Bousra waterfall

Mondulkiri’s biggest tourist attraction is Bousra waterfall, a massive double-drop waterfall which is so famous it’s inspired a song, although being a Cambodian song, it’s probably not very good. On Saturday I finally got round to seeing it – Jeltje’s dad is visiting at the moment, so that was a good excuse for Jeltje to talk her friend Somnang into driving us there. There were six of us altogether: Somnang, Jeltje and her dad, me, Tak and his mum.

We put ourselves in charge of catering, which was interesting. Tak’s mum and I are currently engaged in a month-long battle for rights to the kitchen (I’m trying to do my bit for the liberation of Cambodian women, but she says I don’t know how to chop tomatoes), and while Tak is normally happy to leave us to it, barbecuing meat is his forté. At 6.30 he came back from the market with a huge 1.7kg cut of beef, some carrots, cucumber and barbecue skewers, and after several hours of battle, we were on the road just after 8am.

Unlike the other waterfalls I’ve been to so far, Bousra has clearly been developed as a tourist site, with a carpark, lots of souvenir stalls and people renting out picnic mats. The foreigners among us were also asked to fork out $1 to visit the site – many of Cambodia’s tourist attractions charge foreigners but not Cambodians, which I think is quite a good policy in principle although a bit annoying for me.

Anyway, we set up camp and then went to explore the waterfall. We did things like this:

And then we did things like this:

And then we ate food like this:

And then we took photos of monks doing things like this:

It was a really good day and nice to spend time with lovely people.

In other news, work is getting very busy as VSO want us to spend the remaining money in the budget before the financial year ends in March. We are currently organising a trip for teachers and students from three schools to visit schools in another province to get some ideas for developing their student councils. As well as that, we are hoping to support three primary schools to set up libraries, which is exciting although will involve a lot of work. One of these schools is Pu Trom Chah, which is also working on a vegetable garden. Last Thursday Tak and I went early to visit the school, and took some photos of the children and teachers working together:

And then, before we were asked to roll up our sleeves and get involved, we left.