Rather lax

I think I have been rather lax on the old blogging front of late... I've now made it back from Ausland... it was a really lovely holiday... at somepoint i might sort out my flickr account and upload some photos in an organised manner... Jack was highly entertaining. He taught me many things, one of which being that in Pirate language 'Hairy Willy' means dried fish... he has the book to prove it... I'm sure you can imagine many incredibly mature conversations about hairy willies...
aside from that I watched Valient - a kids cartoon about carrier pidgeons in WWII - on repeat (yar, Herr General)... did lots of cycling up and down hills, found the cheese factory, found the distillery, was entertained by primary school sports day, was locked in a chicken house, went on some loverly walks, made and ate cakes and pizzas, spoke to a class of 7 year olds about Cambodia (this mainly revolved around eating flys and burning poo as a means of reducing the numbers of trees cut down)... etc...

Then home via Singapore and a Sushi with Markyboy back to Heathrow with no trouble on the airport security front. In fact Singapore airlines didn't seem to object to my 3 pieces of handluggae weighing over 20kg, which was most most fortunate.

Spent the last weekend in the Lake district with Anthony, feeling as if I was in Swallows and Amazons. Seriously that is a legendary film... must dig out the video... When we went sailing I had to restrain myself from trying to land on an island and start exploring and setting up camp... (un?)fortunately my sailing skills would not really have allowed it I rather think...
Lake district was tres nice... I forget how nice England is...

Now back in the big Winch... considering doing something constructive with my time... current thought is sort out the many boxes of junk (can I purge myself of any possessions???) I posses and perhaps redecorate (read pollyfill the holes) in my bedroom walls...

Not sure what I'm doing in October... Laos, Nepal, Timbucktu... who knoweth.... in the meantime I shall become practiced at being a lady at leisure... perhaps I should join the WI?

tumdiddlium
I will try and think of more unexciting events to write about. In the meantime overandout!

x x x x x

Mt Tambourine

I have arrived on the mountain of Tambourines and all is well.
cousin Jack is tall and goes to school and can read books and has a penknief! He is most grown up... but still entertaining!
I am trying to stop myself taking my shoes off before entering buildings, enjoying the tap water, trying not to be too distressed at the cost of everything... loving the total peace and tranquility there is in this place - no more building noises at 5 in the morning... no more crazy traffic... just the smell of trees and the noise of birds...

oh and its cold... i swear there was frost on the ground this morning... but apparently its only dew... oh I just love snuggling under 2 duvets and a blanket mmmm

more excitingly I bought the Guardian weekly today... the guardian... how i missed it... at last we are reunited in paper form, the internet just isnt quite the same.

by the way is britney spears pregnant again?

gone... singapore

well i have made it to singapore quite nicely... aside from sitting across the isle from a vomiting woman and next to a very sweet, but slightly trying (if it had been a long haul flight) man called Kok (pronounced Coke)... I think he had a learning difficaulty (not sure if that is PC way to say it) and possibly something else as he seemed to be frothing at the mouth! Anyway we had a very long conversation, which started with him asking me if i was sleeping - my eyes were closed... he told me about Toys R Us (he loved the place), Barbara Streisand (he hadnt heard her music but knew she was a singer) about how he had completed an adult education course... about living in Cambodia for 4 months where his relatives had sent him to work on the farm but as he had lived in the US all his life this was a shock... about food... about how he thought singaporiajn women looked nice.. about the lack of toothpaste on the plane... it went on and on... but he was well meaning!

so now have been enjoying singapore airport which is lovely.. free foot massage machines... subway sandwhiches, a sunflower garden (which if you got rid of the smokers) was the perfect place to laze in the sun and watch the planes take off.. lots of shops to look at... actually i think a combination of being tierd and sad at leaving the bodge and being in transit makes me feel slightly bamboozeled by al, of the gliter, and shiny products and organisedness of it all. PP was nice, but chaotic. so reverse culture shock or something... im glad i have my mp3 player...

oh yes.. the luggage... by the time i got to the airport my checked bagage was 10kg over and hand luggae was about 20kg (all 3 pieces of it).. managed to get away with the handluggage and negotiated with them to only pay 50% of the excess cost they wanted to whack me for... which was about 25 squids so not too tragic...
half the luggage is left here in left luggae now, so i should be ok to and from ausland... its just the flight to londres!

ok must run think theyre calling my flight..

xxxxxxx

going going...

so...
1 hour till the taxi comes to take me to the airport... considering its not yet 9am I have been very busy.. final packing... cycling round town to take photos.. feeding my friends kitten... eating musli and yoghurt at the traiditional pre-flight cafe - ive eaten musli at the same place before Anthony, Clari and Dad left... oh how i love routene?!

All that is left is for me to convince the check in staff that 15kg of hand luggage and 8kg over on my checked baggage allowance is perfectly ok and that i should not, under any circumstances be charged excess... ho hum

actually I packed in a rush last night and I have a feeling I may be wandering round australia half naked as hardly anything would fit in the backpack for aus apart from the vast volumes of gifts... the other heavier backpack will have to stay in Singapore left luggage as I have even less luggage allowwance for the Aus part of my flights

last day at work yesterday was really sad... oh my team are so lovely... I shall miss them muchly... now must dash and put on my sweater and jacket... hmm thats a good point I wont be running round Aus half naked as i'm wearing more clothes than I've worn in 6 months... who needs a sauna thats what I say...

over and out

tick tock

tickticktock
goes the time

it is dawning on me that i am leaving in about 36hours. I dont like to think about these things too much, or I get sad... best to stay in denial as long as possible.

This weekend has been lovely... spent Saturday on a mountain with beautiful lakes and waterfalls, having a BBQ with my team from work, and then today at the zoo with some friends. At the zoo i saw tigers and monkeys and otters and sun bears and crocodiles and other random animals... the enclosures are not really too bad, and the setting is lovely, with lots of trees. BUT you can get right next to the cages and despite signs telling you not to feed the animals it was possible to touch, stroke and feed all of the animals... in fact it was possible to buy a coconut from some kids hanging around and then they would throw the coconut into the bears cage and assuming it didnt knock the bear out you could watch it eat it... i'm not sure thats such a good thing!

so i am feeling sad about going. I thought because I was only here 6 months, and living somewhere that is more guest house than home, that I wouldnt let the Bodge get to me like Mongoland... cant be doing with pining for years over more countries... but you know I will miss so many lovely people - really I have the best team at work ever... the warm weather, the mentalist traffic, the chaos, the massages, the riding on the back of a motobike, the cheapness of everything, the yummy yummy food (I can see rice withdrawal being an issue)... the bike rides...
Tomorrow is the last day at work... which will be the sadest thing to leave i thinks... but i shall look forward to seeing the aussies... that should distract me... that and my fear of flying...
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkk 4 planes in the next 2.5 weeks sounds nasty to me

must dash... and pack possibley???

xxx

more photos

just uploaded some more photos onto flickr just random round and about the place ones... also trying to add some of my better ankor ones as i think the ones up now arent the best!

Ammusements

The following story in the news here entertained me. My friend that works at USAID verified that it was absolutely correct!

The US Embassy in Cambodia mistakenly received a shipment of 140,000 bullets instead of the delivery of artworks it had ordered to decorate its new USAID offices.
The mix up was apparently caused by Thai Airways, which mislabelled the cargo… apparently the bullets were supposed to be going to Finland (why?… perhaps for moose shooting?)… anyways the bullets weren’t actually anything to do with the US government but they got them all the same.
Of course this event generated much comedy comment about bullets as art in testimony to the great Bush etc etc

Other amusements has been todays rain… cycling home and the water nearly covered my wheels. This wasn’t a problem in itself, however whenever a bally Lexus (I think perhaps I have issues with these machines) drove past the wake made me wobble… but I did not fall off. hoorah

bally corruption

This shall be a rant about the bally corruption that occurs at all levels in this country… Last week I went to the post office and there was a bit of a debacle when they tried to overcharge me lots and I made them re-weigh the envelope with the scales on the counter so that I could see exactly how much less than they claimed, the envelope really weighed (standard practice is the scales are under the counter)… anyways today I went to the post office again and after they told me some crazy price for a couple of large envelopes I again insisted they showed me the scales. Absolutely not, the bally woman refused and just turned her back on me when I tried to push the issue (Asian non-confrontation?)… Can you imagine if this sort of thing happened at home grrr… I really wished I spoke kick ass Khmer and then I would have let rip properly… so I just grabbed my post and stormed out… and was mad for a couple of minutes… but its hard to stay mad… I’m sure like every other public sector employee they’re woefully underpaid, and ripping off people over the price of their stamps is a means of survival… perhaps I would feel better if I scratched up a couple of Lexus and Mercedes owned by high ranking government officials?

