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Elephants in Mondulkiri

Oh dear oh dear, I've let this blog get terribly out of date! So instead of attempting to remember everything that has been happening, I thought I'd post a bunch of photos from my trip to Mondulkiri last month. In a nutshell, a friend and I travelled to the north-eastern province to play with elephants and enjoy a bit of fresh air. It's an absolutely gorgeous place, though the deforestation and rubber plantations are unavoidable. There are only 50 odd elephants left in the province and most are being used for work and tourism. Nobody wants to let their elephant get pregnant as it means she won't be able to work for a few years. There's also the issue of babies being born out of wedlock... apparently elephants need to get married before they can mate. I would LOVE to go to an elephant wedding. We went to an organisation that works to protect and rehabilitate elephants. 

Anyway - here are some photos! I would highly recommend the trip! 

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This morning’s cycle to work

I keep meaning to write another blog entry but I hadn’t really known what to write about and time keeps slipping away. But as I’m stuck at home this morning waiting for the roads to clear so I can get to work – I thought I would take this moment to write.

The roads here are truly awful. They’re heartbreakingly dangerous. Not dangerous in that cool, wild, rebellious way- dangerous in that way in which people die all the time. That way in which every colleague at work is either related to, or knows someone who has been killed in a traffic accident. The road fatality rate here is unbelievable, not to mention all of those who are seriously injured in accidents. There is also a very limited driver’s licensing system. From what my colleagues have told me, lots of people will sit the written test fine, but to pass the practical test you’re at the mercy of whatever level of bribe the instructor demands. Hence most people don’t bother. Which means a huge amount of people on the roads who have never been taught to drive and haven’t much idea about safe distances, tailgating or cutting up traffic. Driving without a license is technically illegal, but if the chances are you’ll only get caught and forced to pay $1 every now and then, it’s a finically better option to risk getting caught then to pay the bribe to pass a test. Which even in itself doesn’t guarantee you won’t still be pulled over by the police demanding a bribe.

 My colleague was telling me this insane situation in which he bought a new motorbike. Not long after purchasing it, his car was broken into (by the security guards who work in the garage where he pays to securely park his car…) and the papers for his motorbike were stolen. The papers that come with a new motorbike are irreplaceable apparently. So now he can’t get his motorbike insured or registered, which means he can’t legally drive it nor sell it. And there is nothing that he can do – they absolutely refuse to replace papers. As a very honest citizen, and considering the nature of our work, his new motorbike has now sat at his house for a year, completely unused. Thousands of dollars down the drain because the system is so insanely irrational. You can suddenly see why people choose to drive unregistered vehicles here. And with unregistered vehicles come unlicensed drivers. And a vicious circle begins to develop.

So this morning’s ride to work was especially eventful. I cycled off as normal, but when I came up towards the main street that I have to cross, the whole road was full of police with riot shields and batons, media and people protesting. The whole thing appeared to be turning violent quite quickly, with police charging and the sound of tasers. They were screaming at all of us coming down the street to get out of there. And this is when the entire, chaotic traffic system absolutely shuts down. When an incident happens and panic ensues and everyone is frantically trying to turn around and get the hell out of there.  I guess the beauty of a bicycle is that you can just jump off and push in the other direction. Which I did. Everyone was driving in a crazy manner, trying to find another way through. I cycled in circles for a while, like a slow motion, high pressure game of dodgem cars in which every passing motorbike decides to hit your bicycle as manoeuvring around would just be too much effort. I’m now back at home and soon to head back out and try again. It’s a manic, crazy experience living here, but some days it’s nothing short of exhausting.

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Wedding and kittens

Well that’s the most fun subject line I’ve written. I’m sitting in my living room with two tiny, adorable kittens running around my feet. Also climbing the curtains and the faux-leather sofas, which may not be good for getting my deposit back on this place…. The ‘office cat’ at my friend’s work had yet another litter of kittens. So while she takes the poor mum off to be neutered, we’ve got adorable kittens to play with until they get permanent homes.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a senior colleague’s wedding. I’ve been meaning to blog sooner but time seems to have slipped away. I thought I would write a post about Khmer weddings as they are a very big deal here and something that all expats seem to experience at one point in time or another. And not just because a giant, obnoxious wedding tent appears in your street and wakes you up at 5am as the ceremony starts, aided by a megaphone. Although that’s definitely an experience. No, it seems to be a right of passage here as an expat to be invited to a Khmer wedding. Getting married is a very big deal here. And from what I’ve read in the news recently, the wedding industry is growing exponentially. Some have introduced more Western elements whereas others are still quite traditional. Anyway – this was my experience – something I thought would be fun to share. 

