The island.

Lately, we find ourselves slowly and sadly counting down the days until Emily’s current season in Cambodia comes to a close and she relocates back to the states. She, Josh, Kris and I have considered the typical things people do when someone moves away, like getting matching tattoos, sky diving together, or getting Best Friend necklaces.

Because we are too frugal for any of the above, Emily chose to let a group of us come along with her yesterday to an island just beyond Kompong Chnang to drop off some children’s ministry curriculum at our church homes there, as well as rent motos and ride around the island for a few hours.

(This was Josh's scenic view from the very back of Emily's car)

We left early in the morning to catch a ferry from Kompong Chnang. We had an amazing breakfast (the best chicken and rice I’ve ever had, and I have witnesses who will echo that this is no exaggeration), picked up lunch for later, parked the car in a shady spot where the nice police officer agreed to guard it for a small fee, and made our way down to the ferry.

Now, a walk through the market in and of itself to board a ferry doesn’t sound like much of an adventure. At least not for most people. But sometimes you will be walking to a ferry in Cambodia (and I think everyone can relate to this) and someone behind you will motion for you to move over so the guy balancing the bamboo pole on his shoulders with two large gasoline containers on the end can get by. Did I mention you are walking on uneven interlocking wooden planks??

Yes. You are.

And as you instinctively react by stepping to the side, your right foot gently descends into one of the softest, most absorbent piles of mud known to man (by current estimations).

The best part of this, aside from the added “adventure” to your day, is that even more people stare (and point) at you than is normal for a foreigner who strays out in Cambodia beyond the typical tourist spots. And we were definitely out there. And I was definitely a spectacle. Admittedly only briefly, but far beyond my normal attempts at blending in.

Needless to say, I kept my winning attitude and bright smile on the whole time, never openly sulking to my husband or telling him that I refused to ever blog about the incident that had single-handedly proven the sacrifices I make in doing cross-cultural ministry.

I am far too consistent and good natured for any bad attitudes to creep in, as the picture below would reveal (taken just after a very kind Cambodian woman offered me a bucket to rinse off my muddy foot).

We finished our ferry ride, found our motos (which incidentally marked my first time on a moto in Cambodia..I am slow to try new things sometimes) and prepared ourselves as best we could for riding in the dry season in Cambodia.

(This was before the right lens of Josh’s sunglasses fell out and he alternated between riding with one eye closed and covering his whole head with the krama (“I still have about 60% of my vision with this on.”)
We rode toward our destination of the infamous mountain that resides on the island. “Mountains” in Cambodia are apparently a pretty big deal. This is the second one I’ve been to now, and while it doesn’t constitute what I might normally refer to as a mountain (being from Washington and all), it does tend to come with a legend of some sort, which no one can resist.

Sophera attempted to tell us the legend of this island mountain as we sat waiting for lunch yesterday, but all I really retained from the story was that there was an abnormally tall mythical lady (a giant some might say) who fell in love (as many giants do), something went terribly wrong, we’ll say she fell in love with a mortal, like Bewitched because this makes for a better story, but then she got clumsy, fell over, and was petrified (not in the fearful sense but in the way that makes you turn into a mountain).

The end.

Actually, in the end for us, we ran out of time and energy to scale the giant lady-mountain so we scaled some stairs instead to encounter a large Buddha statue and views like this.

Also in the end we found out that the "island" itself is technically more of a peninsula apparently. It was a day of lessons learned, from the historical, to the geographical, to the practical (watch out for mud). We arrived home sweaty, dirty, tired, and full of random ice cream treats from Tela. A very full, satisfying day.

And now for some multi-media presentations from our trip...