smokingboot

Siem Reap was low rise and welcoming, an easy stay; cocktails at the Foreign Correspondence Club, visits to the night market and Pub Street, the viewing of Apsara dancers who are only just beginning to demonstrate their art again (thousands went to the killing fields cos the KR considered dancing to be useless) there are tuk-tuk drivers everywhere eager to help, including the one who rescued R's fedora from its escape along a busy road, there's coconut water and beer, and pineapples stuffed with rice and shrimp. And there was one more place I wanted to visit; https://apopo.org/support-us/apopo-visitor-center/
Cambodia's got one of the worlds highest populations of amputees, due to landmines and clusterbombs. It's far from the only country with these disastrous devices peppering farmland and landscape. Apopo trains African Giant Pouched Rats to seek out TNT components in the soil; they're smart, got an incredible sense of smell, and are too light to trip the explosives.

There was a disappointing element of ewww rats no way from most of our group but I guess people can't help it. Others simply couldn't join us because the heat had got to them. In the end it came down to me and the Hooty Lady with the Nawks; but somehow that turned out to be just right. I looked across to see her cuddling a rat and she looked uplifted, happy. When it was my turn to hold one I recalled Mum's hysteria about rabies.

'Are they all vaccinated against everything?' I asked the attendant. She laughed. 'Their healthcare's better than mine,' came her reply, 'fully vaccinated and two health checks every month, they're very safe.'

Goodbye Cambodia. With all my heart I wish you well. I just wrote a philosophical essay here and deleted it: maybe I should ponder on how much of my understanding comes from Marcus Aurelius courtesy of Hannibal Lecter, and 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 via A Wrinkle In Time, but I'm not going to worry. Instead here's a pic of Zefania and me. I'm a tired traveller, she's been saving lives for about 4 years.