I’ve never sat overlooking the Mekong River before, never seen its people this close, never breathed its heavy wafts of raw sewage before.

Happy Tours motors tourists in lazy loops this side of the Japanese Friendship Bridge. The wake gently jostles the boat people, in their long fishing crafts, strung up with nets, hammocks, small covered areas in the centre where the family cooks, sleeps, rests, cleans their catch, seeks shade. This is home and work and play-space and yard and mode of transportation, docked as they are in the garbage heap that overflows down the concrete banks into the water, the boat people scavenging among the street kids, krama (the ever-present, endlessly versatile, traditional Cambodian scarf) tied around their heads and faces – to keep out the stench, the flies, the dust, the sun that beats even in this, the “cool” season. Debris and garbage drift slowly beside the docked families, among the double-decker tour boats, as children swim and splash and bathe and urinate, as others dip their feet, catch their supper, wash their clothing. (more…)