Day 4 - Visiting Arafin

8am and we are waiting outside for Vong (our man from Plan International) to collect us for the drive to visit Joannes's sponsored child in Danbae village about and a half drive away.
When we arrived the whole family plus extras were waiting to greet us. Jo spotted Arafin immediately and I also recognised the huge smile from his photos - everyone welcomed us and we were ushered into their wooden hut to meet the family one by one. His father was still working and his eldest sister was at school but there still seemed to be an awful lot of people there ( I do remember the children's names but I can't spell them so just take my word for it!).
Jo gave them the gifts we had brought and a special book that she had made for
Arafin showing photos he had sent her of his progress over the years and her photos of family and life in England. They all wanted to know such a lot and were also happy to share their life with us although Arafin was very shy about whether he had a girlfriend or not ( it is quite usual for them to marry at about 16). Everyone's favourite gift was the inflatable world globes Jo had taken and all of a sudden most of the village seemed to turn up as word got out!
For a distraction Joanne produced a length of elastic and started a jumping game that gathered even more people and caused a lot of laughter.
They are delightful people who have very little but enjoy such a lot and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit (albeit for a very short time) and were pleased that the charity has done such a good job to improve the lives of children in Cambodia.
We drove back to Kampong Cham stopping for a comfort break( although the facilities kind of stretch the meaning of the word comfort ) and lunch ($3.50 for 2 meals!!) on the way. We also made a quick stop to see the bamboo bridge which is built every year after the rainy season to enable people to get across the Mekong river to an island. Joanne was accosted by a monk who asked if she would have her photo taken with him - quite bizarre but she thinks it was because she was white!
We discussed the day back at the river 'pub' over a few beers and then our friendly Tuk Tuk driver got us back to the hotel. Leaving tomorrow to go back to Phnom Penh.