Christmas Day 2006 in the countryside of Cambodia

For Christmas Day, I decided I had enough of the temples and wanted to head out on a Christmas adventure in the countryside of Cambodia, an area known to be incredibly poor, partly due to the political turmoil over the last 30 years. My driver and I stopped at a local market on the way out of town to pick up ~$5 of candy, which is very large 5 bags full in Cambodia – I decided to play Santa Claus for the kids! We headed about 5 miles south of Siem Reap to a village called Chong Kneas. The pictures below capture the adventure:

this was the first group of kids who attacked my cart after I pulled out the first bag of candy. After stopping to hand out candy to a few kids, I soon looked up and saw ~30 surrounding the cart-- they went through two bags far faster than I can remember slashing through presents at that age. They were aggressive, partly because this was still an area with tourists often visit.


I finally arrived at our final destination -- a poverty-stricken village, which is entirely built along Siem Reap river. To access the center, you had to hire a boat, and my two guides, Ang and Sam are captured below. Sam (on the right) was decent at english, and was currently enrolled at a local college, which I learned cost $30 / month -- He was astonished when I told him that US schools cost $30,000 / year. They were both helpful and incredibly grateful for my visit.


Here is a general photo of the main river through town. The river is quite polluted, and the sourrounding poverty is far more than I have ever seen.


All along the way, you see natives conducting various sorts of business along the river. This little guy was manning a boat entirely on his own. The kids in the area obviously know a completely different lifestyle than their western counterparts...

We made it through the town to our ultimate destination -- a lake. On the lake, there were about 30 local boats, all there for the purpose of selling products (i.e. beer) to incoming tourists. These boats surrounded us immediately, and my tour guides and I enjoyed three cold ones. The little salesmen below was noticeably thankful for the business.

After our visit to the lake, we stopped to have lunch. Needless to say, I was a little concerned of getting sick given the area that I was in; however, they assured my that the food was clean. As an additional Christmas present, I bought lunch for my guides.

..and a picure of our food -- the local catfish, both wet and dry style ..combined with a plate of shrimp. Not bad for a dinner, but a far cry from my Grandma's usual Christmas feast. To my luck, I never felt ill at all afterwards.

Here is a shot of a friendly, thankful worker in the restaurant.

After lunch, we stopped in a local, riverside “snooker” pub to play a few games of pool. I played against my guide who was quite good, but there were literally NO rules. He played whatever balls he wished, and so I simply went along with it. After clearing the table twice of balls, we called it a draw and went on our merry way.
(From the picture, you can see that I barely had room to lean over on one end of the table, …and to add to the complexity, the table was by no means stable as the entire “pub” was floating on the river .. a fascinating pool experience nonetheless)

By far the most personally rewarding experience of my 2006 Christmas day activities was my final stop -- a visit to a school right on the river. The teacher saw our boat approach, and as I walked into the classroom, all ~25 students aged around 8 years-old immediately put their hands together, bowed, and in their native language greeted me in what I learned later to be, “Hello – Good Afternoon – Welcome to our classroom!” I was amazed at how well-behaved all the kids were, and even more impressed at how thankful and gracious the classroom was for my candy-gifts – I was truly a Santa Claus! I’ll never forget this…