Hello from Cambodia 9

The draft of this latest blog is being composed on Christmas Day while sitting beside the blue sparkling waters of the Gulf of Thailand – never thought in my wildest dreams that I would ever write that last sentence.

Five of us decided that being alone in our placements at Christmas without friends and family around would be just too difficult so instead we indulged our selves in that island paradise that is Koh Chang. Getting there from Phnom Preuk proved to be more pricy then we had had anticipated as we had to “encourage “ the Thai authorities to let us cross the border and then finding that there was no way to continue our journey except by hiring a very expensive taxi. Fortunately a bit of research and local knowledge meant that the return journey was far more sooth, cheaper and incident free, except for the collapsed bridge, flat tyre and road being de mined!

Arriving over the border was a real shock. Firstly, Thailand has proper roads, with tarmac and white lines in the middle and traffic lights and sign posts. Everyone drives on the same side of the road and chickens/dogs/cows/children don’t run in front of the car and you travel at more than 30 mph. Also the taxi, what bliss, only 2 passengers rather than the usual 7 (4 in the back and 3 in the front excluding the driver of a Toyota Camry), and it had seat belts!

On entering Thailand one realises just how devastated Cambodia has been. The change of colour in just a few yards is dramatic; Thailand is green and Cambodia is brown. The difference is the dust in Cambodia which settles on everything within 500 yards of the road. Also Thailand still has its forests, in Cambodia most have been cut down by the Thais or the Khmer Rouge or the Cambodian army or anyone else who can make a few dollars out of raping this poor country.

The other big difference in Thailand, apart from the lack of plastic bags and rubbish everywhere, is that it is so quiet. No barking dogs, crowing cockerels, blaring karaoke, chanting monks, crying children just the sound of the sea lapping on the shore. In fact sitting here writing this blog in Jean’s kitchen back in Battambang the amplified chanting from the local Wat has now been going for 6 hours,( it 10 am, do the maths).

Next door to our little group of thatched beach huts there was a flash hotel complex with swimming pool and liveried staff. We crashed their Christmas Eve party so we could see the arrival of Santa on an elephant. However we swiftly left when the karaoke carols started, grateful to return to our own stable-like accommodation and a tinsel-decorated palm tree and sing along to Carols from Kings on the iPod (much more tasteful).

Christmas Day started with the opening of presents which included the traditional shirt and not so traditional J-Cloths. Christmas dinner of fried rice and prawns was made complete by the mini Christmas pud (thank you Liv). The rest of the day was spent swimming, sun bathing and eating from a beach BBQ in a truly festive way. We’d all been dreading Christmas away from the family and were all a little subdued until phone calls started to arrive from UK. As the messages winged their way across the world all of us would have exchanged our island paradise for cold grey damp old England and the ones we love.

Happy New Year to you all.

Happy Christmas

from Cambodia

Love from

Chris and Jon xxxx

Hello from Cambodia 8

Tales from the Wild West.

We have been living here a month now and are beginning to feel less like visitors from the planet Ogg. Our trips to the market are now greeted with “oh here come the Barangs “ as opposed to “What the hell are they!” Most people are friendly and welcoming and go out of their way to be helpful. When our attempts to buy produce are met with blank incomprehension by a stall holder, there is usually a bystander who is able to pipe up with “They want half a kilo of onions and a bunch of bananas”. If fact a surprising number of people speak very good English but are too shy to let on, but it is worth us remembering this when we are tempted to make tactless comments to each other within ear shot of a Khmer. Also as everyone here is related to everyone else it is important to keep our views to ourselves as we could alienate the entire village by one throw away wise crack. (ie Chris keep your mouth shut!). The surveillance network here would put the KGB to shame. On Monday morning Sophen was able to report to us exactly when and what we had been doing around the village over the weekend, i.e Saturday 10.35am visited the Wat, 11.40am narrowly missed running over a dog outside the bank, 12.10 pm bought half a kilo of onions and a bunch of bananas in the market etc….. The moral of the story being if you want to keep the respect of the village, behave yourself in public! (oh dear, it could be very hard to change the habits of a life time - Chris).

As you will begin to realise there is not a huge amount to do in Phnom Preuk, a bit like a Cambodian Bricket Wood, we have seen all the films on at the multiplex and the clubs are rubbish, we are putting together a team for the pub quiz and Chris has joined the local gym. (that is called irony). Actually so far we don’t seem to find we have time on our hands, we are at work by 8pm, lunch break from 11am to 2pm which usually involves a trip to the market and a little sleep, back to work until 5pm then home to cook tea, play a game of cards or watch the telly and in bed by 9pm. In fact it is very like living in Bricket Wood. But the difference is that this is Cambodia and that is very very different!

