Only in Cambodia, Part III

When I travel, I have a certain rule that I stick by: Never Be Without Your Camera.

Working in the orphanage, we had a little lunch time routine of going for a walk once we finished eating. On our very last day working there, a few of us headed out for our usual walk around the neighborhood. The orphanage sits on a dusty, dirt road which is one of several dirt roads configured in a grid. We had our same usual route. There was never really a whole lot to see, just mostly lots of palm trees and a few homes. On this particular day, I went to grab my camera, then thought, I don't need to lug around that big old thing today. I've done this same walk a gazillion times and have already photographed anything worthy of a picture. Yes, folks, I broke my own rule.

Some of the kids from the orphanage had joined us that day. I had fallen behind the group, and I think I was with Jim, when someone from up front called back to us and said the kids were gonna show us the alligator farm.

Ahh...Only in Cambodia. The theme Cambodia Does Not Have Lawyer appropriately and equally applies here too, as you will soon read.

Now, this "alligator farm" is the adjacent property NEXT TO the orphanage, and the kids knew right were to go. This whole scene is hard to describe, but I'll do my best since I only have two pictures. From the front, it was pretty much a normal looking house, set back from the road just a bit. We walked back in behind it, and I didn't see anyone else around besides those of us in our group. Behind the house was this kind of concrete patio area with some chickens running around, a few monkeys in cages, and if my memory serves me right, I may have seen a peacock or two. It was all very makeshift, like those stories you hear of people keeping exotic animals illegally, cuddling with their Siberian tigers until they are interviewed from hospital beds, arms and legs ripped off because their wild animal followed it's instincts and turned into, well, a wild animal, and ate it's master's limbs for breakfast. And they're all, "I've raised Fluffy since she was a kitten, when I smuggled her home from that African safari we went on five years ago. I don't know why she'd turn on me like this."

We followed a path further into the jungle, then up a ramp into dwelling best described as a glorified tree house. From there we turned to the right and walked out into the open again, finding ourselves out over these alligator pits. So it was us, some railing, and ten feet below were hungry alligators. There were different sections, grouping these man-eaters by, I'm guessing, stages of maturity. Damn, no camera.

I never would have told this story without pictures. It's just too crazy. But I got these from Dave.

Honestly, this first pic does not even do it justice. Some of the pits had to have had upwards of a hundred alligators.


Aww...'lil babies.

Oh wait! It gets worse! We walked further down (we were basically on catwalks over these pits) and then there wasn't any railing! Like, you could just fall in! And the kids that were with us obviously had been there before because they were all running around like they knew the place inside and out.

Now, of course I wanted to get eye-level with these kids and in my caring-yet-stern mommy voice tell them not to come play here! Because they could fall in! And the alligators would eat them in one bite! But how do you do that when they don't speak English and you don't speak Khmer? Even in translation, how do you convey the importance of that?