The wedding I went to was my boss’s – so it was probably a lot more Western and high profile than many others. The ceremony occurred out in the provinces at the bride’s hometown. We didn’t get invited to that part – but rather the ceremony in Phnom Penh a couple of weeks later. The ceremony was in a big flashy hotel on the other side of the river – a strangely empty part of Phnom Penh that I’d never been to before. Apparently during the actual ceremony the bride and groom change into many different outfits, but at the reception the bride was in a big white dress and the groom was in a rather casual suit. The bridge greeted us upon arrival and gave us each a soft toy keyring… The reception was in a big function room with lots of round tables on one side full of people eating food. I felt incredibly self-conscious walking in as there was no assigned seating and everyone there was already eating. But that seems to be how it’s done. We were ushered over to the closest empty table, and once the table was full they began to serve food immediately. There were a couple of bottles of beer, water and cans of cherry coke on the table. Food came out on endless platters. Nothing particularly unusual – just normal Khmer cuisine with rice, fish, duck and veggies. And of course all forms of delicious coconut-sticky rice desserts. Oh god the desserts here are good – I need to write a blog about that at some point. 

Whilst we ate, three girls took turn to sing. For reasons I can’t understand, and nobody could explain, the girls were in the shortest, tightest mini-skirts I’ve ever seen and absolutely obscenely high stilettoes. Alongside them was a looped slide show with pictures of the bride and groom in various outfits, including posed next to a fancy new car with a big bow around it. Understated is not a thing at weddings here. After all the guests had eaten, the bride and groom stood up and performed a few rituals such as kisses on the forehead, cheeks and chin. There was a bouquet toss, though I’m told that’s a very unusual thing to include here.  The strangest thing to me was all the other guests dressed in big, white bridal dresses. Absolutely blew my mind, so many women wearing dresses similar to the bride’s. And even those not in bridal dresses were absolutely done up to the nines. The women were all exquisitely dressed up. The men less so!  

Anyway – the bridge and groom started to dance, along with a few guests. And then that was that. Two hours later we were off, as was everyone it seemed. However, on the way out we encountered the money table. Now I was prepared for the fact that guests are supposed to give money at weddings. And that we would be given an envelope with our name on it in which we put the money. But I was definitely not prepared for the money table. Three staff manned the table. You put your name on an envelope and your money inside and handed it to one of the staff members. They then opened the enveloped, counted the money and recorded your name and the amount on a list. I realise giving money is just a cultural tradition that I’m not used to, and maybe not overly comfortable with, but having staff manning a table in which they opened the envelope in front of you to confirm that amount written on the front was the same as that inside all felt a bit much.

After that it was out the door and heading home. My colleague dropped me home and I was in bed before 10. A very fun and interesting experience that I’m glad I finally got to experience. And now I need to sign off as this kitten is so intrigued by my typing and wants to climb all over the keyboard. So I’m off!  

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Radical Ratanakiri

Last week I travelled to the far northeast of Cambodia, to a province called Ratanakiri. It’s about an 8 hour bus ride away (bump, bump bump). It’s about as far from Phnom Penh as you could possibly get – in every possible sense. And it was so much bloody fun. 

My job here is incredibly desk-based. A lot more so than I would like it to be (and according to my Myers-Briggs profile, as I’ve recently discovered, a lot more so than is healthy for me). Sometimes I feel a bit disillusioned by the whole thing, realising that most of the work I do here I could do from anywhere in the world. Researching, editing and managing budgets hardly requires me to be located in Cambodia. So this was an absolutely wonderful change. As I mentioned last time, our volunteer data collectors are currently traversing the country, surveying young people on corruption. One of those groups was sent up to Ratanakiri, and so I went up for a few days in order to follow them around and see the work in action.

