Where my feet will tread

It was an eight hours journey from Phnom Penh to Siem Riep in a toilet free boat through Tonle Sap river, where the horizon mingles with the waters in a monotonous landscape. To get into its narrow entrance, through the floating village Chong Kneas, we divided ourselves into two smaller boats, since the tide was low and our boat heavy.

At that very point I saw coming in our direction, in an impressive speed, decrepit boats full of women and children. The exact minutes from the passengers’ transition between boats were the small crack in the window of opportunity to those people who, depending on tourism, were fighting against Physics – time, space, force – to reach us.

In a blink of an eye, those boats were right by our side. With bananas in their hands, they’re selling each bunch for an insignificant price: “Bananás, one dollár, please, sr.”, they would constantly repeat with a strong accent. It was a real gold rush. And the quotation of the day was what it’s worth for them: ONE AMERICAN DOLLAR.

While some women were pushing green bananas to the tourists, many of them with watches and rings made of gold with karats, the children, with plastic cups, were rushing against the stubborn water entering their poor canoe-boats full of holes.

But what really stroke me was an alternative boat with one unique and distinguished passenger: a boy in a large trashed aluminum bowl, rowing with a broken stick. Minuscule, in the middle of that huge lake, alone - and yet master of his domain, he wasn’t a seller or a beggar. He was simply following that procession of miserable people, composing that sad big picture painted in bright alive colors of real life.

That was the most remarkable scene for me, which cut me into pieces and made me think about life and opportunities. People don’t understand why I like to experience the wild side of the world, but I can easily explain: See the dark side of things brings me the opportunity to enjoy light, see poverty makes me value what I have, see ignorance and lack of education makes me more open to learn and to knowledge.

Experiencing both extremities I can set my feet in the middle way, finding balance in the shaky line of life, with all its shades, embracing richness and poverty, black and white, one big chain with contradictory ends properly connected, having a better notion of how the world works, accepting all the ways which make life as it is and goes. And it surely goes with the flow, like the muddy waters of Tonle Sap.