Hit the road girls!!

Today was such a good day!! We got our long, well deserved sleep, rented motorbikes, a tour guide and hit the road ;] I’ve never driven one before but I did reasonably well with a scooter so how could I fail on this one?! Yes, I am fine now, no harm done, and I must say that it’s actually easier than a scooter! Anyways, we got to see some real Cambodia today as soon as we left the town. The roads, if any exist, are better than in Poland (no holes). But a few times we had to take a gravel road, which was fun in itself. Our first stop was the bamboo train – a must see! We were greeted by a uniformed officer who introduced himself and told us about how the thing works etc. It’s basically a platform on wheels on crooked rails. If two wagons going opposite direction meet, one gets dismantled to let the other one through. Such a bizarre view! At the end of the ride awaits a small village with the brick factory as a tourist attraction (although I think it’s the train ride in itself that is an attraction), and a lovely lady and several kids really happy to see a tourist to earn some money and practice their English. Such nice people, and willing to learn too! They instantly made us feel like good friends. I just wish I had an English book with me so that I could leave it to them… It’s a pity that most of the money that one pays for the train goes to the officers supervising and only 10% goes to people actually doing the job.

Next, we drove the gravel road with a lot of red dust till the killing cave – that’s where the Khmer rouge killed people and dropped the bodies into the cave. There is also a big Buddha statue and a temple a bit up the hill. There again we were greeted by a bunch of high school kids really glad to speak some English, smiling and using every opportunity to get to know us at least a little bit. The girls are amazingly beautiful here too!

After we got our work-up walking down the hill we got some more: walking up the stairs to the Bannan Temple. Pretty place on top of the hill, but not well preserved unfortunately. On the way back we got waved us so many times and collected so many pretty smiles … I’m amazed by the people here and how welcoming they are. Brian Tracy and all those customer service gurus can learn from the Cambodian people.