The weather here is perfect. It seems to have stopped raining at last and turned cooler. We have had to buy a blanket because the cold was keeping us awake. The day time temperature is about 25 degrees which means it is possible to sit out on the balcony in the late afternoon and soak up the rays without being burnt to a frazzle or dissolved into a sticky puddle. It is weird to think of you all preparing for Christmas in grey old England, although we try not to think of the whole Christmas thing much at all. It is too hard to contemplate everyone and everything we are missing, that way leads madness. So a group of us are thinking of going to the beach in Thailand for Christmas to distract us from our sorrows. Maybe the next blog will be sent from an island paradise or perhaps not. ( A few days later ….. We have just trimmed up the Christmas tree while listening to Carols from Kings College, pity we are out of Advocat snowballs. We have been invited to the British Embassy in PP on Sunday for a carol concert and mince pies, us ex-pat, nah.)

Yesterday, Saturday, we went to the garden centre (!) to buy palms for the balcony. On our return the landlady donated us enough potted plants to fill the hothouse at Kew. Chris now has her garden, as you all knew she would. NB. The nasturtiums are growing at a terrifying speed, but haven’t risked planting the giant sunflowers yet, the story of Jack and the Beanstalk springs to mind.

A weird episode. Next door to us is a very big wooden house inhabited by a very large extended family. It was there when we went to work but when we got home it had gone! They had dismantled it and are now all living in a shoe box in the garden while they await the builders to come and build them a new home. Apparently the roof was leaking, but that does seem rather a drastic solution.

The highlight of the day is cooking the evening meal. We are gradually getting more adventurous with our shopping as we start to identify what is for sale in the market. There is a huge supply of fresh, organic fruit and veg as well as fish and shellfish imported from Thailand. The Thai cookery books are proving invaluable and we have produced some culinary masterpieces. Tonight we are planning swordfish steaks cooked in ginger and lemon grass, with aubergine in a light chilli sauce as a side dish.
The meat situation is a little less straight forward, as it not always possible to identify the animal you are being offered, let alone what cut it is. We have not yet braved buying chicken as this involves selecting a live bird and having it killed, plucked and disembowelled in front of you. This healthy eating has resulted in us both loosing weight although some might say it is due to the reduction of our daily alcohol consumption, but whatever it is we are feeling better for it.

Being as it has been nearly six months since she had a haircut Chris decided that a trip to the hairdressers could no longer be put off. So we asked Sophen’s wife Sophala to recommend a good local salon. Consequently this morning found her sitting nervously in the chair surrounded by a crowd of intrigued onlookers while the stylist tackled her hair with a razor. The result was surprisingly good, although now most of the colour has been cut out she resembles her Mum more than ever. The whole restyle cost about 45p is about 100 times cheaper than Tony and Guy. (Rosemary- please don’t tell Padraig).

The landlord has now installed cable TV, but unfortunately most of the channels are in Khmer, so we called in the TV man. It transpires that the set top box is in the cable company’s office in the village and the programmes that are transmitted are at the whim of the bloke on duty. So on Sunday we get wall to wall sport, Jon is currently watching Aston Villa v Arsenal, most of the rest of the week we get large Australian babes doing aerobics in the mornings and CNN in the evenings, we also get Star Movies which occasionally shows an oldie but goodie, (Star Wars was on last Sunday) but usually churns out low budget teen movies. The bizarre thing was that the TV man says if we don’t like what is on we should phone him up and he will change what each channel is showing. This is OK for us but it could really piss off the rest of the village when they are all happily watching the grand final of Cambodian X Factor and it suddenly gets changed to an old Jerry Lewis movie on HBO.

The one (?) downside of installing cable to our house is that the landlord has now got a TV as well, this means that from 5.30 each morning we get Karaoke music being broadcast at full volume. The voice of John Humphries on the Today programme is a far gentler way to be woken up. Cambodia is not a quiet country. The days kicks off with the monks chanting prayers via loudspeakers from the wat over the road, then the cockerels join in accompanied by the continuous barking of dogs, the wailing of children and the chugging of trucks on the road outside. Plus Khmers do not speak to each other, they shout, all the time. The family next door sound like they have stepped out a particularly gruelling episode of Eastenders when all they are doing is discussing what they want for tea. But gradually we are getting used to it and manage a good 8 hours sleep, (unheard of in England- Chris.)

It might seem from the above that are on some strange reality TV “I’m a volunteer get me out of here” holiday. We are also working quite hard. We go to the office every day although because sometimes no one else has turned up to unlock the doors we have to go home again. We have been concentrating on networking the local area, and “pressing the flesh” with the local big wigs such as the Commune chief and the District Governor, because without their OK we will get nothing constructive done here. Our short-term intention is to focus on the 5 nearest primary schools and following a needs analysis and baseline study we will review and implement our plans accordingly (you can tell we have been on inset courses can’t you). We had a meeting with the 5 headmasters involved and they seemed thrilled to bits, all nodding and smiles, but this means nothing here as the Khmers hate to cause upset or offence and will agree to anything even though they have absolutely no intention of carrying it out. We shall see. We have a big meeting with the provincial education bosses in Battambang on Friday and they might veto our whole plan anyway. ( NB the meeting got cancelled at the last minute, but that’s Cambodia for you.)

