In our last week in Kampong Cham, me, Paul and Ingran felt the need to do a bit of sight seeing and decided to cycle for about an hour to visit the Man (Mannu Proh) and Woman ~(Mannu Sray) Hills. The story of the hills goes something like this: A woman gave birth to a son but had to send him away from the village (not sure why). He returned to the village years later as a young man and fell in love with the most beautiful woman in the village (which unfortunately turned out to be his mum). In order to save everyone’s face (very important) the woman decided to set a challenge for the young man (her son). If the men in the village could build a higher hill than the women in the village by sun rise, she would marry him. But of course, because women are so clever, they build a massive fire than turned the sky red and orange and made the men think it was sunrise so they laid down their tools. The women carried on building their hill and the woman did not have to marry her son.
So we climbed both hills (which are not very tall as it didn’t take too long) and looked at the views of Kampong Cham, wandered around the Wats and tried to avoid the hoards of monkeys that were roaming around. (This was Paul’s 3rd visit to the hills and the last time him and Dave got chased by angry monkeys so we were a little nervous).
Paul (on the way back down).
The monks don't seem to mind the monkeys!
My favourite moment was meeting a group of young monks. We asked if we could take a picture of them and they dutifully posed for us. As soon as we’d finished they whipped out their mobile phones and started taking pictures of us!! So much for letting go of all worldly possessions!
One of the monks spoke very good English and arranged everyone for the picture.
If you look closely you can see the mobile phone.
Here we are at the top of Woman Hill.
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