A Couple of Things

A few days ago we had the usual near death experience with two water buffalo crossing the road at a random angle. Water buffalo seem like the easy choice for work-horse type work here in Cambodia as probably elsewhere in southeast Asia. They are powerfully built, low to to the ground, so you'd think they'd be the best choice of animal for hauling firewood, plowing your field, carrying your goods to market if you lack a scooter, and so on. Turns out, if you want a domesticated animal to help you out, cattle seem to be more popular as work animals, and I think some of that may be regarding how much money you can get for selling them to restaurants (I haven't seen water buffalo on any menus). But some of it also seems to be domestication. Water buffalo seem to always be more feisty and frisky. Hence the near death experience.

So we are sitting in a tuk-tuk that's cruising along at maybe 40 kmh. Along come two loose water buffalo straight across the road at changing angles. They don't know what they are doing, and it seemed like they were scared by the oncoming traffic. Well there just happened to be a large tourist bus romping in the opposite direction and other lane (i.e. toward us) at the same time. Naturally of course the buffalo cross in front of the surprised bus first. The bus then heads straight for us to avoid the buffalo. The buffalo continue across thankfully. The bus careens back toward his side of the road, and in the meantime we are scrambling completely off the road, narrowly avoiding the buffalo and bus.

I'm facing the opposite direction in this tuk-tuk (it's like a motorized carriage in a way), so all I hear and see is Cyndi's frightened face shouting "Oh my gosh!"  - Cyndi rarely curses apparently - twice in a row, the second time more urgent (mind you, this is split-second material), and then she covers her face. I turn around just in time to see the buffalo and bus miss us, and then we are back on the road again. No problem. Tuk-tuk driver acts as if nothing even happened, and this does not phase him in the slightest. Cool, cool. All is well.

A great thing about that day was meeting an extraordinary little girl, must have been 9 or 10 years old. If you are accustomed to tourist traps in any third world country, it's sadly almost always the same. Everyone is peddling and hawking and selling something to you, dear traveller, as you make your way toward the entrance of whatever. This is all well and good, as folks need to make a living, and that's fine. But this girl was not only the usual all smiles and sunshine along with clearly poor, poor, poor and filthy, she was also funny and smart. So everyone asks where you are from as a selling point starter. She was no different. I replied: Greenland. She looked at me right away and said in perfect English: No you're not, you're either American or Canadian. I said: How do you know, and she said: Because of your accent. I gave her that point, definitely. Then after seemingly infinitely more negotiations, it was determined I wasn't going to buy anything. So she said: You're buying nothing from me? I said: No thank you, sorry. She said: Well "nothing" will cost you 10 dollars. I sad: No haha sorry again. She said: Okay, three for twenty-five.

That was where we went into the temple grounds, so I lost track of her, although I did see her chatting up three German tourists after I came back out. She was talking to them in crisp, fluent German of course.