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