Ratanakiri has quite a unique demographic – in a country that is 95% ethnically Khmer and Buddhist, Ratanakiri is home to a significant portion of that other 5%. In addition to ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese, that other 5% is made up of a small number of indigenous people from various groups. These people are very often ignored by the mainstream society – many of them unable to even qualify for citizenship in a country that links citizenship to ethnicity. Over the two days I spent with the volunteers, we visited four different indigenous villages – each of which was home to a different indigenous group with a different language and different customs. Travelling with the volunteers meant that I was able to experience these villages from their perspective. They were undoubtedly nervous – they often said to me ‘the indigenous people don’t like us’. But they handled themselves beautifully.

In some places along our drive there was dense vegetation. But most of what we saw from the road was rubber plantations and a huge amount of deforestation. The logging industry is out of control here, and apparently mostly illegal. Though it all happens in plain-sight, so even if it is illegal, quite clearly nobody at the top gives a damn. In fact, it’s those at the top running the illegal logging operations and profiting from them. The people we met in a village just near the Vietnamese border were all employed in the logging industry and trucks full of logs continuously drove past. In addition, although we saw lots of huts everywhere and patches of dense vegetation, it didn’t seem as though any of the people up there owned farming land. A lot of the villagers told us that the young people were away working at the farms, but nobody seemed to have their own land for farming. Land rights and logging are serious problems here. 

It’s strange driving through Ratanakiri. Where there is beautiful countryside, there isn’t much in the way of tourism to appreciate that. I’m used to driving through beautiful countryside and seeing cute hotels, restaurants and lookouts to appreciate the scenery. I didn’t see any of that up in Ratanakiri. Beautiful countryside next to rubber plantations next to wooden huts alongside empty plots of land where the tree stumps were still burning.  Tourism would be wonderful to create a demand to preserve the landscape – but I suspect that’s no competition for the interests of the logging and rubber industries. To get to one village we had to cross the river on a barge, drive through the base of a waterfall, through a bog about a metre deep and up red dirt hills. It’s so incredibly remote. So hard to get my head around the fact that people live in such remote places. And without the necessary transportation, many of them will never leave their small, remote village.

Although I was only away for four days, my trip to Ratanakiri revitalised something in me. Seeing our project in action was inspiring, and being able to interact so closely with the volunteers and the villagers was an awesome experience. And the best bit was getting to stay with my good friend who lives up there – to meet her friends, see her house and get a sense of the Cambodia she’s experiencing during her time here. Which although quite different physically and aesthetically to the world I know down in Phnom Penh, wasn’t quite as far removed as I had expected it to be. Though trying to sleep with a firefly trapped in my room turning the ceiling into a disco was definitely a new experience for me.

I’m back in Phnom Penh now, which, although much hotter than Ratanakiri, has the added benefit of the availability of a lot more air conditioning. And a more dependable electricity supply. I guess you take the good with the bad.

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Surveys, statistics and poor project management

It’s 40° and I have a cold. Some words just don’t make sense. Just like oranges here are green, colds can happen in suffocatingly hot climates. But colds definitely work better in the cold. Colds in the heat are awful. When you just want to snuggle up under a duvet in your comfiest pair of trackies, you have to settle for some sort of semi-naked sprawl on top of the sheets, moving about regularly so as to spread out the pools of sweat. Whereas normally a fever makes you cold and shivery, here, any attempt at a fever just means that I’m able to withstand the temperature in my house without turning the air conditioning on.

Work has been insanely busy this week, which is a wonderful change. Though the irony of me getting sick during the first week that work has been genuinely busy has not been lost on me. The project that I was brought here to do is finally taking flight. We’ve got 25 volunteers heading out into the provinces tomorrow to survey young people in order to understand their perceptions and experiences of corruption. The logistics of conducting a nationally representative survey in a country with no census data and minimal infrastructure are incredible. The 25 volunteers will spend the next 20 days traipsing around remote villages across the country, knocking on doors looking for people who fit our demographic.  It’s an incredible feat and has really made me realise how incredibly difficult it is to get any data in places where infrastructure and demographic information are so lacking. And yet statistics make the world go round, despite how precarious they sometimes seem.