This is a picture that Jon took on his way to visit Samer Ki Primary School on Wednesday (mobile phone camera - sorry about the quality). Yes this is the road! and yes he did make it to the school.

So this is a snap shot of our life so far here in the Wild West. As you can tell we are currently very content but that might all change. How many times can Jon beat Chris at Canasta before she takes the machete to him? But before that happens we are wallowing in the pleasure of learning how to relax, enjoying the sensation of reading a book, sitting in the sun or just looking at the view of the sunset without the guilt of knowing there is a pile of marking to be done. We will enjoy it while it lasts.

If we don''t get a chance to write another episode before we'd like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a safe and healthy New Year. We hope you will all raise a glass (we certainly will) and think of use at some time.

This blog is going to be brief because it has already been written once in draft form and that disappeared when Chris’s bag was snatched from her grasp by a youff on a moto while she was in a tuk tuk in PP. The bag not only contained her phone, camera, I-pod and one hundred dollars but more frustratingly her family photos, address book and reading glasses. We had been back in PP for a 3 day conference of all the VSO education volunteers which was to culminate with the Water Festival holiday. This is a huge annual celebration of the end of the rainy season when the Tonle Sap river changes direction and starts to flow back towards the Meekong. It is marked by Dragon boat races in which all the champion boats from throughout the country compete. It is quite a spectacle however as over 3million people flock to the riverside to watch the city becomes even more frenetic than usual. The prospect of having to deal with these crowds together with the trauma of the theft meant we decided to give the festivities a miss this year and instead return to the safety of our little house in the country and spend the holiday watching a good film on the telly, (are we getting old). Also CNN weather was predicting that we would be in the shadow of a cyclone that is supposed to be hitting Vietnam this weekend and we want to get home before it rains.

Rain is really a big deal here and it can control your life. While we are in Phnom Preuk we have been visiting schools with are lovely assistants Sophea and Sophen who are both in their mid to late twenties and are respectively a head and a deputy head of local schools. We have seen schools that vary from clean well maintained institutions where the pupils are bright and well taught by highly motivated staff to those which are literally no more than cow sheds where often the staff do not turn up leaving classes of 50 6 year olds unsupervised and un taught all day. We travel about the district on motos, this has proved interesting. Sophea had been complaining that in the wet season he could only get to his school by walking the last 2 kms because the road was too bad. We thought he was exaggerating until we went there. The road had been churned up by tractors so we had to negotiate ruts over a metre deep (see photo).
The following day we visited our neighbouring district about 40km away. The trip should have taken about an hour but then it rained. The road turned into a slippery morass which could only be passed at a walking pace, picking your way around water filled pot holes. The journey took 2 and a half hours and Jon says its like coming down a black mogul run at Chomossier. (a skiing reference). Chris, true to form refused point blank to ride her moto and instead went pillion behind Sophen, hanging on like grim death. We arrived for the appointment with the district director of education covered in mud and had to sluice ourselves down with water from the village cistern before we were in any state to meet him. Apparently the correct dress form for travelling around here is to roll your trousers up to your knees and wear flip flops.
Photo: Sophen is on Chris' far right and Sophea is between them.

It is wedding season. This is because everyone has more money as they have sold the harvest and it has stopped raining (!).Weddings are huge 2 day affairs, families hire big brightly coloured marquees and set them up in the road outside the house if they have no land. They also set up sound systems with banks of speakers, that wouldn’t look out of place in Wembley Arena, through which they blast Cambodian pop music for 2 days starting at 5am until about 11pm. Everyone dresses up to the nines with the bride having at least 10 different dresses. The young women look like Barbie princesses immaculately made up and coiffured wearing tightly fitted florescent pink or lime green long dresses which are decorated in lace, sequins and frills. (unfortunately the photos are in the stolen camera). We were deeply honoured to be invited to 2 weddings last week. Sophea is marrying his childhood sweetheart and the landlords daughter is also getting married. They were both going to be huge affairs with over 600 guests but much to our disappointment we had to go the meeting in PP instead. Although on second thoughts the non-stop music from next door could have got a bit wearing after a while.
Photo: The family; r-l Touch, Mum, Oeurn and Granny.

We are getting on very well with our neighbours and have taken to sitting on the bench outside the house of an evening watching the world go by in companionable silence. Our cleaner / concierge Touche became a grandmother for the first time on the same day that Chris became an Auntie to Jessica Rose. We shared the excitement of the birth of our new family members and unable to spoil the baby in Brighton we bought a hat, mitts and booties for the little Cambodian boy as proxy. Just a thought, as they grow up, how will the lives of these 2 new citizens of the world differ?

Photo: Touch and Chris.

Photo: Goodnight from Cambodia.

