HOMESTAY - AWESOME NIGHT!!!

18/09/07 - 19/09/07 Overnight stay with local family - Intrepid Tour

The journey to our homestay was pretty long so we stopped off in Phnom Penh for a lunch/shopping break. Arrived in Chambok late afternoon in... you guessed it... the rain, hehe! We were staying in a small eco-village, where a few of the locals offer homestays. The power was down due to the weather so we headed straight for the eating hut and enjoyed a fantastic meal that had been prepared for us. The guide for the village then took us to meet the family we would be staying with.

The dorm room we all shared was in a typical building, that I can best describe as a wooden shed on sticks... it was really nice and although the rest of the group might not agree I really don't think it could ever be described as roughing it, which is what I'd been told to expect.

The family we stayed with didn't speak any english, but we managed to ask them a few questions using Con as our translator. It got dark really quickly and I guess you kind of forget how dark it can be at night as we're used to having street lights everywhere... it was quite literally pitch black. At the beginning of the night I was really freaked out by the beasties (which were everywhere and provided the soundtrack to our evening!), but the desire to drink beer far outweighed the fear of having to walk in the pitch black, past the cows, etc to the toilet... so I got over it (kind of). Plus the fact I was with someone who is as scared of beasties as me (he really was Rajified) made me feel abit better.

We stopped up for what seemed like hours drinking beers from a coolbox and talking in innuendos, I don't think I have laughed that much for a long time! Went to bed around 10pm, but it felt more like 4am.

SILENCE OF THE PIGS...

I thought that I'd spend the night worrying about beasties, but the mosquito net over the bed somehow made me feel really safe, plus I managed to land a place between Mel and hazel in the bed the three of us shared so they were like my human shields! Didn't sleep well though as the countryside is so noisy!!! When I finally nodded off I was woken up by the most horrendous squealing (...and no it wasn't a member of the group!). Scared the life out of me... but Mel just calmly told me it was a runaway pig. The same runaway pig that appeared in pieces on a table later that morning. Listening to a pig being slaughtered... NOT fun! But all part of the experience again.

Other sounds of rural Cambodia included cockrels crowing, the drumming of the buddhists monks based a few km away, the torrential rain (again!) and finally the locals playing some Cambodian music... so it was definitely time to get up. It was at this point that we realsised that we had all woke up in the night freezing cold not realising that we had been asleep using our blankets as pillows... d'oh!

We had hoped to take the 3km walk to a local waterfall in the morning, but due to the amount of rain we'd had the track might not have been walkable so we gave it a miss.

Said our thank yous and goodbyes to the family who'd put us up then went for a great breakfast down at the main hut... luckily there was no bacon!