Howard once again whisks us out of the Pagoda, around and in front of the arriving tour buses, and down the hill to a primary school. The director (principal) gives us a tour, translated by Il Son, around the facility which is no more than a series of 4 open barrack like buildings housing over 730 students.
The school has classes from Kindergarten up through 5th grade, each in a different classroom, which we tour. They are taught all the basics, obviously, plus many lifeskills. In the older classroom, they had posters teaching about road signs and road safety, as well as sex-ed. It was all very interesting, but sort of disturbing, like being on display. We would enter the classrooms and all the children would stand up and give us a greeting, then sit back down while we stood up in front of the class talking to the Principal. The kids were, nonetheless, adorable, even when I think they were making fun of us. LOL.
One of the classes is doubled up because one of the teachers had a baby last night. The cool thing though was that the teacher with the class had her little baby with her, rocking her in the stroller. Pretty neat.
As an aside, as we move around the complex, Howard is following us in the car, driving around the school yard in between the schoolroom houses. It is really sort of weirdly stalker-ish, if not a little oddly comforting to have him following in. He did at the Pagoda too, as if he had to be right there with us to keep us safe, or if we had to make a rapid get away or something.
We walk outside, still chatting with the Principal who tells us that they don’t have enough funding to buy the basic necessities (the donation pitch), but that NGOs do donate to the school pointing out a large playground that an NGO recently donated to the school. It is sad, but at least the kids do have basic learning and can hopefully go on to upper level courses for more. We thank the Principal for his time, and head back to the car just as the next tour arrives.
Off we go to the waterfall, which is only a few kilometers away but located down this wide, yet incredibly ill-maintained dirt road. We have to drive really, really slowly avoiding huge ruts and pot holes, weaving from one side to the other in search of the best and smoothest surface. Welcome to Cambodia! But Howard expertly guides us there, and we arrive dusty, but otherwise unscathed.
The waterfall turns out to be this huge complex built around a meandering river that merges into falls in a number of places. There are food stalls outside, and on the inside platforms you can rent for the day to chill out in, complete with the requisite hammocks. Il Son walks us around the first level of waterfalls, where there is this bamboo chair sitting in the middle of water for pictures (at a price mind you). Its really quite peaceful here, as we climb around the rocks and Il Son snaps a few pictures of us (ok, so he’s no Wayan when it comes to photography, but he does try to do his best – he’s too cute to complain about it).
We walk over to the main complex, looking at the different stalls with food and trinkets, and then climbing out into the falls again where Il Son asks if we want to cross the water – nah – we’re fine from here, but thanks!
This is where Il Son brings his family on weekends or during holidays to hang out and relax. He says during those times it is really busy, and we can see that, it is already starting to fill up as we have been wandering around the last half an hour. We snap a few more pix as we leaving, one of snails – Yum – wish we were eating here – and one of the lady carrying fruit on her head. So typically Cambodian.
We buy some dried jack fruit – finally jack fruit, well, sort of! – while Howard buys a crushed ice drink, and we hang about under a shade tree waiting for the car to cool off, then head to the beach for a walk along the water before lunch. Not on the top of our list, but we’re early, and it is on the itinerary, so we might as well.
Il Song explains all the different beaches to us – the typical divide between local and tourist. We go to the unoccupied part of Otres beach which is lovely, and reminds us very much of Maui – trees to sit under, softly rolling surf, nice white sand. You can see the National park island way off in the distance. Because we are running ahead of schedule, we spend a good half an hour or more walking down the beach, chatting. There is a lovely breeze, so we don’t really mind it – but we’re hoping Howard is still doing his car stalking and will come pick us up!
We walk far enough down the beach that we end up in the populated Otres area. Here there are beach bars and restaurants, with tons of Farangs hanging out in beach chairs, and kayaks and boats launching from the beach taking visitors to the out islands. We’ve had enough and are ready for lunch, so we make our way out to the busy dirt road that runs along the beach to wait for Howard, who apparently wasn’t car stalking this time.
Hopping in the car, its a quick 5 minute ride to the little resort where we will be having our lunch.
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