🎣 Fishing Lessons 🛺 & More Cambodian Adventures With Our German Guests 👨👩👦👦
On the last day of our guests stay here in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, we decided to go out for a day of fishing and swimming.
Mr. Mab 🔪 Filleter Of Fish 🐟
On the previous day the two sons of our visitor had some partial success with a fish trap they brought over from Germany. In addition to this my wife paid someone in the village to catch some fish to grill because one of the things the oldest boy wanted to do was eat new kinds of fish. As a vegan I had little advice to offer, so I left it to Mr. Mab to come up with a tasty way to prepare the fish.
In the above is a creature that has been known to burn her eyelashes while stealing fish from a grill. Luckily her tastes are mostly for gecko, shrew, and cricket meat, as well as some seaweed chips, corn, and nutritional yeast, all things we have in abundance at our house when there are no human meat-eaters staying with us. She brings all her kills to devour behind my computer chair, and this gives me a good opportunity to make sure she's getting enough to eat, but sometimes things get pretty gruesome.
🚙 The Trusty RAV4 ⛰️
My friend Andreas is a German resident of Cambodia, someone I've known for several years, and he is both guide and friend to the woman and her two sons who are holidaying in Cambodia. They both went to university together in Germany to become doctors, my friend Andreas became a family physician and his friend became a pediatrician. Last year he came with an old friend from highschool and they both successfully traveled south on a road all locals said was impossible in the rainy season. The above Toyota did it in stock form, only having to be pushed by villagers seven times.
On this day we didn't plan any distant trips, instead we opted to have fun in the village and explore the local swimming and fishing holes. Sakana was having fun with the boys catching fish from the river and adding them to the spirit house pond in the corner of our property. With no fish the pond becomes a breeding ground for mosquito larvae, so it's good to have something in there snack on the mosquito babies.
🚶♀️ Upstream Swimming/Fishing Holes 🚶♂️
The river behind our house was very low because it hadn't rained in months, and everything upstream from us is even drier and lower except for a couple areas behind none of our neighbor's homes. We went there in search of deeper water because one of things the boys wanted to see was a handcast fishing net in action.
On this day we brought along Bong T'heeun, my wife's half brother who is part of the in-law construction crew staying with us. He has experience using handcast nets, and he seemed quite happy to entertain the boys who speak only German, and T'heeun speaks only Khmer. Luckily fishing doesn't really require a whole lot of language.
On the previous day the guests had put a fishing trap in the above nook of the river, also the place where T'heeun had cast the net. The tiny little area was cut off from the rest of the river due to the low water, so between the trap and the net most of the fish in this isolated section were caught.
🏊♂️ Swimming Time (For Me At Least)
Just a little more upstream is the best swimming hole, the deepest and clearest section of river in the whole village, and because it doesn't contain the two tributaries the section of our river has, it doesn't flood as violently here either.
It is here when I took a few more pics and put my phone down to get into the water, but on this day the weather was a little chilly, so it was just me and Bong T'heeun in the water. I swam upstream from him and didn't intentionally send the fish in his direction, but I'm sure it didn't hurt his efforts because although a big area, this part of the river was also mostly isolated due to low water levels.
👋 Last Day In Town 🙏
Time to head out because our guests planned to leave on this morning, their last day at our place. I was surprised to see the oldest boy crying because he didn't want to leave our place. He was having so much fishing and riding in the tuk-tuk that he didn't want to go anywhere else in Cambodia, so I was honored by that. My own family members won't come to visit because they are scared, but a woman traveling solo with a 7 and 2-year old is having nothing but good times here.
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That will be such an honor for you since the son doesn't want to go. They must been having a great time in your place, with all those adventures and a good host like your family.
!LUV !PIZZA
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It was an honor indeed, especially because the kids didn't want to get out of the car when they first arrived. I hope we can host more adventurous guest like this again in the future.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@ekavieka(2/5) tipped @justinparke
Hello @justinparke sir how are you.
