Friday 28 December
Today was our first real quiet day but after last night’s successful bike ride we also had planned a 10 km cycle south on the island with Serd.
The ride took us through a couple of villages with multiple photo stops - luckily Serd is a keen photographer. A lady making sweet sticky rice in bamboo; a fisherman mending his nets while minding the baby; a mother making rice noodles, a family making charcoal - everybody had a something that they could produce and sell to supplement their income.
We stopped by the local primary school where we were a welcome distraction from the lessons. There was one teacher with about 30 children ranging from about 3 to 7. She said it was hard to cope with that age range but she seemed to have got the older children in hand as they each took turns at the blackboard to lead the class in reciting the writing.
On and on we went on the sand paths with our bikes with no brakes. At the end of the island there were fisherman mending their boats. On the way back disaster struck as Trevor ran off the road and struck a tree. We managed to hire a plough driven truck back to the hotel and applied copious bernadine !
Today was our first real quiet day but after last night’s successful bike ride we also had planned a 10 km cycle south on the island with Serd.
The ride took us through a couple of villages with multiple photo stops - luckily Serd is a keen photographer. A lady making sweet sticky rice in bamboo; a fisherman mending his nets while minding the baby; a mother making rice noodles, a family making charcoal - everybody had a something that they could produce and sell to supplement their income.
We stopped by the local primary school where we were a welcome distraction from the lessons. There was one teacher with about 30 children ranging from about 3 to 7. She said it was hard to cope with that age range but she seemed to have got the older children in hand as they each took turns at the blackboard to lead the class in reciting the writing.
On and on we went on the sand paths with our bikes with no brakes. At the end of the island there were fisherman mending their boats. On the way back disaster struck as Trevor ran off the road and struck a tree. We managed to hire a plough driven truck back to the hotel and applied copious bernadine !