My Cambodian moto driver made the mistake of casually mentioning that he could probably put me up in his rural home for a night or two, and I grabbed the opportunity to see a part of the country not on the tourist trail with what to Narun was probably disconcerting enthusiasm. Narun, an orphaned Khmer Rouge survivor who fought in the Cambodian Army before becoming a moto driver, has his home two hours from Phnom Penh in a place called Mekong Island – a massive, tropical sand spit in the middle of Asia's largest river which is only accessible by ferry.
The travel time and petrol costs involved in a trip from Mekong Island to the city centre where Narun makes his living means it isn't practical for him to return home after work. So, like hundreds of other drivers in the Cambodian capital, Narun works all day and then sleeps rough on the back of his bike most nights of the week. When money and time permits, usually once or twice a week, he heads home to spend time with his family.
It was a dusty, uncomfortable drive across the city centre and through the slums on Phnom Penh's outskirts on our way to the Mekong Island ferry, but the sight of the ferry itself made me want to jump onto Narun's bike and head straight back. The Mekong River – a massive, brown bubbling body of water – was stretched out before us with the shore of Mekong Island barely visible a couple of kilometres away. The vessel myself and the other passengers would attempt to traverse this Asian giant was, basically, a wooden shed nailed onto a some floating barrels with a beat up old motor strapped onto the back of it.
My fellow travellers; farmers returning from markets, school kids on their way home and moto drivers like Narun, were highly amused by both the presence of a 'barang', which had been nowhere to be seen for the last hour of our drive, and the look of dread I imagine I was sporting.
We skidded down the steep, muddy embankment and onto the hodge-podge of a craft we would trust our lives just as it spluttered into life and began to move away.
I attempted to keep as calm as I could in the cramped, oily bows of the ferry by sponging up the nonchalance of the other passengers crammed in around me. It wasn't difficult – they were all staring at me with expectant, beaming smiles plastered across their faces. “Hullloooo!” said a small Khmer girl in a tattered red dress from behind her mother's skirt. “Hello!” I answered with a smile. The rest of the group erupted into giggles and words of congratulations for the brave kid who dared to converse with the oddity in their midst. “Hullloooo!” yelled a scruffy, animated teenage guy from atop the clucking, chicken-filled bamboo basket he was sitting on. “Hello!” I answered over the roar of the struggling engine.
An awkward silence descended when the whole boat had greeted me with what appeared to be the only English word in circulation. Luckily, the girl in the red dress peered out from behind her mother's leg to save the day. “Hullloooo!” she said, smiling through the two fingers she had jammed into her mouth – and around we went again.
I scrambled off the 'ferry' when it beached itself on shore and helped Narun push his moto up the steep, gravelly bank. The passengers fanned out and headed off down dirt tracks that cut through the thick, lush vegetation that topped the island as we started the old bike up and made out towards Narun's home. “Remember Rob, we are very poor!” he warned me for the thousandth time.
The island itself was stunning. Traffic on the pathway was dominated by carts pulled by bony white cows and people either on foot or on battered bicycles. Trees heavy with mangoes, bananas, coconuts and a range of other unrecognisable fruits partially concealed beautifully constructed if basic stilted teak houses. The land occasionally opened up to reveal verdant fields dotted with lazily grazing livestock and bent figures in conical hats. Tourists are a rarity on Mekong Island and necks craned as we sped towards Narun's home. Narun visibly brightened as we neared our destination and when we finally arrived it wasn't difficult to see why. His two daughters ran, giggling and screaming from under his stilted house while his wife walked smiling from its main room. The poverty in the area made its presence felt in the absence of electricity, sanitation or running water, but Narun and his family had found a way of living which made their happiness not depend on such trivialities.