Hello from Cambodia 6

So here we are in a new house, in a new job, in a new town, in a new country, in a new continent all of which are very, very, very different. The journey from Phnom Penh (PP) to Phnom Preuk (PPk) with an overnight stop at Battambang (BB) took two days. We travelled on from BB in a battered right hand drive truck which was very scary when overtaking a massive lorry on a bend! All our worldly possessions including 2 motorbikes, 2 bicycles, 2 comfy chairs and 2 bookcases were all tied to the back and a young lad perched on the top of the pile, in fact for most of the way he sat on the saddle of one of the motos. The trip took 6 hours non-stop on appalling roads but the truck only broke down once and unusually we were only stopped once by the police so they could claim a “fine”. When we arrived we were delighted with the house as the landlord had almost completed all the promised renovations eg installing a staircase and electric ceiling fans. However Jon despairs of the finishing eg plaster splashed all over the walls and ineffectual grouting (most of which is on the tiles rather than between them). Unfortunately not all of the works have proved successful eg the plumbing in the upstairs shower room was suspect resulting in water pouring through the kitchen ceiling. They decided to dig up the tiled floor to investigate (this is after Jon spent 4 hours on his hands and knees with wire wool tidying up the grouting). Work is still ongoing as we write 3 days later.

Also our water is supposed to be pumped from a well in the garden into a tank on the roof but this keeps on running dry, probably cos the water’s running through the kitchen ceiling. This proved a little inconvenient when three fellow volunteers came to stay last weekend and we had no shower or toilet facilities, but we’re sure these little hiccups will soon be sorted out.

The dry season officially starts on November 1st and sure enough its not rained since. Also the temperature has dropped so it is quite pleasantly fresh and we are not constantly bathed in a pool of sweat. We now have to cover ourselves with a sheet at night and the cold shower in the morning has now become a feat of endurance rather than a welcome release. The Cambodians, however, are traumatised by the temperature change and the early morning finds them huddled in puffa jackets, gloves and woolly hats, its about 20ºC! The lack of rain means that the dust is building up. We didn’t realise when we viewed our new house that what we thought was a little used back lane is in fact the main road to Thailand and consequently heavy trucks laden with agricultural produce trundle passed the door throughout the day. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that opposite us is the main repository for the Cambodian soya bean harvest and day and night trucks are loading and unloading giant sacks containing every bean in the country. The ensuing dust cloud settles on every surface against which the lovely Touch, our , armed with her twig brush wages a constant battle. She also hand washes our clothes which turn a sandy brown after every moto excursion, life would be very uncomfortable without her.

The landlord and his family live next door and are very friendly and welcoming, perhaps a little too friendly and welcoming because if we leave the door unlocked they are constantly popping in for a chat. The first few days there was a continuous flow of cheerful neighbours doing a grand tour of our house regardless of whether they had been invited or not. This seems to have calmed down now that the novelty has worn off but it is still not unusual to be relaxing with a beer on the balcony in the evening and be startled by the appearance of a friendly Khmer who has let them selves in and up the stairs without knocking. Privacy appears to be an alien concept here. We’re not sure how many people, dogs and chickens of all size and ages live next door but they all greet us with a cheery smile. The only unwelcome visitor so far is the spider who lives under the fridge (see photo). It made a visit to the kitchen at night terrifying until Jon very bravely evicted her (I hope she doesn’t come back with her even bigger mates).

We have decided to cook for ourselves as we need something to pass the time on these “long winter nights” and it also gives the excuse for the daily trip to the market. As most people here have never seen a Barrang before our first visit was met with huge interest. We were followed about to the sound of oohs, ahhs and giggles, they seem to find Jon hugely amusing. We are now getting the hang of what’s for sale basically fresh veg, eggs, pork, chicken, various unidentified types of fish and bizarrely tins of Princes pilchards in tomato sauce. After a week the culinary imagination has just about dried up so its tomato omelette for lunch and vegetable and rice for dinner again! Actually its not that bad and we did produce a very successful dinner party for five last weekend using only two gas rings and a wok.
The District Office.
We’re beginning to settle into a routine at work now. We have been given a room in the district education office which, despite the lack of glass, the piles of chicken pooh and clouds of mosquitoes we are making quite homely. On Monday we held interviews for our assistants (translators). There were ten applicants and the interviews took place at our house because it’s bigger than the district education office (DOE)! At times the proceeding descended into farce especially when half way through the plumber decided to dig up the bathroom floor with an electric drill. The range of ability of the candidates varied from the young man who’s stammered reply to the first question was “I can not speak English” to the two amazing lads who we have appointed. Sophea and Sophen are both teachers and speak excellent English, you will hear a lot more about this dynamic duo in the future.

