The Ever-changing Landscape of Cambodia | SLICE | FULL DOCUMENTARY

foreigner when a new day dawns amidst the final chaos that comes just before we wake up, dreams collide and bring back memories of important moments fantasized and blurred from a past earthly life, thank you again, foreigner come true here I am in Cambodia sailing in the meacon a mystical river that symbolizes in itself a journey to Asia, like a flying carpet that descends through the Himalayas and meanders through China Laos Burma Thailand Cambodia and Vietnam the Mekong River is an imaginary vehicle with which

ever

y adventurer in the world I would dream of visiting this side of the world.

It navigates well in this unique region in the center of the country. The river becomes larger and its banks separate, forming a kind of Delta that rises in the middle of its course, extending along a couple kilometers and during the dry season when the water level is low. Countless islands appear that house small villages. My father died in 1977. During the Khmer regime, I was still young and he didn't have time to teach me how to fish. I became a fisherman many years later, my uncle taught me before that fishing was not a thing. It is very difficult because there were a lot of fish in the Mekong, but now there are more and more poachers who fish with electricity and explosives, with our traditional nets and rods, we simply cannot match them and we cannot do anything to stop them, small fishermen.

Since we are not strong enough to keep them away we are not police if we try to intimidate them we put ourselves at risk some of us have been attacked by these people before asking them at least not to destroy our boats in the river we are free we can fish wher

ever

we want it depends on each one of us choose our own places and if there are no fish left we just move the nets each fisherman is independent we work alone or with our family on our own boats I leave the fisherman alone while he continues taking out his nets and I go to the family house to walk with his son to school the dry season lasts several months and turns the soil in the fields into a hard, cracked and dusty crust in a couple of weeks.

In a few weeks it will pour rain and the farmers will return to the rice fields. This small school is isolated in the middle of the fields, with no marked roads or paths leading to and from it, and yet the island's inhabitants had been waiting for it for years. I want the children of this island to be educated like the children of other villages. When I was a child I didn't go to school and took courses in a foreign pagoda. It was to return to my village and bring knowledge to the children. there so they could grow up things have changed a lot since my childhood I went to school in pagodas or under the coconut trees I would have loved to have a school like this when I was a child I didn't have access to a school on the island and since we didn't have motors either at that time I had to row to a nearby island now they built this school and the children can come on foot it means the school is located in the middle of the field because the villagers wanted it there as a room, they all got together and donated part of their land, that's how we were able to build this school. songs at first it was impossible to teach here as soon as it rained there was mud everywhere, it dripped everywhere.

I was forced to leave school to go teach inside the houses of The Village, however, this year the government helped by building a concrete floor. Thank you. Today's children do not concentrate in school. When I was your age, I already knew how to read, whereas today I'm just in my class. one or two are able to read correctly yes, it's not difficult to learn tomorrow um they often come to class without having done their homework, we can't really blame them, although when I ask them why they haven't done their homework, the most common response is is that they had to help their parents at home with daily chores, going fishing for example is very common here he says what I really want to share with the children of The Village is everything I learned in other places I want to share knowledge and give them the opportunity to grow up to have a job like mine later.

I believe that the more educated children are, the less likely they are to be deceived and abused in the future. My wife is from the same town as me. I met her thanks to my mother, who arranged our marriage. She thought it would be a good match since we both grew up without a father. She also thought that our living conditions were similar and so we could help each other. The whole family is from the island. My parents and I was born here yes, I grew up in this town and I got married here too, we all live very close to each other and it has been that way for generations.

My parents were not fishermen, they were farmers. I have eight children and four of them are already married. Actually, it's an average. size for a family some people have 12 children abroad adults work with their father I cook and wait for everyone to return home I don't want to get involved in my children's marriage I want them to choose their spouse as long as they get along well and They respect the laws, customs and traditions. It works for me. Thank you. For now, we live exclusively from fishing because we cannot work the land. We have to wait for it to rain before returning to the field.

We grow rice, our staple. Food fishing is a way to earn some money. to buy ingredients such as salt, glutamate or medicines when someone is sick abroad. I like to take care of the house, cook meals and go to the rice fields with my husband and children. However, I never go fishing. I don't like that we live in a traditional house. I built it myself with natural materials like straw or bamboo. It houses my family. I had to ask neighbors and some friends for help to build it. Everyone came to help and in return. We offered some food and drink throughout. the day.

