The following morning, we take a boat tour of a floating village on the Ton Le Sap Lake (which forms part of the Mekong river). Our boat driver (Vet) tells us about the poor students that attend some of the schools in the village. The orphans sleep in the school overnight.
Vet says the best way to help is to buy some books and pencils from one of the floating shops. At $15USD for 10 notebooks (several times the price of notebooks in Aus) we decide against buying the notebooks as it’s clearly a ploy at ripping off the multitude of tourists.
After we leave the floating shop, we arrive at a floating restaurant with a fish and crocodile farm. We don’t buy anything and are anxiously awaiting our next stop, a visit to one of the floating schools.
This is one of the schools in the Vietnamese section of the floating village. This school has 216 students who all have brand new notebooks. Our boat driver tells us that many people give donations to the teacher of the class and he spends the money on himself. When we meet the teacher, I instantly dislike him; he’s more interested in asking for money than teaching his class. His job is more of a supervisor than a teacher and I feel sorry for the kids not getting the pleasure of having an amazing passionate teacher that inspires them to learn more. I wish some of the teachers I knew back home would get a chance to see this class.
We end the boat trip after the school visit and are sad to be leaving. We sleep through most of the bus trip back to Phnom Penh.
« Siem Reap and The Temples of Angkor | Home | Phnom Penh Take Two »