We have spent our mornings visiting the local schools, which usually involves a death defying moto ride. The schools vary from two roomed huts that flood in the rainy season to quite efficient, clean and tidy well run institutions (there is in fact one school in the district which has no building at all but we haven’t been able to visit that, for obvious reasons). There is so much to say about the Cambodian education system but we will leave that for later blogs, but here are a couple of observations so far:
Children as young as six are unable to walk the five kilometres to school because they have no shoes ie flip flops.
In the hot season some schools can not afford to buy clean water so the kids are forced to drink polluted well water, they get sick so their parents do not let them come to school again.
How on earth can we begin to do anything constructive to improve the standard of Cambodian education when faced with basic problems like these?

However we have not given up hope yet, we’ve seen some excellent teaching, often against all the odds, and we’ve only been in the job a week.

Sam Rong (left) and O Ta Sok Primary Schools. O Ta Sok has 2 classrooms divided by a wooden wall, when one class is doing spoken work the other has to be silent. There are often 40 kids in each room and when it rains the tin roof means nobody hears anything.

So we are still on the In Country Training in Kampong Cham and wishing it would end so we can get on with actually doing something constructive. The Khmer lessons continue every morning although the level of proficiency does not seem to be increasing accordingly. We now know useful things like that the word for pink “por pka chhook” is the same as that for lotus flower and shower head. The word for tri-mester is the same as gold fish! The potential for making some very big blunders with the language is huge but as yet we have not got further than “2 bottles of beer and a plate of chips please.”

Last week was one of the many, many religious holidays. This one was in honour of the ancestors, an extended “day of the dead” when everyone returns to their family village – a bit like Christmas without the Queen on the tele. The tradition is to visit the pagoda (wat) and make offerings of food or money to the monks. About 95% of the population is Buddhist and the golden roofs of the Wats dominate the landscape. Many of them are quite spectacular considering that most were damaged or destroyed during the Pol Pot era. The shaven headed, saffron robed monks are deeply respected although its difficult to show deep reverence to a very attractive young man hammering along on the back of a moto, smoking a ciggie and chatting on his mobile phone.

A surreal Cambodian moment occurred during a visit to a local Wat. A very frail and elderly monk is lying sleeping on the floor while a large monkey was gently and lovingly grooming him. When Maraid stepped forward to take their photo the monkey went ape(?) lunging at her and screaming with bared teeth. Perhaps the reaction to this insensitive intrusion into an intimate ritual was justified but it also rather disturbingly resembled a moment from “The Omen”.

Taking advantage of the holiday we went on a little trip to Krattie to see the famous, freshwater, Irrawaddy dolphins. We took a long tailed boat out on to the river and the dolphins obliged us by putting on a show. We tracked them for an hour or so until the magic was complete when they broke the surface against the backdrop of a beautiful Mekong sunset.

There was a little bit of drama on Sunday when some of us went out for a bicycle trip into the

country to visit The Man Mountain and The Woman Mountain. As Jean is a cycle phobic Jon took her as a pillion passenger on one of the motos. As we pootled down a country lane three lads on a moto cruised past and lifted 800 quids worth of camera out of his front basket. Outraged, Jon chucked Jean off the back and set off in hot pursuit of the little buggers. The rest of us puffed and pedalled along behind occasionally coming across huddles of excited villagers who pointed and said “they went that’a’way”. In high dudgeon Jon chased them down the muddy lanes for about 20 minutes yelling Anglo-Saxon abuse and threatening castration when he caught them (whether they understood all of this clearly is in question). Eventually, having the advantage of one against three on the bikes, he started to gain on them. Faced by the prospect of a big, bearded, roaring red-faced Barrang (Khmer for foreigner) they ditched the camera. As he victoriously drove back through the villages triumphantly waving the camera he was greeted by clapping and cheers. This heroic exploit has gone down in the annals of VSO legend but it is also universally denounced as a very, very, very stupid thing to do. However Jon is now quite confident of his ability to ride across the muddy wasteland that is the Cambodian road system.

Travelling through Cambodia you become aware that it is a place of huge inconsistencies and contrasts. The countryside is so beautiful, verdant and fertile producing wonderful images like a huge black water buffalo wandering through the paddy fields with a tiny child sitting cross-legged on its back. The towns’ streets, however, are lined with mud and rubbish. Some families live in little more than grass shacks, which they share with their livestock while their more privileged neighbours have acquired massive gated and guarded palaces. Despite the wealth suggested by the huge Landcruisers and majestic housing the poverty of some was brought home to us one evening in Battambang. Having eaten our fill in a pavement restaurant we were humbled when a small boy asked us to fill his plastic bag with our leftover rice so he could feed his family. We are under no illusions that we can solve the problems created by

over 30 years of genocide, war and corruption but increasingly we see the need for us to do our tiny bit.

Hello from Cambodia 4

So we have been in Cambodia for a month now and we are no closer to understanding this country and its people .In fact the longer we stay here the more confusing it becomes.

