The Road

It looks like any other road: well, no, for decades, this major road between Siem Reap and Banteay Mancheay Province then the Thai border was just a dirt road and travel time depended on the potholes, the rainy season, whether a bridge was broken and the 90 km took 4 to 5 hours, or more. There is now a real road and in 75 minutes, we arrived in Sisophon! There are still kids riding their bikes to go to school, stray dogs and buffalos venturing to cross, little shops selling petrol bottles, but no more potholes! Once in Sisophon today, we visited the Enfants du Mekong centre and talked to the staff. We also met Tainleng and his mother: the boys were very excited, Oliver showed him how the little foam plane works and Sebastien finally understood what the sponsorship was about. The boys were impressed by the computer lab (there are more computers than in their school’s) and the language lab. We gave a few English books to the library and I was stunned by the drawings and paintings made by the students at their art class.
It was getting a bit late to go up to Banteay Chmar – especially there is only a dirt road there; so we headed back to Siem Reap- the return trip took a bit longer as expected because the Camry (official and ubiquitous taxis here) kept breaking down. That reminded me of my childhood family trips in Peugeot!).