With daybreak came enlightenment . Yes , this is what travel is supposed to include . Travel , as in life , is filled with the confrontational , the challenging , the wrong , and yet at some point good will prevail . Leave the resorts and hotels to the tourists who want as much of the comfortable life of home no matter where they are . The traveller , whilst not seeking poverty , destruction , or pain , will embrace it and realise that this is often the real world that needs to be discovered . Back on board my aging little Honda XR250 I rode with the others from Kampong Chnang . The traffic
seemed to part and flow with me as my mind wandered back to Phsar Chnang . I thought about the people and what the new day had brought for them . The small child ’ s dark eyes were in my thoughts , as was the man who had comforted me despite his own , what I perceived , misery . I thought of the people smiling and joking as they sifted through what remained of their possessions . Would the fishermen be back in the muddy waters searching for the daily catch ? Or would the small boy carrying roof iron from the river to a trolley on the ford return for more work ?
I wondered if the people carried animosity to those that started the blaze . They seemed not to and were more fixated on working as a community to ensure not one person suffered . I wondered if we , in developed western nations , had the concept all wrong and were too concerned with material possessions and portrayed imagery . I ’ d been confronted by what I had seen and had been witness to and yet I felt grateful for this experience as travel , especially that with a motorcycle , had taught me a great deal , that travel , as in life , is filled with great hardships . It ’ s how we deal with it
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