On the culinary front It seems that if it moves or grows you can eat it .We have now sampled curried frog, stewed eel and Jon has eaten a spiders leg, although he drew the line at munching into its body.Generally we are eating very well although the dominance of rice to the diet is reflected in the language, e.g. a restaurant is hang bai meaning a rice shop, A dinning room is bantop gnam bai, the room where you eat rice, and breakfast is gnam bai preuk, to eat rice in the morning. As you travel about the country , which we have being doing a lot recently, the vivid green of the rice paddy fields dominates the landscape. We were invited to lunch with the British ambassador at the residency which was extremely pleasant especially as the menu did not include rice, (or Ferrero Roche).

Our In Country Training has continued in PP.This has mainly involved the admin part of the job. The VSO project we are working on is funded by the World Bank and the EU but because corruption is rife here at all levels every dollar/ euro has to be accounted for.This requires a huge amount of form filling and report writing. I thought we had left the education system to get away from all that.

Last Sunday we at last left PP to visit our placements. The intrepid little family who are going to be based in Battambang Province are Jean (Mummy), Ally (baby), Onno (Dutch Uncle) and us 2 , the embarrassing country cousins. Onno, who is based in a district about 100 km away will be our nearest neighbour. It takes about 6 hours by bus to get from PP to Battambang town, which will become our haven for R and R and peanut butter. From there we travelled with Vantha, the boss of VSO Education, on to our placement in a 4x4 truck with no suspension in the back seats .As the most direct route is impassable at the moment the first part of the journey was on the main highway which links Siem Riep to the Thai border at Poipet. Considering this is the main tourist route into the country the road was truly appalling. As we were shaken from Pothole to pot hole the inertia in the seat belts ratcheted back until we pinned unable to move or breathe against the back seats.

And then we turned onto the dirt roads........... and in fact they were not too bad by comparison, if you avoid the wandering cows , dogs, chickens and children all of whom seem to have suicidal tendencies. Overall it took about 5 and a half hours from BB town, but it should be faster in the dry season.

So what about Phnom Preuk, our home for the next 2 years?
The area is very unlike any other we have seen in Cambodia so far, it has mountains. It reminds us a bit of the Puys of the Massif Central in France - well a little bit- or the valleys of the Alps. I found myself thinking "" I wonder what it is like here when it snows? Duh!!! It is however very beautiful scenery.

The town itself is like something out of a Western movie. A frontier town with a main street which is either dust or mud depending on the season. "The theme tune to "the Good , the Bad and the Ugly kept running through my head. Also it appears to be far more Western than other areas with less people wearing the traditional costumes and more tractors. The influence of Thailand.

Vantha was on a mission to find us a nice house. He was working on the principle that being as we were based in the back of beyond unless we were happy where we lived we wouldn't last 2 days let alone 2 years. We traipsed from site to site which varied from the top floor of a palace owned by the local army chief to a delapidated beach hut that overlooked the local rubbish tip. Running out of options, Vantha resorted to knocking on the doors of likely looking houses and asking the owners if they would move out so we could move in. This tactic proved successful as we found our dream home.

It is a concrete house rather than the traditional wood built on sticks, based on the outskirts of town with beautiful views of the mountains and the Wat (pagoda). 2 bed., 2 bath / shower, 2 reception, study, kitchen , balcony and roof terrace for $250 per month. Vantha negotiated an amazing deal which included beautiful carved wooden furniture, a fridge, cable TV and a cleaner. This voluntary life is tough you know! The landlord and his family live next door and they have a teenage daughter who is learning English. They are our new best friends.

We also visited the local Education Office to meet our new boss and work mates. The office is open plan, in so far as it doesn't have a front wall, and it closely resembles a barn. While we were there a group of bedraggled NQT teachers arrived for a training session. They all looked about 14 and one had been travelling for 3 days to get there! They were staying overnight sleeping in a wooden shack behind the office. NQTs don't you ever, ever, ever complain again about how hard it is becoming a teacher.

While we were there we heard several very loud explosions in the near distance which no one else seemed to react to. Turns out the de-mining units were detonating their daily find!

So we are reserving our judgement on the placement, Every time we mentioned to the Khmer staff in the BB education office that we were going to Phnom Preuk there were little squeaks of amused surprise and a jolly "Good Luck"" as we left. What do they know???
So its back to Kampon Chan for another 3 weeks of language training, oh joy ,oh bliss, then off to start our new lives in the Wild West. SCAREY>

Hello from Cambodia 3

We have been here 2 weeks, it seems like so much longer. Already so much which we originally found strange we take for granted. Pigs on motor bikes, torrential rain, lizards on the bed room wall, flooded streets…. All these things now seem normal and not worthy of comment. We are almost becoming used to the heat and humidity, almost.