Trying to get organised to send out the 25 volunteers has been a huge amount of work. I’m project managing a project in a culture I’m completely unfamiliar with, across a landscape I don’t know how to navigate, and without the language. It’s an insane predicament to be in, and really means that my role has been reduced to managing the budget and sending nagging emails to remind everyone else what they’re supposed to be doing. Without any awareness of prices and logistics, I haven’t spotted instances where colleagues have grossly underestimated the cost of various things in the original budget. I didn’t think about the practicality of paying 25 volunteers 20 days’ worth of stipends in a country where few have bank accounts. Even just trying to get stationary delivered is challenging. Despite an assurance that the stationary would arrive at 3pm yesterday, we were still waiting at 6pm. Everytime we called them to ask where it was they promised us it was ‘on the way’. Eventually, after the third phonecall from us, they got one of their staff to bring the stationary on a motorbike as all of their cars were out. They called us about 6.15 to say that it had started raining so he wasn’t able to go any further as all the stationary was getting wet. Eventually one of their cars was able to rescue the stationary from the motorbike and deliver it to us. These are not factors I’d taken into consideration.

We stayed at the office til after 7 last night packing boxes of questionnaires and pencils and staplers for all of the volunteers. My phone started ringing again at 7.45 this morning from one of the team leaders who has already managed to lose his cheque that he needs to cash today to cover all of the transport arrangements for his team for the duration of the 20 days.  I just really hope we get some good data from all of this. And make it through the next three weeks without any unresolvable challenges.

And apart from the craziness of work, Phnom Penh plods along as ever. The heat is crippling at the moment, but rainy season is definitely upon us. It poured for hours last night, which brought some respite. The quiet months of June and July are nearly here, and it’s starting to really feel like I’m on the home straight now.  

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Travels in Thailand

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Back in Cambodia

So I’m back in Cambodia after a blissful two week holiday in Thailand. Travelling to Thailand from Cambodia is like taking a trip into the future. Sealed roads, lanes, cars driving in one direction, public transport!!! (well in Bangkok), cool hip trendy youngsters skulking about in skinny jeans, record stores, shopping centres, awesome cafes and bars packed with locals. The difference is staggering – though upon returning I did look up the GDP of both countries and perhaps Thailand’s $366 billion to Cambodia’s $14 billion explains some of that disparity…

Apart from the wonderfulness of feeling like I was getting a real break from life in Cambodia, the obvious incredible excitement of my trip was getting engaged. Certainly didn’t see that coming, have never been so sure of a decision in my life. It has even made the return to Cambodia solo that little bit easier. And now I’m back in the baking heat. Although the temperature hasn’t moved much in the past month or so (daily highs of 38° anyone?!), the humidity has skyrocketed. I feel as though I’m moving through treacle. I walked into an appointment the other day after cycling 10 minutes to get there and was offered a towel by the person I was seeing. I can’t begin to explain the embarrassment of being given a towel due to the levels of sweat dripping down your face. In addition to the crippling humidty, the rains have started to arrive. Not everyday yet, but there have been a few huge downpours this week. Just enough to give me a glimpse of what I’m in for over the next few months. After a 5 minute downpour there were puddles so deep (due to the holes in the road and lack of drains) that I couldn’t see the ground and had to push my bikes through some bits. Rainy season genuinely frightens me.

Not much has changed since I went away. Our toilet at work has now been broken for over a month. A ‘plumber’ comes every second day to look at it. At this stage, the lid of the cistern is sitting on the ground and inside there is an orange straw attached to one part and a piece of pink ribbon tied to another. It doesn’t flush at all – you need to stick your hand into the cistern and pull off the cap in order to make it flush. And then replace it. A trip to the toilet has never been so enjoyable. They keep calling the same ‘plumber’ back again and again. I suggested the other day that perhaps a new plumber was necessary which was only met with looks of confusion. As if all toilets require their own regular plumber.

Getting back on my bike after a couple of weeks off (and a couple of weeks in a country where traffic only moves in two directions, as opposed to four), has been testing. My road rage has dissipated into passive aggressive comments at other drivers, all of which are proactively ignored. I’ve realised that indicators here are like a human appendix – they exist in all vehicles but as yet nobody can figure out their purpose or what to do with them.

