Kids of Tonle Sap
Kids are the future of any country, but kids that we've met on our way next to Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia we will remember forever.
Kâmpóng Khleang was only town that we've visited there, but also it is the largest one next to lake and thanks to large distance (60 km) from Siem Reap (where is Angkor Wat) is not often visited by tourists, so it's not yet changed due to tourism. People are still very open and warm, and white man is more curiosity than problem or way to earn some easy money.
Especially kids where very interested in us. Every moment we could here "bye", both for welcome and to leave - youngest don't speak english and it's probably the only word they know. Even kids running to us to make high five where screamed the same. At the beginning it was a little bit strange for us, but in the end it was cute 😃.
"hello" , "bye bye" - we could hear it, spoken by tiny voices on our way through the village
We've met also two sisters that speak decent english, so they were able to tell us a little bit about neighborhood and local school system.
When we were flying drone a lot of small kids runed to us. They wanted to get to know us, see how the town looks from above or just see the foreigners.
Later we've seen two boys playing with alive snake! For people from city like us it was scary, but for them it was pure fun. When they realized how afraid we are they they try to amuse themselves even more by throwing snake to us! We moved quickly the other direction, but I assume in the end that poor animal was harmless 😃.
In all of this kids happiness, lack of fear and trust charmed us the most. All of this despite low standard of living and poverty - toy for them was everything, and having own bike a great treasure.
So much happiness in place where work of young kids and for sure teenagers is daily life. It's amazing when thinking of western society, where lack of new phone can be a problem, and not having original shoes is tragedy. Looking at them can remind how much do we own, and how wonderful life we have. Not only us - authors, but most of western society.