The wonderful fishing scene gives me the vivid nature. Thank you so much for showing us such a beautiful mind-blowing form of nature. Also, I respect and love your hard work of fishing. Many people enjoy the sight of sleeping cats with great photographic glory. However, fish is a non-vegetarian food that is very beneficial for humans. Which is one of the ways for people to stay healthy. Our body lacks a lot of meat. For the purpose of which we eat fish is very beneficial. Eating more non-vegetarian foods provides eye sight and body structure and all necessary nutrients. May God always bless you with all abilities.
best regards @mdakash62
Thanks for stopping by. Fish are a very important of the Cambodian diet, and I have great respect for those willing to take a life themselves to eat meat as opposed to having someone else do it for them. I cannot afford to take a life myself, but I stay healthy with protein choices like beans, legumes, cassava leaves, seeds, nuts, and many other things.
The fish are small here, so net fishing is the best way to do it even if using a fishing pole seems like more fun. Downriver there are bigger fish, but it is almost 20 minutes away from our home. There are also tiny crabs here in the river that the local boys like to catch and eat.
Yes my friend you are right. Although the fishing spot is 20 minutes away from your house. I think he's just too happy to be close. Yes mate but I have never eaten crab. But I like small fish very much. Which is very beneficial for our eyes. This small fish is very useful to increase the eyesight. May God bless you always with all abilities. I love your loving and kind comments. I always respect and love your hard work
Yay! 🤗
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Very good video of bong Thean.
I knew it would be a good slo-mo shot, glad it worked out.
This kind of outdoor fun and adventure makes every bond even stronger. It's nice that you have a beautiful place to do things that makes you all happy 🥰♥️
Yes, sometimes we get overwhelmed by life and stress, but when visitors come and truly enjoy our place as it is, we are humbled and reminded to give thanks for what we have here. Thanks for stopping by with some thoughtful words.
Beautiful pictures. I wish I could explore Cambodia one day. Seems like you and your family are enjoying the life there. But with the beautiful and prestine water and abundant fish is relaxing to watch. So maybe it is so good to be there in Cambodia.
Yes, life can be good here. Cambodia has a bit of a bad reputation and many more visitors go to Vietnam or Thailand, but this is what makes Cambodia special. I live on a national highway, albeit in one of the most remote parts of the country, but even here I am the only foreigner for hours in all directions that is not part of the Chinese casino on the border.
I am often the first white person many Cambodians have ever met, and for me it's quite exciting to live in these remote areas where tourism hasn't polluted the attitudes toward some foreigners.
I love your surroundings @justinparke. It reminds me of my childhood home, where my father built a fish pond where we could grill fresh-caught fish. Dad raised catfish and eels so that we could spend our bonding weekends together when he was on vacation from working abroad. I miss the place and our tiny pond. My father was an agriculturist. That's why we had an abundance of veggies and fruits in our yard. Reminiscing about such days is a treasure for me. 😊
Haha, once upon a time I liked to eat eel in my pre-vegan years. I didn't know until recently that our stretch of the river is primo eel territory, and so all the local villagers like to place their traps here. The villagers don't eat many veggies or fruits because the ground is pure clay and rock, not a good place for farming because it's all jungle.
I can understand why so many people here fish because there aren't even any large animals in our village other that one person with two cows, but that's a pretty big deal here. When we finish our construction and have a clear idea of where we want to build future bungalows and camp sites, I hope to put more efforts into gardening, landscaping, mulching, and trying to create some fertile areas. The markets are nearly an hour away, so we need to grow as much as we can.
I think a lot of people who have only ever known USA life have the wrong idea about how dangerous it is over here. Even I was expecting to always need to be on my toes to avoid being robbed or kidnapped but as you know, it is much safer over here than it is in the cities of our own country.
Even my own dad goes to Mexico several times a year with his new wife, both are simple Indiana rednecks. They stay in resorts and go to eat at restaurants that are only a half a mile away from kidnappings, murders, and some of the most intense gang activity on the planet. Apparently the tourism industry and the ganglords in Mexico have pretty solid agreements to not let gang activity spill over into tourist zones, so it's all mental conditioning that have created this false image. I can't even count the towns in the USA I would want to wander around after 10pm, but here in Cambodia there is almost nowhere I would feel unsafe at 2am.
I'm the same way. I tell people that you really have nothing to worry about over here other than getting conned on the price of something and even when that happens it quickly becomes a life lesson and it doesn't happen again. I have never heard of anyone being a victim of a violent crime here in Thailand or even feeling nervous about a part of town they were in and as foreigners, we are frequently lost so ending up in the wrong part of town is likely something that happens to us on a regular basis. Even in my own smallish college town there was a "no go" part of town and the population was only around 100,000 people there.