And now it’s less than 6 months to go til the end. Though if I could find a job before then I’d happily leave early. I’m not sure I’ve got enough salts left to keep sweating at this rate. Three and a bit months til I’m heading back to Europe for a two week stint. I’m getting through, trying not to be counting down but desperately looking forward to living in the same country as the boy again. Slowly, slowly, catch a monkey. 

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Holiday time!

Bags are packed, windows locked. I’m sitting eating the biggest bowl of papaya imaginable as a last ditch attempt to ensure there is nothing perishable left in my fridge. It’s really, truly holiday time. The whole city has a holiday buzz at the moment as everyone is leaving to go back to the provinces to celebrate Khmer New Year. It’s a bit like a ghost town this morning – I cycled across town in search of something delicious for breakfast and was faced with many empty streets and closed cafes. People are transporting some crazy things out to the provinces on their motorbikes. Today I saw a couple carrying a lovely wooden chair with floral upholstery off the side of their bike, and a women carrying five live chickens all tied together by their feet. I’m in such a good mood I’m not even going to comment on the animal welfare issues of that scenario. I’m desperate for a holiday and a break from Cambodia. Here’s hoping that I’ll come back in two weeks feeling revitalised and ready for another four month stint away from the boy…. But for now, Happy Khmer New Year, Happy Easter, I’ll blog again once I’m back. 

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Cracking up

Today was that moment when all my anger and frustration at the insane drivers and complete disregard for human life dissipated into hysterical laughter whilst sitting on my bike at a junction with a traffic jam banked up in every imaginable direction.  The after-work crush was in full swing and the ‘2-lane roads’ were transformed into 8 lane dystopias. As I approached the junction I geared myself up for an all out suicidal battle to push through the traffic. Stopped and strategically scanning the scene for any potential break points between the Lexuses and motorbikes, I saw a taxi stopped on the side of the road. The taxi driver was standing alongside the car with a shovel in hand. Upon closer inspection I noticed that one half of his taxi was elevated off the ground. It appeared that some kind soul had dumped a huge amount of rubbish and gravel to form a substantial obstacle in the outside lane of the road. The taxi had obviously ‘taken the corner too sharply’ (that’s what we’d say in Australia- here it’s just called ‘turning’) and mounted the mound of gravel, wedging himself in mid-air. The taxi was trapped with two wheels off the ground, straddled across the embankment. And as I arrived the taxi driver was proceeding to stand in the middle of millions of vehicles attempting to dig his taxi off the mound. Nobody stopped to help, everyone just swerved past as if this was the most normal thing that could happen. And I got the first big-belly laugh I’ve had on the roads here in a long time here. That weird ‘woman-sitting-on-a-bike-cackling-to-herself’ type of uninhibited laughter. That wonderful moment where you’ve witnessed something so utterly ridiculous that you couldn’t even make up if you tried. The insanity of a city with no traffic rules, no safety rules and the most phenomenally opportunistic, resilient road users I’ve ever encountered.  

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Mango Rains

I’d never heard this term until this morning. It was wonderfully ‘cool’- the most welcome respite to the incredible heat. The ground was soaking and it had obviously bucketed down in the early hours of the morning. The mango rains seem to be the pre-monsoonal rains that come sporadically at this time of year and bring momentary relief from the summer sun. April is mango season and currently all the trees are heavy with green fruit. Perhaps these rains are what’s needed to turn them all orange so that we can gorge ourselves on fat, juicy mangoes. I’m very excited for mango season to kick off in all its glory, but less excited about the prospect of it getting any hotter than it already is. 

The past few weeks have been unbearably hot. Everyone had warned me about April and the heat, and yet no amount of anecdotes could have prepared me for this. The heat has been sitting around 38/40C with high humidity and a suffocating thickness that permeates every part of your body. I’ve sweated so much that I’ve started drinking coconuts in a medicinal fashion. It doesn’t cool at night and the houses are so poorly insulated here that they just bake. There’s seldom a breeze, and the claustrophobic nature of this concrete jungle means there is nowhere to escape. Air conditioning is incredibly expensive to run, though thank god my work sees the value in having a cool office so I get some relief there. I’ve been told that it’s not going to get much hotter, but it will get muggier. I’m off to Yangon soon and that’s supposed to be even worse than here. 

