As I mentioned earlier, one of the more interesting things we did on our Mekong cruise was to stop and visit a number of small villages. One particularly different one was Kampong Chhnang, a Cham village. The Cham are mostly Muslim in this 95% Buddhist country. We happened to be docked there so we scrabbled up the river bank for a visit with our guide. It seemed a bit more prosperous than some of the other villages we'd visited - more cars and better maintained homes, a school that seemed to be thriving, and a lot of small stores along the way, including a pharmacy.
Our guide told us that they follow Islam, but are not as strict in some practices as in other parts of the world. Women were riding motorbikes and while most had their hair covered, we only saw one or two with their faces covered. We didn’t see any women driving cars, but we didn’t see that elsewhere either.
School was just letting out for mid-day as we arrived