Ok perhaps not… aside from not really being criminally minded, the prospect of extending my stay here… in a Cambodian prison is not a particularly thrilling one…

Dentist 2

Sooo i decided not to go for an appointment with the unqualified dentist. after asking around i heard of a Khmer dentist that had been trainned by german missionaries so thought i would give that a go... in the interests of saving fast quantities of cash...
i toodled in to a little dentist place which was considerably less glamourous than the place i went to last weekend. no appointment needed and i was shown out the back where there was a row of dentist chairs with low screens dividing it up. I was glad it was empty... hearing the screams of the next paitient might have been disconcerting.
So i told the very sweet english speaking dentist that i thought i needed a filling. he examined my teeth and said they were amazing. no fillings needed... they looked very strong yadda yadda. Not sure which 'dentist' was correct but i figure it would be in his interest to tell me i did need fillings cos then he could charge me lots of money, so im inclined to think i dont need fillings. I opted for a scale and polish (after asertaining all equipment was sterilised)... and he did a great job. much time was lavished on my little teeth, much better than bally england where dentists exist to extract vast volumes of cash from you for doing very little... Half way through the procedure, whilst i was rinsing my mouth i mentioned my wisdom teeth had been aching. ''oh'', said the dentist man, ''let me me help you''. He then proceeded to massage my jaws intermitedly whilst polishing my teeth. Very sureal especially as i felt his face was rather too close to mine durring this procedure. Anyways i escaped unscathed and unmarried and for $8 (they gave me $2 discount for some inexplicable reason) i was happy doo da...

other events this weekend have been cycling around the countryside, which is starting to look very lush and green... spending much money in the markets, and sorting sorting sorting out my junk and getting ready to fly fly fly high in the sky to australia. where i shall watch people stop at traffic lights, drink water from a tap, drink fresh milk and most excitingly go to a cheese factory near to where my auntie lives... mmmmmm think of all that cheese... yumyumyum so 1 week and 1 dayo left in the country. Time flies when youre having fun...

much love
me xxxx

teeth

Today I decided to go to see the dentist, not because I have toothache, just because I havnt been to a dentist for 2 years and I thought it had to be cheaper here than at home. There is a very posh shiny new clean looking place near to where I swim so I thought id give it a try – no appointment necessary. The check up was free, which was surprising. They showed me in a mirror that 2 of my teeth have smallsmall holes in which it might be wise to fill. I’m not particularly surprised given the number of biscuits I have eaten in the 2 years since I last saw a dentist. So the question is do I have them filled in the bodge? Or do I wait till I come home? It will cost less than $US20 to do them both, with a composite filling. Apparently I could have mercury fillings if I wanted hahahaha… I was thinking I would go for it, but decided to just check with the ‘dentist’ that he was qualified. I felt embarrassed asking, but he laughed at me and said that oh no he wasn’t trained, he was doctor who had just been playing dentists for the last 10 years… hmmm so at this point I decided to leave and ponder the wisest move. I’m inclined to just get them filled but I don’t want to end up poisoned or with no teeth…
Ed – my cheapskate mentor what would you do? Would you get them done here to save some $$$?

A perm!!!!

This last week seems to have sped by and im steaming towards the end of my time here… pondering constantly how im going to make my luggage = 30kg. As per usual I’ve accumulated many things.

So I’m leaving here in less than 3 weeks, and I’ve now got tickets sorted to go to Aus on the way home to see my auntie and uncle and the wonderful jackjack… who is now 7 years of age which is a shocking fact really. Then I should be back in englandos on the 11th August… and I believe Nadj is collecting me from the airport in a pink limousine with pink polar bear fur seats… so we can celebrate her birthday in style. Helicopters were also mentioned.

What next is unknownunknown… but I don’t think I will be unemployed… the question is more where I shall be employed. Ho hum didlium

So yes I thought I should write about my perm. I have been ruminating over whether to have one for some time… seems like such a comedy thing to do… so I went with my friend to the salon… all very nice. Many Lexus’ parked outside = indication that people of wealth used the establishment… however we got board of waiting so went somewhere else, which was probably nicer, albeit there were no cars parked outside.
Now I am a hairdresser novice. I was trying to count how many times I have been to a hairdresser in my life and it is honestly less than 7… I thought with a perm they might just rub some stuff in your hair and leave it to dry and that would be it… but apparently not. It was a 3 hour process involving a long hairwash… a hair cut… many pink curlers wrapped in my hair (see photo), much chemicals applied and then sitting around whilst it set and then another hair rinse, and then mousing… phew… the results are also depicted in the photo. I am not totally convinced, but it still isn’t dry yet… I also think putting bally mouse in my hair every 3 days will be a pain in the ass bone… and I cant believe it will last 6-12 months… surely not?! Also I think that a bit of my hair at the front isn’t permed properly and it looks odd so I might have to venture back there tomorrow and get them to fix it… anyways it cost US$20.. which apparently is expensive… but seemed like a bargain for me given it was 3hrs of 2 peoples time… now I am under strict instructions not to wash my hair for 3 days. YUK.



Also this week I met up with Gilb who was passing through on his south east asian tour. Was very nicenice to catch up and meet some of his travelling friends… made a change from expats and Khmers…

drugs

Today I went to the chemist to buy some paracetamol. It was a surprisingly exciting trip. The shop smelt like I remember the vets smelling when we used to take our cats there when I was little. The shelves were stacked chocablock wall to ceiling with boxes and jars and sachets of potions.
I decided to do a little experiment and see what prescription drugs I could get over the counter. I can only conclude that really you can get whatever you want really… no hassles… what is more scary is that many of the drugs do not come in a packet and therefore have absolutely NO instructions, warnings etc… although you could argue many Cambodians wouldn’t be able to read instructions in English anyway. I have heard so many stories of the inadequate medical system here where people are prescribed the wrong drugs, conflicting drugs etc etc… people are undiagnosed, wrongly diagnosed etc… one of my friends was told she could only see the scan she had had done if she signed up for an operation (which she didn’t need)! These are the lucky people… the people who can afford drugs and health care. Most people cant.

Anyways back to the drug store (oh how American is that?)… I was actually thinking that despite the obvious draw backs and potential for serious serious disaster of an unregulated pharmaceutical market, there could be some positives, especially with the volume of information on the internet. For example it is possible to establish which drugs are licensed in the UK, and what they’re licensed for, it is possible to find out from both drugs companies, and users of drugs what are the benefits and negative side effects of different drugs, and of course there are many reputable self diagnostic sites. Sooo for people who are reasonably literate and sensible, one could by pass the need for a doctor for simple ailments or repeat prescriptions, which could be useful for those who cant access a doctor or cant afford doctors fees…

In balance tho, I think we are extremely fortunate and protected by the fact that we do have a regulated pharmaceutical market in the UK… however whilst im here… any orders for drugs ;o)

Psychology of grey weather…

I didn’t realise that living in England for the best part of 25years could give me such long term psychological damage… it is very grey outside and I don’t want to leave the office and go home because I am scared it will be nasty and cold… but actually I know that it is boiling hot… but that fact isn’t really conveying itself to the part of my brain that moves my feet…

a life of leisure....

In the interests of trying out all possible combinations and permutations of massages before I leave this haven of massage-ness I have been deviating from the usual full body aromatherapy massage... and in recent weeks I have had a Thai massage where a midget Thai lady tried (unsuccessfully) to click every joint in my body. I can only conclude we Europeans are not as clicky as Asians... one of my colleagues at work can even click his neck whilst sitting looking at his computer (legend)... the Thai massage also involved her walking all over my back and feet and trying some strange maneuvre where she lifted and twisted me round... for a midget (well small person) she was rather strong...
today I went for an Indian head massage... lying on the cushions, under the aircon, listening to sounds of the forest (piped in over a posh sound system) was a nice was to laze away the hot lunch time hour... however I did wonder why on earth I was paying someone $10 to bore their fingers into my skull and pull at my hair (does anyone know how an Indian head massage for bald people works?)... I don’t think ill try another one of those... especially as they used this kind of massage oil/gel stuff and despite washing my hair 2x today it still looks greasy - as if I haven’t washed it for a month... nice...

oooo thoughts on hair... I’m thinking of getting a perm... which is comedy... in the sense that I’m really not a spend 5 hours in front of the mirror doing my hair and make up sort of girl... in fact I can safely say I have been to a hairdresser 3 times in the last 2 years... however I’ve never had curly hair and I thought it might be interesting... a one off experience... just to see what I look like... but I’m not totally convinced about the chemicals being poured all over my head mlarky...
we shall see... I shall keep you updated... if I start blogging from a hospital in Bangkok you know it all went wrong...

My elfname is....

quite by chance i have stumbled on a random website (blogthings.com)
which tells you all sorts of useless information about yourself...

so i thought i would enlighten you with some little known facts about me.

My elfname is: FURRY SNOWBALLER (do not ask me how this is calculated - I am certain its not scientific)....

My ''sexy Brazilian'' name is: Rafaela Peixe

The car I should drive is: Jaguar XK 4.2 (wont say no to one of them...)

I am 23% american (apparently this means pretty un-american.. good... no offence sadiebaksh)

I am not scarry

In my past 'animal life' i was a fox... edward???

My mind is 'a creative hotbed of artistic talent'.

I am 12% Psychopath...