We have fallen into a gentle daily routine. Up at 6.30 am, cycle to the market, buy bread, fruit and Laughing Cow (the only form of cheese that is edible) then cycle across the town to the VSO house, braving the terrors of the round about on the way. I will not describe the mayhem that occurs when Cambodians in every form of transport imaginable (and some that are not imaginable) meet at a 5 road intersection. It’s a case of close your eyes and pray. After eating breakfast we cycle to the “university” for our Khmer lesson until noon. More comments on that later. After lunch, more bread, salad and Laughing Cow (it is a staple food with VSOs here) we do our home work on the terrace or more usually fall asleep in the comfy chairs. Then depending on what time the afternoon deluge arrives we either spend an hour or so in the Internet shop battling with computers which compete with Parmiter’s school for being the slowest in the world, or exploring the local area by bike before going back to sleep. At 6pm we eat in a local restaurant very, very cheaply, about 75p each for a beef and veggie dish with rice and then retire to one of the 2 bars which are run by ex pats for a beer or 2. Unfortunately, the beer is relatively expensive, about 2 dollars a bottle, which makes a hefty dent in our VSO allowance, so we have been forced cut our alcohol consumption (pause for gasps of amazement). By 9pm we are dropping asleep again so we are usually in bed by 10pm.

A view of the Mekong

This delightful life style is about to change next Tuesday when we are all going to visit or placements for a week. The more we hear about Phnom Preuk (which means Morning Mountain) the more excited / intrigued / terrified we get. When the serving VSOs learn where we are going there is a lot of sniggering, eye rolling and “that will be interesting” going on. But we will reserve our judgement until we have been there to see for ourselves.

Chris after she fell into the Mekong!

Learning Khmer is proving an interesting experience. It is the first time in over 30 years that we have had to study in a class room situation, and it isn’t much fun the other side of the desk. If we ever go back into teaching in England we will have far more sympathy for our pupils. Being the only kid in the class who has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on is a very frustrating experience. (Chris) We are struggling to master the structure of the sentences without much luck and end up speaking like Yoda, “the language of Khmer learning we have been”. The worst thing about it is that after 7 days of slogging away for 4 hours a day plus homework, no Cambodian understands what we say. They just giggle.

We had to go to back to Phnom Phen yesterday to get our second Rabies jab. Up at 6am to catch the 7pm bus, 3 hours drive to PP, 5 minutes injections, then back on the bus for the 3 hour return journey, home at 5 pm. It takes along time to get anything done in this country!!!! While we were in PP we got spectacularly lost and a friendly chap offered to show us the way. He greeted us in English, “hello Grandfather, hello Grandmother, can I help you”, this has made Chris think its about time she got her hair re dyed!

A few more impressions of Cambodia.
Smiling children shouting “hello, how are you” as you cycle pass them, ladies wearing pyjamas as day wear, printed with bunnies and kittens, big white cows wondering along in the middle of the road, big black Lexus 4 by 4s with tinted windows speeding down the middle of the road oblivious to any other road user, amazing thunder storms and wet feet.

We are still happy here. Miss you all.

Hello from Cambodia 2

Saturday 15th September.
Suarsadei

Here we are in the real Cambodia. We have left Phnom Phen and travelled 3 hours by bus to the town of Kompong Cham. On the journey we passed through some beautiful scenery of rice paddy fields, palm trees and banana groves. It is a very rural country with stuff being grown on every inch. The one thing there appears no shortage of is food. The markets are full of every type of exotic, fruit, fowl, fish and things we cant work out yet. When the bus stopped mid journey, we were besieged by hoards of little girls selling giant roasted spiders on trays. Thankfully we have yet to meet their living sisters.

Kompong Cham is apparently Cambodia’s third town but is smaller than St Albans. It used to be a major port during the days of French imperialism and some of the architecture still reflects its former glory. Nowadays however it is rather jaded, its main point of interest is a huge bridge which the Japanese have built over the Mekong. The river itself is very wide and grey with surprisingly little traffic on it although rather beautiful at sunset. We have also been told that the sunrise is spectacular but seeing as this takes place at 5.30 am we have yet to confirm this.

The VSO have a big villa here where volunteers are put up while they are doing their in country training. Unfortunately there is not enough room for all of us so we, and the American couple have been put up in the Hotel Mekong. This is a huge place overlooking the river which, although initially impressive, has seen better days. There are huge marble lined corridors, which are slightly scary if you have ever seen The Shining, but the rooms are a little shabby. We have our own miniature zoo including hot and cold running geckos who sing to each other at night. The main asset is the cable telly which has BBC world, CNN and HBO films. So we are able to follow England’s sports successes, and watch truly awful films.

We spend from 8 till 12 every morning learning Khmer form the lovely Mr Khamdey in the local FE college. Jon is finding this less of a challenge than Chris although when we try out our new found vocabulary in the local restaurants and markets we find that they don’t understand a word and burst out laughing at us. Hopefully our language skills will improve before we go to our placement or we’re going to have a very non communicative two years.

The word for bottle is Dob and the word for 10 is Dob can’t wait to learn the word for green!

Our first impressions of Cambodia:

Everyone and everything is very young and very small. No one seems over 20 and there are tiny children playing and laughing everywhere. Even the ants are tiny, we have a column of them marching up our bathroom wall.

