small things continued

So we were in a grocery market in a town called Jerentut killing some time while waiting for our train to go to Singapore. We had gotten off the boat from the rainforest in time to catch a bus to Jerentut to make the 12:30pm train to Singapore. BUT unfortunately that one was sold out and we had to wait until the next one, which was at 2AM. Yes that’s right. The next train wasn’t until 2:00 in the AM. We had an entire 14 hours to kill in this small little town kind of in the middle of no-where. If you read the most recent entry of “small things” (not to be confused with the last entry of ‘small things continued’)… you’ll know that we already spent more time in this town than we had intended, but this time decided to actually get a room at a guesthouse and try to go to bed early to catch at least a few hours of good rest. We were thankful we did. It was nice to be able to put our things down and get out a bit.

We did some walking around and checked out the local shops (I even found a new pair of jeans!) The grocery market was definitely a step up from the markets in the local towns of Cambodia. It wasn’t completely up to what super-market standards would be in the states; but almost. It was still partially open air; but there were real check-out counters (for the entire mart), shelves for all the goods inside and things were spread about in an organized manner, with aisles, a clean floor and everything. Anyway, we were at the checkout line and one of the locals…actually kind of a scraggly lookin’ guy; the type of person that you hope doesn’t continue conversation with you for too long; but you’re willing to acknowledge and at least exchange a few words with for a bit. Anyway…he had asked us (the obvious foreigners) where we were from. We told him we were from the States, but currently live in Cambodia. And out of his mouth with a deep scraggly voice, in sort of a slow drawn out question with a bit of surprise came, “Cambodia? Cambodia’s a terrible country!” and he said nothing else. We kind of laughed and said, ‘Oh, it’s got its ups and downs’…and we were on our way. Anyway, it was just kind of funny to hear that from a local, a scraggly local no less, in another country in the region. Obviously Cambodia is a developing country and it’s got a ways to go; but it also has the history to justify where it’s at, and it’s also got some really wonderful things going for it. I guess it just wasn’t the response we were expecting to come out of this guy’s mouth. Ahh well.

That night, we decided to catch dinner at a Chinese restaurant across the street from where we had breakfast just four mornings before…and Will finally said, “You know, I really kinda like this town!”