Cambodian B&B

This is Kheang who, with her young family and American husband Don, runs Rama Home stay, a bit like a Farm house B&B but with a special Cambodian twist. After spending the day on the bus, I missed the 3 hour walk around the local farms and villages, but after an excellent meal of tomato salad, steamed rice and a Cambodian curry We spent some time talking with her mother who grows rice and lotus. The life of a rice farmer on 4 ha is incredibly hard, with back breaking work and long hours for only a subsistance living. If she was lucky, when yield and price was on her side, she could pay back the loan taken out at the beginning of the season, feed herself and have enough to save a little. This scenario was similar to our own small family farms in the UK, but we don't starve if our crops fail, subsidies and tax credits mean that nobody needs to go hungary. So similar to farmers everywhere but so different as conversation turned to the Pol Pot era. I found it quite overwhelming to talk to a lovely educated women that was the same age to myself but at the age of 9 had been taken from her family to work on dam building by the Khmer Rouge and grew up in the years of war and famine. She believes that the only hope for Cambodia is education, but in the countryside where most still have no electricity, education and healthcare is poor. Hygiene practices are non existent and excess to good healthcare is unaffordable. A traditional midwife can be paid in rice, but until recently there was no transport to get to the NGO funded medical centres that allows a women a clean and safe childbirth. The women want to improve their lives but until they have the right facilitators on the ground not much changes, with the provision of money to pay to get to and from the hospital complications at childbirth have improved, while still allowing the women to return home and carry out the traditional customs.

Talk also centred on the worry about the land Concessions, excitement about affording a hand tractor to make live easier and the price of chickens (it's 1500 riel per kg and that was because it was just before chinese new year but the chicken are only around 1kg). Much interest was shown in how you could keep sheep with fences and not needing to herd them daily and amazement over the green fields in my pictures of Devon.

After a night in a shed on stilts and a wash with a bucket, we breakfasted on traditional rice porridge and cambodian pastries before a long taxi drive to Koh Kong. A great stay with a lovely family and if anyone is passing I left my phone there and with no reliable postal service it may need to wait until some one returns.