Although I’m becoming accustomed to being damp all the time, it’s still pretty disgusting to sweat this much. And the Khmer people at my work don’t seem to sweat at all – though they don’t cycle to the office or go walking outdoors at lunch time which definitely helps their cause. It’s embarrassing turning up to work and having to dry your face with toilet paper.  Embarrassing trying to have a professional conversation whilst mopping sweat from your upper lip. Though I guess with rainy season around the corner, which will mean a lot more humidity, I need to get used to feeling perpetually dishevelled. I think the thing I’m looking forward to most about going to Europe in August will be a lack of sweat. And pedestrian crossings – let’s be honest.

Things here continue on as ever. I survived the staff retreat which actually wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Although there was the Sunday morning bike ride through blazing sun and 40 degree heat for 2 endless hours with no water, no map, no emergency back up plan and some seriously crappy bikes. One colleague fainted. Another spent the rest of the day vomiting with heat stroke. I survived unscathed except for some sunburn. Everytime I asked how much farther it was until the end I kept being told ‘1km’. This went on for at least 10km. Nobody was particularly happy by the end but, in my workplace at least, Cambodians wont speak up or challenge orders. Which means they’ll endure the cycle silently and spend the rest of their day vomiting…. Definitely a cultural quirk that I can’t fully grasp.

Next Sunday I fly to Bangkok to see the boy. I couldn’t be more excited if I tried. I’m so desperately in need of a holiday and a break from Cambodia. I’ve got two full weeks out of the country and away from work. And then when I get back it’ll be the halfway point in my assignment. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly excited for that milestone. But I’m amazed at how much has happened in six months. 

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Phnom Penh reality check

Living abroad as a volunteer is a funny one. If you moved overseas for any other reason and the city just didn’t click for you, it would be completely acceptable to want to move. But it’s different when you’ve moved somewhere as a volunteer. Nobody seems talks about not ‘clicking’ with a place in the development world, the expectation being that you’re here for work rather than pleasure. To suggest that somewhere isn’t what you hoped sounds ungrateful and ignorant- I feel churlish just writing this.  You don’t often read blogs from aid workers in Darfur talking about how they just don’t click with the city. But surely as well as all the talk of ‘capacity building’ and development, there is some underlying, perhaps unspoken, hope that you’ll also enjoy the city in which you live? Isn’t that just human nature? It doesn’t mean you want to leave right this instant, or aren’t finding the work rewarding. But that the city itself just doesn’t inspire you- for whatever reason.

I just read another friend’s blog about her preparations to leave a town she isn’t enjoying. A perfectly normal response to a place, an acceptance that we can’t all love living in each and every location. And it made me realise that I haven’t clicked with Phnom Penh. For whatever reason, this city isn’t ‘my city’. Aesthetically, culturally, socially – something about me and here just doesn’t quite match up. Which isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying my time here, nor that I want to leave. But rather that I’ve realised that I’m just not clicking with the city in the way I had hoped. It feels quite empowering just to write that, to acknowledge that relationship without appointing any blame. I’ve spent a long time here feeling that it was my fault that I didn’t love the city. That I wasn’t looking hard enough, that I couldn’t see what it had to offer. But reading my friend’s blog earlier really made me realise that any relationship is a two-way dynamic, and for whatever reason some places resonate with us more than others.

So there it is. The confession that’s been stewing for five months now. Incredibly anti-climactic but somewhat liberating.  And now I guess I take this awareness and move forward. And maybe the city will grow on me a bit more, and maybe it won’t. But I’m starting to think that’s ok. That’s completely normal. I didn’t come here because I was desperate to live in Phnom Penh; I came here for a job. If I had fallen in love with the city as well it would have been a wonderful bonus. And that I haven’t is ok too. And the journey of self-discovery continues.

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Tweaking

Well it’s been five months now. Five incredible, exhilarating, stressful, fun, sad, happy, intense, overwhelming, dull, crazy months. I feel much more able to cope with my life here, but still just as perplexed about certain things as I was at the start. I’m coming to accept that there are cultural mannerisms and behaviours that I will probably never fully understand or feel entirely comfortable with. But I’ve also learnt that a lot of that is a reflection on myself, my own boundaries and limitations and tolerances. I feel like I’m learning more about myself here than I am about Cambodia, or corruption, or anything else for that matter. I guess that’s a good thing – it definitely must be healthy to become more self aware. Though five months of naval gazing definitely gets exhausting!

