Day 42: Ban Krut beach to Bang Saphon Noi Beach, Southern Thailand
“Do you eat spiders in Cambodia?” We ask our guide Hueng who is from Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat, in Cambodia. “Yes, it is very tasty. They are the size of Tarantulas. It does not taste like Chicken.” He smiles and laughs.
We had just been talking about eating honey from the comb and bee larvae, like I did at the first elephant sanctuary, and another rider talked about her experience of eating crickets. “I think I wouldn’t bother with them,” she said. I agreed with her.
A few minutes later, we stop to watch the 4 foot monitor lizard sunning itself on the trail next to us and we remark that they are protected in Bangkok where we saw several in the main park in our walks. Hueng mentions that if we were back at his home he would be eating that too.
As we start up again biking lazily through the rubber plantation, Heung opens up more about his story. “Cambodia had many years of civil war, and so people learned to eat anything they could to survive. It is still that way in places.” I remember just yesterday thinking how resourceful he was when he showed us a video of himself fishing outside his front door when his new house was completely surrounded during the floods and he remarked, “They are all bones, really, but they add flavor to a soup.”.
“We have had 35 years of no civil war, and many years of war before that when we were colonized by the French for over 100 years. Thailand has had no civil war for hundreds of years and they were never colonized.”
As we take a left at the coconut tree and the cow with a white egret on top, Hueng continues. “Thailand has food everywhere, they are our wealthy neighbor. Due to the civil wars and the Pol Pot regime, there are not many people over your age in my country. Most of them were killed.”
It makes me take a long pause to take one what I just heard as I imagine growing up with such recent tragedy within your own country. I remember watching the “Killing Fields” on a Sunday night Flicks, a story of the brutality of the Khmer Rouge in college and being disturbed by the inhumanity it showed. And here was kind, gentle, Hueng, born just a year before the fighting ended – a testament to the faith his parents had in their future and a better life.
We pass by the waving tall trees so laden down with coconuts that we have to dodge a few that have dropped on our bike path.
This reminds me that we do enjoy the slower travelling, that we get to learn pieces of people’s stories, find out how amazing each one of us and learn. It also reminds me to slow down, take the time to listen, be in the moment, to be fully present with others.
Over lunch, Hueng gladly shows a picture of his lovely wife and a video of his spunky little soon to be five year old daughter. “When are you coming home Dad? Are you tired? (from biking)”
We talk every night, he tells us.
Reminds us of our friend’s Kevin and Kim’s place in Maui – just with a lot less people.
Siri and David Adventures 