tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4034743760083476822024-03-19T19:14:13.506+07:00Paul's blogPaul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-43070792707560857492012-04-19T17:53:00.002+07:002012-04-19T18:37:51.613+07:00A final post<div class="MsoNormal">Y<span style="font-family: Georgia;">esterday I left Cambodia. I feel very sad about leaving as my time there and the people I spent it with are very special, but I’m glad that I had a very good final few weeks. Firstly, the Leo beer festival was lots of fun and for the last two days, as if I hadn’t already done enough for Cambodia’s beer industry, I ended up working with them selling beer with Tak and some other friends. I enjoyed it and actually we were so busy that I didn’t end up drinking very much, which was a nice change. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">There were also several leaving events: a party in our house, pizza at Jemma and Dominique’s house, and a presentation from the staff at the POE where I work. It was very nice of people to organise things like that, and I particularly liked the present from the VSO lot in Mondulkiri, which was a Paul O’Connor special edition of Khmer whisky.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">With all of that, I felt a bit stupid that I continued to hang around for another two or three weeks, but Khmer New Year was so much fun that I was glad I’d stayed. It involves lots of drinking and partying, even more so than normal. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">At one of the parties, Tak came back from the market with the trio of Bad Things - cow's liver, intestines and stomach - along with this particular delicacy. Can you guess what it is yet?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Tak came with me to Phnom Penh on Monday for a final few days. We had a nice time there, with his mum, friends Chumnit and Ratanak, and Dave and Neil. But it was very hard to say goodbye and I will miss them a lot. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
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</span></div><!--EndFragment-->Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-53822314598255921512012-03-26T16:59:00.001+07:002012-03-27T05:49:19.455+07:00Getting ready to leave<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">I’m not often described as a decisive person, but I think I might be getting worse. I used to be plagued by fairly minor dilemmas which mostly took place in supermarkets, but this week I’m been repeatedly changing my mind about when to leave Cambodia and I’ve noticed a faint tone of despair whenever the VSO staff answer my phone calls. I decided initially to leave on Sunday 8th April, and just before my flight was booked I thought I might like to stay for Khmer New Year, so changed it to 18th April. Then it occurred to me that I have no house, no job, nothing to do and not very much money, (and also a wedding in England I’d like to go to) so I tried to move it back to the 8th. Before I could change my mind again, though, my flights had already been booked so I will be leaving on 18th April. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">This is exactly five weeks after I was forced into having a Phnom Penh leaving party to suit the plans of jet-setters Gilly and Sam, who won’t be in Cambodia in April. It’s always a bit awkward when you have a leaving party and then don’t leave. It was a great weekend, though, and it reminded me how lucky I’d been to arrive with such a nice group. They had organised a special edition of NSJ, the VSO Cambodia magazine which I’d co-edited with Sam – two editions which are already being talked about as the glory days of NSJ. It was a brilliant present and I was very touched by all of the contributions, though less impressed by the insinuations about my relationship with Tak. (I think my reputation never recovered from the ménage a trois gaffe in a previous blog.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the last few weeks I’ve had my first illness – nasty hookworms that came in through my feet when I was digging the well. The doctor in Phnom Penh gave me around forty packs of medicine and instructions about what to eat. Luckily she didn’t say anything about drinking, and I’m assuming that getting the little parasites a bit tipsy will help the medicine kill them off. Ingran, who is a doctor and came back to Cambodia last week, confirmed the validity of this tried and tested approach. This is fortunate, as there is a five-day Leo Beer festival this week, and beer is definitely the healthiest of the drinks available here. There was the same festival in Kampong Cham when we first arrived eighteen months ago, with the same promotions, the same presenters, and the same catchy tune which is easily the best song in Cambodia. (There can’t be many countries where advert jingles are better than all of the available pop songs.) So it feels like a fitting way to end my time in Cambodia. Although I fear it’s probably also a fitting symbol of my time in Cambodia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-80823726803297518992012-02-08T17:01:00.000+07:002012-02-08T17:01:51.318+07:00A quick entry<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">It’s been quite an eventful few days. Firstly Tak’s house-building suffered a bit of a setback when the previous landowner turned up and pointed out that they were building on the wrong land. Tak’s land is actually a lot smaller than he thought and he’s disappointed that there aren’t any shady trees (“drinking places”). But it’s lucky that he hired particularly lazy builders who hadn’t done much work, so it hasn’t taken them long to relocate to the correct land. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In better news Eng finally went for a scan and is having a girl, which everyone is happy about. I was a bit shocked, though, that the baby isn’t due until the end of June, because Eng is really quite fat already. I think I’ll need to keep a closer eye on my dwindling supply of Mars bars in future.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">And just a note about Tak’s mum. Tak told me the other day that he had a dream that he and I were in the forest and I got bitten by a snake. Tak’s mum’s reaction was to ask if I died and, when Tak said yes, to clap her hands repeatedly and say, “Good, good, good.” It’s taken me almost a week to understand that, according to her interpretation, it means I’ll be getting married soon and will stay in Cambodia forever. The logic is that the snake represents a woman, the bite is her choosing me, and that by killing me it means that she will stay with me until I die – which, after a snake bite, is presumably not very long. Whether this logic is common in Cambodian culture or just among the slightly mental is still unclear, but I’m not generally convinced by Tak’s mum’s theories. She claims that visiting Angkor Wat in Siem Reap will make you live for a long time, because the temples are very old, and this week she banned Tak from eating chicken because she thinks it will damage his skin, given that chicken skin isn’t very smooth. Luckily for Tak, who is fond of chicken, he hasn’t taken any notice of anything his mum has said since about 1992. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-75330461219982130972012-02-06T16:34:00.002+07:002012-02-06T16:37:59.094+07:00January<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">January is usually the worst month of the year, particularly if you spend it in a secondary school classroom, but this one in Cambodia has been lots of fun. There have been more weddings, trips to Pu Trom and Sreiee, parties with Eng’s friends from the bank who, having a bit more money than Tak’s friends, tend to have really good parties, and lots of nice evenings with friends. (The recycling man who came yesterday was pretty staggered with the amount of beer cans we had and had to go home to get bigger bags.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Work has been a bit slow because there have been lots of workshops and trainings, making it difficult to do activities with the teachers in schools. Luckily, I seem to have found alternative employment as cheap foreign labour on Tak’s building site, as his house-building has finally got underway. After a long process of applying for permission from the Forestry Administration and various other departments, Tak managed to get his wood from the forest to his friend’s house in Pu Trom, which at one point involved carrying a massive log through the forest on the back of his motorbike. I couldn’t help very much, so was pleased when it came to loading the wood on to the truck to take to Sen Monorom. As this involves no skill whatsoever, I was able to help, and in fact I was better than most of the other people because they were all about a foot shorter than me. I was particularly pleased that I was much better than Tak who, though quite strong, hasn’t done any exercise in all the time I’ve known him. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Tak has hired two builders who come from another province but spend their time going from one building site to another, where they set up camp until the work is finished. They wear hats and have loud, deep voices which I find hard to understand, and smoke all the time and squat and sit round fires in the evening, and so they remind me of characters from a Steinbeck novel. I think if they were Steinbeck characters they’d probably be a bit nicer though – Tak is finding it hard to get them to do any work and he seems to be doing a lot of the work that he’s paying them to do. Eng’s dad has come to help out which is good as he can oversee things while Tak is at work. ‘Overseeing’ was the job I was after, but Tak says he’s got me earmarked as well-digger, which I’m not sure is the most glamorous job on the site. Expect me to come back to England looking like Hulk Hogan. Or to be stuck down a fifty-metre hole in Cambodia. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">We have also been to Sreiee twice this month, probably my favourite school and the one that used to require an overnight stay. The first time I went it felt like Macondo from the novel <i>One Hundred Years of Solitude</i>, a village that you stumble across unexpectedly in the middle of a vast jungle – it even has smooth round rocks 'as big as prehistoric eggs' which Garcia Marquez describes in the opening page of that novel. But things are about to change: a new road has almost been finished and you can now reach the village within about 45 minutes. This might be good for economic development, but having seen what’s happening in the rest of the country, it will probably mean the arrival of big rubber companies throwing people off their land and cutting down the forest. Either way, Sreiee will change dramatically, I think.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-65619803324180262902012-01-03T17:32:00.002+07:002012-01-10T05:06:48.480+07:00Christmas and New Year<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Happy New Year. I spent the night eating soggy fish and chips for one at Heathrow Airport, followed by twenty hours on planes where not a drop of celebratory Cava was served. They’d also run out of food from the ‘Western’ menu so my last meal before returning to Cambodia was something disgusting, pickled and Korean, served with rice.</span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Before all that, however, I had a great two weeks in England. I’d planned ambitiously to put on ten kilos in order to survive another three months of the Cambodian diet (as well as my tendency to spend too much money on beer and not enough on food). But despite eating past the pain almost every day, I failed miserably, putting on just 200g, which I think is the equivalent of a low-fat sandwich. I did manage to fill my suitcase with chocolate and Christmas cake, so I might be able to put on a bit more weight over the next few weeks, although I probably need to learn the Khmer for ‘Get those thieving Cambodian hands off my English food’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">As this blog is about Cambodia, I won’t write everything that happened over Christmas, except that I had a great time seeing everyone and eating everything. It made me realise that I’m very lucky to have such good friends and family, and made me wonder why I keep moving so far away from them. The fortnight was also the first chance I’ve had to make direct comparisons between England and Cambodia; here are some of the things I observed. (I’m copying a similar format used in <a href="http://www.ourvso.com/2011_06_01_archive.html">Sam's blog</a> after he returned from England last year.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Hot water from the tap is really great. After a few months in Cambodia in which I’d told people that British taps have hot water, I’d begun to have doubts and wondered whether I’d imagined it all, as the idea seemed so absurd. But it was true. I really enjoyed the washing-up I did over Christmas. I did a lot of it, partly because it was a bit like a nice bath for my hands, and partly because I’d also forgotten that many British houses have dishwashers. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;"><br />
</div><ol start="2" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Things are much easier when you’re speaking your native language. I really like learning Khmer and I particularly like the ego-boost you get from speaking to strangers who are highly impressed with even the most basic phrases, often responding with warm invitations to come and have a drink with them, or marry their daughters. I’d even learnt so much that, when trying to speak Catalan or even Spanish to Jim’s friends Luis and Muriel, I could only think of Khmer, and in fact the only Catalan word I could remember was ‘Adeu’, meaning ‘Goodbye’, which I decided would sound a bit rude in mid-conversation. Nonetheless, it was really nice to speak English again. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
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</div><ol start="3" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Breakfasts are much better in England. Tea and toast beats a bowl of super noodles any day. Similarly, cheese, pizza, roast chicken, chocolate, fresh milk etc are all better than rice, and are considerably better than insects and intestines. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: small;">Jim cooks chicken</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><ol start="4" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Saying hello is nicer than saying goodbye. The two weeks were over very quickly and, although this time it won’t be for long as I’m due to finish my placement at the end of March, coming home will also mean saying goodbye to lots of good friends here.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
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</div><ol start="5" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">I have good friends in both places. I was obviously very impressed with all of the parties that were organised for me in England (although I think some of the guests were a bit confused and kept going on about Christmas or something), but I was also quite touched that Tak organised a surprise leaving party the day before I left. He’s living in particularly austere times, so he did his usual trick of inviting friends and then telling them to go and buy beer, but it was very nice all the same.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
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</div><ol start="6" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Cambodia really is very poor. You get used to the way things are here, but spending two weeks in one of the richest countries in the world, and also returning via South Korea which must be one of the richest places in Asia, makes you see it all afresh. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