No one walks anywhere, mainly because the pavements are flooded, inhabited or nonexistent. Everyone travels by either motorbike or pushbike, usually multi occupied. We are now used to seeing entire families of mum, dad and four children on one bike. However it’s a little unnerving to realise that it’s the 3 year old up front who’s driving. We have been issued with VSO pushbikes the riding of which has proved a very interesting experience; some of them even have brakes. The golden rules while driving in Cambodia are a) never look back, like skiing assume the people behind will avoid you and b) never stop for anyone or anything.

One word to sum up Cambodia so far is DAMP! The high temperatures and humidity mean that we are continually melting. We have to shower at least twice a day and a shirt will only last a few hours before it has to be changed. This gives clothes a very short life and is going to prove rather labour intensive when we don’t have the benefit of the VSO washing machine. Also it rains very heavily every afternoon which means that exploring the local environs has become an even wetter experience. Thank goodness for English Simon and the Lazy Mekong Daze bar by the riverside.

Tomorrow is Sunday and we have the day off. As it is Anna’s birthday we are all going on a boat trip up the river to a wooden pagoda and silk weavers’ village. We’ll be listening out for strains of the Ride of the Valkyries and looking out for Hueys on the horizon (Francis Ford Copolla joke).

We have not yet taken many photos and we’re not sure the local computer technology is up to loading them in less than 5 hours so wait till we get back to PP for illustrations of the above. We are about to brave the deluge to send this out, hope it gets to you.

Love and miss you all very much but still no regrets, how is 9EH by the way?
Hee hee.

Chris and Jon.

Hello from Cambodia 1

Hello from Cambodia. Sunday Sept 9th

All settled in and beginning to acclimatise to the jet lag, heat and culture shock. The journey out was fine albeit sleepless, and the temperature (high 30s) and humidity (high 80s) means that we have not yet caught up on the zzzzzzzs.

There are 18 new VSOs here doing the In Country training ( all teachers) and we are all living in the accommodation above the VSO office in central Phnom Penh. There are 8 of us in the over 50s age range, made up of 2 couples and 3 ladies by themselves and an older American man. The others are under 30 and include 4 Dutch, an American couple, and a Spanish girl. As you can imagine it’s a bit like the Big Brother House although everyone is really nice and nothing has kicked off - yet. On Wednesday we are all making our own way out to the VSO training house in the sticks about 90 km away. I wonder how many of us will disappear into the jungle never to be seen again.

We have had a very gentle introduction to Phnom Penh, with a cyclo tour round the sites on Saturday and a free day today. This was spent shopping in the Russia market which is an experience that smacks every sense full in the face. With some vigorous bartering we came away with a wardrobe of loose cotton clothes for tuppence. After that we went for an hour long massage which was amazing. It makes you feel all floppy and mellow. Will be doing that again!!!!

Cambodian bars are cheap and pleasant .We went to Elsewhere which is an ex-pats hangout with reclining cushions set among banana trees and a swimming pool in the middle. It felt like being on an 18-30 holiday in Ibiza. Some of the younger of members of the House went to The Heart of Darkness which is a club that even the Rough Guide is wary of. Too scary for us

This afternoon we experienced a rainstorm that would have washed Gloustershire away. It reduced the roads to foot deep raging torrents, however no one seemed worried and all the water had disappeared within half an hour, no idea where it goes!

We have seen some interesting sites - two full sized mattresses being transported by motorbike, a bag of live pigs in a tuk tuk, and a bike on a bike, to name but a few. We have also been out to dinner twice, been invited to a house party and done lunch at the Foreign Correspondents Club, which is an amazing restaurant /bar that overlooks the Mekong. It’s like stepping back into a Graham Green novel.

To be quite honest it feels like we are on an Easy Jet city break. However the hard work starts tomorrow with the In Country training beginning at 8am.

Post can be sent to us at the VSO Programme Office, PO Box 912, Phnom Penh although we will only be able to pick it up when we are in the city or if they send it on to the Battembang Office which probably won’t happen too often. We were given our pigeon holes today and some people already had post. We felt all sad and neglected, so start writing to us now.

We will probably have access to the internet until the end of October when we are sent to our placement. We were looking for Phnom Preuk on a map in the VSO office, eventually we found it with the help of one of the Cambodian staff who said, “ here it is….. but how do you get there, there are no roads?” A little worrying! Still we will have our phones for emergencies and when we feel really lonely, but it is expensive to send and receive calls so we won’t be using them too often. Our mobile numbers are Chris 0085592149785 and Jon 0085592149790.

Ok so we will now try to send this to you, but does the internet café have the technology? If you receive this obviously it does.

Will write the next instalment from Kampong Cham, if we ever get there.

Much love to all

Jon and Chris

Jetting off!

Chris and Jon travel to Cambodia on the 5th September! Follow their travels here!