The Honda Cub is a trusty steed when it comes to hauling the illegal logging scraps out of the river behind our house, but 90cc of engine is barely enough.
Ecosystem Future Unknown 🤷♂️
For weeks I've been hearing chainsaws running all night long across the river, and judging by the distance of the headlamps I could see, the guys were no more than 100 meters away from the main river. I personally know the guys who are doing it, but illegal logging is so profitable that it's often deadly for anyone in Cambodia that tries to stop it.
On this day Monkey-B and I went for a swim just like other days, but I decided we should cross over the river and hike all the way up one of the tributaries to see what kind of trees were lost in the last few weeks. The water level is very low at the moment, and this makes trekking upstream much easier with little risk of flash floods.
I left my camera behind when we crossed over, and as we hiked, we took occasional dips. I noticed lots of fresh-smelling wood planks and timbers all along the way, and I felt guilty to leave them in the river, so I half-carried and floated several of the timbers down to the main river, not realizing it had been nearly three hours and I hadn't drank a drop of water.
After arriving home and using the Super Cub to haul the scraps up the hill to our place, I realized how dehydrated I was and also how physically draining lugging wood through the forest and creeks had been. I tried to make it fun for Monkey-B though, and when we reached the mouth of the main river, I let float atop a few of the planks and sail the river a bit. Sad to see the rapid loss of such an incredible forest, but it's not my country and never will be, so I must make peace with the freedom Cambodians have to destroy the last of the natural resources in order to fund endless trips to the local casino.
Operation Fence Kind Of Stalled 🧱
My brother-in-law is staying with us at the moment to help build a fence on three sides of our property, and for the first few days things were going well. Now the #2 ranking soldier has informed us of where we can build the fence along the old road, and it will cause us to lose around a meter of land in many places, not very agreeable. All the other soldiers agreed with our intended fence location, but this one guy has different ideas, and also wants us to stop 2 meters short of the property boundary at the back where he once owned the land that bordered ours.
I don't know why he has such strong feelings about a piece of land he no longer owns, but we do know he sold it to pay gambling debts, and then recently one of his houses burnt down. I assume he is trying to make us come up with an idea to pay him a few hundred bucks so we can build where the property boundaries actually are.
The whole situation is a mess, and now my brother-in-law is too scared to dig postholes on that side of our property for fear of drawing the wrath of this one particular soldier, who I should mention we gave $60 of clothes and blankets to the night his house burned down, and now all of a sudden he is being a total prick to us. The old expression "what comes around goes around" must have never passed through this village.
Well, at least I've got two beautiful daughters and a loving wife, even if they all do occasionally think I'm nuts. For now we're discussing the concept of building a fence with only two sides, and even though it kind of defeats the purpose by leaving one side completely open, I want to solve the dispute first before installing any posts along the border of the old road and the back of our property.
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