I’m starting to tweak my life and my routines to make things easier for myself. Which means attempting to move a bit more slowly at the moment due to the incredible heat. Hot season is well and truly upon us. I’m being absolutely defeated by the heat. Last week hovered about 38/40C every day and didn’t drop much at night. It’s incredibly dry at the moment – rainy season isn’t supposed to start until about May or June. Though it still definitely feels really muggy here. I’ve never sweated so much in my life. I’m really starting to wonder what 24/7 sweating does to the human body. So I’m drinking lots of coconuts and eating bananas and trying to spend as much of every day as possible in front of aircon or a fan.

I’ve stopped having lunch at work which is has improved my life no end. There’s only one table at work for lunch- outside in the heat. I tried to have lunch at work at first in order to build relationships and get to know everyone better. But as time has gone on and it gets hotter and hotter, it’s less pleasant. There’s also this ridiculous situation with food here. Khmer people are incredibly curious and simultaneously very unadventurous in their cuisine preferences. Every lunchtime involved endless questions as to what I was eating, can they try it?, can they smell it?, what country does that come from?, it looks funny. I’ve realised I’m just not cut out for this level of interrogation on a daily basis. I now go to the gym or head home for lunch where I eat my food in peace.  Definitely learning my limits.

My new flat is still wonderful – I’m really enjoying living on my own – though am incredibly grateful for the houseguests that have come to stay with me recently. I’m still a bit nervous about May, June and July in which there are no international visitors coming and the rainy season will probably restrict movements somewhat. I think I’ll start German lessons again and maybe buy a guitar and figure out a plan to keep myself occupied. I suspect a lot of books are going to get read during that time…

Next weekend we’re off on a staff retreat. I’m feeling somewhat anxious about spending my entire weekend with my colleagues in which every minute of every day is full of scheduled ‘team building’ activities that seem to involve things such as, ‘one person sits in the middle and we all ask them personal questions’. And the last day involves cycling through Kampot wearing tee-shirts with our organisation’s logo on them and promoting our work. I’m hoping the whole weekend is going to surprise me and be a lot of fun- but at the moment I’m just feeling surly about having to give up my weekend to work.

But in three weeks time I’ll be flying into Bangkok to see the boy and couldn’t be more excited. I just hope these next three weeks fly by! One weekend at the retreat, one to enjoy Phnom Penh and attempt to get updates on the Brighton marathon that I’m not running, and the final weekend I’ll be off! I just really hope they've found that bloody plane by then...

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March in Cambodia

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Communicating Cambodian Style, aka the milk saga

Communication here is a completely different concept to what communication is back at home. In fact it shouldn’t even be called communication, it should be called something different altogether.  Just like I think that the Brits shouldn’t label the months of June, July and August summer, it suggests a comparable state to what the rest of the world knows as summer. It’s misleading. As is Cambodian communication. I haven’t fully figured it out and my conclusions are purely based on my own observations- god knows I’d love some Cambodian input into this hilarious rigmarole but that would require some level of effective communication. 

Nobody here will tell you that they don’t know something. Rather than tell you that they don’t know the answer to your question, they will simply make something up. This also applies to all the tuk tuk drivers who don’t know the street numbers and can’t find their way around the city. Mum got in a tuk tuk at the Central Market, asking to be taken to the Russian Market. The guy was adamant he knew where he was going. He drove her in a circle around the Central Market three times before finally stopping and asking another tuk tuk driver for help.  When I finished the half marathon at Angkor Wat, sweating and exhausted, I walked to the drink station at the finish line and asked for water. ‘Sorry, no more water today’, they informed me. Seemed strange to have no water at the finish line of a half marathon. Desperate for hydration I went looking for a vendor to buy water from. Shortly after I noticed the water station being replenished with crates of water.  Things like this are an everyday occurrence. 

