Waiting for the ferry to be emptied of its load of turnips, we enjoy the view over the river that has been with us for a long time and now abandoned. The boat ride is an adventure: packed with tens of scooters and flanked by a number of housewives who came to the morning market in the city for shopping, we are witnessing a move to say the least risky. The young man who controls the vehicle behind us (and which until recently was busy clearing the keel of ten feet of water with a pump and a tube inserted under the floor) go quickly and decisively to a boat the same size coming in the opposite direction ... the collision seems inevitable when both slow to a stop within inches of each other: a woman leaps forward on our other boat and soon both boats return to their routes. We understand the chance when a mysterious passenger presents a ticket asking for money: Things you do to save on staff!

Thalla is a small village starting point of our journey to nowhere. The powder already creeps into our lungs and just take a couple of miles to be the only animated in the silence of the forest. The red road is broad and well beaten, almost exclusively available to us the enormous track every now and then pass a motorcycle and the driver looks at us aghast. Mysterious sounds of birds come to our ears from the depths of the bush, more impenetrable because of the thousands of mines still present on the ground that the density of vegetation. It's been twenty kilometers and three scooters a crossroads when he takes us by surprise and we decided to make a stop in the hope that someone steps. We have the honor to see hoopoe perched on a branch nearby, but no human to show us the right path. Keep on the right, but fortunately a tractor in the distance is getting closer and we placed on trajectory so as not to miss out on it is logical that the road we have chosen is the wrong one and we have circled the correct path to take that becomes narrow and hilly. A village in check suddenly absolutely nothing and dies a few hundred yards away as it had begun. On the faces of people leaving unchecked the chin down their mouths wide open as we passed. The track and rolling in the hot sunshine and sand and dust sap us explore every single corner of our face. Our eyes would become inflamed due to ash and smoke coming from the underbrush burned to create pasture for cows. The landscape is bleak, dead trunks blacks rise to the guardians of a forest that nothing can be against human ignorance. Chep is an outpost with no service for travelers and just wondering here and there we find a family willing to host us for a few dollars. The shower is packed in a huge jar with a little pot from which to draw water that is poured on him in the open air refreshing. We cook a dish of rice and we lie down on a bed of a typical Khmer house open to the starry sky on both sides.