Well, I would like a new wooden house, a simple and taller one. I would have liked a house made of concrete, but we don't have the money. We always lack money. We can't save enough. Because we always spend it on food, medical care, and children's schooling, we simply cannot save enough money to build a big house like the others. Come on, yes, this place is sacred, it was chosen by the villagers because of the Tall Tree. No one knows its age, but the elders have always known this tree, they say it survived many fires around it, it had burned down, there was nothing left except this tree, people thought it was because a genie lived there and they decided to build an altar under the tree. tree since then.

Villagers have been gathering regularly to honor him. This is a ritual for the spirits. Our ancestors used to have that type of ceremony before a trip or to help them carry out a project. These are very old beliefs, but they continue today abroad. We have two religions, they are Buddhist and Animist, when a child is sick and we cannot cure him with traditional medicine and pray to jinn, sometimes it works and our beliefs get stronger and we start to think that only jinn are effective abroad. music bands like ours, so we go where they ask us to go to Kitchen, when other bands are not available people ask for us and we go from Ireland to Ireland to play in various towns in Cambodia, as in many countries with A strong animistic belief spirits have been sharing people's daily lives for thousands of years.

Jinn are respected and feared, whether good or bad, even more so because they are everywhere in the desert, but also among the crops or the land surrounding the houses that they themselves are. protected by other geniuses in short there is spirit for anything that deserves respect benevolence I saw protection to ensure prosperity and good health in each family never foreign words every time I find myself in a situation of change when certain Customs or certain trades disappear to be replaced by other more modern or profitable ones, I forced myself to take a certain distance and try to understand what is really gained with this change.

Soon this small boat manufacturing workshop will disappear because plastic or fiberglass holes come that will inevitably replace the wooden ones. Ships and boats will be lost, the owner of this small family shipyard will have to invest in new machinery that he may not be able to repair himself, he will depend on raw materials that come from abroad, hundreds of kilometers away. Here, while he had access to all the wood he could need provided by a generous nature and the merchants who are also his neighbors, whether forced or accepted, these changes shape a future that is easy to predict, a future that modern societies know very well. struggle today to deal with its negative consequences, whether social, environmental or cultural, we feel like telling them to be wary of turnkey solutions from abroad that are supposed to simplify their lives, but we also find some comfort in the idea that people of these virgin regions find in the inevitable changes that are coming a unique way adapted to their needs when the way things work seems to move further and further away from common sense I always wonder oh still for now these three fishermen come to collect their boat because tonight they are going out to the river thank you foreigner thank you foreigner it is time for me to leave the Mekong and its fishermen with their boats backfiring while the noise fades away the river remains in a misty silence and the soft sounds of its inhabited banks arrive I retreat while I am drifting on the water in the midst of the numbness of the last few days without rain because very soon Everything Will Change the rainy season will begin and with it a complete agitation the river will rise and little by little it will gain more than five meters under which they will drown The peaceful

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s The turbulent water for months produces the strongest plants that will ignore the currents and continue to grow as best they can, thus revealing when the water level drops again a fantastic foreign

landscape

before moving towards the mountains to the east of the country, near the border with Vietnam. have a spiritual meeting to attend since the official religion Buddhism is everywhere in Cambodia the pagodas are places to pray and meditate, but also where the community of monks who live there spend their time the population visits them throughout the year year during ceremonies that are financed and restored by the inhabitants themselves, I am lucky enough to be welcomed into areas normally reserved for monks when I was young.

I remember loving to listen to the monks pray. I was fascinated and that made me want to become a monk too. I also did it to show gratitude to my parents and help people do good things. I don't know how long I will be a monk, it will depend on how I feel so far. I have been living in the Pagoda for five years oh my name is I must say that it is difficult for me to learn all these lessons and the Pali language which is very difficult and I have a hard time remembering everything you know because I am supposed to learn everything by heart foreigner But anyway, boy, I'm old enough to get married, but that time hasn't come for me yet.

I still want to spend a lot of time at the pagoda to learn how to help people develop their Buddhism. Thank you, in addition to traditional subjects, monks also follow religious education. No. Regardless of your age, an important aspect is to learn the Pali language used in all the founding texts of Buddhism and prayers between religious responsibilities, daily tasks to carry out studies throughout your life in the monastery and the tasks you must perform following The Village requests, the monks are unexpectedly busy. Days I leave the Mekong region to go deeper into the territories of the Phnom people.

Once upon a time, this region at the eastern end of the country had no proper roads, which meant several days of travel to reach it, this helped preserve the culture and traditions of the local populations when I arrived I marveled at the peace, the Simplicity and relaxed pace of life in this long town. I have seen many things. I grew up in this village and was born here 80 years ago before villages and people used to move from hill to hill, the custom was that when one of the patriarchs of the village died the village would move to a new area and settle there .