The communication challenges are further exacerbated in the workplace where I still continue to hold on to this idea that communication should be better than out on the street. For example, just before I left for Cambodia, my boss emailed me to ask if I could arrive a week early to attend a staff retreat they were having in Laos. My flight ticket couldn’t be changed so I was unable to attend, though it turns out the retreat never happened. It’s now 5 months later and the retreat still hasn’t happened, despite countless meetings in which we vote on where we want to go and agree on dates. The retreat currently sits in our diaries for the end of this month. I’ve not heard another word since. Whether I’ll be going on a staff retreat in 2 weeks time remains to be seen, but I’ve not doubt I won’t find out until the day before. Or then there’s the ever hilarious situations faced by my volunteer-from-the-provinces friend. Last Monday she arrived at work only to be told they were heading to Phnom Penh for 5 days (an 8hour drive away), leaving in an hour, and would she like to go home and pack a bag? On the drive down they mentioned that they’d actually be staying for 7 days. All good?

Which brings me on nicely to the milk saga. The most ridiculous situation that obviously does not matter in the grand scheme of things but is an amusing story that should be shared. My work seems to sometimes provide milk in the fridge for us to use in our coffee.  When I first started at my job, there was a regular milk supply that slowly dried up. I asked the office assistant where the milk was kept, she replied ‘no more milk, too expensive’. So the next day I went and bought a carton of milk, only to discover the milk had been replenished. That was four months ago and there has been milk solidly since. Until about a fortnight ago, when a container of milk appeared in the fridge that was actually sweetened milk. This happened a couple of times and no other milk was available. For the uninitiated, sweetened UHT milk is one of the most revolting things imaginable. Eventually I caved and emailed HR to find out what was happening with the milk. ‘No budget for milk’, he responded. ‘Ah’, I said, ‘but there is obviously some budget for milk as milk is being bought, it’s just sweetened milk. Would it be possible to go back to the normal milk?’. He informed me that ‘everyone loves the normal milk’ but it’s too expensive and there is no budget for any milk. Milk is only bought when visitors are coming in. Fine, fair enough. The next day I bought some more milk for us to drink. Popped it in the fridge, made a coffee. Came back down a few hours later in search of a cup of tea, only to discover another container of normal milk had appeared in the fridge. No visitors had come in that day. The mystery of the milk continues. Pick your battles wisely, they say. I’ve accepted this is a battle well and truly lost.

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A swim in the ocean

It seems that nothing is more healing that a swim in the ocean. My endless yearning for fresh air and green space is always on my mind; but I hadn’t realised how much I missed the ocean too. Years in London slowly beats that need out of you, and god knows those rocks on Brighton beach hardly impressed me much. Honestly, nobody does beaches like Australia and having time back at home last September to swim in the ocean was incredibly therapeutic. And this past weekend a group of us went to Sihanoukville and I had the intense pleasure of swimming in the ocean again.

I’ve heard pretty average things about Sihanoukville- and from the looks of things the town itself is pretty awful. We tried sitting on the main beach one night to have a drink and spent the entire time just being harassed by hawkers and dodging fireworks soaring dangerously close to our heads. But, the drawcard of Sihanoukville appears to be the beautiful Otres Beach, which is about 20 minutes away in a tuk tuk. Although still some hawkers, the beach is pretty much empty with white sand and beautiful, warm water.  There’s a dirt road that runs behind the beach with bungalows dotted around the place. Nothing to do except drink mango smoothies and sunbake. I’ll definitely be going back.

The main purpose of the weekend was to participate in the Sihanoukville 10km race. Life in hot, sweaty, footpath-free Phnom Penh has not done my running ability any favours. But it was still nice to get out and run and feel that lactic acid burn. Although the Friday night 5 hour journey down to Sihanoukville was extended into an 8 hour ordeal after our bus driver went in the wrong direction for 1.5 hours, then spent 30 minutes standing on the side of the road asking some guys for directions, then proceeded to do a u-turn through incredibly heavy oncoming traffic on a road with deep ditches on either sides. Simultaneously, we were treated to a movie depicting a horrible fatal bus crash. My relationship with Cambodian roads is not improving. However, we arrived in one piece at 2 am. 

Apart from the bus journey, it was a much needed, incredibly relaxing weekend.  Which followed on from a week of having my super duper volunteer-from-the-provinces friend staying at my place, which followed on from 3 incredible weeks with Mum. And then tonight, my superb friend from Sydney arrived.  A fabulous chain of events. And in a month I’ll be jetting off to Thailand to meet up with the boy. Life is feeling pretty bloody good right now. 

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