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.