On Saturday, January 31, 2026, we started the day off with a nice buffet breakfast at our hotel.
Then we all climbed aboard yet another form of transportation: An open-air bus with two benches. It was a lot like a songthaew (pickup with two benches), but it was much larger and more open.
There was a table running down the middle, and it was kind of a party atmosphere on board.
The upholstered ceiling was pretty fancy.
From our vehicle, we could look right out and see other people, like this family on a scooter.
Or this family on a scooter.
Our big activity that day was to ride ATVs through the countryside. At Tyler's suggestion, we all brought a big bag of candy to hand out to little kids along our ride.
They gave us these fun water bottle holders to use for the trip.
We each took one practice trip around a track to make sure that we knew how to drive an ATV, and then we prepared to head out for a ride through the countryside.
Many people wore masks to deal with the dust from the other ATVs.
Soon we were heading down dirt roads in the country.
I had a GoPro mounted to my head.
We came across these water buffalo walking out into the road.
As we passed by houses, little kids would come running out to get candy. They were so cute!
The adults seemed happy to see us and waved as well.
The kids were adorable.
We saw people caring for their livestock and small farms.
A lot of houses are up on stilts to handle the rainy season.
This little gal seemed to be pretty good at working the system.
There were 13 of us on ATVs, so after going from one vehicle to the next like it was Halloween, these gals started carrying their candy in their shirts.
Jen always seemed to have an inspirational shirt.
This girl had a cute puppy that we got to pet.
The kids came in all sizes.
Here is Devaughn handing candy out to some of the older boys.
Linette did the same.
Valerie stopped and interacted with each of the children.
Sometimes we gave candy to the adults, which always made them smile.
Linette held this lady's bike (with a baby on the handlebars) while Valerie gave the mom a candy. The baby was ok for a moment, but then decided this wasn't ok.
She was happier when her mom came back to the bike.
We did feel slightly funny about teaching children to take candy from strangers, but it was really fun.
It was fun seeing scenes outside of the busy city.
Eventually we reached a temple called Wat Aranh Raingsey where we parked our ATVs for a few minutes.
Linette and I were at the back of the line, so we were the last ones to the temple.
We took a bunch of video footage that morning of our interactions with the kids along the way. Below is a 20-minute video capturing a lot of this activity. (That is a lot of video, so if that is more than you have time for, feel free to watch a sample and maybe skip to the end where we enter the temple area.)
We walked a block or so to a nearby elementary school.
Jen handed out candy along the walk.
Inside the school, we got permission to interrupt several classes and hand candy out to the children. We split up so that all 13 of us weren't giving candy to the same kids.
Darren was good at getting a fist bump out of the kids.
I thought it was fun to see their "a b c's" on the wall.
Jen also gave a lot of fist bumps or high fives. Most kids knew what to do, though a few seemed confused.
Many other kids gave a little two-handed bow (a sampeah) to say thank you.
We often gave a piece of candy to the teacher as well.
It was fun disrupting classes and practicing "thank you" and "you're welcome" with some of the older kids. Finally we headed back out. These kids were all lined up for something as we headed for the exit.
We walked back over to the temple area to get back on our ATVs.
We took a group picture at the temple before we rode off. A couple random little girls were hanging out by us, so they got in our group picture as well.
Here is a 7-minute video showing some of our interactions with the kids at the school.
We were mostly out of candy by that point, but some people got a couple more customers as we headed back towards our starting point.
We saw water buffalo from time to time as we drove along.
The glowing green rice fields reminded me of when I used to see these during my missionary service in Korea.
At one point we all gathered in the shade in a field and took pictures of everyone on their ATVs.
Everybody's got a water buffalo. (According to Veggie Tales).
We were all pretty dusty by the time we were done.
The ATV crew was very friendly and waved as we headed out.
Here is a final video from our ATV ride. This 5-minute video shows some of the countryside and water buffalo that we saw on our way back to the starting point of our ATV ride. Some sections are sped up by 4 to 8 times to give you a glance at the countryside without taking too much time.
Our open-air songthaew made it really fun to see all the other drivers on the road, as we all zoomed along at the same speed.
That afternoon, people scattered and did their own thing for a while.
Linette and I went for a swim and relaxed for a while on the pad in front of our room.
Greg and Kelly walked along the river.
Some found some fancy food for lunch or dinner.
Darren and Valerie got this. I'm not even sure what it is, but I think mangoes are involved.
Towards evening, some people walked back over to Pub Street.
Someone discovered the "Gelato Lab", and their ice cream was very creamy and tasty.
Jen got an ice cream roll, where you watch them freeze the cream on a cold plate right in front of you, which I imagine was also great.
Pub Street had a huge market.
It sounded kind of nice to have a relaxing afternoon, but we also knew we didn't have any main activities planned for the next day, which was Sunday, so Linette and I ended up going with Devaughn and Kim on a tour to see the "Floating Village," starting about 2pm that afternoon and going until dark.
Along the way, we saw some more awesome examples of motorcycles towing stuff.
And I'm not quite sure what this is.
The first stop on our tour was at an outdoor vendor who was selling Bamboo Sticky Rice (called Kralan, ក្រឡាន, in Cambodian).
Sweet sticky rice and black beans are cooked over charcoal in a tube of bamboo (with a banana leaf plug at the top). Then you peel the tube back to eat the treat out of the middle. Our host said that this was a very popular snack in this area.
Here is a 30-second video where our guide shows how one peels and eats Bamboo Sticky Rice.
Our second stop was at a local bakery.
We tried little doughnuts and other local snacks.
As the tour continued, we saw some more fun examples of getting the most out of one's motorcycle.
