The Land of Indigenous People

In the northest of Cambodia, where the landscape are covered by forest, is still a secrete place for most Cambodian people living in the lowland areas. My journey to Ratanakiri today was my dream 15 years ago. The first place I heard about this highland area is the Yak Loum Lake. I knew it by reading a legend story in grade 5 text book while I was in primary school. I sometimes heard of many secrete things around Yak Loum about spirit, dragons, and the elders told me that you can’t swim if you’re not pure or innocent person.

Now it comes to the real eyes for me. I was very exciting to see it for the first time taking by Mr. Jan, a manager of a CARE Education Project, who lives there many years. To find out what I heard about secrete things in Yak Loum, I have spent one very early morning around 3:30 AM to see if something really happen. Yes, yes, it was something I heard and it appears out from the water, middle of the lake. It was very loud and makes quite big wave. I was surprised but then I was told by an indigenous fisherman that it is a big fish. There are a lot of big fish in this lake he said. But we don’t fish them because those fish take care of this lake. We fish only small fish for our daily food, he added.

Talking about indigenous people, I have no idea about them. One minority group I know is Pnong. I don’t even know there are many minority groups. Working with CARE makes me aware about this. I met many different groups in the project target areas such as Kreng, Tampourn, Charay, Kavet, Kachok, Stieng...etc. There are very nice and friendly. I liked spending over night stay in their village at the weekend. Always drunk! because you have to drink their wine when they ask you. That is the polite way.

I would recommend you to come to visit here if you are looking for a fantastic place for your tour. There're a lot of places to discover: numbers of waterfalls not just one, lakes, spending time in indigenous village if you want to study about them, walking in the forest...etc. But something you should do when you go to their village is to respect their taboos and culture, don’t give them things or money (we don't want them to expect and wait for the present from outsiders) , ask them before taking photo and just drink at least a little bit of wine if they ask you to.