Sorry, that blog title is a cop-out. It is slogan plastered on t-shirts at the market aimed at tourists. I feel I arrived all of a sudden and find myself in a brighter version of Phnom Penh. It is madness here, as there, but you can see it better.
On the six hour bus ride, we passed through mainly rural areas of rice fields and coconut palms. In one area, the simple wooden houses were all adorned with a brilliant gold face of Rama-Shiva or someone (something) else under the eaves. I couldn’t figure this out, and it was too late to ask anyone in Cambodia, and impossible to take a photo as we honking along at over 100kph on a 2 lane road towards the border. Literally honking – telling the mopeds and ox-carts to get out of the way. The fields were occasionally interrupted by massive communications towers, required to deal with the influx of mobile phone users (there is phone shop on every corner in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh).
I am housed in a tidy little guest house on a quiet alley away from the pervasive noise and dust. On the dust, I note that Saigon ladies are a bit more fashionable about their dust masks (look like surgical masks), and vendors sell them in a range of colors and patterns.
The photo above shows Khmer women wrapped in headscarves to protect from dust (and sun). They are selling their wares as buses wait for the ferry. It is fascinating to see the many ways the women (and the men) use their checked scarves (called krama). They are dust blockers, hats, sun protection, and fashion too from what I have seen!
1 comment:
I love rice fields. I think that, next to floating in the ocean on a SUP at sunrise, rice fields are one of the more peaceful things on this planet...standing in a rice field, the bright green of the blades of rice, the texture of the tiered paddies and the occasional farmer planting and re-planting each plant by hand. Just beautiful...
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