Good morning all, we are back online again, still with about a 5 day delay – hopefully that will improve in the next few days when we hit the beach resorts!
So, where were we? That’s right – Battambang still. This little part of the trip – and it was little – only a couple of hours – deserves it’s own blog entry. We had read about a French NGO in Battambang that trains local kids in visual arts, media, music and acrobatics and puts on a circus every Monday night. We were lucky enough to be there on a Monday so after chowing down on some street food from the market down by the river, we hopped into Mr Scorpio’s remork and headed off to the circus.
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| Says something in French and something in Khmer - maybe "Circus" |
Then into the big top we went – a simple setup with half the ring surrounded by tiered wooden bench seating. The crowd was made up of 60/40 split of foreigners to locals – the latter most likely being families of the performers. The kids we watched perform were the 5th generation to go through the school.
On with the show, titled, Ï Lost My Bike”. The plot was hard to follow but it was secondary to the amazing performance that we were lucky enough to watch, Needless to say one of the boys has his bike stolen and then goes on a mission to find it with some friends – sees some cool guy with a pretty girl on the back of his bike and realizes that indeed it is his bike and a competition/fight starts. There’s also a sub plot about the coolguy double dating and being caught out.
Enough of that – the highlight and drawcard of the show is the acrobatics that these kids perform. Whether it be tumbling through the air, being thrown from one pair of shoulders to the next , human towers, hula hoops with fire or performing handstands on dodgy scaffolding 20 feet up in the air, this show was captivating and had us forgetting about the hard wooden seats! This show is all for a good cause – a genuine one – which is hard to distinguish in Cambodia.
Words cannot do this circus justice so we will leave you with some photos. Hope everyone is well and will try and see what the issue is with the comments. Enjoy the photos below and we will be back online with some photos from Angkor Wat and even bigger surprise news in the blog after that!....
Anyway – back to the photos we keep talking about! :
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| The star of the show - those hula hoops are on fire!..seriously |
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| Building a bridge |
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| 20 feet high in the air |
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| tumbling..being caught on the feet and then being thrown back/1 |
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| Surfing is easy compared to this |
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| Found the bike! Give your mate a double to celebrate! |
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