Day 50 Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Today we dropped anchor in the harbor of Sihanoukville which is the major port city of Cambodia. In fact this city was developed after the break up of Indochina in 1954 when Viet Nam took control of the Mekong River and the Cambodians had to develop another port to get their goods to market. We spent little time in this town. The part that we did travel thru was dirty and congested with the roadside markets that support the population. It appears to be a largely poor population with some scattered tokens of affluence. A nice looking house set in the middle of a row of hovels. Once again the motor bike is the main mode of transportation.
The one thing that struck me is that we have seen no old people, except those traveling with us and I guess ourselves. There is an abundance of young people and a great number of very young children. We visited a primary school this morning and were able to see the students in class. There is a morning session that starts at 7 am and ends at 11 and the other kids go from 1 pm to 5 pm. Looking at these kids creates some feelings about what they will have the opportunity to accomplish inn their lives. The country has mandated schooling until grade 12 which is a great start. Your heart goes out to them and the life they are living.
Cambodia has a long way to come but they are making progress. We traveled about 3km on paved roads before we were on dirt roads. In fact one of our buses got stuck on the soft dirt and had to be pulled out. There is no noticeable industry. A very large percentage of the people are farmers and subsist that way.
Tomorrow Bangkok, Thailand.

Chris - What He Said - I would only add a couple things and a couple observations. I thought it was interesting that the school we visited considered it a high honor to be chosen to be visited, They had made up posters of pictures from the last cruise ship that visited in November. I thought what we saw of Cambodia was a little cleaner than Viet Nam. They don't have the infrastructure Viet Nam has but they do seem to have a little better houses than Viet Nam. Where Viet Nam were very primitive shacks and lean twos, Cambodia's poor housing is actual pieces of wood that looks like a house. No furniture in the one we saw and 5 people lived in basically two small rooms. But it did look something like a house. The other half of our tour was spent at a 5 star resort, Sorkha, where we had a very "chic" beachside BBQ and beach opportunities. I spent an hour swimming in the very warm Gulf of Thailand and an hour actually swimming in a beautiful large pool with a "swim up" bar. I loved the resort and swimming, but I had a bit of a hard time enjoying such luxury after visiting the beautiful, indigent children with the soulful eyes. All in all it was a very enjoyable and interesting day.