I hope you now feel as enlightened as I do

Change

you can always count on Tracy Chapman for some thought provoking lines....

Change
Tracy Chapman

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of god and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

If you knew that you would be alone,
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings up pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

Are you so upright you can't be bent?
If it comes to blows are you so sure you won't be crawling?
If not for the good, why risk falling?
Why risk falling?

If everything you think you know,
Makes your life unbearable,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow,
And hard times come to bring you down,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you saw the face of God and love
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

photos

ive just uploaded a few more photos onto flickr - see link on right hand side

karaoake and mud

I am currently typing this lying in my hammock, eating popcorn… seeing the screen is proving hard through the glare of the sun and my scratched up sunglasses… note to self: investing in some decent non scratch sporty type sunglasses might be wise before going mountain biking in a dirt bath…

There has just been a short interlude, during which (and I lie not) my hammock has broken… I was just lying back and the next thing I new the ropes snapped and I was on the floor… ooops…I have either become incredibly fat or the ropes have rotted… I am inclined to think the latter is true, its not like I'm eating lead bricks… popcorn is really quite light… I suppose this means I will have to buy a new hammock…tomorrow is another public holiday (Queens Birthday) so I shall go a shopping!

Since I last wrote I've had a couple of amusing experiences that I thought I might write about… the first one was at the beach. Anyone who has spent much time in Asia will know they’re mad crazy about karaoke… karaoke here involves renting a room and then just singing or dancing with your friends (I’m not sure if you could rent a room on your own… but possibly?)… the other thing about Asian karaoke is that pretty much most karaoke bars seem to double up as brothels… so anyways we went to the karaoke on our last night at the beach. We went to a pretty high class establishment (identified as such by the large numbers of mercs and land cruisers outside)… even so I was slightly concerned about how old some of the ‘beer girls’ looked… ho hum… lets just hope they were having safe sex. Once in our Karaoke room we probably disappointed the staff by just drinking water and not ordering any ‘extras’… being with mostly Khmers we mostly did Khmer karaoke.. Khmer just looks like squiggles to me… so no chance of singing along… however of course the time came for me to sing a song… what to sing was the problem… for some unknown reason I opted for ‘locomotion’ by kylie, everyone was waiting with baited breath for the song to queue… I had the microphone ready and was watching the screen intently… however the opening words revealed that there was some error, the qued song was certainly not locomotion, but something random which I had never ever heard before… there followed 3 painful minutes whilst I hacked my way through a random unknown song, my colleagues laughed at me and scantily clad women danced on a ski slope on the karaoke screen (I really don’t know what the ski slope was about)… so kylie take2… in retrospect choosing kylie was a mistake… I know the chorus to locomotion, but the rest of it I haven’t a clue… I’m not even a big Kylie fan… hmmm… anyways it was entertaining, especially as the karaoke movie this time around was scenes from Saltsburg (singing Kylie to scenes from the sound of music is soooo wrong)…

Enough about karaoke bars… next excitements happened today, when I took advantage of my half decent Vietnamese bike and went for a ride with a friend. Oh how I love riding my bike. It was a great ride up a dirt road alongside the river, passing through some little villages, wooden houses all higgledy pigildy on stilts… neither of us are going-back-the-way-we-come types… so we determined to find a nice loop back to the main road… this involved riding along ever deteriorating mud tracks… through rice fields… we were hoping that the land markers were not actually land mine markers, we knew they weren’t, but thoughts of being blown to bits do float across your mind… anyways it was a bit bumpy but the tracks were not a problem in itself until it started to rain… it didn’t even rain that hard, and my initial concern was the degree to which my clothes would go see-through… however I soon realised this was really a secondary concern as the mud started sticking to the wheels… and then more mud started sticking and soon, as soon as I had unclogged the mud with sticks even more mud had got attached… I should perhaps note that the soil is like clay… so in effect my bike was fast becoming a clay model… sticks were proving ineffective at declogging so I just was pulling off the clay with my hands… getting myself more and more filthy… in the end, after going less than 30meters in 10 minutes I realised the only choice was to carry my bike, it wasn’t going to be ridden or pushed anywhere the mud-clay was so thick. My nice orange Vietnamese bike isn’t that heavy, but the added weight of the clay made it a little tricky… as did attempting to stay upright, whilst lugging the bike walking barefoot through the slippery mud – I had to carry my sandals as they were fast turning into high heels the amount of mud they were collecting… anyways so we are slowly slip walking along a mud track, bikes in the air, in the middle of Cambodian nowhere when my bike slips and the front wheel fork swings snap shut onto my wrist… ooops. The outcome of this was that I nearly passed out and had to crouch with my head between my knees to stop meself throwing up… anyways we had to go onwards, couldn’t just stop… we really were in the middle of no where useful…I estimate we walked for 1.5-2km carrying the bikes which was increasingly hard with my left wrist being slightly buggered… I know our mud covered appearance caused much amusement to bystanders… proving to Khmers that fancy foreign bikes are just as useless at dealing with mud as their grannie bikes.... Eventually we met the graded road… and a power hose (there are power hoses all over this country… presumably as mud clogs up everyone’s motos?)… the bikes, shoes and feet and hands were power hosed sparkly clean and ride-able whilst we supped sweet sweet sugar cane juice (dad will appreciate this)… then back to Phnom Penh along the main road… tricky as by this time I was really only able to cycle one handed as the vibrations from the road annoyed my wrist… my friends cartilage in her knee was also causing problems… it might all sound rather messy, but it was soooperdoooper fun… its good to have adventures me thinks, stops life getting too dull…

Now my wrist has had a little rest it feels marginally better but its fairly bruised and my hand tingles… however typing this isn’t too hard… I shall see if it improves, before considering attempting to find a doctor… I don’t think Cambodia is a centre of health excellence in the world… although its not the worst. According to the WHO Myanmar has the worse health care service in the world… mmm its really quite close to here, perhaps I could go on a medical vacation….

I think that’s enough from me

Love and lovely muddy bikes

Me x x x x

world cup updates

I thought I would write a brief update from the beach... as I type I am looking out over white sands, at the lovely warm blue blue sea... mmmmm

actually I am at the beach to do work... team planning and team building... the team building bit is the fun bit because it means we can play play play... hooray!

Yesterday we arrived and went down to the beach... we ate BBQed squid and then got down to playing football... now I am fairly rubbish at this sort of thing but it was amusing running around in the sand and I scored a hat trick... (I think this is more due to the fact that no one wanted to tackle the foreigner than skill on my part). Lots of kids joined in, a chance for them to stop selling bracelets or collecting rubbish and just mess around like children should...
according to my colleagues Cambodians are really into football, and watch as many of the world cup matches as they can stay awake for (we are 6hrs ahead here)... teams supported are England and Brazil! When questioned about the Cambodian national squad they unanimously concluded they were rubbish.. Loosing every game... although apparently the under 14 squad is great!

After football people decided to go swimming... I should mention that when most Cambodians go swimming they just run in the water in their clothes and don’t actually swim (they cant)... but splash around... looking around the beach in Sianoukville you notice a stark contrast between the scantily bikini clad foreign tourists and the Cambodians in their shorts and vests... the small irony is that sometimes due to the see-through nature of their clothes the Cambodians can be revealing more than the foreigners!
now my swim suit was back in the hotel, but I would have felt uncomfortable wearing it anyways what with everyone else being fully dressed... unfortunately I was wearing some trousers which are really quite loose and I thought they would fall off in the water - nightmare! Fortunately a kid selling beach shorts came to my rescue and for 1 English pound I bought a pair of blue shorts which have ''World Cup 2010'' embroidered on them... interesting... it doesn’t say South Africa or anything like that so perhaps they were made before that location was announced? anyways these shorts were preferable to the white ones with palm trees (huge see-through potential there) or the purple ones with sleeping dogs on them (nasty) or the ones which were designed for thin Asians and not fat telfys (most of the selection)

once I was suitably dressed in shorts and t-shirt I could go play in the sea... oh the warm warm sea... so unlike the cold Atlantic sea...

over and out xx

itchy head

i've noticed my head has been itching recently. perhaps i have lice... ive slept in some fairly scanky looking places... or perhaps its just itchy... interesting.

last night i decided to half watch the last 20min of the england paraguay game... commentary was in Vietnamese... the only things i understood were the cries of 'day-vid beeeek-ham' and 'steee-van jeee-rard'.. there wasnt a nice little score tally in the top right hand corner like on the BBC, so it wasnt until they fortunately flashed the score up at the end that i knew we won!

ooo other exciting things that i have spied on TV was that apparently yesterday was the 'world naked bike ride' why didnt i know about this? would have been great in Phnom Penh... possibly...
actually it all looked a bit naked for my liking, but good idea!http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5067154.stm


im currently trying to upload some photos of 'nam onto flickr... if it works and you fancy a look there is a link on right hand side of this page xxxxxxx

The ride

I have been meaning to write an update about my trip to ‘nam for a few days, but just havnt found the time to sit down and collate my thoughts into something for the old blog!

