Photos

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They are Vietnamese kids in Chong Kneas Floating Village over Tonle Sap Great Lake. Their destinies are abnormal.

In Cambodia, they are considered as foreigner because they maintain all Vietnamese tradition, language and costume. If they ever have a chance to visit Vietnam, they would be a foreigner again right on their ancestral soil because they couldn’t even tell where their parents were from the native country.

These kids go to the floating school to learn English from a Cambodian teacher using Khmer as teaching communication. The classroom and tuition have been paid by benefactors from abroad who cover the basic cost to keep them from illiteracy. After class hour, they must follow tourists to sell postcards, or to beg for donation so they could pay for the chalk, pen and notebook. To them, motherland is nothing since they never have a night on land, just water. Their life is a synonym of Chong Kneas. Cambodia and Vietnam, to them, just as abstract and out of reach as the airplanes crossing by on the sky.

For additional info about their village, please refer to my theme, ”the floating misery”. Thanks.




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