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</div><ol start="7" style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">South Korea is definitely not on the way home. After flights of over twenty-four hours, I’ll make sure I’ve got a world map next time I’m booking plane tickets.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ol>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-67714407922897899942011-12-13T10:50:00.000+07:002011-12-13T10:50:56.147+07:00Hospitals and more weddings<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">A few weeks ago, Tak’s dad fell unconscious while in our house and was taken straight to hospital. I’m not sure what he was doing in our house but it was lucky that he fell at lunchtime when there were lots of us about. (He has an irritating habit of turning up at our house at all hours, usually drunk, in search of more alcohol – luckily we’ve usually drunk it all already.) This time, though, he hadn’t been drinking and was feeling ill. He is now much better and is at home, having escaped from the hospital in the middle of the night without the doctor’s permission. This was very embarrassing for Tak’s family although the doctor was probably glad to get rid of him – he is a stubborn man and kept removing his various needles and catheter. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The week or so that he spent in hospital did allow me to see more of it than I’d seen before. I had been quite impressed when I’d given blood at the doctors’ professionalism (although the approach is different from in the UK – there you have about four interviews about your travel history, illnesses and sex life, whereas here they just said, ‘Feeling ok? Right, lift your sleeve.’). On the first night I was touched when a man I didn’t know invited me and Tak to join him and his friends for a drink. Then I realised he was on night duty in A&E and in fact all of the doctors were heading to their staff room with several cases of beer. I’ve read blogs from health volunteers about that sort of thing but I think if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it. We didn’t join them, anyway. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3lPQF5h4bCEZhPA0x3UO3bH7mJJELwY-ad7gKxYi_LBWbA0aJzxU9TKn9HR4EWCHyw-YVM2hEb9IChewmXHWtXKKGQPnbgk9d42raMb8l_nB8oZn6c1lI-GdPrxad0OFtPiUCeJ6iB_k/s1600/DSC02003.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3lPQF5h4bCEZhPA0x3UO3bH7mJJELwY-ad7gKxYi_LBWbA0aJzxU9TKn9HR4EWCHyw-YVM2hEb9IChewmXHWtXKKGQPnbgk9d42raMb8l_nB8oZn6c1lI-GdPrxad0OFtPiUCeJ6iB_k/s320/DSC02003.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Pu Choo Open Day</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">In the past few weeks we’ve helped more schools organise open days which is good fun, and attended VSO meetings and workshops in Phnom Penh, which at times involved almost all volunteers and staff. It was a really nice opportunity to see everyone again and I remembered what a great group of people there are here. Our ICT group is getting smaller though – Kath was the latest to leave last week, though she may be back at some point next year to continue her support for the Cambodian Midwives Council. At her send-off, there were around forty or fifty people, which shows what a good friend she’s been to many people. There was also a VSO Christmas party the following night which was lots of fun, especially as Gilly was drunk enough to agree to go to DJ Club.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Wedding season has also restarted, which is good because weddings are fun, but bad because it stretches the VSO allowance to the limit – I’ve been told that the minimum we should give now is $12.50, and that is should be closer to $15 or $20. Tak and I went to one in Phnom Penh for one of his close friends Rathna, whom I also know very well, and it was good fun – I especially liked the fact that his wife ended the night in pyjamas. (At the wedding venue, I mean; I didn’t follow them home or anything.) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPQ45ki7LUA6z79MRsmUk1csDlc8nLBk0Z3aSPeF2xHhhFDRtG1tn8ZniBh-T_qQhDFLHK_bkEjsV5TK6Nnk541fnlUbG_Q6yRgvqWmYeUtg-_uBnynDOZshoXw8vCdS3MySjboQRPtM/s1600/DSC01956.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPQ45ki7LUA6z79MRsmUk1csDlc8nLBk0Z3aSPeF2xHhhFDRtG1tn8ZniBh-T_qQhDFLHK_bkEjsV5TK6Nnk541fnlUbG_Q6yRgvqWmYeUtg-_uBnynDOZshoXw8vCdS3MySjboQRPtM/s320/DSC01956.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheOUDYVl0XtXydYCQGiJ6nayRQUil3C76iJz9uVFqjfM6rwDzcbu_QPyzZBhnrArYXgfSowE84GYQdvZtoBLaHmlUWQm8kXa8H1xiO5aCTHiJ3irLOcZxQX9w5n0cNJibrIpL32W2QLgU/s1600/DSC01989.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheOUDYVl0XtXydYCQGiJ6nayRQUil3C76iJz9uVFqjfM6rwDzcbu_QPyzZBhnrArYXgfSowE84GYQdvZtoBLaHmlUWQm8kXa8H1xiO5aCTHiJ3irLOcZxQX9w5n0cNJibrIpL32W2QLgU/s320/DSC01989.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Tak and I are definitely pushing at the boundaries of acceptable behaviour though – last week at a wedding we drank far too much and then sneaked out with a bottle of brandy each. In fact I was so anxious not to be seen with the brandy that I have a horrible feeling that I forgot to pay my $12.50. I didn’t have the money in my pocket when I got home, so I’m hoping I paid.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbbt24uFVCjGZ-kAq9unLuxTbzA7yloiZTwTpEZCg7ZlWsuE0kGcY7YqSmcVQQRJG5cLd11TGv_vUlQsTWE2YO3KNqHw-uI6L9BoM91a2zMaJSpk_u_XWgIMYDX-UvC8yG2uck7CknfU/s1600/DSC02053.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbbt24uFVCjGZ-kAq9unLuxTbzA7yloiZTwTpEZCg7ZlWsuE0kGcY7YqSmcVQQRJG5cLd11TGv_vUlQsTWE2YO3KNqHw-uI6L9BoM91a2zMaJSpk_u_XWgIMYDX-UvC8yG2uck7CknfU/s320/DSC02053.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The VSO Mondulkiri team: Kim, Daniel, Edwin, To, Tak, Torn and me.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">F</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">inally, Come Dine With Me Cambodia has been released (though it takes about four hours to burn each copy so the distribution is quite slow) and has been well received so far, even though as editor I’ve manipulated the footage to make it clear that Ingran and I were robbed when we came third out of four. It’s too big to put on Youtube or anything but I’m making as many copies as I can.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I’m also going to England on Friday. I will be in London until around Tuesday 20th or Wednesday 21st, and then Liverpool until about the 30th, so let me know if you want to meet up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-91345896527150363872011-11-26T14:02:00.000+07:002011-11-26T14:02:03.470+07:00Learning Khmer<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I've been meaning to write something about the Khmer language for a while now, and I was reminded of this this morning when Tak's mum temporarily forgot that we've been speaking Khmer together for a year and decided without warning to switch to</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> French, and I realised I was finding it much harder to understand her. This might be due to the quality of her French, which she learnt at a time when almost every French-speaker in Cambodia had been killed, but still, it felt like a milestone in my progress with Khmer. </span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's not an easy language to learn, especially as it's the first language I've studied which doesn't use the Roman script, so I'm learning entirely through speaking and listening. The good thing is that people don't expect foreigners to speak any Khmer at all. In fact I get quite annoyed about this - if I go to a café with Tak they usually ask him what I want. But still, it means that people are very easily impressed and I get lots of nice compliments for the most basic phrases. And as the soon-to-be-realised Come Dine With Me footage will show, Ingran admitted on camera that I was better than him in our Khmer lessons back in March. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm interested in languages and the logic with which they come up with their words. Some of my Khmer favourites are bear (honey tiger), giraffe (long cow), to grow up (get big and fat), jellyfish (sea cloud), and snot and ear wax (poo from the nose and ear respectively). I also like the fact that they use the same word for the inner tube of a bike and for the intestines of an animal. I've probably never eaten inner tube (though you can never be sure in Cambodia), but I'm willing to bet it doesn't taste that much worse.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">About a week ago I began learning the Khmer script, because it suddenly seemed ridiculous to be illiterate at the age of 26. It looks daunting at first and I'm not sure of my teacher's pedagogical commitment (an increasingly bored Tak is teaching me), but it's very satisfying because you make progress very quickly. When I get round to learning how to type, I'll write something in Khmer.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don't have any photos to go with any of this, so I'll just add some of the open day that was held this morning at Lauka school. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEu9MlXaaCrqQdUT_olVnmtw8UR0X8HY0r_nOSS0SJ7QOYxID-oSpDZ78EDzsmfxy9ObVzb3u7iSbaG9_wlzkksSNIpWIiBi7kFkpXUJtIc2w9mdjona5HdZdCvAEV0SFz2A0DpoDnZMA/s1600/DSC01938.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEu9MlXaaCrqQdUT_olVnmtw8UR0X8HY0r_nOSS0SJ7QOYxID-oSpDZ78EDzsmfxy9ObVzb3u7iSbaG9_wlzkksSNIpWIiBi7kFkpXUJtIc2w9mdjona5HdZdCvAEV0SFz2A0DpoDnZMA/s320/DSC01938.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-42635179147529052042011-11-05T10:13:00.000+07:002011-11-05T10:13:15.860+07:00Comings and goings<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Towards the end of September our ICT group said goodbye to its third volunteer. After Danny had left in March and Ingran in August, it was Dave’s turn to head back to England. We made quite an elaborate film called Come Do VSO With Dave, in which we compiled his best moments and then rated him out of ten. Most of us also managed to make it to Phnom Penh to say goodbye. And then we had a night out that was so much fun that they following day Dave decided not to leave after all. He’s just started a new VSO placement in Phnom Penh for nine months. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In Mondulkiri we have lost two volunteers though: Neil has a new placement in Phnom Penh, and Jeltje left to work in Kampong Cham. Before she left we went to the Sea Forest, and then to her house for a leaving party.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3sIIKLaB3CEgapOIv4M9lrApdGNirTrTwWFh8zWrYumRk5tS4TBS49qoeD9RLWPvtYnZnYVAspgqqVLcNkQyigP4UUM6v_7SuAFCIX_giiVqmEMoH6iJF-Jx7pshTnkFTDZ5ogp05GU/s1600/CIMG2970.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3sIIKLaB3CEgapOIv4M9lrApdGNirTrTwWFh8zWrYumRk5tS4TBS49qoeD9RLWPvtYnZnYVAspgqqVLcNkQyigP4UUM6v_7SuAFCIX_giiVqmEMoH6iJF-Jx7pshTnkFTDZ5ogp05GU/s320/CIMG2970.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">I’ve been in Mondulkiri for over a year now and haven’t written much about the Punong, the province’s largest ethnic group. While Sen Monorom town is mostly made up of Khmers, in the countryside almost everyone is Punong, and having less access to markets, education, healthcare and other services, their poverty tends to be more severe. Most are small-scale farmers and walk miles every day to sell their vegetables in Sen Monorom, carrying their produce in baskets which they wear on their back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I’m lucky enough to have become a bit of a regular at a Punong family in Pu Trom village, as Tak and his dad have close friends there, but a bit less lucky that it’s considered very rude not to drink alcohol when visiting, so my recent progress on that front has suffered a bit of a setback. It’s always a gamble because sometimes they have the nasty 70% rice wine which is almost undrinkable, but other times they have the delicious homemade jar wine. It’s not as strong and really tasty. They don’t usually make it with clean water though, so it usually makes a reappearance of some sort the following day. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">They’re very welcoming and the house always seems to have about thirty people in there. I assumed the extra people were also visiting but it turns out that it’s common for Punong men to have more than one wife, so they’re actually all members of the same family. I find it hard to imagine what that must feel like, and it also doesn’t make much economic sense as, in a country where men are the main breadwinners, that’s a lot of wives and children to support. Apparently it was also common among Khmers too until fairly recently. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I don't have any photos but below are some of the people from Pu Trom performing traditional music at the school open day in June.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKokUTs9-iRqtQEFJcz6ilgLEV9lnkFWQutEfyulT58DM_klcKUgOIeOW5TlPKuy5GjnQ4ESS2EhSDEUGGeOCTZ9VE0p0tbaC4LdYB2YIS6_Jyc1fLCX6TVjUjXpRACfMtGZRRznP9k8/s1600/DSC04270.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfKokUTs9-iRqtQEFJcz6ilgLEV9lnkFWQutEfyulT58DM_klcKUgOIeOW5TlPKuy5GjnQ4ESS2EhSDEUGGeOCTZ9VE0p0tbaC4LdYB2YIS6_Jyc1fLCX6TVjUjXpRACfMtGZRRznP9k8/s320/DSC04270.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">At work we’ve been helping schools to update their community maps. This involves community members and teachers drawing a map of the catchment area and filling in information such as the number of school-aged children in each house, and anything that might make it difficult for children to attend school, such as disabilities or extreme poverty. Teachers can then compare these maps with actual attendance rates and work out who is not coming to school, and can then visit these homes to find out what the problem is.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">We’re also going to be doing some research on behalf of Actionaid and NEP (an umbrella group for all education NGOs in Cambodia) on children’s rights in schools. Tak and I attended a five-day workshop in Kampong Cham to train for this (although I won’t be carrying out the research myself). It was difficult as I was the only foreigner and after the first morning Tak got bored of translating. I understood most things but found it hard to contribute. It was nice to meet NGO workers from across the country though and see a group of young, educated, opinionated people who are committed to improving their country.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1fGIJjGILuvV1RM9WtlPvWppwMQEX4O2kyMrEcyZxjIsgmVMMsf8nMKWpeM-xQ3kElsXdQ6X9bCj_-p_5aP_JeqvQrH3gJyhAQl7X9HmLMjNvMrsd6BX0rNYkJlisf8cB5z9uebRNGqk/s1600/DSC01849.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1fGIJjGILuvV1RM9WtlPvWppwMQEX4O2kyMrEcyZxjIsgmVMMsf8nMKWpeM-xQ3kElsXdQ6X9bCj_-p_5aP_JeqvQrH3gJyhAQl7X9HmLMjNvMrsd6BX0rNYkJlisf8cB5z9uebRNGqk/s320/DSC01849.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-47182636537455170882011-10-04T12:51:00.001+07:002011-10-04T12:59:06.574+07:00Travelling in the northwest<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Last week was Pchum Ben, one of the longer Cambodian public holidays and a religious festival which I still don’t really understand, except that it involves lots of parties at the pagodas. I went to the northwest with Dave and two of his colleagues, Phinet and Sharon, to visit Preah Vihear temple on the Thai border. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeh-S5iTMK2nKBos6GoZSyQusZhsK1fj1BR5hCv3KECVA_jxNz2nnMzD16gYU2OucAhl4lQdMskdPZ1pI4WuAPMQipMWkIPUMhCtPdFGFXX9GQqPaDGRmtoeaAo6SnOpoBx8PO6wRyFA0/s1600/DSC01790.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeh-S5iTMK2nKBos6GoZSyQusZhsK1fj1BR5hCv3KECVA_jxNz2nnMzD16gYU2OucAhl4lQdMskdPZ1pI4WuAPMQipMWkIPUMhCtPdFGFXX9GQqPaDGRmtoeaAo6SnOpoBx8PO6wRyFA0/s320/DSC01790.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The four of us in Preah Vihear province</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Preah Vihear is one of the most important of the Angkorian temples and probably very beautiful, although it was so foggy we couldn’t see it. Perhaps more significantly, though, it’s been the source of conflict between the Thais and Cambodians for decades because, although it was officially recognised as Cambodian by the UN in 1962, the only access was from the Thai side, leaving them effectively in control. In 1979 it was the scene of “the worst forced repatriation in UN history”, as Thailand marched thousands of Cambodian refugees fleeing from the starvation caused by the Khmer Rouge back over the border. And more recently, the ownership issue resurfaced when UNESCO awarded the site world heritage status and Cambodia built a tarmac road; this, coupled with Thai political instability and a flare-up of nationalism in both countries, led to fighting earlier this year, with several soldiers killed. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">There has been no fighting since February though, and the temple has been reopened to tourists.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Before we got there we had a night in Siem Reap followed by a drive up to Anlong Veng, a town close to the Thai border and the last Khmer Rouge stronghold. It was controlled by them right up until 1998 and is the resting place of many of its leaders, including Pol Pot and Ta Mok. It wasn’t an unpleasant town and people were friendly enough, but I couldn’t help wondering what kind of things they’d got up to, and what on earth they’d been thinking for so long. After lunch we visited Ta Mok’s house, a weird place because, alongside the cages where Khmer Rouge prisoners were kept, there were groups of people having picnics. Then we drove almost to the Thai border to see the cremation site of Pol Pot – he died mysteriously and was cremated the same day. It was raining and felt appropriately grim, a large mound of grey earth covered by a simple tin roof.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It was a nice drive to Sra Em, a town about 25km from the temple where we stayed the night, went to a Pchum Ben party at the pagoda, and left around 6.30 for the temple. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The area was heavily militarised, with lots of army buildings including one with about eight tanks, and when we reached the temple after a very steep drive, there were over a thousand soldiers stationed there. I wasn’t expecting this at all but, although the fighting is over, neither side is withdrawing its troops until the other side does. A group of soldiers offered to take us round and handed us a gun, saying we could hold it. Being a bit clumsy and wary of accidentally restarting a war, we declined. I did think though that there can’t be many national armies who, on the frontline of a warzone, would offer their guns to passing tourists. Of course, Dave and I weren’t just tourists but had military experience: at the age of 15 I did four days work experience at Altcar army training camp, and Dave once did an army fun day at school. We wondered whether to ask if they wanted us to get them some tips. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The soldiers took us round the whole site, showing us bunkers dug into the temple walls, the sandbags marking the border, the Thai military camps on the other side, and some of the damage done to the temple by Thai shooting. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeV0mk4sR2fok3VUlF0mIIYrPMq01MGtr3c7Q0Rpe9jtEYiErumnCUVUGXl0phxPd12qhS7o1XH2I7LdXU3xb_ym1DBP5an94qFQwQd25oc6I2gMjESvn527L4fGrj9UCf-V9EmESg_fI/s1600/DSC01740.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeV0mk4sR2fok3VUlF0mIIYrPMq01MGtr3c7Q0Rpe9jtEYiErumnCUVUGXl0phxPd12qhS7o1XH2I7LdXU3xb_ym1DBP5an94qFQwQd25oc6I2gMjESvn527L4fGrj9UCf-V9EmESg_fI/s320/DSC01740.