From the middle of nowhere. Or rice fields actually.

Since my German friend Niklas had told me about Pang Na, it had been my goal to visit this small village in the middle of Cambodian countryside. Unfortunately he couldn't join this time but I got the contacts of his host and friend in Pang Na so I was able to go there by myself. While staying in Phnom Penh for a few days I was trying to reach Seng Thy (the host and contact) by e-mail. It wasn't until my last morning before leaving back to Bangkok when I finally got the answer. Thy promised to pick me up from my guest house in two hours, so I spontaneously decided to exceed my trip by a couple of days.

After buying some breakfast from a local food market nearby and waiting for an hour under the hot rising sun, Mr. Thy arrived. I spent the next 42 km on the back of a motorcycle as we drove through the flat landscape surrounding the capital inhaling dust and carrying my fully packed backbag. In the village Thy showed me around his house which is also a school. While working as a high school teacher, Thy manages The Real Life Association, funding money and hiring volunteers so that the children in the village could study English. The living room was full of school tables donated from Hong Kong and the walls were covered with posters teaching the basics of English. Outside of the house there was another classroom made from seemingly questionable materials. Thy seemed to be an unselfish and noble guy who had a clear vision and strong will to reach the goal of his project. Let alone the amazing experience of spending time in the village, I was also happy that I could help this poor community.

As I strolled around the muddy roads of the village, villagers greeted me every time I passed a house. Especially kids were excited to see a white guy and I heard friendly hello's everywhere. After a while I encouraged myself to talk with the people and got surprised how fluent their English was, not too much body language was needed. Children impressed me by saying hello and introducing themselves very confidently. The Real Life Association had done good job with them. The adults told me that it has been a bad year for rice cultivation because the rainy season had been drier than usual. While many of the villagers still work in the rice fields, especially the young go to work in a nearby factory or Phnom Penh. To be honest, I didn't expect to meet hospitality bachelors or former Bangkokian electricians in the village. However, a university degree doesn't always help to get a job from the desired field - unless you know the right (as in rich) people. That's the reason why there are university graduates with serious skills working on rice fields of Pang Na.

Thy's wife cooked some fried pork and bean sprouts with rice for dinner and apparently I looked so tired and torn after the long and dusty day that I was given two bowls of rice without even asking. The family gave their bedroom for me while they slept on mattresses on the living room floor. The hospitality was taken to a next level! I got to see that Sunday night in a Khmer family was not very different from western habits after all: eating dinner and watching television with the whole family, playing some board games. I was amazed by this deep insight into a foreign culture and to see how similar we are around the world. I washed myself with cold water and went to bed before eight o'clock, probably for the first time in this millennium.

I woke up around six when my dust allergy reminded me about its existence. After a while I got up and walked to the class room outside. There was an English lesson going on and I sat down to see how teenagers read text chapters out loud with their teacher Soy Kim Srun. After the class I spent a couple of hours with Mr. Thy's youngest daughter, Sousty, jumping rope and playing tag. Being just 14 years old she was the most impressing teenager I've seen: behaving like a total kid compared to Europeans of the same age, she took care of the household while her parents were away. Feeding the animals, doing laundry and cooking seemed to be daily routines to this girl. But what was the most amazing thing was that she was also teaching the younger kids in a daily basis! At some point about twenty children wearing school uniforms appeared to the yard to play limbo with their teacher. I joined them to play hide and seek before the class and realized that I was the most popular teammate amongst the group. The sun was burning my neck as I tried to keep up with those toddlers hiding in every place possible at the backyard of the house. I wonder if I was that energetic as a little boy.

The last mind blowing experience in the village was to attend the English class of the kids. I couldn't help wondering how well Sousty kept the kid pack controlled. I would have been totally unable to control a group of twenty children and besides of that getting them to actually learn something. But for Sousty it seemed to be a piece of a creamy cake. I sat in the back row and tried to take photos discretely so that I wouldn't disturb the class. I also got a chance to be the teacher for a while and pick up volunteers (which means everyone) to come in front of the class to spell words out loud. There was no such thing as lack of motivation, it was just pure excitement to learn English for these kids. All of them repeated the words on the chalkboard as loud as they ever could. I was just amazed and smiling. The class ended and it was time to go home for a lunch. All the kids wanted to hug and high-five the white guest star before leaving. I even taught an exploding bro-fist to one of the boys. Let that be my part of the cultural trade.

On my way back to Phnom Penh I was sitting at the back of Thy's old tuk-tuk, watching the vast rice fields and thought that people at the countryside seemed to be happier than the people in the crooked capital. Children of Pang Na were totally different from the mean and nasty street kids in Phnom Penh. The hundreds of pictures captured in my camera cheered me up during the 26-hour journey back home. I had really experienced something that I had in mind when I decided to move to Asia: authentic local lifestyle and the feeling that I'm really far away from home. Neither have I ever been so popular as in Pang Na, I felt like Santa Claus! And it wasn't just the kids but also the adults who welcomed me warmly - I'll never forget the moment I shared with a young lad cutting firewood with an axe. The guy wanted to have a break and offered me a cigarette. We sat down on different sides of the thick language barrier between us, exhaling smoke clouds in the air. There, in the middle of palm trees it was clear to me that this world is just a wonderful place to live.