Now I have just finished a lunch of sour soup and crab and other yummies and I have some time… actually on the lunch note, the soup was not soured by tamarind (as usual) but by these strange insects that looked like mini wasps… slightly disconcerting to eat at first, but I got used to it…

So the trip to nam… well last I wrote I was sitting in Ho Chi Minh pondering whether the bikes we had picked up would make it back to Phnom Penh… they did indeed do the distance… 298km in 2.5days wasn’t bad going considering the heat and humidity!

Day 1 – the ride from Ho Chi Minh to Bavat (Cambodian boarder town) via some tunnels used by the viet cong during the Vietnam/American war – was pretty adventurous… mostly because the tunnels were not on the main road, and required some navigation through the Vietnamese countryside. We were armed with maps – but these turned out to be slightly dodgy, and anyways we didn’t really meet any Vietnamese who could read maps very well… indeed the Vietnamese we met couldn’t really speak English either which made getting lost an interesting experience… so yes we got lost… alas for all its lovely smooth roads Vietnam hasn’t developed brown signs to major tourist attractions… each time we got lost or in trouble we were helped by some incredibly lovely people, which restored some of my faith in humanity (it has taken a knocking in the bodge with all the corruption and stamping on small people that goes on here….)
The first time we were lost we stopped at a petrol station to ask for help… pointing at the map and gesturing about tunnels… everyone looked confused, but then these two men on a moto with limited English said we should follow them… so they poodled off down the road and we tried to keep up with them for about 5km back the way we came… they stopped at a shop and went and bought us another map and drew a line on it the way we were supposed to go… very very nice of them… so off we went again and all went well until we started thinking that perhaps we were not quite on the road we thought we were on… especially when people kept telling us it was another 20km to the tunnels… hmmm well I think we took a wrong turning or something, but we ended up doing 2 long sides of a triangle rather than one short one… but we did eventually make it to the tunnels… there we watched a promotional video about ‘America and her lacky’s’ and then went around the tunnel system which was pretty amazing, even if it was reconstructed (apparently so the fat westerners could go down the tunnels… Vietcong were very small… hence the Americans couldn’t follow them in the tunnels). We got our photos taken by Vietcong (well dummies dressed up as Vietcong)… my dad got to climb on an American tank that had been partially blown up… and we ate tapioca (as the Vietcong did)… I never realised tapioca was a plant… finally there was the horrible shooting range where my dad fired an AK47 and an M16 I think… guns are evil things, they were so loud and just make me think of all the damage they can do to peoples lives… what is the point?… ho hum.
It then started to thunder which added to the feeling that we had stepped back in time and were about to be bombed by B52s… back at the bikes I discovered that minimiffy (smallsmall toy miffy animal) had fallen off my bag where she was attached… (minimiffy had been keen to learn about the vietcong you see)… this was verging on a minor tragedy, I couldn’t just abandon minimiffy to the Vietnamese jungle… soooo I paid the guide again to take me round the tunnels and forests to find minimiffy (I am sure this amused/confused him highly)… we couldn’t find her in the tunnels and I really was despairing of ever seeing her again when we arrived back at the shooting range and there she was talking to the shooting instructors. It would appear that minimiffy has less compunction about guns than I do… and is possibly now the sharpest toy rabbit shooter in the world?
By the time I returned to my poor dad it was raining monsoon styleee… we waited a bit to see if it would ease off… haha no chance! So we set off in the rain… me feeling very smug at having invested in some gore tex clothes and ortelieb panniers (I can confirm they’re 100% waterproof – we tested them real good)… there were a few small hills on our mission back to find the main road to the boarder and it was just nice to cycle up them and feel my cycling legs again… the roads were good, even in the countryside… although in saying that the drainage on the roads was CRAP, lots of cycling through floods! Also Vietnamese houses were not on stilts like in Cambodia and they had neat gardens with hedges, and at some points, in the rain and with the smooth road, I could imagine myself to be home…
So of course we got lost again… and this time a nice non-English speaking lady drew us a map of how to find the main road… if she hadn’t I think perhaps we still would be cycling round south Vietnam today… back on the main road and it was 5ish… still rainingraining and we were 40km from the boarder and had cycled 80 odd km already… we plodded on, and it got dark… plodded on for a long long time it seemed. Fortunately Vietnam has street lights… so we reached the boarder around 8ish after stopping for a genuine slap up Chinese… we declined the offer of a guesthouse, wanting to hop across the boarder and into a glittering casino we could see across the way… after clearing customs we soon discovered that no casinos wanted 2 mud splattered barangs (foreigners) on bikes to stay, we couldn’t even get past the guards at the entrances… it was past 9pm, the 1 guesthouse was full and I was a leeetle worried cos Cambodge in the dark… at a boarder town full of casinos and prostitutes and probably guns… we were really tired etc… and there was no room at the inn… I managed to get past the guards into the last casino (there followed a comedy moment as I tried to walk through the metal detector and they thought my camelpak drinking system was some sort of gun holster)… so inside the casino I tried to talk my way into the Casino’s hotel… I was looking pretty pathetic and I played up on that and the poor manager (who spoke English) was concerned for me… but we couldn’t stay… anyways pesterpester and he eventually agreed to call another guesthouse 2km down the road and see if there was a space.. there was and he booked us in, and he even came outside (by this time it was only drizzling) to point us in the right direction… seriously if there was no room at that guesthouse we would have been screwed… anyways we slept well that night!

Ok, the final 2 days of cycling in the bodge were less eventful, mostly because we just headed into Phnom Penh on highway number 1… long and mostly flat... varying quality and busy-ness (roads are no way as nice in Cambodia as ‘nam)… it was great just to see and smell the countryside… and interact with people a bit… something you don’t really do looking out of a bus/car window… sometimes kids would come and cycle alongside us for a km or so just to practice their English… we drank lots of sugar cane juice and even more water – wowing people with the camelpaks (why were we pouring bottles of water into our rucksacks??)… we chatted to some monks… watched the world go by… shouted ‘hello’ to the manymanymany children who called out as we cycled past… it was really nice… and hot and sunny… I wrapped a Cambodian scarf or Krama around my cycle helmet to keep the sun off my face, ears and neck… seemed to work, although my colleagues now say I am the same colour as a Cambodian (this is not a compliment and I feel they’re exaggerating the colour of my skin significantly)…

The final mornings ride back to PP involved crossing the Mekong and navigating along a narrow road with potholes the size of elephant’s feet, whilst ridiculous amounts of traffic sped past us, weaving in and out of other traffic, and generally driving in a manner that implied the driver was trying to kill himself, all his passengers and anyone else (including the barang cyclists) who happened to also be in the road… however we didn’t die… and made it into PP in time for lunch and a rest!

It was a really great trip… lots of fun. I am glad I did it…

Now today apparently is the start of the world cup…perhaps I should find out when England’s playing and who they’re playing? Hmm I don’t think football is popular in the bodge… if I didn’t watch the bbc in the morning I would probably be oblivious to the fact that Wayne Roony got injured a while ago… and that the world cup was taking place in Germany…

This is more than enough from me I think
X x x x

observations from a new country

sitting in a hotel lobby in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city... we arrived in on the bus and picked up some hopefully not too tragic bikes and now am waiting for the room to be sorted!
Hilary my bike is predominantly orange. not through choice... there was no choice... but the range was better than PP... my bike is not designed for midgits...

i thought i would quickly write down some small observations from the 3 or so hours i have been here!

• PP is a village... this place is huge in comparison
• Everything is much cleaner, and better kept
• There are many motos... same as PP, but they seem to be in better condition on the whole.
• People in Vietnam dont wear motorbike helmets... in PP some people do wear them... but here i have seen i think only 1 person wearing one... silly
• People obey the traffic rules... i think i would feel guilty cycling down a one way street or jumping a red light!
• There are taxis... wow...
• There are tall glass type buildings...
• The roads dont have pot holes
• There is a KFC... i dont think there are any international fast food chains in PP...

I was thinking life in PP was pretty cushty, but perhaps coming here makes me realise that it might well be in comparison to UB... but Saigon is a whole new level of niceness... hmmm but i still dont think you can drink the water from the taps... oh i dream of a day when i can stick my head under a tap and drinkdrinkdrink

I think tomorrow we will head off on our new bikes back to the boarder... we might split the trip into 3 days rather than 2... it is hot and neither of us have cycled much this year... and our bikes are untested! This means tomorrow night looks like it might be spent at a casino on the boarder... i'm thinking there is potential for entertainment there...

love from me and uncle Ho x x x

updates

well i have calmed down slightly from my last blog... this blog is going to be a mixture of different thoughts i've been having the last few days...

1. at work i had been thinking something was missing... couldnt quite exactly put my finger on what tho! however on Monday I realised it was the ubiquitous picture of the old king, new king and Queen mother that are EVERYWHERE, especially in public buildings... there isnt actually a queen of cambodge although it is suspected that the new king is gay (i should say this could just be a malicious rumour, but he is 53, unmarried and used to be a ballet dancer in Paris).. the old king is still alive and mostly lives in a palace in North Korea... I suspect making random movies with Kim Jong il…i understand they both have a penchant for such activities... so my workplace doesnt have pictures of the royal family on the wall... or so i thought until i noticed the cleaning cupboard door was open... had a nose round, and there on the wall were the old king and queen smiling down on the mops and bottles of detol... the cleaner obviously isnt a fan of the new king...

