Nop Kong, a farmer and tuk tuk driver from Siem Reap near Ankor Wat, Cambodia has become a dear friend. We text or chat by phone about once a week. He's trying to improve his English and I get to ask serious questions about his country.

It's the rainy seasons here and he's planting his rice fields in the hope that we will get several days of a good downpour so the fields will flood and the rice will take root. He works from about 5:30 a.m. until 5 or six p.m. plowing, planting and irrigating his fields which are a kilometer or two away from the house where I ate with him and his housemates.

In the cool months of November, December, January and February Kong takes time off of farming and drives tourists around to the various historic places in Ankor Wat. That's how I met him. First, my friend Reese who I first got to know almost 16 years ago in Kansas City, Missouri went to Siem Reap and hired Kong as a driver for his tour of the temples. Kong, anxious to make a good impression really helps out his customers by walking through the ruins with them, explaining the details of what is an overwhelming (thousands and thousands of acres) site.

Kong has always been the most gracious host to his home town. He knows it backwards and forwards and in between and is even able to describe places that locals just never go to. As you can see in the picture I still have the horrible heat rash when we took this picture at the Siem Reap airport. I've covered it with a krama, a ubiquitous scarf that almost every Cambodian keeps to carry things in, wipe the sweat, use as headwear or simply use as a towel. Kong took me directly to the tourist pharmacy in Siem Reap so I could get some hydrocortisone and an ace bandage to cover what was an ugly pulsing welt. Thanks to him I could fly back to Phnom Penh with some dignity, although the flight attendant kept asking me if my hand would be okay.... (Both of my arms have welts in this picture, but I've covered only the one with enormous red scabs.)

The best part of my little trip to Siem Reap really was visiting with Kong and his extended communal family (remember that civil society in the rural areas still reflects the socialist/communist roots of modern Cambodia) and being able to eat with them even though I could not really talk to them. We are fixing that with twice weekly Khmer lessons.