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We travelled to a small eco-village in a place called Chambok for our homestay experience. Everyone was a bit apprehensive about what it was going to entail. All we knew was that we were going to a small village and they were going to cook us food and we would be sleeping in their homes. It turns out that we had an excellent time, well, apart from having to stop in the middle of nowhere to fix our bus. We took a couple of crates of beer to share between us and the locals, so we were expecting a bit of a party and we got one, Cambodian style.
The dinner was cooked by some of the women from the women only village, it was real Cambodian food, things that they would actually eat, not just food for Westerners. I had curry again. Then after dinner we lit a campfire even though it was still really hot. Haing had bought some 'western' music from the market, Westlife and Backstreet Boys, not really my thing but we had fun. The village runs on generator electricity and only has squat toilets but they still have a kareoke machine and very loud speakers. These are definately my kind of people. The locals put on their favourite music and taught us how to do Cambodian dancing. The whole group were dancing round the fire. After a while the beer ran out, but even though we were in the middle of nowhere, it only took one person a short moto bike journey to get us stocked up again.
We eventually went to our 'homes' at midnight. The people whose houses we were staying in showed us around. The house was typically Cambodian and on stilts with cows in the garden. The owners were sleeping outside while we were sleeping where they normally slept. It was boiling as we had all got used to having air conditioning or at least a fan in our rooms. The worst part was being woken up at 3am by the c*** crowing right outside our window. This carried on until dawn. I couldn't sleep so I watched it get light, looking towards the mountain. It was great.
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