Stilted and Floating Villages (16/7/16)

We visited Kompong Khleang, the stilted village again. We took the truck with Sister Pontipe, and headed along the roads, looking for Ellie’s hat on someone else’s head. We arrived at the school and anything we were carrying was immediately taken by some of the children, and brought upstairs for us.

When we got to the stairs, the ground had been flooded, so we had to walk the ‘bridge’ to get to the stairs.

When we got up the stairs, we introduced ourselves and then Sister pontipe asked some of the to come up and repeat after us, so they introduced themselves.

We then taught them heads, shoulders, knees and toes, without the song. They were very confident when we did it in the order of the song, but when trying to mix it up, they weren’t as sure! We did this for about 5 minutes until Sister Pontipe took over again, doing a dance with them, followed by a catechism activity.

It was then rice soup time, so we helped give out the many bowls to the children, they went up for more and more until they ran out!

After, we played with them under the school and got very hot and sweaty, but the smiles told us they enjoyed it!

After a while, we jumped back in the truck and headed back to Siem Reap for lunch.

After lunch, we were picked up and driven to the boat station to go visit the floating village.

We arrived at the station, and waited a while for the church’s boat to arrive. The tourists all around us were packed into boat of all sizes, and there were 7 of us for the massive double decker boat the church had provided.

We went along seeing the houses, churches, schools an understanding how they live. We then reaching the opening of the river into a lake, where we turned around and stopped at the crocodiles. We then headed back, visiting a school and the Catholic Church on the way. We returned to land just as the rain got heavy, so we ran to the van and headed back to town.

We then went to 6:30 pm English Mass after dinner and had a relaxing evening afterwards, getting an early night before 7:30 am Khmer Mass.