went with our language teacher and were asked by the monks to stay and eat as their guests.

The chief monk served us himself and made sure we had water. it was all rather difficult for us as the food had been given by the people and after us the poor and then the beggars were allowed to eat. However we were assured that the Wat was honoured that us "Barangs" had chosen to visit them on such an auspicious day. Some of the food was good - as you can imagine I was very selective!


Sitting on the roof of the boat.

 On Saturday we organized a river trip ( against the VSO risk assessment policy) for the day to explore part of the Mekong river. We left at 8am and travelled slowly upstream in this "tub" for about an hour to visit an island village.


Village from the shore

We had been told to bring sweets and balloons for the children as they have so little. Actually they have nothing! Dave was brilliant with the children and played games about giving the balloons out.

 The children then showed us round the village and the Chief Elder came to talk to us. It is a very low-lying island and if the water rises too high in the wet season the government will move them to higher ground but this year there has not been enough rain.

Village school aka cartshed

A typical village home

This is the village school and school is supposed to have started already so I get the feeling that thesechildren do not have school at all. There were about 20 children on the island of school age.

After the island it was back on the boat for another 2 hours to lunch-stop. it was described as a resort it turned out to be a temple complex with very old stupas (graves) and some petrified monks.

Lunch was funny as the locals could not get close enough to us in order to see what we were eating and thought it was very funny that we were making sandwiches from bread, bananas, crisps and cucumbers. The Dutch had even managed to bring some cheese.

Aside. Not as funny though as when I went to the market on Saturday to buy some new sandals- the women just laughed when I asked for size 38!

After lunch we had a wonder round and I steeled myself to walk down the 201 steep steps I struggled up only to find the younger ones had gone off to take a short cut down and Kath ( a midwife from Yorkshire) and I had to find our own way out!! What gentlemen we had with us!

Back on the boat and I sat on the edge and paddled my hot feet in the Mekong whilst others slept!