Before heading to Tbeng Meanchey from lunch, we took a detour and visited "New Big Ricefield Village", an area where the poorest of the poor (as identified by the people themselves) are given a house, some (pretty rough, but demined) land, teaching about farming and organising a community, and some fruit tree saplings from World Vision. As a friendly gesture we helped plant the fruit trees. Each household grabbed (or ran off with in the case of one young girl!) one of our team and we did very basic placing-the­-plant-in­-the-soil-and-watering with them. The family I was with then invited me up into their house and we sat for a while, playing interlingual charades/pictionary and basically trying to make a lick of sense to eachother. I got a photo with my new mate that I said I would send a copy of to him. It was quite clever the way he asked they asked me to "send a copy"!

I'm already a few days behind (haven't yet got to our arrival in Tbeng Meanchey), hopefully there'll be time to catch up soon…

Room 23, "Prum Tep Guest House"
Tbeng Meanchey, Preah Vihear province
Cambodia