2. rains continue... the last 2 days we have had heavy heavy rain and thunder and lightening at around 3.30 - 4.30 in the afternoon... it is so nice as everything just cools right down. however the drainage system in this place is crap. the last 2 days have seen me once more laughing aloud as i cycle through flooded streets (water covering almost the top of the wheel of my grannie bike)... calmly passing motos and cars which are flying everywhere... stalling... crashing into each other... i realised why these rich types drive round in their 4-by-4s they need them for the flash floods - some roads are impassable to all those not in 4x4, on grannie bikes or in boats. one rather large 4x4 drove past me too fast for my liking and created a wave of water that threatened to wobble me off my bike and into the murky waters... fortunately i stayed on!

3. my dad arrived on montag, and he has been touring PP... tomorrow we planned to cycle to Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City... however today we went looking round the markets for some half decent bikes and could only find crappy ones designed for asian midgets... we decided that cycling 160miles on a dodgy bike designed for a 12 year old might not be fun... so we changed plans and are now busing it to Saigon ($6 - bargain)... and going to pick up some bikes there (im informed there is a much better range)... and then cycle home on saturday and sunday... i really hope we do get some half decent bikes cos it should be a good ride!
looking forward to going to 'nam... apparently as soon as you cross the boarder its like another world... lots busier, more developed etc... cycling back means that shopping will have to be kept to a minimum... no more Vietnamese tea sets for telfy then...
We might try and visit the viet cong tunnels... could be cool. Apparently there is also a shooting range where you can fire AK47s and other military hardware... i'm fairly anti guns etc at the moment, and cant see the attraction... although i guess i can see the macho, pretend like your a hero type thing... but it just seems bad taste, when you think what they can do to people's lives... bad taste like you wouldnt go around with a t-shirt with Hitler or pol-pot on the front... unless you were weird.

4. the arrival of dad bought many new toys for telfy... i now have a spangly new mp3 player (the old one was killed during a power surge).. it is green and exciting, and plays movies... which i didnt think would interest me, but you can get the complete series of ''the office'' uploaded for a couple of quid at the shop downstairs and i think that could be a good way to kill a bus journey... better than boxing orangutans... oh and i have a new compoooter. the old one was not killed by a power surge, but was very ancient (6 years)... it couldnt cope with me uploading digital photos and kept crashing... i think it only really functions as a typing machine... so i am very happy with my purchases, and my courior for shipping them for me... however i am dyspraxic (read clumsycareless), so i will try my very bestest not to ruin them anytime soon...


now off for diner i think xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Ponderings

I was thinking about what to write in this blog when I was cycling around and about this morning… then I came to the internet and was reading other peoples blogs and realized there was a something rather similar about Spearsy’s most recent blog and what I wanted to write about…great minds spearsy great minds…
Spearsy was saying how fragile life was after seeing pictures of the earthquake in Indonesia… I was thinking how fragile life was after watching someone go up in smoke as I cycled past the cremation tower in the temple at the end of my street, and because for the last few days I’ve been getting more and more __________ about the disparity in how people live in this country, and the fact that for so many people here life is as fragile as …. hmm an eggshell??? That’s pretty fragile right?
The blank line in the previous sentence is because I don’t quite know what the verb is I want to use… its partly angry, partly sad, and partly guilty…
I’m angry because some people in this country are so stupendously ridiculously rich, and they get that way treding on anyone and everyone… through corruption and through selling off natural resources etcetc… landmines and war and conflict in general is another thing that is making me mad… most days you see people who have had their lives damaged by violence.
I’m sad because of child mortality rates, illiteracy levels… levels of stunting and malnutrition, the highest HIV/AIDS incidence in Asia… statistics… it is easy to let them run over you without taking in what they mean to real people… but everyday I see the statistics in the children begging or playing in the street and the people with blank empty faces…
I feel guilty because it is all too easy for me to sit and judge rich corrupt Cambodians, but I live a pretty nice life here, and in the UK… giving money or buying someone some food slightly salves ones conscience… but I am becoming more and more convinced that I need to reflect carefully on how I spend my money and my time… the world is small… what we do or don’t buy impacts people in other places, and the environment… life is fragile and short… can we really justify only spending our money to build ourselves up? The world is also full of lonely and vulnerable people and we pass them by the whole time.. I speak for myself – I can spend ages engrossed in my own mini dramas (what massage shall I choose today type thing)… that I become blind to other people… giving money to a charity is the easy option… but is it really the only option?

My thoughts on these things are a bit scatty at the moment… possibly I need to ponder them further… I’m not convinced the answer is to renounce all worldly possessions, or sleep on a bed of rusty nails… or embrace Marxism… ultimately, for the majority of people in the world the changes we can make to injustice is going to be at the individual level not some sort of global revolution… which means… I think… I need to consider more carefully how I am spending my time and money…

Hmmm I think this is all a bit heavy, sorry I’m in a ponderous mood today… off for a swim…
xxxx

Rule number 7

The guest house where I live has 11 rules.
Rule number 7 is: Prostitution, gambling, drug taking and other illicit activities are not permitted in the Hotel premises.

Last night I was coming home about 10ish and I followed 2 ‘ladies of the night’ down my street and into my guest house where they were greeted by one of the owners. I then followed them all up the stairs and watched as they were both shown into one of the guests rooms. The guest looked rather embarrassed as I walked past to my room as he ushered them in. I felt rather uncomfortable, although the irony of the hotel owners breaking the rules is vaguely entertaining…
Of course this stuff goes on everywhere… several Cambodian women have told me they reckon 90% of Cambodian men go out to brothels of an evening, just like men at home might go down the pub. The Garry Glitter image of old western man and young Asian girls is much vaulted, but in reality the biggest users of the sex industry here are local men.
It’s another irony that on the one hand traditional Khmer culture is so reserved and on the other sex for money is a huge industry. My friend describes it as a rare phenomena – a culture where you can touch, but not look! She’s probably right!

7 days

Wow, it’s been nearly a week since I wrote anything here… this last week has been fairly full of various things and the time has sped past…

The start of the week was public holidays and Clari was visiting, so we went down to the beach.










We lazed around at some beachside bungalows for a few days, just reading and swimming and sleeping. Randomly met a woman who had been to a conference in Milton Keynes ages and ages ago that Spearsy, Holly and I were notetakers in chief for… it is a small world.
Oh yes, excitements were had on the final night when we heard (rather too close for our liking) a shoot out at the neighbouring 5* beach resort… seems the guards sometimes get drunk and shoot each other or the sea. [note to self: midnight dips might be dangerous]. A reminder that this country has not been ‘peaceful’ for long, and perhaps an example of the wealth the supermega rich have – it needs to be protected with guns.
After the shooting there was a huge rain and thunder and lightening storm. Wondered if we would be washed out to sea, but the next morning we were still on the beach.

The in-bus entertainment on the way home from the beach was slightly different from the normal mix of Cambodian karaoke, exceedingly violent Chinese movies, or Cambodian horror movies… instead we had a film made at a Khmer zoo… a boxing orang-utan show. I’m sure the RSPCA would lock people up for such a thing in the UK. Orang-utans were dressed up in boxing outfits and made to hit each other with boxing gloves. Meanwhile other orang-utans dressed up as cheer leaders danced around, lifting up their skirts. It was bad taste and rather cruel to say the least.

On Friday I had a telephone interview for a joby job. It was fairly nasty, mostly because the delay on the phone was so huge, and the people speaking to me were using a speaker phone, which made them seem even more distant. It made me realise how much we depend on non-verbal communication to guide us… I had no idea if I was saying too much, or too little, if they were liking what I was saying or if they thought I was an idiot! Ho hum.

Yesterday Clari and I went on a Khmer cookery course.










It was really cool. We learnt how to make spring rolls, red and green curry, fish amok (fish curry steamed in a banana leaf) and this weird banana tapioca dish. We ate everything we made so felt quite fat and had no need for diner… instead we went to the Raffles Hotel Le Royal. It’s the hotel in the movie the ‘killing fields’ (although the movie was filmed in Thailand). It was stupidly posh, and the bar was fairly pretentious… but 2 for 1 cocktails is always a good thing… we had these random champagne cocktails named after Jackie Kennedy’s visit back in the 1960’s… followed by an amaretto sour mmmmm my favourite. The most exciting thing was rubbing my feet on the carpet. A carpet I tell you, and a plush one at that. My feet are so used to tiles they were in heaven in the soft cushiness of it all.
Mel and Sophie we checked out the toilets and quite frankly they weren’t up to Lainston House standards… the towels were only paper not linen for starters.

The rains have started. There seems to be no pattern, any time of day they fall from the sky. It’s definitely cooler. Last night was almost what you would call cold… 29degrees C… needed a sheet when I went to sleep!