Our next stop was in the village of Kompong Khleang (Kampong=port/harbor/village, Klleang=storage/warehouse, so it kind of means "warehouse port"). It is the largest, most authentic stilted village on the Tonlé Sap Lake near Siem Reap.
I wondered what in the world was going on with all the smoke.
It turns out that the main industry there is smoking fish.
We watched a 6-year-old girl doing her "chore", which consisted of cutting the heads off of a hundred small fish. Her little sister, a toddler, was playing with a dead fish as her toy.
Our guide actually grew up in this little village, and showed us some of the smoked, dried fish that is the main product of this village.
After seeing so many scooters in town, it was interesting to see so many bicycles in this village.
The houses here are all on high stilts. Water comes up to the top of the dark areas of the wood during the rainy season, and the above road is under water, requiring boats to get from your house to anywhere else.
Some buildings that are down at water level are floating buildings and rise with the water level.
Our guide took us up some stairs to a school there. He talked about the donations that have made this school possible, and told about all the good it did for the children there.
The Khmer Empire lasted from 802-1431, and built amazing irrigation systems that allowed them to gather water during the rainy season and use it for irrigation during the dry season. This gave them food production which brought them great wealth and allowed them to build monumental cities like Angkor Wat. During this era, the empire included parts of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
However, environmental shifts and encroachment by neighboring powers eventually led to a long period of decline, during which they were also colonized by France.
In the 20th century, the country was affected by the Vietnam war, and is still to this day plagued with the largest concentration of land mines in the world. Following the instability of the Vietnam war, the radical Khmer Rouge took over and tried to implement "Year Zero," an attempt to get rid of all things modern and go back to where everyone was just happily farming. Their approach to this was to murder everyone who was educated, including administrators, politicians, doctors, teachers, professionals, and even anyone with glasses. This led to the "Killing Fields," a genocide that took the lives of around 2 million people—one-fourth of the country's population.
The result was devastating to the country. With 90% of the educated people wiped out, there was no one left to teach the next generation. Cambodia has made heroic strides since the 1990s, but this "knowledge vacuum" continues to result in a struggle with poverty as the educational system is slowly rebuilt.
So I thought it was cool that this guide cared about his village so much that he ran these tours in order to support his village and especially this school.
Here is some Khmer script on the white board.
The floor is made of wooden planks with gaps you can see through.
If you look closely through the gaps, you can see the ground, 30 feet below. In the rainy season, I assume you would see water down there, just a few feet below.
Here is the view across the river from the school. The colorful buildings on stilts were quite a sight.
You can just see the lighter-colored wood at the tops of the stilts that show where the water comes to.
Here is a closer view where the water line is more obvious.
Our tour group consisted of a couple from England; Kim & Devaughn; Linette & me, a couple from Europe or something (I can't quite remember), and a couple from Montreal, Canada (both doctors).
Kids were playing volleyball down below, with a big fishing net to keep the ball from rolling down the hill into the river. (I wonder what they play during the rainy season? Water polo?)
Linette gave a bit of candy out to the kids there.
The guide took us to meet his sister, who had a cute baby, and his parents, who fed us some noodle soup.
The guide said that during the rainy season, they have a barge for the chickens to float on, like a portable chicken coop.
As the sun started to set, we boarded this blue boat.
A Buddha statue overlooked the water as we pulled away.
We started out in the seats on the main level, but soon moved up to the roof where we had an unobstructed view.
Things looked kind of magical during the "golden hour" before sunset.
As we continued towards the lake, we soon saw the school that we had visited.
The river got wider as we got closer to the lake.
People on the shore were doing various kinds of work, but most of them smiled and waved. I suppose they don't get a lot of visitors out here.
The homes were pretty humble, and I assume these are temporary, too, as they would be under water later in the year.
Other homes were built on barrels so that they float, literally creating a floating village.
The floating houses migrate as the water level goes up and down.
This is a floating elementary school with a floating playground next to it.
Here are some more floating homes.
A lady was standing on the bow of their "family car" (actually boat) in front of their house.
Some ethnic Vietnamese don't have the legal right to own "land", so a floating house is the only place they can really live. Others may find it too hard to afford land.
It was so interesting to see the people who live their lives on these boats. They always seemed to have a smile and a wave for us.
It was great to hang out on the top of the boat with this good group of people.
We saw clusters of plastic bottles all over the lake, which marked where there were fishing nets.
Eventually we reached the main lake.
Tonle Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. It connects to the mighty Mekong River via the Tonle Sap River. During the dry season, water flows from the Tonle Sap Lake down to the lower Mekong River. But during the rainy season, the Mekong River swells so much that it actually reverses the direction, filling this lake until it is five times its dry-season size.
I didn't realize when we were there how big a deal the fishing was here. Apparently, 80% of the protein in the Cambodian diet comes from the fish in this lake.
The lake is so large that it goes to the horizon. The Great Salt Lake in Utah varies between 900 to 1700 square miles, depending on how full it is. The Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia varies from 1000 square miles in the dry season to 6200 square miles during the rainy season.
Finally, the sun started to disappear behind the haze near the horizon.
We got more smiles and waves as we headed back up the river.
Though the sun was down, there was still a magical glow of color in the sky.
So beautiful!
By the time we reached the stilted village, it was starting to get dark, and the scenery seemed magical to me, like the mysterious swamps of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.
When we saw the Buddha statue, we knew we were almost done.
We really enjoyed our tour of the stilted and floating villages, and I appreciated the guide sharing his home town with us.
Here is a 3 1/2-minute video showing scenes from our visit to the Floating Village.
When we got back to our hotel, a traditional dance performance was going on.
It was another great day on this adventure.
In the next episode, we wrap up the trip with one morning in Cambodia, one night in Bangkok, and a series of plane rides to get home. We will also review the list of modes of transportation to see how Tyler did on his goal to provide as many of those as he could.