Cambodia 207

Muylen had to attend a meeting so I went off on my own for a few hours, taking a taxi to the banks of the Mekong river. This lady was selling bird seed, for people to feed the pigeons, and I wanted to help her. She was saying she had five bags to sell, and I indicated I only wanted one. She raised one finger to show that it would be 1 1000R note, as I had a stack of 100 of them to give. I gave her the stack, and I could see her brain working, she knew she could accept the full stack, but thought that I didn’t understand the value of the money. She then, and I could see it was costing her effort to do the right thing, took one note from the stack and offered me the 99 back. I appreciated her honesty, and knew that she was giving back what was probably a week’s wages, so I took the single note back and indicated she should keep the 99.

99000R / $24.75