The trip from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville is 135 miles and took 5.5 hours. Midway we stopped at this somewhat rustic rest stop where there was a restaurant and toilets.
Inside the restaurant there were the inevitable pieces of heavy wooden furniture and art works, including this huge tree stump carved into something I couldn’t decipher.
Out in back a couple young women dried dishes sitting on a pile of construction plywood. Several buildings were going up around the restaurant.Before supper there was a social hour to let everyone relax from the day’s travel and get reacquainted with old friends.Then our retreat leader had an opening fifteen-minute session to explain the theme of the retreat and how we would proceed.Bishop Sebastian Francis, the archbishop of Penang, Malaysia, is the retreat leader this year. (Khmer culture loves big displays of flowers for guests, even when they hide the guests).