They were small villages with only two or three families. I have been living here for 20 years and I will not move The villages do not move as much as before anyway thanks do not write everything is shared orally as the method of building our traditional thatched houses is passed down from generation to generation although today people build more and more wooden houses my parents taught me everything to build houses work bamboo cultivate the land everything I know about life was given to me by the elders I know my generation and my children's generation still know a lot but the new generation the most young people no longer know the old techniques.

I try to teach the children how to make baskets, but they are not interested. They say if you want, I don't mind going to school, but I'm not interested in this foreigner. The new Great Road is opening little by little. Improving the region and stimulating trade with the rest of the country is a great opportunity for such simple populations that see tourism as an opportunity to diversify activities that until now were focused onExclusively in the cultivation of cashew nuts, soon betting a fertile plot with trees planted by his great-grandfather and a reliable nature that never lets him down, this farmer can trust that his rows of cashew nuts will deliver him the expected amount of cashew nuts.

Cambodia is the largest producer of cashew nuts in Southeast Asia, however, it does not make as much profit from it. as it should, because the product is sent to Vietnam immediately after harvest to go through a complex treatment and roasting process that turns a toxic ingredient when ripe into the delicious grain that everyone recognizes as strange when they watch children burn their fingers on it. his rush to try the roasted fruit. I remember the chestnuts that we tasted with eagerness fresh from the fire with that same desire to share but very far from here oh strange rhythm and the precision of its movements respect its mere presence inspires the light in its eyes when it looks at a human everything in this animal It's fascinating and makes me sit still while I look at it.

I forget that I'm here so close to it when my father grew too old to care for the elephant anymore. I took charge. He was 12 years old. My son right behind me started when he was 15. Life would have been much more difficult without the elephant because we only had two solutions to make a living using the animal's strength or our own today we no longer use the elephant for any work we It requires strength. The adults work in the fields when they return from school. The children take care of the house and we raise the animals in the yard.

The elephant belonged to my parents. They had exchanged it for buffalo animals. However, they were not its only owners since other villagers had also He contributed to its purchase by bringing pigs for rice so that other villagers could borrow the elephant when they needed it to carry goods. We lent it to them for a week or two without asking for anything in return and sometimes we rent it. Now it is different of course since people have vehicles. but before it was like that and everyone could rent an elephant we left it to them. The elephant goes to the forest freely in a place

full

of bamboo because an elephant is different from a buffalo, it eats all the time almost 24 hours a day, it sleeps for half an hour or an hour. hour and continues eating, we only tie it to a tree when it is too close to the crops, otherwise it destroys everything.

Elephants are surrounded by many beliefs, for example, if a pregnant woman gives birth outside the family home, it is always a bad omen and the elephant may become ill. Our ancestors did not allow a domesticated elephant to have a baby because it was a bad omen for the family and the entire village, if it happened, they had to protect themselves from bad luck by making so many offerings and sacrificing so many buffaloes that it became too expensive for the people. families and, to avoid this, we made sure that the elephants would not mate. The owner of the foreign elephant left a male and a female together and the elephants quickly approached, then they entered the village, destroyed several houses and attacked and killed the corner where no one was in. the village could sleep after that a policeman ended up solving the problem by killing the foreign male this female will turn 60 this year she is like a member of the family now I think she likes us a lot but as always she is in the forest taking a walk around So to speak, we cannot watch her to protect her, take care of her as much as we would like and as much as we do with other animals when I was a child during King Noradamsianuk.

I remember we used to follow the elders into the forest to catch young elephants, there were two or three of us for each elephant before we didn't kill elephants, it started during the Khmer Rouge regime, people started killing males for Ivory before that there were elephants everywhere, maybe in the forest and in the villages, when the last elephant appeared in the town will die, there will be no more, the army forbids capturing them and no one knows how to do it anymore, anyway, those who know are already very old. I imagine the strange feeling you must feel when you say these words because your people can no longer hunt elephants in the desert like they used to and their strict tradition prevents captive breeding, the entire Cornack lineage and the culture associated with it will end the day you die the last domesticated elephant.

This perspective brings a whole new dimension to the care this man provides for his animal. Thanks to traveling to other lands is a choice and an initiative that any Adventurer eager to meet others will later take as we approach the expected Earth. The Force of Will that started everything little by little gives way to a kind of uncertainty, Randomness and luck to travel means feeling fragile, vulnerable and needy for a while, it all depends on the generosity of our host and how they will receive us , which will directly impact the beauty of a life-

changing

experience abroad Ed in Cambodia, everything a traveler can hope for.

I am grateful beyond words and this film shows but a fragment of what people gave me: The world waits for no one and I am eager to meet it abroad.