Fiona's Adventures: Boat trip round 2 to the silk weaving islands

Again, sorry these are not in order! Anna and I took a boat in fact two seperate boat trips in the same day to the silk weaving islands. This took place on election day in Cambodia as it was good to get out of the city due to a small political violence risk if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time! The morning boat trip we took with Liz and Brian some other VSA volunteers. This is me at one of the beautiful pagodas chatting with some small Khmer children who ran over to me and gave me big cuddles, felt very nice!

This is the smae pagoda, notice the beautiful floor and walls, the walls tell the story of the budda and there are two buddas behind me the one sitting up is the one that you pray to, and the one lying down is actually the budda after it has died. You have to remeber in the pagodas to take off your shoes and hats or its extremely rude!

This is Anna also at the same pagoda.

The outside of the Pagoda, the grounds are all beautifully kept and animals roam around fairly free its a nice environment, the only things that feels weird is the amount of money that gets put into this religious place when so many people right next door don't have enough money to feed themselves. I guess thats seen in the Buddhist religion as those people have been bad in a previous life and so now deserve to starve. Logical? not in my opinion, but then perhaps that why I'm not a monk.

Me with PP in the background coming back into PP, King or rather Queen of the world I think!

At the silk weaving islands all the ladies and children try to sell you many different items and this is their only form of livlihood. Usually I just can't resist and on this particular day bought 3 scarves!

Anna making selections, its best to ask where the scarves have been made as some have been made in China and brought across and I like to try and support the local economy as much as possible!

Just some adorable litle children taking a dip in the heat of the day in the mekong river. The girl was trying to cover the boy with mud, reminded me of in NZ the game when you were at the beach and used to cover other people (usually dad) up with heaps of sand top to toe! Also on this day we saw a down syndrome girl, was lovely to see the other children particularily look after her and look out for her she seemed very happy!
This thankfully was not our boat just one of the ones docked, that the local kiddies love to play on. I think the smiles on their faces really paint a picture of a thousand words, fun doesn't come much better than this!

Anna and I also took a dip a little later on in the night, on our second boat trip, we got to watch the sunset and then went to a fairly clean part of the river and jumped into the water which was still amazingly warm from the day and the mud sludged between your toes felt awesome! We were with some predominantly French families and their children joined in as well was a great night!

After swimming we were invited back to Guillaume and Carole's house, Guillaume is the French economic diplomat and they have 4 Cambodian children aged 7. Anna and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner there and had lots of fun playing with the children although they could only speak French! Maybe a third language is in the pipes!

Me climbing up on the side of the boat, you could really climb quite high and dive off was a lot of fun! Also the first time I have worn a bikini, felt a little revealled but it was dark and the norm so quite nice to be out of all those sticky clothes! Cam is still so hot! Temperatures around 40 degrees are very common! Bring on the rainy season I say!