We left the hotel earlier than expected because the Governor of Steung Treng arrived at the village early. The village of Say San isn't really a village. It's more of a community gathering place.
As we drove to Say San we were told that this is land mine area. The areas with land mines was not mapped out so we were not to go wandering around the village area or into the jungle to use the facilities.
It took over an hour to get there on very narrow bumpy roads. As we got closer to the village I noticed that there were soldiers along the road...all facing the jungle. We asked SoPaul, our transportation guy, what they were doing. He said that they were protecting the Governor from whatever...raiders, tigers, whatever.
When we reached the village they had a tent lean to set up with chairs with the Governor waiting. The people came by boat, there are no roads to their villages. It took 2 hours by boat - they had been waiting for 3 hours and they had a 2 hour ride by boat home. We hurried over to get started. No drama this time.
The rice had already been placed in front of the people - Red Cross style. We went through the presentation and then went out and handed out the salt, vitamins, stickers for the kids and Gospels.
Each of us was asked to find a family and formally present them their rice and salt. Then the Governor gave each of the families 5000 riel (real) to help pay for the transporting the rice home.
Along the way we stopped at a farm to use their corn field then headed down the road to find a place to have lunch.
We stopped at a little roadside restaurant and asked the owner if we could use her tables for our lunch. Very nice of her!
We headed to our next destination - Ban Lung in the Rathanikiri Province.
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