Today we drove to a floating village about an hour away from our hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Som, our tour guide, said about 3 million people live around the Tonle Sap Lake. People live in hut-like structures on stilts in the water. Actually the craftsmanship was quite impressive. Some of the materials look like what Americans would pay big money for at places like Pier One. Even though it was a bit primitive looking to me, I thought it was funny that some of these 'huts/homes' had television antennas. We took a long wooden boat down the lake. At first, the water was very smelly and I thought I might get sick but soon the odor dissipated or maybe I just put it out of my mind. Actually as I write this, I feel a little as if I'm swaying from side to side!!! Okay, I digress. What struck me was HOW do these people live in, play in, wash in, use this very dirty water. I thought about the diseases it must carry. How they spend their time-- day in, day out around it. It is just something I don't think I can adequately put into words. We passed animals, dead fish, hard working people and lots of smiling children! I thought about what we consider poverty in the U.S. and what a relative term that is. Again, what we consider poor, they might consider wealth. The voyage continues.
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