I think this is enough for now x x x x

Arrivals

This morning saw the arrival of what could either be the start of the rainy season, or just a huge rain storm. It also saw the arrival of Clari who is here for a 2 week visit. I was really glad her plane landed 60min after the storm had passed, yuk planes are bad enough, but planes and thunder storms… argh.

So this afternoon we are off the beach. Did I mention we have more public holidays here in the ‘bodge? Friday was Buddha’s birthday, Monday is the kings birthday and Tuesday is the Royal Ploughing ceremony… or something like that. So we shall go down to Sianoukville, and laze on the beach, and hopefully go to a tropical island. I’m sure half of Phnom Penh are there as the place seems empty, but never mind. I’ve booked us into a ‘romantic’ beach side bungalow. Excellent.

I will endeavour to take and upload some photos… but internet is crappy slow..
Ta ta

Ginger nuts

Today, for the second day running, the food stand near work is shut. This is a major tragedy for many staff including myself, and means we have to retreat to the Caltex petrol station and gorge on mangos and pot noodles (not the original pot noodles you understand... these ones have pictures of 'Miss World'emblazoned on the side)...

Today, due to major headache induced sleep deprivations (the evil things have been back with a vengence of late) i was in need of a sugar high... excitments of excitments i found a pack of ginger nuts. yumyumyumyum... theyre not 100% crunchy but have done the trick and woken me up... a bit. I have tried to share the ginger nut love with my collegues, but theyre really not into them at all.. what ho more for me.

Lights

Living fairly close to the equator the daylight hours, and the quality of daylight don’t really change much.
I was half watching the V music channel and a couple of the videos caught my eye and reminded me of home, where if you look at the sky you can often tell what time of year it is… one was a Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s live concert, it was in the summer, and must have been 10ish in the evening, the point where almost all the light has gone from the sky, but there is still a hint of blue left, summer dusky dark… I can almost smell the BBQs. The other video was Simon Webb (V music love him and play his music all the time… he used to be in ‘Blue’ apparently and is the 6th sexiest man in music according to their recent poll…) anyway in his video he is wandering around London in the dark… it looks cold and wintry, but the streets are lit up by the many many florescent lights coming from the shops he is passing. It is always dark here by 6.30, but there are not many street lights, and by 10pm its pitch black almost everywhere as people go to sleep ready to get up at 5am Yay!

By the way… for those who are interested who is the most sexiest man in music (according to the V music channel) it is JD Fortune, who won a lengthy competition to be the new lead singer of INIXIS… interestingly this was aired on the V music channel… I’m not a cynic really…

Feta maddness and a facial

Today is a great day for the pods… Marionanon is getting married, in fact probably now she is married. I am pretty sad not to have been able to go to the wedding, however Hils has been doing a fandabulous job of keeping me updated with proceedings… the photo below shows the small orange animals (from Milton Keynes) celebrating the great event by eating feta and melon salad, as the real wedding guests will be doing… excellent.
[Hils I cant seem to login to orange midgit i'll check my work email tomorrow, perhaps i wrote down the login wrong!]










Other, perhaps less surreal events have been the opening of a handbag shop under my apartment block… previously there was a bar, but the alcohol has been replaced by some fancy bags…

Last week I mentioned facials… so this weekend I toodled off for one. I think I was expecting someone just to slap on some cream and rub it off or something… but the facial seemed to involve having my face gently massaged with many different lotions and intermittently being blown with steam from a fancy Chinese machine. This was followed by the application of banana and jasmine lotion… whilst this was drying I had a arm and hand massage, and then at the end, after my face was well and truly pampered I had a head, neck and shoulder massage… during the whole experience there was aromatherapy oil burning, and the sound of running water from the Japanese garden outside, and birdsong (presumably from a CD given the inner city location?) I can now cross facials off the things to do list… excellent… however I have added a body wrap and scrub to things to do before I leave Phnom Penh… they sound exciting… I am a pampered princess indeed.

PMT

I thought I would blog about PMT… the airline that is…
In this case PMT stands for Progress Multi-trade airlines… I think I posted a photo of their logo on my flickr site, as it entertained me…
Anyone who knows me will know I dislike flying… and small airlines, particularly those operated in developing countries, are not ones that inspire me with confidence, more like deep dread…
Yesterday the paper reported that a PMT plane (a sturdy Russian Antonov of course) flying into Ratanakiri had engine failure, and so was diverted back to PP, where the airport could actually manage an emergency landing, as Ratanakiri isn’t much more than a dirt runway… apparently Antonovs can fly with only one engine (???). So it made it back to PP and proceeded to land safely (unlike last November when a PMT plane crash landed off the end of the runway…. injuring several of the passengers)… PMT said that the engine failed due to human error… the mechanic forgot to screw the oil cap back on…. Duh
In conclusion I shall not be flying PMT air…

http://aviation-safety.net/index.php is an interesting database of all air accidents ever… and is useful for vetting dodgy airlines… if you’re paranoid… yupyupyup that’s me

respect for Mr Bush???

I am not a huge fan of the President of the United States...
however i woke up this morning and watched him take the piss out of himself durring the Whitehouse Correspondants Association Annual Diner... he did this with the help of a george bush lookylikey... it was fairly amusing... and i was kind of impressed he subjected himself to that sort of ridicule, Im not sure Tony Blair would have done the same!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1765025,00.html

1st May

For this blogsite I use a webstats website called tracksy... its pretty cool and tells me all sorts of imformation like how many people visit, how many people re-visit, what the ISPs are of the people that visit... where theyre located in the world... its very clever...
anyway i thought i would have a look at my webstats today, and i decided to look at the list of websites that were reffering people to my blog, and then look at the search engine key words that people had typed in, and then ended up at my blog... of vauge amusement to me where 2 people searching for information about massage parlours in Phnom Penh... i am sure they will have been disapointed by the information in this blog...

other news... i found some pine nuts sooooooooooo expensive but well worth the investment. The resulting pesto was fandabuloso mucho amazingo... yumyum
other food i have eaten today: a deliciously scrummy Belgium chocolate brownie from 'The Shop' - a very nice deli... this was a very nice eating experience considering chocolate is only available in a couple of shops, and even then it is hidiously expensive, and fairly manky as its imported from malaysia or indonesia and i dont think theyre chocolate capitals of the world... as a result i feel chocolate deprived a lot of the time. [not necesarily a bad thing]

went out for a cycle about the place and ran into a large protest/march calling for better conditions for workers in Cambodia (relating to Labour day i guess)... it reminded me once again how globalised our world is, and how much we in the west benefit from the poor labour laws or cheap labour in countries such as Cambodia...

finally, i have decided that i need to have a facial... i have come to this conclusion as i feel it is what is missing from my check list of ex-pat activities.
massages: done
manicures: done
cocktails: done lots
yummy food: done even more
lazing by the pool: done done done
new clothes: done [although admitedly i havnt got anything tailor made, and my new clothes arent exactly executive]
having someone clean/wash/iron for me: done [although i am feeling guilty about it, and this week have been doing my own washing up... its very stressful as you can imagine]
if anyone is wise in the ways of facials can you tell me what to expect? and what type of facial i should go for... the choice seems rather huge...

on that note i shall end... i realise this blog reads like some sort of long lazy holiday... which in a sense it is given the rediculous number of Cambodian Public holidays... but i am actually working quite hard here... its just i dont think this blog, or indeed any blog... is a place to air comments, thoughts, opinions related to work... the potential for legal repercussions must be reasonably significant

x x x

Smile

Living in Cambodia is very nice… I love lying in my hammock, I love the sunshine, I love finding out how things are different and yet the same… I love eating out… I love going swimming in an unheated outdoor pool and not freezing to death, I love having massages (ooooo I am addicted for sure!)
But I miss home too… I miss some lovely people, I miss not being able to drink out of a tap, I miss the smell of grass, I miss feeling cold (sometimes)… I miss not having an oven… I miss not being able to understand everything people are saying… I miss not having proper speakers so I can play my music loudloud… I miss the countryside… I miss recycling and I miss my bike (very much).

Living in another country seems to be finding a balance between what you miss and what you like about where you are… and being happy. Mostly I think I am happy… this morning 2 things made me smile.
I was cycling home from church and stopped along the way to distract myself in a supermarket… when I came outside it was raining… and raining very hard, Cambodia style. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I seem to always forget my raincoat… anyways I hopped on my bike and cycled… the streets clear a bit in the rain and so I cycled fast, very fast given my bike only has 1 gear… the air was cool, the rain soaked me, and I was laughing my head off (yes I am going mad)… it was exhilarating…
The other thing that made me smile was sitting in the internet café, and I looked up at the old lady opposite me. I’ve seen her before, she must work here… anyways she was just sitting there, smiling in a lovely way, at the email she was reading. She reminded me of my lovely grannie… and I smiled, because she was smiling. Nice.

