Placement visit week

We’re now on placement visit week so I am in a guesthouse in Sen Monorom, the town where I will be living. Daniel (the other volunteer coming to this area) and I arrived on Sunday on a bus journey that was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Lonely Planet says the place is “only for the hardcore” but luckily they have just finished building a tarmac road all the way to Sen Monorom, so the less hardcore can also come. Unless by ‘hardcore’ Lonely Planet was referring to the megaloud Cambodian karaoke music videos (mostly involving love in the countryside, with lots of tea-towel-wearing and rice farming) which they played non-stop for the entire bus journey. That was admittedly quite a trial.

Anyway, we arrived about 4.30pm and chatted to some friendly motorbike-taxi drivers, which was nice although probably quite annoying for them when it turned out our guesthouse was about 25 metres away. We left our bags there and then Charlotte, the current volunteer who I’ll be taking over from, took us to a house-warming afternoon for a British-Swedish couple and their children. We met some nice people there and had some proper tea with milk, before going to a decent restaurant for dinner.

Sen Monorom is as small as I was expecting and there’s nothing really happening in the evenings (people get up early and go to bed early), but it’s pleasant and lively enough in the daytime. It’s also very beautiful, with lots of green rolling hills and jungle areas not too far away, as well as some famous waterfalls which we’ll see in time. The best thing about it is the climate: it’s much cooler and less humid than the rest of Cambodia as it’s 800m above sea level. It’s about as hot as England in the summer, and in the hot season (March-June) it apparently only gets a few degrees hotter.

We went into the Provincial Office of Education, the office where we will be based, on Monday and met a few of the directors as well as the two volunteer assistants, Tak and To, who are both great. They work primarily as translators and are key people for volunteers coming to a new place for the first time.

After spending two hours in the bank opening an account (they put full length films on at the bank for people to watch while they’re waiting, so I don’t think two hours is unusual), we started house hunting. Quite a few previous volunteers and other foreigners have lived here so there are a few houses available, and the ones we saw are huge! I’m in negotiations about a really nice house which is pretty big and is already set up with things like internet and even a fridge, and if I manage to get that I’ll share with Tak as it’s far too big for one person.

This morning we did a bit of motorbike practice. The motorbikes are semi-automatic so are easier to ride than the ones I practised on in England, and it was fine. We went to Sen Monorom falls, the nearest waterfall which was very nice. The water looks quite brown at the moment but in the dry season it is clear and it’s a good spot for swimming.

The school year starts on Friday so it’s a busy week for people at the office, although I think we will get to go to a school opening ceremony on Friday. Apart from that we might visit another school this week, or will do some more exploration of the area before heading back to Kampong Cham for two more weeks of language training.

Cycling in Kampong Cham province

Er, I didn’t mean my first entry to the blogosphere to be quite so harrowing, so I thought I’d follow it up by an account of yesterday, a brilliant full-day bike ride around the countryside near Kampong Cham.

Six of us – Ingran, Dave, Gilly, Sam, John and me – set off around 9.30 on bikes that were definitely not made for Cambodian countryside, and stopped at around 9.50 at the first bike repair shop we saw. Cambodians tend to be very resourceful, though, so they managed to sort out Sam’s chain while we had some breakfast and tried to work out how to wear the traditional Cambodian krama - a large checked tea-towel that people wear on their heads to protect from the sun – without looking like an old woman. As you can see, we weren’t particularly successful.

We were back on the road soon after and cycled for about an hour on Route 7, one of Cambodia’s main provincial roads. I had my first Cambodian road accident when a motorbike carrying logs overtook me, forgetting that its logs were horizontal, and whacked into my leg. No harm done though. The Cambodian countryside was beautiful: lots of water and bright green vegetation, and we passed some floating houses. These look like massive rafts where people live and fish with massive nets that they lower into the water. It looked very peaceful although it’s probably a very tough life for people living on them.

We arrived at one of the many rubber plantations in the area. They had been planted by French colonialists and after independence were given to the Cambodian government. Technically, they are state-owned but apparently they just line the pockets of a few rich people. We stopped for a drink, saw some wild water buffalos, and recovered for a few minutes from the immense heat.

We then went onto some small roads and cycled for another hour or two, and everyone we passed was extremely friendly, saying hello in English and smiling. Children, in particular, were very excited and came out of their houses to say hello – I felt a bit like Jesus must have felt when he cycled into Jerusalem. I’ve read that cycling in Cambodia is something done only by people who can’t afford not to, so they were possibly quite surprised that we would choose to do it. Anyway, it was very nice.

And then I had my second (minor) road accident when I fell off my bike. I had a few cuts and grazes, but to keep them covered I had to put bandages on because I was sweating too much for plasters to stay on. This had the added advantage of making it look much more serious than it was, so I got considerably more sympathy from everyone. Just before we stopped for lunch, though, Gilly almost fainted due to the sun and lack of food, so she returned in a tuk-tuk (motorbike with a cart attached) and the rest of us carried on.

We were getting a bit anxious because apparently we needed to get a boat to avoid having to go back the way we’d come (about 35km), and they weren’t running all day. So after a quick lunch we carried on in the direction of the port. When we got there, though, it was really easy to get someone to take us across: four of us went in one narrow wooden boat and Ingran went with the bikes in the other, along with a small child, his captain. It was a really nice experience to travel by boat and see other boats on the Mekong River – the biggest and most important river in South-East Asia. We followed the bank downstream towards the Kizuna Bridge (a Japanese-built development project that will have brought huge benefits to the area but which, incidentally, must also have completely destroyed an entire boating industry), passing some very basic-looking wooden houses on the shore. People here were noticeably less friendly and probably have a much harder life than some of the villages we’d passed earlier in the day.

We paid half a dollar each for the boat trip and they laughed a lot when we paid them, so we wondered whether we’d given too much! The final stretch was cycling through a busier road towards the bridge, with lots of market stalls on either side of the road, back in time for some beers by the river.

It was a really fun day and we saw quite a lot of Cambodia. I’m going to be working in a very rural province in the east of the country so I’m now feeling very excited about it all.   

First impressions

It’s siesta time, Saturday lunchtime on 18^th September. We are in a small town on the Mekong River called Kampong Cham, about three hours north-east from Phnom Penh, the capital. We have been here since last Sunday for intensive language training and are here for another four weeks. Siestas are very long here so, two and a half weeks in, I thought it would be a good time to start writing this blog.

We arrived on Thursday 2^nd September, flying from Bangkok to Phnom Penh early in the morning. It is the rainy season at the moment, so on the way in Cambodia looked completely flooded, with patches of lush green vegetation here and there, and lots of wooden houses on stilts, the traditional Cambodian house. It was already hot when we arrived and two VSO staff met us at the airport to sort out visas and to take us to the VSO programme office.

       The first week or so was spent getting to know each other, acclimatising to the sweltering heat, getting to know Phnom Penh and having lots of briefings and training sessions about VSO’s work, the political context of Cambodia, health and security etc. All very interesting, especially the political briefing with the British ambassador at the Embassy, although sadly we weren’t offered any tea or biscuits.

       We also spent quite a lot of time seeing Phnom Penh, which is quite a small capital but very busy. Everyone rides motorbikes or moto-variations, including tuk tuks (local taxis made up of a motorbike and a wooden cart) and stalls attached to motorbikes. It took us a few days to get used to the Cambodian traffic system: everyone does exactly what they want to do regardless of the flow of oncoming traffic. It was quite fun cycling round the city once we understood how the system worked. I didn’t see that many of the tourist sites as there will be plenty of time for that later, but we did go to Tuol Sleng, the Khmer Rouge interrogation centre which is now a Genocide Museum. I had read quite a few memoirs and history books about the Khmer Rouge period but I still wasn’t prepared for the experience.

      Tuol Sleng had been a secondary school in Phnom Penh, but when the Khmer Rouge took power in April 1975 and the entire urban population of the country was evacuated, it became the main interrogation and torture centre for political prisoners. 14,000 people were imprisoned there between 1975 and 1979. Each prisoner was photographed and tortured into writing a full confession of their alleged anti-regime activities, before being taken to Choeng Ek where they were clubbed to death and left in the most famous of Cambodia’s killing fields. Of the 14,000 prisoners at Tuol Sleng, only seven survived.

      I think the most striking thing about the site were the room after room of black and white photographs of the prisoners as they arrived into the museum, particularly as quite a lot of them were children. Apparently when the museum first opened in the early 1980s, quite a lot of people came to look for their missing relatives among the photos. The fact that the site still looks like a school was very disturbing too: classrooms, still with their blackboards, were used to hold prisoners and for interrogations, and the monkey bars and play area had been used as part of torture techniques.

      Overall the experience was horrible and I felt nauseous as I came out, but given that everyone over the age of about 35 has memories of the Khmer Rouge period and that it is only very recently that the political situation has stabilised, it’s an important place to visit, I think.

      That’s all very grim and there’s a lot about present Cambodia that is very disturbing too – huge levels of street poverty, high levels of infant mortality, complete absence of any social security and very inefficient public services – but overall Cambodians seem very positive and cheerful, and the atmosphere is a happy one. They are also very welcoming towards foreigners and particularly here in Kampong Champ where we are more of a novelty, lots of people smile and say hello (in English) when we walk past.

      Last Sunday we came by bus to Kampong Cham which is apparently Cambodia’s third biggest city but feels very small. Language lessons are going well and are very useful – we are already able to communicate fairly well in markets and restaurants and can even have basic conversations, (as long as the conversations only involve words and phrases we have learned.) Yesterday Gilly’s husband Sam arrived so we are now a complete group of sixteen volunteers. We are here for another week and then go to visit our placements for a week, before returning for two more weeks of language training.

      So, so far so good! I’m even getting used to the food although I’m not that keen on rice soup with chicken for breakfast. Those interested in visiting should note that every café or restaurant offers free tea all the time! (No milk though.)