We visited a Cham village while on the Mekong Delta, south of Phnom Penh. The people are Muslim, which is unusual in this country where the majority of people are Buddhist.
To get to the village, we took a small tour boat from our ship, and pulled up at a board walk that consisted of bamboo uprights and worn planks of various sizes (and ages). Our tour leader assured us that the board walk was sturdy, so we gathered our faith together and set off, grimly grasping the handrail (yes, there was one) and trying not to step in the gap between the boards.
The boardwalk led from the ship to dry land and then crossed over several stretches of water filled with water hyacinth plants.
It was only after we got across the second board walk that I realized that, although the planks seemed to be nailed down, the rest of the structure was simply lashed together with strips of cloth, and in some places, wire.
On the way back to the boat, I stopped and took a picture of the water hyacinth flower, which truly looks like the hyacinth I am used to growing!
Bamboo is used through Asia for scaffolding because it is both light and strong. Clearly, the board walk was a good example of bamboo’s usefulness – AND, we were assured, when the monsoon blows it down in the wet season, it is cheap to replace!
Published 1/31/18 from Luang Prabang, Laos
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