Tomorrow is international Labour Day, and the Royal Government of Cambodia has put large banners up telling me I must ‘celebrate’ this. So I shall celebrate international labour day by not going to work… which seems ironic… surely you should have to go to work on ‘labour’ day? I have various plans which involve applying for jobs... acquiring a new swim card as I lost my old one… sourcing some pine nuts to make pesto… on that note I should add that I have been away 3 months and in all honesty, aside from porridge, smoothies, lollypops and sandwiches, have only cooked once, and that involved the difficult task boiling some asparagus. I actually really like cooking, but it is too easy to eat out. However this weekend so far I have made a Greek salad (ok, not really cooking… but it did involve lots of chopping)… hummus (yes you can buy tahhini imported from Macedonia… how exciting)… pumpkin soup… mmmm and would have involved making pesto if only the shops hadn’t run out of pine nuts… so I feel quite Delia like.

Currently I am lying in my hammock, listening to DJ Shadow, trying to drown the sound of jinglyjangly wailing from the temple at the end of the street… and pondering how to end this blog…

Kisses and love perhaps??? X x x x X

Battambang

I am sitting in Battambang... pronounced Battambong i think... we arrived today from Kampong Chhanang, and appear to have a free afternoon before working thursday and friday and then back to PP on Saturday. I think my collegues are going to take me on a moto ride round the sites later, but whilst they replicate their emails i have been wondering around the place, taking photos of slightly dilapidated french colonial arcitecture, probably getting sunburnt and finding the fastest internet connection in cambodia so far! This place reminds me of Siem Riep without the tourists... Siem Riep is the town that all the Angkor temples are close to, and really the centre is totally set up for tourists and isnt particulalrly cambodian at all... here it is so much more laid back... but there are a lack of nice restaurants selling fruit smoothies mmmmm. Mostly when traveling with work i am obliged to eat rice 3 x per day... my collegues were distressed this morning when i ate a mango for breakfast and not a huge bowl of rice and beef...
A final thought... whoever decided that hotel rooms with no windows were a good idea should be shot (well possibly not actually shot... i am fairly anti guns i suppose) ... i am staying in an airconditioned, but decidedly prison like room for the next 3 nights...

ta ra

23rd April 2006

Well I completed my swim across the Mekong, and came 50th out of about 111 people so I felt pretty pleased with myself… mostly because I didn’t panic about being way out of my depth, which is what tends to happen if I swim in the sea… I don’t think we actually swam that far… its probably only about 700m… however the bally organisers told us the current was going the opposite way from the direction it was actually going in and so most people tried to compensate for the current and then realised halfway across that they were heading miles down river… so we probably swam about a kilometre I would guess. The river was a bit choppy but otherwise it was fine.
Now in the last 12months I’ve run a half marathon, cycled the length of Wales and swum the Mekong. Tri-athlete telf I shall be. [not]

Other thoughts…
I am fairly rubbish at knowing my age, although after a few seconds rummaging in my brain I can usually get it right… however I always remember the age of my one and only cousin in the whole world - Jackjack… today he is 7 years old. Interestingly this makes me feel old, I can’t believe it is 7 years since he was born and I was studying for part of my modular geography A-level.
I think the reason it makes me feel old is that in another 7 years he will be 14 (nasty beard sprouting boy teenager I expect?) and I will be…. Ummmmm 31, its not that 31 is old… its just that I am speculating all the unknown things that could happen before I am 31… when Jack was born the immediate future was less hazy than it is now…finish college, go to uni… but now I have not the vaguest idea what I’ll be doing in 7 months let alone 7 years…
Although I want to cycle the length of both islands of New Zealand I don’t exactly have many long term goals…

Char I’m thinking to join you as a postman… it sounds like a seriously good plan… if anyone has any other suggestions for what I should do with my life dooooo let me know.

some photos now on FlickR

Ok, I think I have just uploaded some photos of my Kratchie/ Rattanakiri trip to flickr (link on the right hand side of this tool bar)… it was seriously sloooow, I don’t think there are any places with speedy internet in this country!
Anton a public request to pretty please upload a few nice photos of the Wat of Angkor?

Mucho gracias

X x X
Ps off to north west Cambodia with work this week, so will probably be quiet on the blog front until next weekend…

Fires and Rivers

Today we had fire practice. This involved the loudest alarm ever… actually I think it was so loud that probably half the office will suffer permanent damage to the ear drum. We then walked outside into the carpark… unlike in the UK there was no one waving a pink flag or taking a register, so who knows who stayed in the building… then most excitingly a big, square, red fire engine shows up… hmmm thinks I, perhaps this isn’t a practice… perhaps I should be more concerned about where Sophea and Lyna are… and then the little firemen (they were quite short) started running out the hose and being guided into the building by policemen… the hose reappeared about 5 minutes later from a 3rd floor window, where the firemen proceeded to squirt water on the flower beds… no one else seemed at all perturbed by all of this so I assume that this is standard practice in a fire drill, and that the drill is not just for staff but also the fire brigade? Obviously they don’t have enough real fires to fight if they need to water our flowerbeds…

Other excitements involve the discovery that the Mekong river race is this weekend… I have decided to enter… and hopefully come Saturday lunchtime I will have swum across the mighty Mekong… this could be a stupid idea (despite there being kayak canoes to rescue stragglers)… I haven’t been in training, I have never swum across any rivers, the river is probably reasonably polluted, and I have minor panic attacks at not being able to see the bottom of a swimming pool if its cloudy… cant imagine what a bally river is going to do to me… I know there are no sharks, but possibly there are some large hungry fish??? Hmmm well we shall see… more reports later.

The return of the swimsuit...

Hello blog reader(s)
For those of you like Katie, who were concerned about my lack of swimwear… fear not the costume hath been discovered (don’t ask me where) and returned to my room ironed (why?) and on a hanger… everyone can now breathe a collective sigh of relief… especially me as the weather is so so so sooooo hot… I know I keep saying this but it really really is… the average temperature of my room (with aircon off) is 35 degrees… and outside its considerably hotter, and the sun burns I tell you… it burns… one of my Khmer colleagues told me today I was going black… this has to be the biggest overstatement ever as from my assessment I am pasty pasty, but with a few more freckles… however here whiteness = beauty, and any slight darkening of the skin is not a good sign apparently, hence the wide availability of bleaching lotions, moisturisers etc

Dolphins, an elephant and a lost swimsuit

Well the last week has been a whirlwind tour of the north east of Cambodge. Hopefully I am attaching a map, so that all my millions of readers can become wise in the geography of the Cambodge.

I have seen so many different things it is hard to know where to start.
Hmmm… ok chronologically is probably the best way to arrange things.

First things first we caught the bus up to Kratchie (central cambodge). Catching the bus involved getting a moto to the bus station… dicing death on various forms of transport was a theme of the holiday and the first moto ride was no exception… don’t you just love cutting across 3 lanes of traffic without looking and then speeding the wrong way down a one way street facing piles of oncoming traffic… all to avoid some traffic lights? Great fun. I have decided that should I win the lottery (impossible as I don’t play) I will start a small NGO (non-governmental organisation) called ‘wing mirrors for the ‘bodge’… it will do what it says (on the tin) - provide wing mirrors for all the motos which don’t have them (probably about 90%).
Soooo we arrive at the bus station (we being my English friend Carol and Cambodian friend Sophea) and catch the bus ok. The bus ride was fairly uneventful, on time (7 hours), we had our own seats, aircon, Cambodian karaoke and exceedingly violent Chinese movies on the video… the road to Kratchie is paved and the buses cain it along, honking their horns incessantly for the moto drivers to get out of the way. Have I mentioned road traffic accidents are the number one cause of death in this country???

Kratchie is a beautiful beautiful town on the banks of the Mekong. It’s the dry season so the river was low and there were lots of long sandbanks which looked like tropical beaches! We stayed with Adam, Sopheas husband who works in Kratchie some of the time. The main thing to ‘do’ in Kratchie is get a moto 30km out of town to see the Irrawaddy river dolphins. This was more dicing with death, and this time we actually managed to kill (or perhaps seriously maim as it was still flapping when I last looked) a chicken. The dolphins were interesting, went out in a little boat and floated around watching their fins pop in and out of the water. They don’t jump around and do tricks so in that sense it isn’t really exciting, but they’re so so rare - an endangered species and I think there are only 100-150 in the world. The population is under serious threat from pollution, logging, dams etc. The people living near the river are so poor, that it is hard to get them to think about conservation – although this is what the project Adam is working on is addressing.
After we saw the dolphins we header up river to some floating cafes and lazed around eating eating and paddling in the river.