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sandbag wall is the official border</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOv6sEQZaTmC1v7wOGi6TvywbuXuyIw-eByHhRE5JXNChH2zw9O8VU5Cv8i6IQixeu6N7LIOT9uhkeNmbmU-Tt3j2iAVa7gqh6eBhL0mn5saAetckBufmlvhmp5lhwIBBSYv2ScIEpjnY/s1600/DSC01757.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOv6sEQZaTmC1v7wOGi6TvywbuXuyIw-eByHhRE5JXNChH2zw9O8VU5Cv8i6IQixeu6N7LIOT9uhkeNmbmU-Tt3j2iAVa7gqh6eBhL0mn5saAetckBufmlvhmp5lhwIBBSYv2ScIEpjnY/s320/DSC01757.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bunkers dug into the temple walls</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">I’m not generally inclined to like soldiers very much, but I had lots of admiration for the ones we met. They were warm and friendly, had been there a long time without being able to see their families, and were sincere in their commitment to their country without being excessively nationalistic – they said that they no longer had a problem with Thailand since the recent change of government. And when Dave (who says he gets uncomfortable with lulls in the conversation and says wildly inappropriate things) asked if they found it difficult being so far from a karaoke bar – synonymous in Cambodia with casual prostitution – they didn’t get offended and just said that their work was more important. They didn’t even get angry when Dave when one step further and asked if they liked Thai food. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dave and Phinet</td></tr>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtfTJGN5mzcs63pmSbY-lBh0-5iHj1ECihofeU_MG5mXIhTPsArwUk8bzfklNIe1hOMHx29pK2cJHfQh8JrGMf-ucG5afNi6QQR8ZgNKOI7JWPlgewv-1L3hgrEUV22qvVuL1rRMPp4o/s1600/DSC01780.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPtfTJGN5mzcs63pmSbY-lBh0-5iHj1ECihofeU_MG5mXIhTPsArwUk8bzfklNIe1hOMHx29pK2cJHfQh8JrGMf-ucG5afNi6QQR8ZgNKOI7JWPlgewv-1L3hgrEUV22qvVuL1rRMPp4o/s320/DSC01780.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Three of them took us round and stayed with us the whole time, so afterwards we bought them lunch to say thank you. Dave later told me he’d come really close to asking the man serving us if they had Thai Green Curry; luckily he managed not to, and we left them on good terms. They’d been really good to us, although presumably really bored as they’d followed us around for three hours.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">We drove in the rain back through Sra Em towards Tbaeng Meanchey, the capital of Preah Vihear province, which had nothing much there apart from a great bakery with the best bread I’ve had in Cambodia. We left the next morning and, after visiting a few pagodas on the way, we went back to Kampong Thom, where Dave lives. Phinet invited us for a Pchum Ben party at his cousin’s house which was fun, and the following day I left for Phnom Penh. Overall it was a great week and really fun to do some travelling again. And I’m glad that, the day after Dave’s leaving party, he decided to accept a three-month placement in Phnom Penh, so he won’t be leaving after all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-51544522487788600732011-09-23T10:52:00.000+07:002011-09-23T10:52:18.118+07:00School enrolment campaigns<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Apologies for not having written anything for such a long time. Things have actually been quite busy at work, even though it’s still the school holidays. As well as helping the VSO staff set up new placements in good governance and health for next year, we have had lots of workshops and, more recently, have been working on school enrolment campaigns. These take place during the last fortnight of September to sensitise parents and communities about sending their children to school. The weather this week has been terrible, though, and we haven’t always been able to attend the campaigns, but we did go to one at Pu Tang village on Tuesday.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">This was organised by the school director and they didn’t have a banner, but there was quite a good turnout from the children, who walked through the village with a loudspeaker and posters. It was nice when other children came out of their houses to join them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq71Wre4P0bUVZWhtjDCCJ-O_jG0a5uDie0vooyu3YucnyEwUTgDaVxm1ikqsBDQ0IrSE0P3rQ6XJTrwlcDjY08wrvClCDLOMAUZg5JL_pe6Pb-3AVtDrjl5QpLEh0oY8JGKGBvIo_XaI/s1600/DSC01700.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq71Wre4P0bUVZWhtjDCCJ-O_jG0a5uDie0vooyu3YucnyEwUTgDaVxm1ikqsBDQ0IrSE0P3rQ6XJTrwlcDjY08wrvClCDLOMAUZg5JL_pe6Pb-3AVtDrjl5QpLEh0oY8JGKGBvIo_XaI/s320/DSC01700.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The walk was about an hour and the girl in the picture above (who I think came up to my knee) managed the whole thing. I felt very sorry for her though as she probably has to do this another three or four times before she’s old enough to enrol herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We’ve also made a leaflet with ideas for community involvement which we are distributing to all the schools. And one day in August we had chicken, which is a very rare occasion as it’s expensive here. They’re slightly cheaper if you buy them alive, so we did, although I didn’t enjoy driving him home: he wriggled a bit and broke my eggs. I hope they weren’t related. At home I put him in the spare room, gave him a plate of uncooked rice and called him James; Tak and Eng slit his throat, plucked and gutted him. James nearly had the last laugh though as he’d left a bit of poo inside which the murderers got all over their hands. But he wasn’t laughing when he came out of Jeltje’s oven.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Anyway, I think I mentioned in my last post that my placement is being extended until March 2011. As a result I’ve decided to step back from Cambodia’s collective alcohol problem, which until now I’ve been participating in quite enthusiastically. I’d always thought it was impolite to say no, and that a year wouldn’t do much harm, but now that I’m staying longer I’m going to be more careful – especially as times are hard and we can usually only afford the lethal 70% rice wine. (Last time I think it burned through some of the lining of my stomach and gave me acid indigestion for days, so I’ve given it up completely.) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Next week it’s Pchum Ben which is a big holiday in Cambodia and most people go back to their home villages. Mine’s a bit far away (although I’ll be home from 17-30<sup>th</sup> December), so I think I’m going with Dave to Preah Vihear which is a famous temple on the Thai border. I haven’t been to the northwest year apart from a short trip to Siem Reap so that should be good. <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-80219292248519052582011-08-18T12:07:00.001+07:002011-08-20T17:27:04.387+07:00Changes<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">VSO is currently finalising its new strategic plan for Cambodia and it’s likely that they will start working on good governance at national, provincial and district levels. As public services are currently being devolved to district level (at least in theory), VSO will be able to combine this with continued support for health and education: volunteers will work in small teams with some supporting public services and others supporting district councils to administer these services effectively and to improve democratic accountability. I think it will be a big challenge for VSO to work in this area as Cambodia’s culture of deference as well as widespread corruption makes democratic development very difficult, but it’s also probably the single thing needed to help move the country forward. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">VSO is also planning to reduce its geographical presence to the four poorest provinces in the east, including Mondulkiri, so there will be more volunteers here over the next few years. The good news for me is that it is likely that I will be able to extend my placement for five months to continue the work on education as well as help set up the new volunteer placements, which will begin next March. As the alternative is the miserable thought of supply teaching until next September, I think I’m keen to accept. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">It’s also good that Tak will keep his job and will then have new volunteers to work with in March. We might need to clarify our respective roles, though, as I definitely feel there’s been some confusion in the volunteer/volunteer assistant working relationship. In fact I think I might be the victim of some highly exploitative working practices: as well as chopping down trees to clear his land, I also seem to be expected to build his house. Last month we went to Bousra to collect wood (not from the forest, I mean; from his cousin who he’d already bought it from). I thought it was nice of him to ask me along, and was imagining a nice trip to the countryside, and maybe a break at the waterfall on the way back. For some reason it didn’t occur to me that lifting and carrying enough wood to build a family-sized house might not be that much fun. It wasn’t, especially when we arrived back in Sen Monorom and realised we had to do it all again, unloading the wood, which took hours and hours. There were 294 planks of wood altogether, and there were no Mars Bars to help us get through it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">The sad news this week is that Ingran is leaving. He’s given up Cambodia for the bright lights of Watford, so it can’t be long before he’s back. But still, we’ll miss him in the meantime. Last week lots of people from our original September 2010 group came down to Phnom Penh to see him off. He's awesome and Cambodia won't be the same without him. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidXYX4Jq4le8BJPzctFwlyWQ_gP85oARxkp4_CC9kEXw2th0Gv3wypqEvDOaj7eb0XP0MAJ7wQxRaQyzrwU17ecXJ7iNxj3WTUEexA1ZkWCkySi_FOv9wA3_eCQymmRT8Xt8ejqHUdYT0/s1600/DSC01463.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidXYX4Jq4le8BJPzctFwlyWQ_gP85oARxkp4_CC9kEXw2th0Gv3wypqEvDOaj7eb0XP0MAJ7wQxRaQyzrwU17ecXJ7iNxj3WTUEexA1ZkWCkySi_FOv9wA3_eCQymmRT8Xt8ejqHUdYT0/s320/DSC01463.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><br />
</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-17473175310333728652011-07-08T19:02:00.000+07:002011-07-08T19:02:54.889+07:00Food<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">We have been out of Mars bars for about two weeks now, and it’s beginning to show, with the ever-tactful Tak’s mum telling me I’m thin and don’t look good anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">(Incidentally, VSO has recently moved to new a office but my postal address – VSO Cambodia, PO Box 912, Phnom Penh, Cambodia – remains the same. Just in case anyone’s interested.) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">So until somebody is kind enough to send more, I’ve been embracing Cambodian snacks. These are mostly insects which Cambodians developed a taste for during the desperate Khmer Rouge years when people would eat whatever they could to avoid starvation. They are also mostly disgusting. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">I’d already had deep-fried crickets, which mercifully taste much more of deep-fried than they do of crickets, and silkworms, which are sloppy and revolting, as well as the famous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pon tea kone</i> – a boiled duck egg with a half-formed and slightly hairy foetus. And last weekend in Phnom Penh I was drunk enough to find myself eating ants cooked with garlic and chilli. Worse was to come, though: at one of the stops on the bus ride back with Tak and his mum, I bought pineapple and water, and they came back with tarantulas. The legs were fine, tasting a bit like twiglets, but the body nearly made me sick. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnjr6YXEnKAzd9NU_LKCiWptFTvl4kpZ1bzP0bdkwbK8jVJoZd8BWnM4n5n9-ce4AjJFEBWRjRNI5pZELZN3frBzKYkC914Kvn81WfckmnBcn5a1t6GfU588-DjGkDczmRQaC3jXSGk0/s1600/IMG_0421.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnjr6YXEnKAzd9NU_LKCiWptFTvl4kpZ1bzP0bdkwbK8jVJoZd8BWnM4n5n9-ce4AjJFEBWRjRNI5pZELZN3frBzKYkC914Kvn81WfckmnBcn5a1t6GfU588-DjGkDczmRQaC3jXSGk0/s320/IMG_0421.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before...</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZXo7wJSdw39hWRoElpRBPcO7KhgFa-XVT-q4lTg1cneTdM8HpuVheBQpLXaxzgn1OdlQ0wwA5HLzg-uFffhiA8NCidunndoj7Ss_BXvji6amnLp3Jmuu_EraAqrY-euTgATn3SbrniM/s1600/IMG_0419.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZXo7wJSdw39hWRoElpRBPcO7KhgFa-XVT-q4lTg1cneTdM8HpuVheBQpLXaxzgn1OdlQ0wwA5HLzg-uFffhiA8NCidunndoj7Ss_BXvji6amnLp3Jmuu_EraAqrY-euTgATn3SbrniM/s320/IMG_0419.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">... and after.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">Still, I felt satisfied that Cambodian cuisine had nothing more it could throw at me, saying to Tak that the only thing I still hadn’t eaten was a cow’s penis. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif";">He looked knowingly at me, smiled and said, ‘Oh yes you have.’</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-63284853898973508152011-06-30T17:55:00.000+07:002011-06-30T17:55:31.359+07:00June<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This week I had my first ever dream about teaching that wasn’t a nightmare, so I think that means I might be missing it. Nonetheless, work has picked up over the last few weeks, and on Monday we had a really good open day at Pu Trom Chah school. We went with fairly low expectations as the director isn’t always very reliable, but they did a great job, with the children performing plays and model lessons, the community arranging a Punong blessing of the new library, and families bringing food to share with everyone. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5tpK97dU5gW61wDaiQBVH9Alglic3PIGyDoG4d_jtBbGZ9VRjBVUyyvaBiGjAgerJzvGRF9UgczFP765uanHP-lCYJUr0SK0v5OhI1a2g3s5VQmFO56doA5g53bNmun3Z-E8y996qNU/s1600/DSC04223.jpgnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid5tpK97dU5gW61wDaiQBVH9Alglic3PIGyDoG4d_jtBbGZ9VRjBVUyyvaBiGjAgerJzvGRF9UgczFP765uanHP-lCYJUr0SK0v5OhI1a2g3s5VQmFO56doA5g53bNmun3Z-E8y996qNU/s320/DSC04223.jpgnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqh9BWr38gP4q9svrU6cg_gZ1Rf3H4t6rOujQkpA_Q6jrE24O7-HSQL9WV9klOItXhrL5Xwwy3I5x0ei-hpAGFId9QZw3FgMkuzxacLh6SVqf3254vN8gfopTr6a-_UQTD8lAXdCWrFY/s1600/DSC04212.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwqh9BWr38gP4q9svrU6cg_gZ1Rf3H4t6rOujQkpA_Q6jrE24O7-HSQL9WV9klOItXhrL5Xwwy3I5x0ei-hpAGFId9QZw3FgMkuzxacLh6SVqf3254vN8gfopTr6a-_UQTD8lAXdCWrFY/s320/DSC04212.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We also went to Sreiee for a community meeting about the dropouts, and had lots of fun driving through the very muddy roads. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfc8Z9LGPSVoZQ1YFerP7yiu5YGoStoTE7_SltblCosNQ24gtnGz14AH6iAj0vrPikIluEtcCOxoALJf5L2e2RqQhqrp0XcxsLkwaEMTyMszX4iqd85Y4IIGFoNZTpdP-bsOtxCNy2bqY/s1600/IMG_0368.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfc8Z9LGPSVoZQ1YFerP7yiu5YGoStoTE7_SltblCosNQ24gtnGz14AH6iAj0vrPikIluEtcCOxoALJf5L2e2RqQhqrp0XcxsLkwaEMTyMszX4iqd85Y4IIGFoNZTpdP-bsOtxCNy2bqY/s320/IMG_0368.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv2xPbX7FURbLMgqXIqqXQV1kTLr4_Nc6S1ldr6ZoGV86Yt8jDTKXvhDtgoig0iWc9ZEFlKECSxnLPxeYA0ho6vlKpzh5lyLdPAJ8-PczA9_1eydubQ1tQKRqrnM1Csx420ZtgXt93aZE/s1600/IMG_0381.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv2xPbX7FURbLMgqXIqqXQV1kTLr4_Nc6S1ldr6ZoGV86Yt8jDTKXvhDtgoig0iWc9ZEFlKECSxnLPxeYA0ho6vlKpzh5lyLdPAJ8-PczA9_1eydubQ1tQKRqrnM1Csx420ZtgXt93aZE/s320/IMG_0381.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And this weekend we’re also going to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> to buy library books for a school called Pu Choo which we’re just starting to work with. As the school year is about to end, lots of the activities in our plan will need to wait till next year, so libraries is something we can work on over the next few months. In September and October we’ll begin focusing on enrolment campaigns and school openings. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I thought I’d start by writing a few paragraphs about work, as someone pointed out that most of my blogs are about drinking. Also a bit concerning is the fact that the beer seller near Tak’s house in Phnom Penh knows me by name, and that when I was walking past a shop on the way to Jeltje’s house the other day, the woman shouted, ‘Whisky? Beer?’ (I think I’ll get Tak to do the shopping in future.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Anyway, the past few weekends have been lots of fun, especially Ingran’s birthday weekend when he and Gilly came by bike to Mondulkiri. They were welcomed by a delicious Cambodian beef soup that Eng has taught me to make, and it wasn’t until a few days later that I remembered that Ingran doesn’t eat beef. Still, nothing like a bowl of plain white rice to celebrate a 30<sup>th</sup> birthday. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We had a walk in the rain to a waterfall before coming back to a house party. This was the biggest one we’ve had and was lots of fun, although since then Gilly and Ingran have been spreading lies and photoshopped pictures, which you can see at <a href="http://www.ourvso.com/">www.ourvso.com</a> and <a href="http://www.ingran.wordpress.com/">http://ingran.wordpress.com</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjioVI59vya0Es3qquRD_FBjJmL2d_mGdm4VJzYiVzYTz7RY7ayM1x491qfNwxlgv94CnZlUSu3S38zRHICNtlsPH_e-D91mUR9xLY02Bj0aY7Ow0kMqiweEvcDaHC2WpuNtPq6Jbo1TAU/s1600/SAM_0508.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjioVI59vya0Es3qquRD_FBjJmL2d_mGdm4VJzYiVzYTz7RY7ayM1x491qfNwxlgv94CnZlUSu3S38zRHICNtlsPH_e-D91mUR9xLY02Bj0aY7Ow0kMqiweEvcDaHC2WpuNtPq6Jbo1TAU/s320/SAM_0508.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCJE1nE2FXVolxGLI-P6JCf2c1RIiQaNPQ60raoYeNyWO_X-Gte1kZbn_nwfaHHUXEs2YVIIuEs1XEPPsaLniRmh_xYl-R0b5vweJgWtRQHQzMCrJQEWLhUYwAq3ij40VxuRs5QXcEcQE/s1600/SAM_0526.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCJE1nE2FXVolxGLI-P6JCf2c1RIiQaNPQ60raoYeNyWO_X-Gte1kZbn_nwfaHHUXEs2YVIIuEs1XEPPsaLniRmh_xYl-R0b5vweJgWtRQHQzMCrJQEWLhUYwAq3ij40VxuRs5QXcEcQE/s320/SAM_0526.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil9I0P_SGxU8vVwEZ326McHGFJerEyi3obOG4erp1n2q_1soTpNGU3sm3My3iYi3ruv9fiK0UQCQ1ktpbDiFWUvVKuUJAgJxQ8YrCVmMBeNp3JfXmJoG3DbBwOzWuwOpJgl96uwHlJOhI/s1600/SAM_0570.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil9I0P_SGxU8vVwEZ326McHGFJerEyi3obOG4erp1n2q_1soTpNGU3sm3My3iYi3ruv9fiK0UQCQ1ktpbDiFWUvVKuUJAgJxQ8YrCVmMBeNp3JfXmJoG3DbBwOzWuwOpJgl96uwHlJOhI/s320/SAM_0570.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sadly not everyone managed to stay as sober as me.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We spent the following day eating about seven meals and drinking lots of tea, before going to the </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Sea</span></st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Forest</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> for some fresh air. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePWIHNFSLXG7fmhMD9me714TCDu737RYwDPyDKZINpwigledh7qlOMC0GBYDd-GQlOO360itdb2a4gM_hsPK2YGYVwtVNGMwHGbH6QOUCNd5w61A4DSBqId10H8ZqGUU-HLu4vYJ80yY/s1600/SAM_0589.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePWIHNFSLXG7fmhMD9me714TCDu737RYwDPyDKZINpwigledh7qlOMC0GBYDd-GQlOO360itdb2a4gM_hsPK2YGYVwtVNGMwHGbH6QOUCNd5w61A4DSBqId10H8ZqGUU-HLu4vYJ80yY/s320/SAM_0589.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-80305041234093256992011-06-01T14:10:00.000+07:002011-06-01T14:10:56.994+07:00Family holiday<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Firstly, to Pu Trom Chah, the school that was building the library. Last week we took the books to the completed library and it was lovely to see the children so eager to start reading them even before they had been organised. This child was particularly thrilled with a story about a magic mango tree:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8EGOt08-L-D9iNyk7amF2WcQk25eSl1f5OOBSCkQVdq04gxQqqZA7JARg79JIDvyJzgdX8hDCRKWTGZtZNcI-sArEkEv8xr4ebxMvWMAZlb6O8_nQCjEUVrHnGf7GGhsSkVLxRcJrD20/s1600/Jen+24-05-11+077.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8EGOt08-L-D9iNyk7amF2WcQk25eSl1f5OOBSCkQVdq04gxQqqZA7JARg79JIDvyJzgdX8hDCRKWTGZtZNcI-sArEkEv8xr4ebxMvWMAZlb6O8_nQCjEUVrHnGf7GGhsSkVLxRcJrD20/s320/Jen+24-05-11+077.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">This month, we will try to help the school organise a community day to open the library and to encourage families and community members to take an interest in their local school. In the other two schools where we’ve supported libraries, the children are going to expand the book collection by writing their own stories or non-fiction books. There’s only about one more month of the school year so we will need to work hard to do as much as possible while the schools are still open.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Secondly, eight months of shopping in Phnom Penh markets have left me quite blinged up – with my $6 Rorex watch, my Leevi’s jeans and my real leather Dolce and Garibaldi wallet – and this week it was the turn of the ‘Dream to have a bit of a makeover, with a $5 new seat cover. It’s the same cover used in the latest version of the Honda Dream, so I can pretend my bike is a lot better than it is. (I’m aware that readers are probably not as excited about this as I am.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And thirdly, I feel the need to offer a correction following my last post in which, like an early 1990s Sun reporter, I outed our cat Tony. It turns out he’s not having an affair with Sarah Brown at all; instead Sarah has been illegally entering the house to steal Tony’s food, and Tony is understandably having none of it. As well as apologising to Tony, we’ve passed draconian immigration laws and are forcibly deporting all foreign cats, with a squirt of water to discourage repeat offences. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And now to the visit of my parents, who came for a week on the 15<sup>th</sup> May. They came with someone else too, someone who just sat and got drunk all week, but I can’t remember who it was now. Anyway, we had a lovely week’s holiday in the south-west, going first to Kampong Som to have a few days relaxing at the beach. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDvo4a-rFsdfkF0BeAgh-xaLDq6udBtWSW2Oq15Pqlo07sfI02CmlEmS0gXsrvllhC2V9_we4tdw1CUSz1aTMY-vDUcE0au-ZGYxDYg6eSEaAQ_D3MVsM9TD6KgqqYwC5AFVvY-oodie8/s1600/DSCF0123.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDvo4a-rFsdfkF0BeAgh-xaLDq6udBtWSW2Oq15Pqlo07sfI02CmlEmS0gXsrvllhC2V9_we4tdw1CUSz1aTMY-vDUcE0au-ZGYxDYg6eSEaAQ_D3MVsM9TD6KgqqYwC5AFVvY-oodie8/s320/DSCF0123.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We also stopped in </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Ream</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Cambria;">National Park</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> on the way to Kampot, and took a boat to a small island where we had a beach to ourselves, with just sea urchins and jellyfish for company. It felt very idyllic, apart from the company (the jellyfish, I mean, not my sister). Tak and my family got on very well, and Tak announced his intention to steal them, or at least to steal my passport and take my place in the family.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMpK_WziZlkvNb1I-QbVWeO5E9vMivyzYUdTzMO2d8KpQHg9Ef4zbY0m5TOAMdC-Ruzl24SEx616565LCeXikTJ-tf7CZOe6tmB8r9b0WkOCZ053u5W2adKneO9h4DnadGSzj11Mhv1h0/s1600/Picture+006.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMpK_WziZlkvNb1I-QbVWeO5E9vMivyzYUdTzMO2d8KpQHg9Ef4zbY0m5TOAMdC-Ruzl24SEx616565LCeXikTJ-tf7CZOe6tmB8r9b0WkOCZ053u5W2adKneO9h4DnadGSzj11Mhv1h0/s320/Picture+006.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YZnaVr-xLguJODPzaNizcD2w7kDmFu6nPlPmNzWsCXSW7acKmzgOU_UxH6izmAdTXSohrTw4WXAh-mQlemUSkuym5Ao-ixwQvUBnU6TpuRVPBny0Q4FvHlX77OIKN2QgotfXz2SPhMI/s1600/Picture+022.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YZnaVr-xLguJODPzaNizcD2w7kDmFu6nPlPmNzWsCXSW7acKmzgOU_UxH6izmAdTXSohrTw4WXAh-mQlemUSkuym5Ao-ixwQvUBnU6TpuRVPBny0Q4FvHlX77OIKN2QgotfXz2SPhMI/s320/Picture+022.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 309.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 309.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Kampot was very nice and we went to Bokor Hill, which used to be a mountain retreat with a hotel and casino built by the French, but which was a site of major fighting between the retreating Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese-backed forces who overthrew the Pol Pot regime in 1979. The Khmer Rouge were holed up in the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Cambria;">old Catholic</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Church</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> and the Vietnamese were in the hotel, and both buildings are grim places, the walls littered with bullet holes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12304y3wrN8VW0pgLlD2L1sgsmJhEb-sPAYOjOGke1SjBknSgHC0S3Ab_WMoXdyb9QmSzrjDzHt3L7qneW0pRN9vubOQXW-BlNTy2HgK-cy8ZLqWNmLIQlVAI5UdvEgYw3Pr9BorVTFQ/s1600/Picture+220.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg12304y3wrN8VW0pgLlD2L1sgsmJhEb-sPAYOjOGke1SjBknSgHC0S3Ab_WMoXdyb9QmSzrjDzHt3L7qneW0pRN9vubOQXW-BlNTy2HgK-cy8ZLqWNmLIQlVAI5UdvEgYw3Pr9BorVTFQ/s320/Picture+220.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">The area is very beautiful though, with cool mountain breezes and extensive forest views. Sadly, a private company is developing the site, which meant we had to pay a huge entry fee and also had to walk part of the way as the road is being rebuilt. I enjoyed the walk uphill through jungle tracks, but it seemed bizarre to be paying so much money to have to walk. We all managed it though, even Tak who claims his legs are too short to move by themselves.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS4mGQEyxyMjWbnh36c7fUM8zAu1xdq6HZ-kRfzZqS4-mYr_1LTUzZuZibOvWLsYtCXWZBHEQokhBulnLTkZ5mWGSYcQgH9Oo9TfAK8aMEtWaalgXbVW0PN4CVgzDnTMMaGeZs8EviF8k/s1600/Picture+078.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS4mGQEyxyMjWbnh36c7fUM8zAu1xdq6HZ-kRfzZqS4-mYr_1LTUzZuZibOvWLsYtCXWZBHEQokhBulnLTkZ5mWGSYcQgH9Oo9TfAK8aMEtWaalgXbVW0PN4CVgzDnTMMaGeZs8EviF8k/s320/Picture+078.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk87iPF1PCiGFrG8uH3yrt4FBAi7WR2XuUllVCQfqZL4sbfP1H10Ue10vlMY6jFG2pTySKvVLtRdWZhp-C2y5akkL5El20Tr_iUuiwCbza4zaP71I-IAcBHRQTLQhCDwCyn1EfFAnolsM/s1600/DSCF0209.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk87iPF1PCiGFrG8uH3yrt4FBAi7WR2XuUllVCQfqZL4sbfP1H10Ue10vlMY6jFG2pTySKvVLtRdWZhp-C2y5akkL5El20Tr_iUuiwCbza4zaP71I-IAcBHRQTLQhCDwCyn1EfFAnolsM/s320/DSCF0209.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">At the abandoned hotel we had fun taking photos until I realised that Tak was in fact just taking photos of himself, like this one:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyn-ew5GkCkWBcyokmrTDXNVl3-nfQJraWDFZyJevlj54HfZ-KWkL4lfPJXoZC605hKrg3giMkAFNxGBPkTNE9vh7VTqARIUJGYAQ1Jgyxmw24N3M0UdFgqbgXy2ujjRp3UiFP4X_NMc/s1600/Picture+122.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzyn-ew5GkCkWBcyokmrTDXNVl3-nfQJraWDFZyJevlj54HfZ-KWkL4lfPJXoZC605hKrg3giMkAFNxGBPkTNE9vh7VTqARIUJGYAQ1Jgyxmw24N3M0UdFgqbgXy2ujjRp3UiFP4X_NMc/s320/Picture+122.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">Here are some taken by others:</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWMzIjvb4Dy6u-wyjItnx42dNy7QMqyiDcQYTw01pV_xA8XCzrcyrNTMhjIznIB0YH7SNY8i1_snB_PIVBOqyU5Vl8Gpcv2mScEmqR8OgoOFhPmcyaJpV7qHtv4U_lBzp9QXV4Is1r3Fo/s1600/Picture+058.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWMzIjvb4Dy6u-wyjItnx42dNy7QMqyiDcQYTw01pV_xA8XCzrcyrNTMhjIznIB0YH7SNY8i1_snB_PIVBOqyU5Vl8Gpcv2mScEmqR8OgoOFhPmcyaJpV7qHtv4U_lBzp9QXV4Is1r3Fo/s320/Picture+058.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmOgi9rsU_BOVKgcU1Obzo46SnbI0UuDl5F7NrF-j9PQ5u0OkEVohgRzz2A0SBFxid4CeqR0fM2TMS9_EbPRwKFtXwAE3RymlwYwb_-T0UMRO0S-2l1tg34sKDUM2AHwOqK8bPPaw6e4I/s1600/Picture+201.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmOgi9rsU_BOVKgcU1Obzo46SnbI0UuDl5F7NrF-j9PQ5u0OkEVohgRzz2A0SBFxid4CeqR0fM2TMS9_EbPRwKFtXwAE3RymlwYwb_-T0UMRO0S-2l1tg34sKDUM2AHwOqK8bPPaw6e4I/s320/Picture+201.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In the afternoon Dad, Tak and I went on a boat ride along with river which turned out to be very nice. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxAg61_-JwthKF0it1OMNQ4ldOAKRa0Tokp2hOkcEc3uhAXOH7gwfJ3SRZzM1cr0pNbGG8LuC2SUvTgcivZs7x0AmEl4xtZOaetanuJUtglKINAFZWfYB8TJMHUVX6xdN_CCqA59qbiTg/s1600/Picture+107.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxAg61_-JwthKF0it1OMNQ4ldOAKRa0Tokp2hOkcEc3uhAXOH7gwfJ3SRZzM1cr0pNbGG8LuC2SUvTgcivZs7x0AmEl4xtZOaetanuJUtglKINAFZWfYB8TJMHUVX6xdN_CCqA59qbiTg/s320/Picture+107.jpgnnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And then we met up with Jim, Sarah and Jen who had been in the same area but a few days ahead of us, and had dinner together. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRa2xjSWrdq4vyAse05dRkzlYtRgRTLpbdalfadWJH6kN1Lzs1et47E232B8A3salQbS7gZpDjk-R784JY0yUlT_6zTR6yluCToLjE3cg39xU1MY6jvbwrZKAcSGxC-_EfcP8LCvnXvus/s1600/DSCF0242.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRa2xjSWrdq4vyAse05dRkzlYtRgRTLpbdalfadWJH6kN1Lzs1et47E232B8A3salQbS7gZpDjk-R784JY0yUlT_6zTR6yluCToLjE3cg39xU1MY6jvbwrZKAcSGxC-_EfcP8LCvnXvus/s320/DSCF0242.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">After dinner we went briefly to a disastrous nightclub, before sending Tak and my sister Lucy to buy alcohol (another disastrous decision) and sitting on the river front drinking rum. It was fun and everyone got on well, with Sarah telling my sister that she was much more fun than me, which was a bit rude but also true as Lucy was on top form.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">After Kampot was </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> which was hot but enjoyable, with another good night in DJ club. On Sunday Tak’s mum came back to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> after being at a family wedding in Kampong Thom, and she and my mum enjoyed talking to each other in French. We decided to go out for lunch to avoid any potential conflicts about vegetable-chopping methods. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5P3aNACclQjmYxZ2UCPFk_w02Ng8HM4jUVYOEDyPJU4jY9Y0UooqLC2UTrAB-HJitme_2_q-5Imojs9chGmKMeCaz-9W8cZsqApvdJgAQ8oEcHmY7WfTgDEKrpqrcAfXHNxdgpwURmI/s1600/DSCF0345.jpgnnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju5P3aNACclQjmYxZ2UCPFk_w02Ng8HM4jUVYOEDyPJU4jY9Y0UooqLC2UTrAB-HJitme_2_q-5Imojs9chGmKMeCaz-9W8cZsqApvdJgAQ8oEcHmY7WfTgDEKrpqrcAfXHNxdgpwURmI/s320/DSCF0345.jpgnnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p>I</o:p></span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">t was sad to see my family leave on Sunday afternoon, so Tak decided it was just the time to buy half a crate of beer, followed by three bottles of whisky at various street-side locations in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> and another trip to DJ club. I was dubious to begin with but decided he was probably right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The hungover trip back to Mondulkiri the next day was a bit of a struggle, and Tak decided to take advantage of my weakened state to find me a wife, telling people at every stop that I was looking for one. At Snuol I think I was offered a choice of two, and if we’d stayed any longer I think I would never have been able to leave that less-than-delightful town (the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Crewe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> of eastern </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;">).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Since then we’ve also said good-bye to Jen who has been missed by all, but who decided it was time to leave Curly and go to seek a better life with Raquel in Kuala Lumpa. If she doesn’t find one, she’ll be off to </span><st1:place><st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Sydney</span></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, </span><st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;">New Zealand</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> and then </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">So now it’s just the three of us again, and only another five months before I’ll be leaving myself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-49492100496533481112011-05-10T11:51:00.000+07:002011-05-10T11:51:59.973+07:00A visit from Jim and Sarah<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The big news this week is that Mars bars have arrived, with which we are well pleased. They came accompanied by Jim and Sarah who are spending three weeks in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. They were in Mondulkiri for most of last week, which was lots of fun although a bit of a setback for my attempts to stave off alcoholism. In between drinking, we visited waterfalls, went for walks, tried to expand Tak’s music collection (he mostly listens to things that Ken Bruce would be ashamed to play), and also had a lovely evening at a place called the Sea Forest, so-called because the forest is so expansive it looks a bit like the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfWgv1iDo5DASYA69d20a8sziGJpsXCEy9wj5hfCuM5vbnvpwCnX30EWE1EwnzP2vgio-dN5bpY_zMRUUORVlCgrd5O1C1z5JVTiV0GTDnIWGXEEd3TvO4ieYYkuTBHxQcqRnpZ5axrE/s1600/IMG_0218nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfWgv1iDo5DASYA69d20a8sziGJpsXCEy9wj5hfCuM5vbnvpwCnX30EWE1EwnzP2vgio-dN5bpY_zMRUUORVlCgrd5O1C1z5JVTiV0GTDnIWGXEEd3TvO4ieYYkuTBHxQcqRnpZ5axrE/s320/IMG_0218nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBPns1_Td3exeVxuDfUBRfgkCN6x5TD9I5tNlLauJhHUCgOASD6y0T4epguGJuMhW_9-iv3ZQysOs7O6Z60vnrVCH3CCcjw5hpo3isirnND-molfEBVUC57KcMs0-0XPiA7Kvf8o88sc/s1600/IMG_0215nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdBPns1_Td3exeVxuDfUBRfgkCN6x5TD9I5tNlLauJhHUCgOASD6y0T4epguGJuMhW_9-iv3ZQysOs7O6Z60vnrVCH3CCcjw5hpo3isirnND-molfEBVUC57KcMs0-0XPiA7Kvf8o88sc/s320/IMG_0215nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeEtjRnhFx4-73Vhyphenhyphen81JmkR3PBSmBY-p8lLh_9AmOWYtX-2SLxTt_j_06mI7wpmOHwKuMvKHnc7ZKMxkRj3vM31yXC6G80Hszl1QFUmBsFPXJL1gxKbU9hRoU_XOp-hjLpocuLGm-EEno/s1600/IMG_0196nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeEtjRnhFx4-73Vhyphenhyphen81JmkR3PBSmBY-p8lLh_9AmOWYtX-2SLxTt_j_06mI7wpmOHwKuMvKHnc7ZKMxkRj3vM31yXC6G80Hszl1QFUmBsFPXJL1gxKbU9hRoU_XOp-hjLpocuLGm-EEno/s320/IMG_0196nnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW6EGNz_0kvOzh1c5XuA7DZce4hdR1RsFNEPZ-ae3CQnSR1OvPsgj-2h4jy0mscrag-8HIZdOv0SG91a_w3ksdUzU0ynUPXfDz1U48HpLCuriNfAiCTzFYUIzwxjfbQvtmrYJQJaBpxus/s1600/IMG_0199nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW6EGNz_0kvOzh1c5XuA7DZce4hdR1RsFNEPZ-ae3CQnSR1OvPsgj-2h4jy0mscrag-8HIZdOv0SG91a_w3ksdUzU0ynUPXfDz1U48HpLCuriNfAiCTzFYUIzwxjfbQvtmrYJQJaBpxus/s320/IMG_0199nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">While they were here Jim and Sarah grew fond of our cat Tony Blair. (Tony was christened by Tak about six months ago for unknown reasons, although I sanctioned the name as I felt a similar mixture of affection and hatred as I used to feel for our former PM). Jim and Sarah are not the only friends Tony has been making, though – we were quite excited last week to meet Sarah Brown, his girlfriend who is quite a lot older than him. Closer examination, however, has revealed that Sarah has testicles. Tak was a bit shocked, but I think he loves him just the same. I might hide all the sharp implements though just in case he attempts surgery. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We’ve also been learning new skills. Jen has been learning to ride a motorbike and is doing very well, and I’ve been learning how to chop trees with an axe, and am doing less well, with lots of nasty blisters. The trees are coming down though. I’ve been drafted in as cheap foreign labour to clear the land where Tak and Eng are going to build their house, which is a beautiful area a few kilometres out of Sen Monorom.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">As for work, the schools have reopened so we’re trying to do as much as we can before the following set of public holidays next week, which coincide with a visit from Mum, Dad and Lucy (not here as imported labour but coming for a holiday). There are just a few more months before the end of the school year, and we’re going to try to support the Grade 6 students as they move up to secondary school, to ensure that as many as possible stay on. We’ll also try to help schools organise end-of-year celebration days to try to make children and their parents enthusiastic about education and the achievements it can bring. Finally, some good news from Pu Trom Chah school which has finally built their library – in the end it took just a few hours and we hope to give them their books as soon as they’ve built and painted bookshelves. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJaai5Xd6zjV8rra0tV0G1w5KcdzBUoeUtnlZ80aamVWMB-Lpms0ihJsoU3xuhhcCAFwHKeGgq7yoYL94QfyxoGnP4kBHzjc65mLkpafJUKarWqtHASfSit_kzWxRHnoWz6juTYV5Noo/s1600/IMG_0181nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJaai5Xd6zjV8rra0tV0G1w5KcdzBUoeUtnlZ80aamVWMB-Lpms0ihJsoU3xuhhcCAFwHKeGgq7yoYL94QfyxoGnP4kBHzjc65mLkpafJUKarWqtHASfSit_kzWxRHnoWz6juTYV5Noo/s320/IMG_0181nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-35968513555997224712011-04-27T20:05:00.000+07:002011-04-27T20:05:47.491+07:00Holiday season<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Early April was party season in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> in the run-up to Khmer New Year, which was on the 14-16th<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>April. It was the third of the new years that are celebrated here (Chinese and international being the other festivals borrowed as an excuse for a public holiday), and is the biggest, with most people taking a week or two off and going back to their home villages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In the weeks before, work starting to wind down as most of the schools closed, and there was a string of parties and weddings – the rainy season is on its way so couples are under pressure to get married soon or have to wait until November. Jen is staying in Mondulkiri for a few weeks so she also went to some of them, including a New Year’s party at the bank and the wedding of one of the teachers we work with.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ayDm1GyJrhd59H6Ak6B5Kju_hWFNawO8vSb_gaZMPvfkvsj_SGU1NrFmB9l1rs33EAABbXmJtnfmn1hFtaZV-noLwK6mAbC8LLbPi-wdebF-JhF8_RQJUv4CExb3u8jxLyDyfrv-xXA/s1600/DSC04015nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ayDm1GyJrhd59H6Ak6B5Kju_hWFNawO8vSb_gaZMPvfkvsj_SGU1NrFmB9l1rs33EAABbXmJtnfmn1hFtaZV-noLwK6mAbC8LLbPi-wdebF-JhF8_RQJUv4CExb3u8jxLyDyfrv-xXA/s320/DSC04015nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>If you look closely, you can make out the empty tables around us - this month we perfected the arrive first, drink lots, leave last technique. It's all about value for money.</i> </span></td></tr>
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj94C30Ixrrka6X2AEzxq9eJV3obV5PLjrTbabdfz3lQrlnTzNXbqvTUWko4ECfOJPKjh_eONcfQF4Dxi2fq5TfVFjfWGIvof98FEvXcy-WZngnaMiwNBHNjdg1MMmsZk6hfIAMmEtQtU/s1600/IMG_0142nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj94C30Ixrrka6X2AEzxq9eJV3obV5PLjrTbabdfz3lQrlnTzNXbqvTUWko4ECfOJPKjh_eONcfQF4Dxi2fq5TfVFjfWGIvof98FEvXcy-WZngnaMiwNBHNjdg1MMmsZk6hfIAMmEtQtU/s320/IMG_0142nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">We also visited a few waterfalls, including Kball Preah which is probably my favourite – quite dramatic, but not as impressive as Bousra and therefore attracting fewer crowds. It also requires a half-hour walk which helps, too, to put people off – I forgot to mention this when I suggested Kball Preah and I think when this photo was taken everybody was a bit pissed off with me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgMWGSe5-xrrlx-Awobd7gH6WtpDe6Zxe_zvC6nbQJRmr9WdeENid5W9hUpgGnyPZQcbqSj0W83I0SCJLwMMeSSxEbNpUC9iB9fXzJ0s4rGBqhRCsQVEsS2T2Rtbi537GltWOhzEi10o/s1600/DSC01308nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgMWGSe5-xrrlx-Awobd7gH6WtpDe6Zxe_zvC6nbQJRmr9WdeENid5W9hUpgGnyPZQcbqSj0W83I0SCJLwMMeSSxEbNpUC9iB9fXzJ0s4rGBqhRCsQVEsS2T2Rtbi537GltWOhzEi10o/s320/DSC01308nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2njEOCu-DqHWzMBJIOxL8IdZ-kX37u2n4j1rWj1nrfRCaYfs3p1mQerELg6p5jTZ4E6-EWGlFtRk7GSDcEFqmhr7SS8vV3UOHSHkmWDfw7PfIoow8NC1Gk38Y9mvTktccZPGR1C7sPE/s1600/P4110091nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht2njEOCu-DqHWzMBJIOxL8IdZ-kX37u2n4j1rWj1nrfRCaYfs3p1mQerELg6p5jTZ4E6-EWGlFtRk7GSDcEFqmhr7SS8vV3UOHSHkmWDfw7PfIoow8NC1Gk38Y9mvTktccZPGR1C7sPE/s320/P4110091nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>It was worth it though.</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">For the holiday itself, we went to Kampong Som on the south-west coast. There were five of us: Tak, Eng, me, Jen and Rachel, who was travelling in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Thailand</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> and met us for a week or so in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. It was a really nice few days of swimming, eating fresh crab and squid, and drinking. (Gone are the days when I assumed holidays were about doing things; now it’s all about sitting around and drinking.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0y6DpQNCvomXcBSvbV9fNJiKNUdhiE4dfi-goHyqNhOVT1rALT9gvq-IrEK038M65GrmLdACkMzR8J-lKDG5RFfda1Bj3Az2TzFFo9jGuHd_wrNsPd-xgzeVRB-wLjr0Xs-qX6huJHH4/s1600/Jen+uploads22-04-11+060nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0y6DpQNCvomXcBSvbV9fNJiKNUdhiE4dfi-goHyqNhOVT1rALT9gvq-IrEK038M65GrmLdACkMzR8J-lKDG5RFfda1Bj3Az2TzFFo9jGuHd_wrNsPd-xgzeVRB-wLjr0Xs-qX6huJHH4/s320/Jen+uploads22-04-11+060nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Eating fresh crab on the beach.</i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpW5EJ1LrhaPED6fS0SDk1s19lvOL3yq3R5teAZWEWTIoAzWKzyD0K2cYAG0llJSuLODgrNTkPPZuObzuMHdpXHlDeJ9eWYQrxhdBFmmDVr4UeSP7l2nSfDt3MuOSfCu-4Wj1lk7tuZo/s1600/DSC01323nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpW5EJ1LrhaPED6fS0SDk1s19lvOL3yq3R5teAZWEWTIoAzWKzyD0K2cYAG0llJSuLODgrNTkPPZuObzuMHdpXHlDeJ9eWYQrxhdBFmmDVr4UeSP7l2nSfDt3MuOSfCu-4Wj1lk7tuZo/s320/DSC01323nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Evening at the beach.</i></span></td></tr>
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ7PRTTTs74HjeDIBl1D21Rq9AxPJSuPzXeUQNOJo5oVBxPV4awC1BKKaTF8D_yQTVaqfoWQldj8TDTgD7WM37_FNqKNvF1UdtsP-bzb09PCmcbmbqAa_i3djbh6tCFGWkbTv0CZji_7I/s1600/DSC01326nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ7PRTTTs74HjeDIBl1D21Rq9AxPJSuPzXeUQNOJo5oVBxPV4awC1BKKaTF8D_yQTVaqfoWQldj8TDTgD7WM37_FNqKNvF1UdtsP-bzb09PCmcbmbqAa_i3djbh6tCFGWkbTv0CZji_7I/s320/DSC01326nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6bQtFnZ8MiiVJDObCExKIYoZAOiVggP8Rko3dSvgfzneEpj9iShyAjtJju0a9MpqxbpM4LLIE8K8vEQsFK2ufO-7IdqojpdzkjM8OzfEfXLRE6fDCvHm3VW8_59wAwvjOfgtV81ZOCY/s1600/DSC01330nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6bQtFnZ8MiiVJDObCExKIYoZAOiVggP8Rko3dSvgfzneEpj9iShyAjtJju0a9MpqxbpM4LLIE8K8vEQsFK2ufO-7IdqojpdzkjM8OzfEfXLRE6fDCvHm3VW8_59wAwvjOfgtV81ZOCY/s320/DSC01330nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT-Nqh0I2BZYhbjE6cRzqmM8DKSOEo8zNl9crz1OwXBoOBEZdpVjvvOqCCgXLbfZ6CMKSW9k031k-V67qfXhgz5hdiVGhJ89JruhRZcxWdrjJ-HIgL68UeyJCMhFOx5thgmPEGUkLrKZw/s1600/DSC01335nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT-Nqh0I2BZYhbjE6cRzqmM8DKSOEo8zNl9crz1OwXBoOBEZdpVjvvOqCCgXLbfZ6CMKSW9k031k-V67qfXhgz5hdiVGhJ89JruhRZcxWdrjJ-HIgL68UeyJCMhFOx5thgmPEGUkLrKZw/s320/DSC01335nnn.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">I was hoping that by the end of the weekend I would have cafe au lait coloured skin (admittedly with extra lait) to complete my Cambodian conversion, but Jen said Strawberry Nesquik was the best I could hope for. The following photo is of the two pinkest men on the beach.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uvaKq8XT3B91ydo-qwitz9QlUsxbWBZOyE0k_EgiW6qn55qdA2kkuWoU_Pd6D1b1OFBqeOT5xvDzqUS7Yj1r48QAJKJOLQBl5WMroyFipIgVuDWHP4LJBOYvAtXKYtgcOamiOr6wS3s/s1600/Jen+uploads22-04-11+071nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6uvaKq8XT3B91ydo-qwitz9QlUsxbWBZOyE0k_EgiW6qn55qdA2kkuWoU_Pd6D1b1OFBqeOT5xvDzqUS7Yj1r48QAJKJOLQBl5WMroyFipIgVuDWHP4LJBOYvAtXKYtgcOamiOr6wS3s/s320/Jen+uploads22-04-11+071nnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">On Saturday Ingran and some of his friends from London arrived, and the following morning Dave and Helen turned up too, so it was nice to see them although we had to leave a few hours later. We had a night in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> on the way back, taking Jen and Rachel to DJ Club which was good fun as always.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGTc574koZs7C17ty0csYr1r1yxj2cM-MXDE01zMdStWmr2JzXnSnMAmH9_lopjZFNP5bT5JY325WmTAXpk0Cl4xC2eY3-WdRF_lj7r4LI7die2SP8vO-1cEJPuDIWylTm5Kbz6UOgNE/s1600/DSC01338nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGTc574koZs7C17ty0csYr1r1yxj2cM-MXDE01zMdStWmr2JzXnSnMAmH9_lopjZFNP5bT5JY325WmTAXpk0Cl4xC2eY3-WdRF_lj7r4LI7die2SP8vO-1cEJPuDIWylTm5Kbz6UOgNE/s320/DSC01338nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfQJWJxiM-XXkOGyTxvpmAa5AQCzz3ebkL_iwr81CJ1Ek9Rmqx0ubxo_7VMdAcH_VSkzOT7hOBXJB9baRL3Wz7MT_RR2kyniSD9yiOm4zCU8mBsM7Yta05pu37pRhFLREIS1L4Mva-YE/s1600/DSC01346nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjfQJWJxiM-XXkOGyTxvpmAa5AQCzz3ebkL_iwr81CJ1Ek9Rmqx0ubxo_7VMdAcH_VSkzOT7hOBXJB9baRL3Wz7MT_RR2kyniSD9yiOm4zCU8mBsM7Yta05pu37pRhFLREIS1L4Mva-YE/s320/DSC01346nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-78040441667330204322011-04-08T12:24:00.000+07:002011-04-08T12:24:55.301+07:00Coming soon on DVD...<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Since my last blog entry, I’ve become something of a TV star. The DVD of Tak and Eng’s wedding has been released and, having confused the camera with the video camera during most of the official photos, I think I stole the show. Furthermore, I recently starred in Come Dine With Me Cambodia, filmed on location in the VSO Programme Office, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. As you can see, I’m becoming something of a cult figure among the Cambodian youth:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5x9OgEAlvvKk3t9Rc1az_VdDUPp2o454bMSlLNhu2PO_GHuMK_Yt-a6MVDaqEJyjuHrVwTVIJaQMGwlKNrsrtu35rEWfzj1CV74D0eRDobKEe4eF_OZMdBuDj8uSluzIBwxrsEKHlcl0/s1600/DSC01288nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5x9OgEAlvvKk3t9Rc1az_VdDUPp2o454bMSlLNhu2PO_GHuMK_Yt-a6MVDaqEJyjuHrVwTVIJaQMGwlKNrsrtu35rEWfzj1CV74D0eRDobKEe4eF_OZMdBuDj8uSluzIBwxrsEKHlcl0/s320/DSC01288nnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>A young boy meets his hero</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">Please overlook the terror in the boy’s eyes, and Tak’s firm grip preventing attempts at escape; I think he was just overwhelmed by the experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Come Dine With Me was Ingran’s idea as the group we had arrived with in September were back in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> for a week of language training. We cooked in pairs over four nights, although Ingran made the mistake of putting myself and him first – on the Monday we set the bar fairly high and were subsequently overtaken by everybody else. It was devastating to feel the prize money of 1000 riel (approximately 15p) slipping away, but at least we got good food. The filming was lots of fun and everybody was extremely rude and offensive, so I’m looking forward to the DVD. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It was a busy week in the end as Sam and I were also editing the volunteer magazine. It’s basically modelled on the Weekend section from Saturday’s Guardian, and so the three spelling mistakes I’ve noticed since it was printed were obviously deliberate, included to add authenticity. I was particularly galled by the typo in the recipe section – where Hannah’s Spanish meatballs recipe for albóndigas was misspelled as albóndingas – as Spanish is a language I have a degree in! Overall, though, I think we’re happy with how it turned out. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Since then Tim and Jen have visited which was great. They were the first visitors I’ve had and it made me feel very Cambodian to be thinking things like, ‘I must buy toilet paper – the foreigners are coming!’ (Cambodians use a water hose.) It also made me realise that many aspects of my daily routine, which now feel perfectly normal, are very different from my life before. Breakfast, for example, is a bowl of super noodles and a cup of Yorkshire tea; lunch is at 11am; drinking – sorry, I mean dinner – starts any time after 5pm, which it hasn’t done since we were children and our family mealtimes were scheduled to avoid clashing with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neighbours</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqe2G1WHxCjRDeXWgtJvjAp-eEEQAwy4DwlSGEbOqWHuS5T5F_vLL7-WlgegidwiaRfot2-u_RMnOilWsr6AFoOCaZuwCQhEOvjQBpY9ezc_zt7txDAQeInM9MYfdBhtFcPs9GofBli3o/s1600/IMG_20110330_151106nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqe2G1WHxCjRDeXWgtJvjAp-eEEQAwy4DwlSGEbOqWHuS5T5F_vLL7-WlgegidwiaRfot2-u_RMnOilWsr6AFoOCaZuwCQhEOvjQBpY9ezc_zt7txDAQeInM9MYfdBhtFcPs9GofBli3o/s320/IMG_20110330_151106nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Anyway, they came to Mondulkiri for a few days and had a barbecue, a bit of waterfall visiting and general hanging out, before the three of us went to Siem Reap for the weekend. This is the home of Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious building and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">’s national symbol, and it was very impressive, in its scale as much as anything else. We arrived at </span><st1:time hour="5" minute="30"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">5.30am</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> to watch the sunrise, and then visited Angkor Wat and some of the other temples. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvQGc48g9do-b0EoP9mz2WWxBiAUUZ2c-qkwv0l4o5DZWY5zvH4k8f-a5aXZGOcJGN_No_Sse08VwJz3aY228Oaz4tsTgISiUiJ2SKias3SA1D-BZCMfoaduMScmMFDESOACoQB4NSXk/s1600/DSC01269nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvQGc48g9do-b0EoP9mz2WWxBiAUUZ2c-qkwv0l4o5DZWY5zvH4k8f-a5aXZGOcJGN_No_Sse08VwJz3aY228Oaz4tsTgISiUiJ2SKias3SA1D-BZCMfoaduMScmMFDESOACoQB4NSXk/s320/DSC01269nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">I was a bit worried about food as Siem Reap is a tourist hotspot and I thought we were going to get ripped off, but it really helps to be able to speak Khmer – people immediately realise you’ve spent some time in Cambodia and know the price of everything. We also found a great all you can eat barbecue on the first night, so we ate until we felt sick, then had a break and carried on. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">They went to the beach after that and I began the long two-day journey back to Mondulkiri, where work has been very quiet as all of the schools are closed. Khmer New Year is next week and schools are likely to stay closed for about three weeks. Our plan for the new year is to go to the beach where we should hopefully meet up with Rachel, who I think is in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Thailand</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, so that will be good. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It is also the last month or so of the dry season, and so there’s been a flurry of weddings and other parties. Last night we went to a house warming party in Bousra, about an hour from Sen Monorom, which was as grand as a wedding. We didn’t see the person who had invited us, and barely knew anybody else: when we noticed that other guests had red invitations while ours were white, we wondered whether we’d stumbled across the wrong party. We never really cleared that up, but as long as you pay your $10 I don’t think it really matters. The party was lots of fun, whatever it was.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-62021044237606149702011-03-20T09:51:00.003+07:002011-03-21T21:33:25.837+07:00February and March<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s been a busy few weeks since my last entry. I’ve entered my 27th year, attended two funerals, had lots of VSO meetings, supported two school open days and hit a cow (on my motorbike, not with my fists). I’ve also found out that ménage à trois means more than just living together, so to clear up any confusion caused by my last blog, I’d like to clarify that, while Tak and I share almost everything, we don’t share his wife. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When we came back from Phnom Penh after the wedding, our landlady’s mother had died. She was old and had been sick for a long time, and perhaps because of this, or perhaps because of Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation, the funeral didn’t seem to be a sad affair. It took place seven days after her death and was an occasion to wish her well as she left this world, with another funeral after a hundred days to bless her new life. Everybody wore white and when we arrived we went to give our offering to one of the monks – rice, sugar, incense, candles, condensed milk and tea. These are considered the essentials for her on her journey out of this world, although after the funeral they go to the monks, who have no income and survive on donations from people. We then ate some food and left about half an hour later. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Much worse was the death of Tak’s older sister, which happened two weeks ago, as she was only 40 and died in pretty awful circumstances. This isn’t really the place to write about it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Work has been very busy as VSO needs to finish all of its funded activities by the end of the financial year on 31st March. Tak, Jeltje and I worked together to help two schools – Pu Trom Tmei and Sreiee – organise community open days to celebrate the new libraries that they’ve recently set up. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLdXAn6BYYds-K-X9OM6S74aJyvkI3y_N4bLhFOdMAAY7siP1VnQYX3pjitomFH_ZrV-tb2CfZhlC4Uzn-4bqHbJ49HS_kyj3wxbqiDvHp1aH5OxSY2U2DWFK6l0dMd5ZEfPA6qB9LKg/s1600/DSC01075nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLdXAn6BYYds-K-X9OM6S74aJyvkI3y_N4bLhFOdMAAY7siP1VnQYX3pjitomFH_ZrV-tb2CfZhlC4Uzn-4bqHbJ49HS_kyj3wxbqiDvHp1aH5OxSY2U2DWFK6l0dMd5ZEfPA6qB9LKg/s320/DSC01075nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">The new library at Sreiee</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">They both followed a similar format: a welcome from the school director, activities from students such as talking about their favourite books, plays and songs and reading aloud, speeches from community leaders and staff from the Provincial Office of Education, a ceremony to bless the new buildings, and a communal meal. Both communities are predominantly Punong (Mondulkiri’s largest indigenous group) and so the ceremonies were traditional Punong ceremonies, involving lots of jar wine which was delicious. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRgiSKrKLlMxZ5Yn3bNIGGXBHdD7m0_LFTiTHJ_ALyWJHfhebHHsIvdSzExVTeC4j2lb6F-xpBMB8lV-SGV74YhKtNGCXROotzmRTNx1r4q8bigjtEfoOWrTdReBEVPbuRlKU5sYAq7Y/s1600/DSC01096nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRgiSKrKLlMxZ5Yn3bNIGGXBHdD7m0_LFTiTHJ_ALyWJHfhebHHsIvdSzExVTeC4j2lb6F-xpBMB8lV-SGV74YhKtNGCXROotzmRTNx1r4q8bigjtEfoOWrTdReBEVPbuRlKU5sYAq7Y/s320/DSC01096nnn.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As for the food, VSO provided a pig but community members donated everything else and organised the cooking, as we wanted the school to feel that they could organise similar events in the future without help from VSO or any other NGO. Both events were successful and well-attended, and we were pleased that staff from our office came too to show their support for the school and also to see the work that we’ve been doing. Finally, while I’m aware that almost every paragraph of my blog ends in this way, we finished by drinking a lot of jar wine. </span><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The following day was my birthday. Having mentioned it to Tak the day before (before the jar wine), I thought he might at least have remembered to wish me well. He didn’t, and even Jeltje only produced a cupcake instead of the birthday cake she’d promised. As the day went on I did wonder whether they were planning something, but it seemed not. I became a bit suspicious when Tak wasn’t in the office in the afternoon and Jeltje didn’t seem to know where he was (she doesn’t normally let him out without a good excuse!), but then she said something about helping his father, which was very plausible as it was the week of his sister’s funeral. Finally, at 5pm, I nearly asked Jeltje if she was going for a drink later but felt too pathetic to be fishing for an invite on my own birthday, so I went home alone. All day it had felt like a soap opera (a shit one, like Hollyoaks) and I still wasn’t sure what the ending would be.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Later, Eng said we were all eating out, and I assumed it was at Tak’s father’s to help with the funeral arrangements, and it was only when Tak came back to pick us up and, crucially, get the bottle opener (a sure sign of red wine, not Tak’s dad’s tipple of choice) that I thought they were up to something. It was a surprise party at Jeltje’s house, and it was lovely to see so many people there. I’ve never had a surprise party before and it is really nice, but organisers should be aware that it makes people feel very sorry for themselves for most of the day!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Since then a new volunteer has arrived from Belfast. He’s very nice and is living two doors away (all six of us – me, Tak, Neil, Daniel, Jeltje and To – now live within a few hundred metres of each other on the same street). We also had a visit from VSO in Phnom Penh to see how we’re doing, and that seemed to go well. It was lucky that this happened just after the open days, so the people from the POE who attended the meeting had a better idea of the work we’ve done. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m now in Phnom Penh about to start the second bout of language training which I’m looking forward to, although I’m annoyed that I’ve slipped down the rankings a bit as other people have improved their Khmer at a much faster rate than me. I am, however, learning the alphabet with the help of a first words book designed for Cambodian children, and I can write fork, spoon, shampoo, mother, tree, cat etc. Tak is here too although he has chicken pox (‘ot swai’ in Khmer, which sounds a lot like ‘not a mango’) and is feeling very sorry for himself. I’ve been playing chief nurse – I’m not sure why as he’s staying with his mum who is an actual nurse – but Eng is coming today so my duties are over.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Finally, my pigeon hole is overflowing with parcels which I’m going to open right now - thank you!</span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-23869213804133164102011-02-25T15:53:00.002+07:002011-02-25T15:59:16.302+07:00The wedding<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Reader, he married her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixV1sx5SVrNbtUcmqV-U5OEJh27NRee2tllN-oUoRJNR8GlAQ3aH0Xfq03uhre-5XbY2lQOLcSBcbWDo9xU3P7lJrvpP723F6pOaDc1K7pucJJO1KWPjFwWls_hgchrvPeifjdIARW0lc/s1600/DSC03821nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixV1sx5SVrNbtUcmqV-U5OEJh27NRee2tllN-oUoRJNR8GlAQ3aH0Xfq03uhre-5XbY2lQOLcSBcbWDo9xU3P7lJrvpP723F6pOaDc1K7pucJJO1KWPjFwWls_hgchrvPeifjdIARW0lc/s320/DSC03821nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That’s the gist of what happened last week. However, Cambodian weddings are extravagant and colourful affairs (very colourful, in fact), so for those who are interested, here’s the full account of Tak and Eng’s wedding. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">To begin at the beginning, or rather, with me, about two months ago Tak announced that on the wedding day I would be the groom. I was a bit taken aback by this because I didn’t know his girlfriend very well, but it turned out he’d got mixed up and meant the best man. In Cambodia there are three best men and traditionally they should be unmarried and have both parents still alive. Many of Tak’s close friends are married already so he had a pretty empty barrel to scrape from. Still, I felt very honoured to be asked along with two of his cousins, Sinny and Lucky. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Incidentally, the Khmer word for best men is <i>neak komdor</i>, which sounds dangerously close to <i>kdor</i>, the word for penis, so I didn’t tell anybody who I was in case I accidentally told them I was Tak’s penis man. Fortunately, my bright orange and pink silk clothes were a bit of a giveaway. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We left Phnom Penh on Sunday morning and arrived at Eng’s family’s house in rural Kampong Cham province, where the wedding would take place on the Tuesday. The family and their neighbours were busy with preparations – decorating the house, beginning the cooking, shopping, setting up the marquis and stage – and it was interesting to see everything from behind the scenes. We also had a lovely swim in the nearby Mekong. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVN4D1EM8Uahg0VZPmF9DYc6VxCYDq2oS9tqY4O9iUTtCtNUIrvj7zx9aQgI_MSOz_AoU77Jd-mbDnGcR1Q7D87kHrTK1pe3eQwmoygc8XZiAqcywILLqmtVyVHLi7MoYgyuCYiQGmKEw/s1600/DSC00994nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVN4D1EM8Uahg0VZPmF9DYc6VxCYDq2oS9tqY4O9iUTtCtNUIrvj7zx9aQgI_MSOz_AoU77Jd-mbDnGcR1Q7D87kHrTK1pe3eQwmoygc8XZiAqcywILLqmtVyVHLi7MoYgyuCYiQGmKEw/s320/DSC00994nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The wedding began at around 5pm on the Monday evening, with a ceremony in which four monks blessed the couple. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvqfJMk0rWOoECUiAoSeJyk0p1NoKdXD9yZ4ObU6WJAeee3WhrLznz-6jxX-V-MbGUKJ3xG1dDfmqO6onNNPP0cGWF0kGQAtBqAfs_RqrnAPVYQSsffQkA55D075rHbeR9-huxDJEYOI/s1600/DSC03788nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdvqfJMk0rWOoECUiAoSeJyk0p1NoKdXD9yZ4ObU6WJAeee3WhrLznz-6jxX-V-MbGUKJ3xG1dDfmqO6onNNPP0cGWF0kGQAtBqAfs_RqrnAPVYQSsffQkA55D075rHbeR9-huxDJEYOI/s320/DSC03788nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Only the bride and groom were dressed up for this; the rest of us were wearing ordinary clothes, and after about half an hour of chanting it was over. Monday evening was a quiet affair as we all had to wake up early the next day, so after a few beers with Tak’s family (most of whom came on Monday as they were coming from far away), we went to bed about 9pm. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvSW4s6tLqmM11KbQgcavf1GY7qK9qyo-cvvZACQHHZwksqJwu70Gd2qbZZA8XUUgviJZGNbluK81ao40ixvYeo0yiAgQucmeXLCPYvVvyBDzBPOnoUE1YtkOnkv18O6yFnITnctr3p7k/s1600/DSC03791nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvSW4s6tLqmM11KbQgcavf1GY7qK9qyo-cvvZACQHHZwksqJwu70Gd2qbZZA8XUUgviJZGNbluK81ao40ixvYeo0yiAgQucmeXLCPYvVvyBDzBPOnoUE1YtkOnkv18O6yFnITnctr3p7k/s320/DSC03791nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tak and his penis men on the night before the wedding</span>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Tak waltzed into the house saying he would be sleeping with Eng, and about three minutes later was frogmarched out by Eng's mother, sheepishly joining me, Lucky and Sinny outside on the veranda. Long after we went to sleep, Eng and her family were still preparing the hundreds of plates of fruit and presents which would be used for the procession the following morning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The bride and bridesmaids (including Jeltje, who stepped in when one of Eng’s friends dropped out) were awake from about 3.30 to begin the hair, make-up and dress preparations and at 5am we were woken up too. I also had a bit of a disastrous hair styling, but it faded into insignificance when our costumes appeared. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU8m3n5GQOqbYh13vAImPUoGM2UAbX4M5rJdQZhEC3zeyvW9dAnn5l-YmfBj2zUVl9nHvOBM7xF08e1KNxCthl3dNWq6RA69mh6LEf50_Txj23Lz5ks1Jie43NXLw4exP98e_YSCUaOwY/s1600/DSC01023nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU8m3n5GQOqbYh13vAImPUoGM2UAbX4M5rJdQZhEC3zeyvW9dAnn5l-YmfBj2zUVl9nHvOBM7xF08e1KNxCthl3dNWq6RA69mh6LEf50_Txj23Lz5ks1Jie43NXLw4exP98e_YSCUaOwY/s320/DSC01023nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At around 7am we went downstairs, Tak first, then Sinny and Lucky carrying a gold umbrella each and me carrying a bouquet of flowers. When everyone started laughing I assumed it was because of the bright pink clothes, but it turned out the bouquet is supposed to be carried by the groom, as the three of them knew only too well. I wasn’t amused. Anyway, we walked about a hundred metres from the house, and all of the wedding guests who weren’t part of Eng’s family came and lined up behind us, each carrying a plate of fruit. Accompanied by music, we processed towards the house where we offered our gifts, in a ceremony that serves to underline the economic nature of traditional Cambodian weddings. (The groom pays the $3000 cost of the wedding, and although guests pay around $10 each, this money goes to the girl’s family, so they end up making a handsome profit from the sale of their daughter.) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Following this we all ate breakfast and then there were further ceremonies involving the bride and groom’s families offering each other gifts. We were also changed into orange clothes ready for the hair-cutting ceremony which took place at about 11am. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzOTksDSaVU92K1ItMnWYAnFTKl0QSit6giEyCnIKYClA3Kj3POua1DnboEJ299z515jNjboJxS4oqP1qSaVfW_N-oy62TjOgbHR5OPIsEOvuceZn47pOmpFaPUwY1fcJgWen1IFDvEg/s1600/DSC03800nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxzOTksDSaVU92K1ItMnWYAnFTKl0QSit6giEyCnIKYClA3Kj3POua1DnboEJ299z515jNjboJxS4oqP1qSaVfW_N-oy62TjOgbHR5OPIsEOvuceZn47pOmpFaPUwY1fcJgWen1IFDvEg/s320/DSC03800nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV6mMOvB9vDawWoETBOkHFPUuOX3OuBIxW976vUNf2_Azbw7bHwMxMcfInAeuw7W0z4LAmNlMmeDKrUdDLGvzC-UDtPccfEzhLjOJVTSHfI-IZVWPMSml4PeOJeialxZWpf0CRBDOyW0/s1600/DSC01034nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigV6mMOvB9vDawWoETBOkHFPUuOX3OuBIxW976vUNf2_Azbw7bHwMxMcfInAeuw7W0z4LAmNlMmeDKrUdDLGvzC-UDtPccfEzhLjOJVTSHfI-IZVWPMSml4PeOJeialxZWpf0CRBDOyW0/s320/DSC01034nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This was downstairs and, after listening to some monks chanting again, the wedding party (the couple, best men and bridesmaids) sat on chairs in a line while two people began enacting a comic play. I found it difficult to understand and soon switched off, and so I was horrified when the microphone began working its way towards me and I was made to get up on stage with them. I had no real idea what was going on, but I think the gist of it was that the man was trying to pay me to marry the woman, and my role was to say no, which I think I managed to do. Anyway, everyone laughed a lot and I was soon allowed to sit down again. After this there were photos of family members pretending to cut the bride and groom’s hair, symbolising a shared future that begins growing from the same point. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Before lunch, we also went down towards the village to pay respects to someone’s ancestors (not sure whose). This took place just outside a school, so lots of the children came out to watch. While Tak was happily boasting about all the attention he was getting, it was pretty obvious that none of them were looking at him but were all staring at me – more than anywhere I’ve been in Cambodia so far, this is the place where people seem totally unaccustomed to seeing foreigners. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Lunchtime offered an opportunity to change clothes and go the toilet (I hadn’t been able to do that in the apsara trousers), and we had one more ceremony to attend before we could have a break – the washing of the feet ceremony. Tak put on a suit that made him look like a king, and Sinny and I stood behind him while Eng bent down and sprayed liquid soap on his feet, presumably to symbolise wifely obedience. No comment on that one.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We had an hour or so to rest (although Tak and Eng continued non-stop with various photos and ceremonies) before putting on a bright blue suit to go downstairs and greet the guests as they arrived. </span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8RnUbE0XZ8RRoSF2iwhSCHpsvzYCw8FWjrypz8-jJMZ21l3IoghwJTmd_6C2COBQSYp8vbLN4czWakiQ0B9p7cyqrIVJcK0KcFKG1Ru1n-clWjT2OOv4bLZwRZdWxI3j4_3WywpzSeSA/s1600/DSC03805nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8RnUbE0XZ8RRoSF2iwhSCHpsvzYCw8FWjrypz8-jJMZ21l3IoghwJTmd_6C2COBQSYp8vbLN4czWakiQ0B9p7cyqrIVJcK0KcFKG1Ru1n-clWjT2OOv4bLZwRZdWxI3j4_3WywpzSeSA/s320/DSC03805nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This was good fun for about an hour, then really hot and tiring for the following two hours as we could see everyone else eating and drinking. Interestingly, many of the villagers were leaving by 4 or 5pm, despite going to huge amounts of effort with their wedding costumes and hair. All in all, there were over 600 people, although not all at the same time as they came and left at different times. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">At about 6.30 we were finished and could start on the beer, which flowed very fast as lots of people wanted to drink with the foreigners. I thought the ceremonies were over but there was one more to go – a Western-influenced cutting of the cake ceremony. We wore white suits (I felt like I was in a boyband) and I took a few photos as we were waiting for it to start.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LMvoDzjUuUlzElc95UUCkAr_m8kXQpUEHDJLua64QDgw68GOPxmyeAH1TBJUR4Ptl7gK0oEvvR7rUs85Xz3ackA5bLerchS_OA1Cze5sA-7npAxna-3hrNfN53im1zvrHbqQKJmlHTc/s1600/DSC01048nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9LMvoDzjUuUlzElc95UUCkAr_m8kXQpUEHDJLua64QDgw68GOPxmyeAH1TBJUR4Ptl7gK0oEvvR7rUs85Xz3ackA5bLerchS_OA1Cze5sA-7npAxna-3hrNfN53im1zvrHbqQKJmlHTc/s320/DSC01048nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Rw9wC2CbEm23DjuFeHb5gpFrEAg0-DhTa0W0QvrLFS-U0CSJjX93fm81UPSufpNMGWL8F6qZ0nG11IbzklQkf7wqb4np5TzIszg24LUViK1Ofxk9kESFE_79WHrApsOYQKXLvWAiHxY/s1600/DSC01045nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Rw9wC2CbEm23DjuFeHb5gpFrEAg0-DhTa0W0QvrLFS-U0CSJjX93fm81UPSufpNMGWL8F6qZ0nG11IbzklQkf7wqb4np5TzIszg24LUViK1Ofxk9kESFE_79WHrApsOYQKXLvWAiHxY/s320/DSC01045nnn.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Downstairs, we walked behind the bride and groom as they were covered in confetti. Because by this stage people were a bit drunk, this ceremony was more relaxed and good fun. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5m-g_jb51h2reemnbldvoGYEgdnIxazIyMjsfSYhUgg-sdvkL_j8owYnN-9M3L_Ol8svRNA8rOfYWm2N8g2XE2gwxYrOssQmmhL4fuUc7pvd4ItcCDlN4q2Uxw-mQ9Tpb5NQKm9zj3Lo/s1600/DSC03815nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5m-g_jb51h2reemnbldvoGYEgdnIxazIyMjsfSYhUgg-sdvkL_j8owYnN-9M3L_Ol8svRNA8rOfYWm2N8g2XE2gwxYrOssQmmhL4fuUc7pvd4ItcCDlN4q2Uxw-mQ9Tpb5NQKm9zj3Lo/s320/DSC03815nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Less fun was the whisky which followed and which meant I got very drunk very quickly. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKPyUk3_3_dAxbuy49q933AjB7NKr5VK-7alzb9lyWusoYYhLuk0quEeFUn4RPFBoZVNd_pKSjpw8wHRRjHGel0J0b-HH2dkwY2jAbeZjjfziuVE8P9LLkuG8JfaaFLPIKMEKyH7fgpg/s1600/DSC03825nnn.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIKPyUk3_3_dAxbuy49q933AjB7NKr5VK-7alzb9lyWusoYYhLuk0quEeFUn4RPFBoZVNd_pKSjpw8wHRRjHGel0J0b-HH2dkwY2jAbeZjjfziuVE8P9LLkuG8JfaaFLPIKMEKyH7fgpg/s320/DSC03825nnn.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I still managed to do some Khmer dancing which always impresses people (Cambodians don’t seem to realize that their traditional dance is the easiest in the world – you just walk around a table and move your wrists a bit). And then I did a little bit of being sick, which doesn’t impress anyone. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">All in all it was a great experience to be so closely involved in and I felt very honoured that Tak had asked me. The next chapter will involve the ménage à trois that is awaiting us when we go back to Mondulkiri tomorrow as, until Tak and Eng manage to build their house, it’ll be just the three of us... </span><span style="font-family: "Lucida Bright";"></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-59486094020445868072011-02-07T17:47:00.000+07:002011-02-07T17:47:34.983+07:00Family times<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Last weekend we took Tak’s mum home to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, after an interesting month living all together. She is a bit like a radio with the off button broken, and at times she seems to pick up different stations at once as she drifts between Khmer and French with no warning of the signal change. Still, I have enjoyed listening and have learnt a lot – she’s like Radio </span><st1:metricconverter productid="4, a"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">4, a</span></st1:metricconverter><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> shopping channel and a Cambodian National Party spokesperson all in one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Firstly, I’ve learnt that I don’t know how to buy tomatoes, green peppers or mushrooms. Every shopping trip was followed by an examination of my purchases, with a scolding for anything that looked like it might be expensive or Vietnamese. She also taught me a lot about cabbage, which was one of her favourite subjects that she returned to at least daily. And she told me that red hair wasn’t good, but that she would forgive me because I was foreign and couldn’t help it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Washing my clothes was a trial, as I do everything I’m not supposed to do - using the kitchen rather than the bathroom, heating up water, using too much washing powder, doing it myself when I ought to have a wife to do it for me. I think I managed to win her over on the washing up though, as she nodded approvingly at my technique. Phew.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Seriously, though, it was very nice to feel part of a Cambodian family and it felt quite authentic – Tak got infuriated and spent lots of the time avoiding her, leaving us plenty of opportunities to continue talking about cabbage. At other times they would both come home in good spirits and we would talk and have a drink which was lovely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is a great person and actually probably one of the most independent Cambodian women I’ve met: she is separated from her husband, drinks alcohol (most women don’t), sits with Tak’s friends when they come round (rather than retreating to the kitchen as other women do), and speaks her mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, coming back from a visit to Tak’s cousin, she said she hadn’t eaten the food there because she didn’t like the thought of me</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"> not eating there too. I was very moved by this kind thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPWKXZf_Vznu7N5h9bbK-ReDjMsc7rrNcCDSETkJPaeDPEG64E56o4qHmzKIhnLifZuO3APOJU86UEopZYn34zzDGx2D4PNOGGmlhWbxCQICNqyn_I-LQtuWQi-E1_2RSwSIJ_6SwuuSI/s1600/DSC00887nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPWKXZf_Vznu7N5h9bbK-ReDjMsc7rrNcCDSETkJPaeDPEG64E56o4qHmzKIhnLifZuO3APOJU86UEopZYn34zzDGx2D4PNOGGmlhWbxCQICNqyn_I-LQtuWQi-E1_2RSwSIJ_6SwuuSI/s320/DSC00887nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Back at work, things are getting exciting. I’ve been to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> twice recently to buy children’s books to support library projects at three primary schools. Visiting one of them today for a meeting about something else, it was great to see a group of children spending their breaktime reading. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoUA80UmulWkITFj1FTRG6NW5J-bvpiSmFHi-cF1Ttr6nJs6I0i_qEDEDLyqjfLSxVFSg8pe3UZJVzlrsEcXI8Pg376Ls5sPHq92nKNRRdGoLq2uUm0mB4DKTuK6e0ZvRRq71pPQLZYp8/s1600/DSC00946nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoUA80UmulWkITFj1FTRG6NW5J-bvpiSmFHi-cF1Ttr6nJs6I0i_qEDEDLyqjfLSxVFSg8pe3UZJVzlrsEcXI8Pg376Ls5sPHq92nKNRRdGoLq2uUm0mB4DKTuK6e0ZvRRq71pPQLZYp8/s320/DSC00946nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphDq420Qpgf4B4vlUYaueSZvkmbimJO2Avf9yxnsmG6tE3VoRv4SH56GIvc-2NkTzvlxeoy679pf1eTt3I8gYbnT2bESDTOTNIIsar3GEbFBhE71th1K97i4OHxqRKAGVA6yiaPJ8Naw/s1600/DSC00947nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjphDq420Qpgf4B4vlUYaueSZvkmbimJO2Avf9yxnsmG6tE3VoRv4SH56GIvc-2NkTzvlxeoy679pf1eTt3I8gYbnT2bESDTOTNIIsar3GEbFBhE71th1K97i4OHxqRKAGVA6yiaPJ8Naw/s320/DSC00947nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Once the libraries are set up, Jeltje and I are encouraging the schools to organise open days for families and community members to come to the school, discuss their children’s progress with the teachers, watch children perform something related to their learning, and cook a communal meal. If they work well, they will engage the community in their school, provide an opportunity to celebrate the children’s learning and promote the use of the library among the children as well as the community. And if they don’t work well, at least there’ll be some food. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-76120285391150407482011-01-23T13:59:00.001+07:002011-01-23T21:19:46.956+07:00Bousra waterfall<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mondulkiri’s biggest tourist attraction is Bousra waterfall, a massive double-drop waterfall which is so famous it’s inspired a song, although being a Cambodian song, it’s probably not very good. On Saturday I finally got round to seeing it – Jeltje’s dad is visiting at the moment, so that was a good excuse for Jeltje to talk her friend Somnang into driving us there. There were six of us altogether: Somnang, Jeltje and her dad, me, Tak and his mum. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We put ourselves in charge of catering, which was interesting. Tak’s mum and I are currently engaged in a month-long battle for rights to the kitchen (I’m trying to do my bit for the liberation of Cambodian women, but she says I don’t know how to chop tomatoes), and while Tak is normally happy to leave us to it, barbecuing meat is his forté. At 6.30 he came back from the market with a huge 1.7kg cut of beef, some carrots, cucumber and barbecue skewers, and after several hours of battle, we were on the road just after </span><st1:time hour="8" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">8am</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Unlike the other waterfalls I’ve been to so far, Bousra has clearly been developed as a tourist site, with a carpark, lots of souvenir stalls and people renting out picnic mats. The foreigners among us were also asked to fork out $1 to visit the site – many of Cambodia’s tourist attractions charge foreigners but not Cambodians, which I think is quite a good policy in principle although a bit annoying for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Anyway, we set up camp and then went to explore the waterfall. We did things like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6s6_7hZhnFDpGW2P_vWw8LLsXf6TQ5EzNf64mG0npoTnR2-XtbgxJw0BCdKGWXNw4tb4UNQHnxJV9ketIHN65Pc1M_ZzyqakSY8O_7q9ONqsM4Si6uQo7NK-Vw7mV2LhDjzlVVaduaY/s1600/DSC00889nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6s6_7hZhnFDpGW2P_vWw8LLsXf6TQ5EzNf64mG0npoTnR2-XtbgxJw0BCdKGWXNw4tb4UNQHnxJV9ketIHN65Pc1M_ZzyqakSY8O_7q9ONqsM4Si6uQo7NK-Vw7mV2LhDjzlVVaduaY/s320/DSC00889nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">And then we did things like this:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA0sX4R3iavIgg1oKB058meZV06nDtFHkPHqC2D-LT98lUKNb9FEYjVY6GvqV7ET492da0-h2gviMzkxFXYYsUxOOwQKS1_ydHof2yuLeip2-TxE8gtrBiyuTzHw_6l31Z6Q5_FDSqcsA/s1600/DSC00904nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA0sX4R3iavIgg1oKB058meZV06nDtFHkPHqC2D-LT98lUKNb9FEYjVY6GvqV7ET492da0-h2gviMzkxFXYYsUxOOwQKS1_ydHof2yuLeip2-TxE8gtrBiyuTzHw_6l31Z6Q5_FDSqcsA/s320/DSC00904nnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And then we ate food like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYqXiKZwz54ml3EdJF_SSLC4uMXEmmmtIOcigZHsFmcRoRhqJXdUfnelEttQzfthj6OxWmBahNIElzL3u0dLXmWqEaksgjt6Kbe3utR79Sb7-I5goFEJc7FwZo9w1FFgbYjPrrdt1TNnM/s1600/DSC00918nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYqXiKZwz54ml3EdJF_SSLC4uMXEmmmtIOcigZHsFmcRoRhqJXdUfnelEttQzfthj6OxWmBahNIElzL3u0dLXmWqEaksgjt6Kbe3utR79Sb7-I5goFEJc7FwZo9w1FFgbYjPrrdt1TNnM/s320/DSC00918nnn.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And then we took photos of monks doing things like this:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqjX4Gq1KhZP5-tqRrXwLQoQEW1QB4yemG-9hVx5kr1iEaWvDIglWQ3Skxmtw9m8n28rdIFNEDDm0TGCFzngqQXloblretxiNYy59O31NpRKiEUuQudHQPKEsf5W1YCL1K4MvILQt4PM/s1600/DSC00885nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKqjX4Gq1KhZP5-tqRrXwLQoQEW1QB4yemG-9hVx5kr1iEaWvDIglWQ3Skxmtw9m8n28rdIFNEDDm0TGCFzngqQXloblretxiNYy59O31NpRKiEUuQudHQPKEsf5W1YCL1K4MvILQt4PM/s320/DSC00885nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">It was a really good day and nice to spend time with lovely people.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In other news, work is getting very busy as VSO want us to spend the remaining money in the budget before the financial year ends in March. We are currently organising a trip for teachers and students from three schools to visit schools in another province to get some ideas for developing their student councils. As well as that, we are hoping to support three primary schools to set up libraries, which is exciting although will involve a lot of work. One of these schools is Pu Trom Chah, which is also working on a vegetable garden. Last Thursday Tak and I went early to visit the school, and took some photos of the children and teachers working together:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhieCSpxS2JmFkmd1X_0JzShC3aibGadUNuo4p4o_lfp8sPEUhMdbgq2fjAlY0gP-81ytXmeYIeZDcMRYPRV3Q5cgFFXPMplKCVp6K4ud3J_vbeFxW5G8P2EtCxb1p9VL9Zxrwwl4BJoKQ/s1600/DSC00878nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhieCSpxS2JmFkmd1X_0JzShC3aibGadUNuo4p4o_lfp8sPEUhMdbgq2fjAlY0gP-81ytXmeYIeZDcMRYPRV3Q5cgFFXPMplKCVp6K4ud3J_vbeFxW5G8P2EtCxb1p9VL9Zxrwwl4BJoKQ/s320/DSC00878nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguocHVLNLvg4Dx3kFbe68IF2tzAibR2H2RcQ4tiSLc5BXuGIBynEFU6ZgI9Y_Qjyj20LHjhxLFzHAT8IebG8cYocgpsETXMy3KTe66ThME_kWYUD_UN0mJc53DoMaoRnBx9xPmdUdBZh0/s1600/DSC00881nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguocHVLNLvg4Dx3kFbe68IF2tzAibR2H2RcQ4tiSLc5BXuGIBynEFU6ZgI9Y_Qjyj20LHjhxLFzHAT8IebG8cYocgpsETXMy3KTe66ThME_kWYUD_UN0mJc53DoMaoRnBx9xPmdUdBZh0/s320/DSC00881nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoP-oqoL-QkwVIhnSbmDToZ-nGz5nPdG3ZycizTOns37qJLXqKpoRqoehnC60K4d3KQim1DrImXuoeAI8BSpHyNe570jBYUcXJwJJVQWIyMdDbzdupcrTBrf29EQwgOJkbmoLn9ex-mj0/s1600/DSC00884nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoP-oqoL-QkwVIhnSbmDToZ-nGz5nPdG3ZycizTOns37qJLXqKpoRqoehnC60K4d3KQim1DrImXuoeAI8BSpHyNe570jBYUcXJwJJVQWIyMdDbzdupcrTBrf29EQwgOJkbmoLn9ex-mj0/s320/DSC00884nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">And then, before we were asked to roll up our sleeves and get involved, we left. </span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-63215325805889008042011-01-17T19:41:00.002+07:002011-01-25T20:28:45.187+07:00The last few weeks<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This week I have beaten Tak three times in a row at pool, crossed a river on a motorbike and rewired a plug (without any help from the internet and electrocuting myself only once). I think this is the manliest I’ve felt since my last Bruce Springsteen phase circa 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Anyway, after a busy few weekends over Christmas and New Year, work has picked up again and the last week has been quite eventful. On Thursday, Jeltje, Tak and I went to Sraee again, the school in the jungle which is probably my favourite school. This time we went on our motorbikes, sharing two between three as Jeltje’s bike was broken. It was the most difficult driving I’ve done yet but I didn’t fall off and it was very satisfying to ride through a river unaided. My approach to the difficult uphill sections of the road was mostly to shut my eyes and hope for the best, and luckily it seemed to work. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">At the school Jeltje did a lesson observation and then we had a short meeting with the school support committee, which is made up of about seven people – much more impressive than I’ve seen at other schools. We had brought materials to repaint the blackboards so we did that, and it was very nice to see community members, children and school staff all getting involved in some basic school improvements. It was also nice to do a bit of manual labour – I’ve always thought painting and decorating would be my kind of job, mostly because you get to listen to the radio and drink lots of tea. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjebFBvljgjK5-qo8urDNPIr6eQIJ65GsaJobKuqBb0FIiOH3ai6vI-4xe32AwkiQA4MMc2sJN4jEvuGr1slGPdaTU-MBGMVN9eS0-33xPTkK6bH1ERN1rYOWbw57evicO-oma4ftMqrcQ/s1600/DSC00837nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjebFBvljgjK5-qo8urDNPIr6eQIJ65GsaJobKuqBb0FIiOH3ai6vI-4xe32AwkiQA4MMc2sJN4jEvuGr1slGPdaTU-MBGMVN9eS0-33xPTkK6bH1ERN1rYOWbw57evicO-oma4ftMqrcQ/s320/DSC00837nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Not sure what these two brought to the table while the rest of us were working hard...</span></td></tr>
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5oOjUFSbJTEcti-1lBZ2C8af2zQNZ0uSyM-kWZZNgXe3db0jdh5UmVGOuWv8oR3ZI4cM4t87NaPpZhUy2SBXaICbtr2WoWVljCvGKFXRJNQYVwi80ikGL78aXd6jjHkr6vqoIoZy5pw/s1600/DSC00847nnn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5oOjUFSbJTEcti-1lBZ2C8af2zQNZ0uSyM-kWZZNgXe3db0jdh5UmVGOuWv8oR3ZI4cM4t87NaPpZhUy2SBXaICbtr2WoWVljCvGKFXRJNQYVwi80ikGL78aXd6jjHkr6vqoIoZy5pw/s320/DSC00847nnn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">The community are also starting a vegetable garden at the school which will enable them to teach children how to grow vegetables (a useful skill in this very poor village where food scarcity is a real problem), as well as producing goods which can either be used to support the neediest families, or be sold at the market in order to make money for the school to buy resources. It is equally positive that community members and the school are working together on something, as the overall purpose of my role is to help communities become more involved in school and to value education more highly. At Sraee this job is very easy as the school staff and community leaders are very enthusiastic and motivated. This is important because, for my work to be sustainable, I need to be doing as little as possible as it is the community who will be responsible for continuing the developments when VSO eventually stops working here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">After this positive visit, I went to my first Cambodian wedding on Friday. I didn’t know the bride or groom, and barely knew the bride’s father who was the one who invited us (he works at our office). In </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> guests don’t bring presents but pay about $10 as they leave, meaning families tend to make their money back on weddings, so inviting strangers isn’t that unusual. It also makes the families look good to have big lavish weddings and apparently it also looks good to have a few foreigners there. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Anyway, we sat down at a table and, when it had filled up, we were served some tasty food. Each table had a bottle of brandy as well as lots of beer, and a drunk man quite high up in our office came over, said hello, was very friendly in a drunken way, and stole our brandy. Sadly he’s a deputy director, so we couldn’t take it back. Still, we had lots of beer (which I prefer anyway) and then went round saying hello to other people we knew and were inevitably hauled up for some Khmer dancing. It was lots of fun and a good practice run for Tak’s wedding which will be at some point over the next few months. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">On Saturday I was invited to go for a barbecue at a waterfall called Kball Preah, about an hour away by motorbike. It was a beautiful place and, when we arrived, there were a group of kids swimming and playing in the water, all of whom I knew from helping with their English class at the secondary school. Being Cambodian children, they are all very friendly, although strangely they left soon after we arrived, and it wasn’t until about an hour later that I realised they should have been in school as Saturday is a school day. Still, at least they’re doing something exciting when they skive rather than hanging around bus stops and going to McDonalds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Today we’ve been planning our work over the next few months, as VSO’s financial year ends in March and they are keen to spend any remaining money, so we need to organise projects quite quickly. And this afternoon someone at the hospital phoned to ask if I could give blood. I was very glad too, although I regretted having my bicycle rather than motorbike, as I didn’t fancy cycling up the steep hills after giving blood. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I hadn’t been to the hospital before and it was an interesting experience. I am always reluctant to criticise hospital staff because I think it’s a tough job in any country, and I must say I was very impressed with their professionalism and the work I saw given the scarcity of equipment. Before they took my blood my landlady, who is a nurse at the hospital, took me to see the patient who needed it. I had misunderstood and thought she was going to show me round the hospital, and seeing the sick woman wasn’t a pleasant experience. She had been heavily pregnant and had begun haemorrhaging, but as she lived in Koh Nek, a remote district far from Sen Monorom, she had arrived at the hospital too late. When I saw her, the baby was dead inside her and she was bleeding severely. She looked very young and I thought she was a child at first; she was shivering in pain under a blanket, with tissues on her bed soaking up some stray blood which had escaped from her evidently inadequate bandaging. The staff took blood from someone else too and I think they are planning to operate tomorrow. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Sen Monorom is a beautiful and quite wealthy town, a place where some of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">’s rich have their holiday homes, and especially in the first few months of living here, with exciting new experiences every week, it can be easy not to see the real poverty that exists in Mondulkiri. It is, statistically, one of the poorest provinces in one of </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Asia</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">’s poorest countries. It is a province where the nearest hospital can be six hours away, or unreachable in the rainy season; where the nearest decent hospital is in Phnom Penh; where the poor can’t afford to go to hospital anyway; where children don’t go to school because their families can’t feed them if they don’t help with the farm; where many who do go to school sit and do nothing because they don’t have enough money to buy pencils or schoolbooks; where communities see their land taken away from them because they do not have the level of education to fight against illegal land grabbing by large companies; where corruption is so rife that those unable to pay are always disadvantaged. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">I have had a great time here so far and although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, it’s useful sometimes to remember that that’s not what we’re here for. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-30642059041671965962011-01-10T11:58:00.000+07:002011-01-10T11:58:04.929+07:00A weekend in Kratie<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Friday was Cambodian Liberation Day, celebrating the Vietnamese-backed invasion which began on </span><st1:date day="7" month="1" year="1979"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">7<sup>th</sup> January 1979</span></st1:date><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, and which within two weeks had liberated most of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> from the Pol Pot regime. As it was another public holiday, Dave, Ingran and I went to see Gilly and Sam in Kratie. It was the first time the five of us had been together since we finished training, so it was really good to catch up. We also did lots of the touristy things that we hadn’t got round to doing during Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">First of all, on Saturday morning, we took a boat to Koh Trong, a large island in the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mekong</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> river, and hired bikes to cycle round. Gilly works with the school there so she knows the island well. It seems like a really well-organised community – Gilly says, for example, that the islanders have decided that children who want to attend secondary school in Kratie are exempt from boat charges. It was also very beautiful, with clean white sand and empty beaches almost all the way round. We even went swimming, after a Baywatch-style run to the shore which became quite a struggle after about ten minutes when it became clear that the water was a lot further than it looked. It was lovely swimming in the water, though, especially as the beach was completely empty and the water was fresh-water rather than salty. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We cut across the centre of the island on the way back to make it in time for the last boat before lunch, and saw some traditional rural Cambodian scenes. (Tak asked me last week when we were in Kampong Cham whether Cambodia seemed like England fifty years ago; he was a but surprised when I said it’s more like four hundred years ago.) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">After lunch and a siesta, we went out to see the dolphins which are about fifteen kilometres north of Kratie. While the others paid $7 to go out on the boats, I sat on the shore and saw some for free. Even better, three monks came and sat next to me while I was waiting for the others. One was drinking Coke, one was smoking a cigarette, and the third had his orange robe slung below his nipple, so I think these might have been bad boy monks. I texted Gilly and told her to forget about the dolphins and take photos of me next to the monks as the boat came in. As she did so, the nearest monk asked who that strange woman taking photos of us was; I said I didn’t know and left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We then went to see some nearby rapids, a group of islands with fast flowing water and lots of swimming places. We waded across to a sandy bank to leave our stuff there, and had a lovely evening swim. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">All in all it was another nice weekend but it’ll be a while before I go anywhere else as I’ve already spent most of my allowance for January. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-64385718355764665402011-01-05T21:38:00.000+07:002011-01-05T21:38:09.120+07:00Sraee school and New Year<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Happy New Year to everyone. It’s been a very busy week since Christmas. Last Tuesday Jeltje, Tak and I went to visit Sraee, a remote school in the jungle. In the rainy season it is too difficult to get to, but it’s been dry for a few months now and so the paths are passable. We decided to walk rather than go on the motorbikes, Jeltje and I ganging up on Tak who claimed his Cambodian legs were too short to get there, and it was a beautiful walk through the forests. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In the end it didn’t take too long and we probably could have walked there and back in a day, but we’d arranged to stay overnight at the school director’s house. He is a friend of Tak’s and is really nice. His wife also runs the shop, which I think was the source of all the beer that kept appearing. Lots of fun and a really great experience to stay in a remote village overnight. The night sky was the most amazing I’ve ever seen. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I can't remember why, but at some point a tortoise appeared. It is upside-down in the middle of the picture.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And this is the rice field at dawn.</span></td></tr>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;">We also did some work while we were there. The following morning, while Jeltje did a lesson observation, I met the school director and two members of the school support committee, and had a very positive talk. I was impressed, first of all, that they had a school support committee, and they were very interested in getting the community involved in the school, arranging a village meeting for the following day. I think that their isolation means that the village has to be self-sufficient, and so the community are more cohesive and perhaps better at supporting their school than other villages here. Anyway, I left feeling very positive about the school (which is extremely poor, with eight kids on benches designed for two and very few resources), and we’ve arranged to go back next week.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">After a busy Thursday of workshops and meetings, Tak and I left at </span><st1:time hour="5" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">5am</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> on Friday morning for </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. We were going by motorbike, and it was absolutely freezing for the first hour before dawn, but it was great to be driving along empty roads as the sun rose. It was a long drive (I think it’s nearly 500km), but I really enjoyed it: having left early we could stop whenever we felt like it and driving a motorbike is lots of fun. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Breakfast at Kaev Seima, about an hour from Sen Monorom.</span></td></tr>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We got there around 1.30 and I met Ingran and wandered around Phnom Penh. We had a drink at the VSO office before going to meet Tak and some of his friends at his mum’s house at around </span><st1:time hour="18" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">6pm</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. I don’t quite know how we managed to drink so much, but by 9pm Tak was fast asleep, I was asleep next to him and Ingran, probably feeling a bit awkward sitting watching us with Tak’s mum, was shaking me awake and insisting that we went to meet the other volunteers until Tak woke up.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We did so and, although I was annoyed that Ingran came back from the bar with beer when I definitely asked for a cup of tea, it was nice to see all the other volunteers. More drink wasn’t a good idea though – at some point I think I wandered outside to use the phone, and at about 11.30 I was lying on the grass near the river front, a worried tourist waking me up, muttering, ‘It’s no way to spend New Year’. I would have felt very ashamed if I’d been capable of thinking, but just then Tak phoned so I went to his and we met his friends at the coffee-sleeping place which I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog. I was very pleased by this as coffee and sleep were the two things I wanted, but we didn’t stay long and were soon going for food, bumping into other friends of theirs and going to a club. We went to sleep at </span><st1:time hour="5" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">5am</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, 24 hours after I’d woken up, and I was really annoyed when Tak woke us up at 7.30 insisting we go for breakfast.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">New Year’s morning felt like it usually does – painful and blurry, but Ingran and I invested in sliced bread and butter and had tea and toast which helped a bit. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The rest of the weekend was fairly quiet until Monday, when Tak, his mum and I went to meet his girlfriend Eng’s family to discuss their marriage plans. I felt quite awkward about going, especially as I couldn’t really pretend to be a relative (although I’m working on the tan), but I feel like Tak is a bit like a brother from another mother so I went anyway. It was quite a long drive in Kampong Cham province, along terrible dusty roads (apparently the government doesn’t invest in the area because it is an opposition stronghold), but Eng’s family were very nice and the food was delicious. We swam in the nearby </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mekong</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> river in the afternoon and ended up staying overnight as Eng’s brother Hong (whom I know well as he lives in Mondulkiri too) wanted to come and drink with us. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">It was interesting to listen in on the marriage talks, which felt like something from a Lorca play: Tak and Eng had virtually no part in the negotiations, and it was eventually decided that they should get married before Khmer New Year to avoid the year of the tiger, which would apparently make the marriage an aggressive one. Tak and Eng were both very happy though as they are keen to get married as soon as possible; it will probably be in February or March. I am obviously very happy for Tak although also sad that he will be moving out; I’ve really enjoyed living with him and will miss him a lot.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We left early the next morning, drove to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;">, picked up our stuff and drove out again, arriving in Mondulkiri at around </span><st1:time hour="20" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">8pm</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> – a fourteen hour trip! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tak on the way back with his mum, who is staying with us for a few days.</span></td></tr>
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</span></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-403474376008347682.post-61011508559455500272010-12-27T16:50:00.000+07:002010-12-27T16:50:21.498+07:00Christmas<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Gilly and Sam were hosting Christmas in their house in Kratie, a town on the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Mekong</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> river about four hours from Sen Monorom. On Friday, after finishing off some work at the secondary school, Jeljte and I set off on our motorbikes, carrying a first aid kid and two toolkits full of things we didn’t know how to use. We thought it was worth taking them, though, in the hope that someone might stop to help us if we had a problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The journey was fine though and really beautiful. We stopped quite a few times to take photographs and arrived in Kratie at around </span><st1:time hour="16" minute="0"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">4pm.</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> It was really nice to see Gilly, Sam and Ingran again, and after some tea and cake we went to watch the sunset on the river and meet the other volunteers who were also in Kratie for Christmas. Much as I missed hugging sweaty drunk people in Crosby village and going back home with my brothers and sisters to snack on food that we shouldn’t be eating till tomorrow, it was a nice Christmas Eve and we stayed by the river till around 11pm – very late by Cambodian standards.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Christmas morning was good: we had a fry-up and lots of tea, opened our pillow-cases (we’d arranged to buy each other $1 presents so everyone had four each) and, starting as we meant to go on, opened a bottle of cava. We also had a walk around the town, stocking up on salad and bread for lunch and had a <i>teuk</i> <i>krolok</i> (a fruit milkshake) by the river, before going back for a cheese baguette lunch. This might not sound like much of a Christmas dinner but some of us got very excited:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">We got through several bottles of red wine before meeting the others at the river, where we watched another lovely sunset (Kratie is famous for them). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Then we headed to a place called Joe’s for a Christmas dinner. I’d heard bad things about Joe’s and, although it was nice to be with lots of other volunteers, it turned out to be pretty bad – in fact, for the first time in quite a long time, I was chucked out of a bar! This was because Sam politely challenged Joe on the prices he was charging for spirits, which were twice what was advertised in the menu, and Joe, being drunk, told us all to leave. I was very glad to as I didn’t like him and the food had been pretty disgusting too. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Anyway, being escorted off the premises was great as it meant that we ended up a party at Kratie’s university, which Sam had been invited to as he’d taught English there. It was lots of fun and we danced a lot, and when in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Cambodia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> it’s always nicer to be doing Cambodian things rather than being stuck in an overpriced expat bar. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The following morning we ate all the food that we hadn’t had time to eat on Christmas Day, and left at around </span><st1:time hour="11" minute="30"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">11.30am</span></st1:time><span style="font-family: Cambria;">. The journey back was also beautiful and, although Jeltje’s back got a puncture, a family stopped to help us. (This isn’t strictly speaking true: Jeltje stood in the middle of the road and waved her arms so they didn’t have much choice.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Happy Christmas to everyone and have a great New Year! We’re off to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Cambria;">Phnom Penh</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> so I’m looking forward to that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>Paul O'Connorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10808576350514823151noreply@blogger.com5