Family holiday

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:

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.

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.)  

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.

And now to the visit of my parents, who came for a week on the 15^th 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. 

We also stopped in Ream National Park 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.

                                                                                         

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 old Catholic Church and the Vietnamese were in the hotel, and both buildings are grim places, the walls littered with bullet holes.

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.

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:

 Here are some taken by others:

In the afternoon Dad, Tak and I went on a boat ride along with river which turned out to be very nice. 

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. 

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.

After Kampot was Phnom Penh which was hot but enjoyable, with another good night in DJ club. On Sunday Tak’s mum came back to Phnom Penh 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.

It 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 Phnom Penh and another trip to DJ club. I was dubious to begin with but decided he was probably right.

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 Crewe of eastern Cambodia). 

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 Sydney, New Zealand and then America.

So now it’s just the three of us again, and only another five months before I’ll be leaving myself.  

A visit from Jim and Sarah

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 Cambodia. 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.

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.

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.

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. 

Holiday season

Early April was party season in Cambodia in the run-up to Khmer New Year, which was on the 14-16th 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.

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.

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. 

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.

It was worth it though.

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 Thailand and met us for a week or so in Cambodia. 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.)

Eating fresh crab on the beach.

Evening at the beach.

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.

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 Phnom Penh on the way back, taking Jen and Rachel to DJ Club which was good fun as always.

Coming soon on DVD...

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, Phnom Penh. As you can see, I’m becoming something of a cult figure among the Cambodian youth:

A young boy meets his hero

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.

Come Dine With Me was Ingran’s idea as the group we had arrived with in September were back in Phnom Penh 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.

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.

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 Neighbours.

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 Cambodia’s national symbol, and it was very impressive, in its scale as much as anything else. We arrived at 5.30am to watch the sunrise, and then visited Angkor Wat and some of the other temples. 

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. 

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 Thailand, so that will be good.

 

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.

February and March

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.

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.

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.

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. 

The new library at Sreiee

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. 

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. 

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.

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!

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.

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.

Finally, my pigeon hole is overflowing with parcels which I’m going to open right now - thank you!