The next day we hired a car to bounce us 250km up the unpaved road to Ratanakiri. We spent 2 days in a hill lodge (after escaping from a prison cell style hotel in the town)… at the lodge we stayed in little wooden cabins in the jungle and woke up to birds and geckos and other assorted animal and insect noises. Lovely. We did all sorts of things… swimming in a beautifully clear volcanic lake, swimming in a not so clean river, visiting ethnic groups, boating on a river and best of all a really great trek to visit some of the different hill tribes that live in the area. The trek was 25km guided and we learnt so much… the guide was a bit Lofty Wiseman… I learnt that you could use just about every single leaf we went past… there are leaves for smoking, leaves for eating, leaves for cooking, leaves for healing, leaves to use as warning signs… the tribes don’t have a written language so they use different signs. We visited several villages and people wanted to talk and make us drink rice wine. It was Khmer new year, and even though the hill tribes are not ethnic khmer they have recently started celebrating Khmer new year. This seems to involve drinking lots of rice wine out of filthy dirty cups, or just sucking it from huge clay pots through a thick rubber straw… its lethal, and reminded me of Airag mongol people! The tribal groups live in houses made almost entirely from natural products from the forest. They weave these into roofs, floors etc. They’re incredibly isolated and poor, scraping a living from the forest. It was another world… it actually reminded me of going to the ‘Weald and Downland Open Air Museum’ near Arundel where you look round all these houses that people lived in hundreds of years ago… except this was real, not a museum demonstration, and people really lived like this… and seemed to be pretty happy. Although I am sure statistics such as incidences of Malaria, dengue fever, education rates and access to clean water are horrific. The tribes people didn’t wear traditional clothing anymore, however the women (especially the older ones) just wandered around topless… very surreal… some of the younger ones wore t-shirts or just a bra (also surreal)…
After we got back from the trek I went for an elephant ride in a rubber plantation which was so so sooooo peaceful, and considerably less commercial than the one Anton and I did at Angkor. I love elephants!

Evenings at the lodge were spent eating, watching the stars and having my friends try to convert me to whiskey… cant say they succeeded… gin and vodka win hands down every time… then it was off to bed before 9.30 as the electricity went off then… and we woke about 5am with the birds!

One of the themes of the trip (it seemed to me) was deforestation. Traditionally the tribal people practice small scale slash and burn where they cut down a small area of forest, plant some rice crops for a couple of years and then move on to another area, leaving the forest to recover. However now this is all changing, people are planting cash crops such as cashew and rubber, and large scale companies are bribing government officials and chopping down huge huge swathes of forest, often illegally stealing land from communities . The governor of Ratanakiri province was recently fired as it is claimed he is not doing enough to tackle deforestation and had received as much as $15million in bribe money from various sources… I reckon his sacking is just an opportunity for someone else to make some cash by selling this countries natural resources (cynic)… It is so sad grrr and it makes me angry. I’m not sure if I have said it before, but living here reinforces the fact that the world is so interdependent and that ok, the wood we buy in the UK may not necessarily be from Cambodia, but it is from somewhere, and unless the source is a ‘sustainable’ one, then somewhere someone is loosing out… and most likely it is someone who is incredibly poor and has nothing… not even land rights. It is so hard to know how to live an ‘ethical’ life… and impossible too… I am sure me staying in swanky hotels at Angkor Wat and eating imported cheese contravenes this… but somehow I think we all have to try somewhat to be more aware of the fact that many of our actions impact other people negatively – be that directly or indirectly.

Finally… this is a long blog I know… I was most distressed to arrive home and discover that my swimsuit that I put in the wash has disappeared. NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE. Basically I need my swimsuit to go swimming… naked swimming would not be allowed in a school pool… and I am convinced my bikini would scare the children and fall off… so unless the bally cleaning lady can find it I am in a mong… swim wear is not readily available here and the stuff that there is, is designed for midget Cambodians whose waist is the size of my arm, possibly a slight exaggeration… but you know what I mean? It is so hot here that I neeeeeed to go swimming. Ho hum didlium.

Now I really should stop procrastinating on this blog and attempt to write my CV. Today has been designated official CV writing day… oh the joy.

PS Katie I have some photos of me babyhugging (I love Cambodian babies!) that I will try and upload for you sometime this week.
PS2 Anton are you going to upload some Angkor photos pretty please with a cherry ontop?

for hilary... mostly

Hilary,
i thought you would appreciate this photo of me looking very corporate... please note the corporate scarf (made by a women's income generation group) and the orange bike...
the helmet is also exciting...

x x x

traffic

Sometimes when I am cycling along the roads here in Phnom Penh I get really annoyed with the traffic, in particular the way people are constantly trying to kill me (or so it seems). Road rage on a bike is not a good thing… ultimately I will always loose out.

A couple of weeks ago I devised a way to quell my annoyance… it is absolutely perfect… I realised the reason I was annoyed was because I was taking the moral high ground, obviously I was a model cyclist obeying all traffic regulations… I came to the conclusion that the only solution was for me to break every single traffic rule and then I would have no grounds to be annoyed by other people… now I cant say I do this everyday as it might be marginally more unsafe than normal cycling… however every time I start to get annoyed I make sure I:

• Run a red light,
• Cycle on the wrong side of the road
• Cycle the wrong way down a one way street
• Cut up people on mopeds (it is actually possible to cut up a moped on a one gear grannie bike, I can be quite speedy)…
• If im making a right hand turn at a traffic lights and there is a petrol station on the corner, I just cut through it instead of staying on the road and waiting for the lights to change…All in all I am finding this method saves time… and significantly reduces annoyance with cambodgian driving… excellent…

I shall probably get into much trouble with the traffic police when I get home!

Rain and Carmen Electra

The other evening there was another huge storm. Fortunately this time it wasn’t when I was trying to sleep. All afternoon it was dark and windy and there was lightning, but no thunder or rain… I new it was going to rain, but I really wanted to get a swim in, so I went to the pool. After about 20min it started to rain. It was amazing amazing. The pool is outside, and the rain was so so so soooo heavy, it was churning up the pool, and then it got dark, it was almost as if I was in a storm in the sea. In the end I realised the rain wasn’t going to stop and I would have to cycle home in the rain… now I only live about 10 blocks from the pool, but my skirt was cream and my t-shirt was white, and it was raining hard… Marionanon will recall berating me in Vietnam for getting soaked and see-through on the back of a motorbike in a village, and I didn’t really want to repeat the experience, but there was no choice! However Marion I did manage to use my sarong as another layer, which significantly reduced see-throughness, and overall I don’t think I humiliated/exposed myself at all really… cycling home was fun… right down the middle of the road as all but the middle was flooded… I also noticed a couple of people washing their children in the run off from gutters. The rain was so heavy and warm… and yet I felt cooler than I had in days…

I’m sitting writing this at home, and the TV is on… most exciting it appears to be a show presented by Carmen Electra. Its called Manhunt: The search for Americas most gorgeous male model. Excellent. To be honest it is not as exciting as it sounds… but there are lots of topless men prancing around and taking themselves far too seriously…

Thoughts on massage

Last night I was feeling board and so I decided to go for a massage… there are several massage parlours in my street (I dislike the use of the parlour word as it springs to mind all sorts of dodgy things… however what other word can I use??)… in fact a new one opened only last week. It advertises ‘back scrabs’… tempting as a back scrab sounds I decided to go round the corner to a different ‘parlour’… here I was given a menu with all sorts of interesting massages… I went for the standard full body massage thinking it would be safer than a) chest massage b) skin peel c) full body wax (ouch)… as I am not at all wise in the ways of massage it was fairly entertaining, quite relaxing, and I emerged relatively unscathed… although to be honest the stomach part of the massage was very odd… I am now only 9 massages away from a free massage as I was presented with a loyalty type card… its so cheap I think I may go back… but I am starting to think that reacclimatizing to UK will be hard… here I am soooooooooo lazy… someone cleans my rooms, makes my bed, does my washing up, washes and irons my clothes… I never cook anything more than porridge or a fruit smoothie (although I did once boil some asparagus)… and now I am going to become a spa junkie or something… all that remains is for me to get some executive outfits and start having manicures and then I will be totally unrecognisable… actually I did notice on the massage menu you can pay $1 to have your hair washed and dried – includes free scalp massage (!!) perhaps I will go for that next time… hee hee hee
It is a hard life here in the Cambodge to be sure to be sure… in saying that I have just returned from 3 days working in the provinces, eating rice 3 times a day and sleeping in what seemed like a prison cell… the part of Phnom Penh that I live in isn’t real Cambodia that’s for sure…

fact of the day

the average cambodian man eats 18kg of rice per month... apparently
that seems like an awful lot of rice to me

Things to do or carry on a moto or cyclio in Cambodge

The following list are all things I have seen people doing or carrying on a motobike or cyclo rickshaw in Phnom Penh… sometimes the mind boggles…

• Carry an air-conditioning unit
• Carry 40 odd half alive chickens upside down hanging off the back
• Breast feed a small child
• Carry 4 or 5 members of your family all on one bike
• Wear a helmet… possibly… actually mostly not
• Carry a large TV, 50kg bag of rice and a sack of fruit whilst still managing to steer
• Sit side saddle (ladies only on that one)
• Carry a large slab of (ever melting) ice
• Carry several live pigs on the back (I am sure they must get sunburn)

Home Thoughts From Abroad

I remember my Dad sent me this poem when i was in Mongolia. I really like it and i guess it is now April so I can think about English spring and compare and contrast to the dusty humid heat here... a heat which impossibly keeps getting hotter and hotter... thank goodness for ice and gin and tonic and swimming pools... thats all i can say...

Home Thoughts From Abroad
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning