WE’RE ENGAGED!!!!!

Right now I feel a bit like Monica in that “The One with the Proposal” episode of Friends, the one where she runs around yelling “I’m engaged” at the top of her lungs … ‘cause that is what I am doing!!!!! We’re engaged!!!!! We’re getting married!!!! I will be Mrs Ford!!!!! I always assumed that a proposal would be a serious and solemn affair and I would say “yes” in a very dignified manner … Nope, that did not happen at all, this proposal was SO SO SO much better! After an amazing 4 hour hike along the Great Wall of China between Jin Sha Ling and Simatai -clambering up and down a very steep and in parts decaying part of the wall – and a beer to cool down at the end of the hike, we found that the were two ways down from the mountain ridge on which the wall is back down into the valley… a scenic walk or a super exciting slide down a steel rope on a flying fox. No guessing about what we did … we got strapped into our harnesses so quickly that I had no time to freak out and were half way down the rope and into the 1minute ride when I stopped screaming for the first time … only to have G say “will you marry me” … so of course there was more screaming and, once we got down to the bottom, lots of jumping around!!!!! I said yes and now we are both totally over the moon …. Maybe I should now let my fiancée write :) …love it, my fiancée!!!!!
C

C has said it pretty well so not much to add. Apparently the smart money was on late June so I was early (for a change). But that doesn't matter, I'm thrilled that C is now meine Verlobte, and very excited about the future. C has a travel ring from a Cambodian shopping mall, so we'll be visiting David the ring maker when we get back. I haven't seen that Friends episode, but perhaps I will now... Thanks for the messages, there will be more celebrations when we get home in July!
G

Beijing

Now onto China where blogging is verboten, so I am writing this from Japan, where the Great Firewall of China cannot stop us.

Beijing is much bigger and smoggier than I imagined; each block is half a mile long and you can hardly see past it. It's a mix of construction dust, industrial and engine exhaust and sand from the gobi desert, which acc to the Lonely Planet is approaching at 3km a year and will one day engulf the city.

The buildings are either ultra-modern, with squiggles and off-set angles like architectural cartoons, or soviet-style blocks. The old alleyways, or hutongs, in between are colourful, one-story slum-like areas but they are being cleared fast or gentrified by ex-pats. We toured one with a tuk tuk driver who showed us houses with big bricks for important folk, little bricks for the poor, dragon-topped doorposts that were defaced during the Cultural Revolution, and some that hadn't, whose heads we were told to rub for good luck.

Our hotel window looked onto a construction site, with workers welding girders eight floors up in the air, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Tiananmen Square was our first major stop. It is enclosed with railings and overlooked by skinny armed guards standing to attention under green umbrellas. It's a bit eery and supposed to be full of plain clothes policemen, but the atmosphere is softened by an ice cream van and hordes of Chinese tourists. Chairman Mau's pickled body is on view in a mausoleum at the back of the square; we didn't buy a ticket, although C managed to buy a nice wristwatch with a waving chairman hand on it. Nothing subversive, officer, it's for telling the time, honest.

North of the square is the Gate of Heavenly Peace, an impressive red monument from which the great helmsman proclaimed the Communist Chinese People's Republic in 1949, and the entrance to the Forbidden City, where The Last Emperor was filmed.

The Forbidden City use to house the royal household and thousands of concubines and eunochs (apparently the eunochs often ended up running things, but it was a risky business as half of them didn't survive the snip, yikes!). Ordinary people were executed if they tried to sneak in, and even ministers and dignitaries had to touch their head on the ground nine times (kowtow), so it felt great to be trampling through with an audio guide.

A moat surrounds the complex of courtyards, with pavilions ranked by the number of dragons on each corner. Symbols of power are everywhere and lots of steps, which early emperors were carried up (the last one had things modified so he could get round on a bicycle). The buildings felt more about power than spirituality, a contrast to Angkor Wat.

Outside, we climbed the hill in Jingshan Park and C insisted on having our photo taken in emperor costumes. C was finally a Princess! The less said about this the better, but at least we made some friends of an English couple, Mac and Lucie, who were watching the whole performance.

Food and drink highlights: visit to a famous Peking Duck restaurant with Mac and Lucie, where we ate duck hearts and deer tongues and authentic Peking duck from Peking (bird number 419,923 according to our certificate). A visit to the Temple of Heaven Park and dish called “The Palace Explodes the Diced Chicken”. An evening in bar area Houhoi, where C bought a panda bear hat, and we were invited to an underground bar for “hip hop and fine dining”, which turned out to be transvestite pole dancing.

We saw the impressively dusty Bird's Nest stadium and toured the aquatic centre, now a tourist trap for merchandising, and toured the 798 Beijing contemporary art area, a kind of Brick Lane district created from an old factory.

Something else happened in China too, but that merits a separate entry.

G

Rain, rain, go away ....

... come again another day .... which it did, annoyingly so!!!! Before coming to HK, I told G about those dreaded and dreadful HK weekends, the weekends where it rains when you come home wet from work on Friday night, wake up to rain on Saturday, call of any evening extravaganza because of fear of being washed away and are utterly amazed that when you wake up on Sunday …. Yes … it is still raining.
Guess what happened while we were there? … Yes exactly that!
We still had a great and action packed two days – initially relishing the fact that we were staying in a nice hotel (courtesy Air Miles, gathered on all my trips around Asia while working for mm) with a brand new bathroom, windows that actually closed properly and no mosquitoes in sight; then meeting up with friends (and the ever-reliable Chinese Elvis in Lan Kwai Fong) and getting all their news! After the last few weeks on the road it was fabulous to meet up with people that you know and be in a place where you know where to find great food and have a drink, without the help of our ever present friend, the Lonely Planet Guidebook. It was great seeing everybody there and after this little pit stop on “home turf” we felt more than prepared to conquer China.
C and G

Phnom Penh, where we nearly saw the King

We left Sihanoukville beach on Thursday and boarded an intercity bus to Phnom Penh, along with a half dozen Cambodians and a stowaway dog. Five hours later we had checked into the Bright Lotus guesthouse and, like the cheapskate backpackers we are, logged onto the wifi from the internet cafe across the street. The hotel had views over the national museum and the king's palace, perfect for sightseeing.
Everywhere in Cambodia are pictures of the country's shaven-headed king, Norodom Sihamoni, who is mainly known for ballet dancing and, unlike his father Sihanouk, for avoiding politics. As we'd had a week off to celebrate the king's 56th birthday, we were hoping to catch a glimpse of him and went straight to the palace after breakfast.
The palace is in a late-1800s compound of pagodas and pavilions that is quite impressive as long as you don't compare them with Angkor Wat. We bought our tickets and were about to walk into the throne hall when a troop of elderly palace guards appeared, wearing ill-fitting ceremonial uniforms and rows of identical yellow medals. They milled about in front of us, then stamped out their cigarettes and marched up to the hall, where they formed two lines either side of a red carpet and stood swaying back and forwards.
There was to be an official visit from the Vietnamese ambassador at 11am. It was only 10am and hot so we backed away from the throne hall and went to the silver pagoda, another royal pavilion containing the emerald buddha. This is a lifesize green buddha that looks down over less elevated gold, silver and bronze buddhas, which in turn look down on the crowd of tourists. The floor of the pavilion is paved with silver tiles, beautifully patterned but very tarnished and some held in place with sellotape.
Access to the throne hall was blocked when we went back, forcing us to give up on our celebrity spotting and settle for a tour of the rest of the palace, including a photo exhibition about former King Sihanouk, who at various times had been king twice, president, prime minister and leader in exile. Mentions of the Khmer Rouge years were conspicuously absent.
By now we had only a few hours left in Cambodia so went to the Russian market and snapped up a bag of goodies for folks back home (bet you cannot wait!) and a last rainy tuk tuk ride to the airport. Next stop Hong Kong.
G


PS, As Ian Dury would say, this has been got out by a friend.

Cast-away city dwellers

So this is what Robinson Crusoe must have experienced every day - walking along a deserted beach, going to sleep to the sound of waves, waking up with a view of the turquoise green sea ...

My good friend Friday (aka G) and I have just spent a couple of days as cast aways. We set off on a day-long snorkeling trip but Bamboo Island, 45 minutes off the coast of Snookerville, proved to be too much of a temptation and so we spontaneously (ie utterly unprepared, sans toothbrush, contact lens solution or clean clothes, or any real clothes for that matter) decided to spend the night in one of the very tempting ocean-view bungalows ... it would have been a sin not to :) The remainder of the afternoon, which would have otherwise been spent chugging back to the mainland, we lazed around on the totally secluded and deserted beach – lazing is mandatory – and (I have to admit) congratulating ourselves on our good luck! The evening was spent quietly getting drunk in the company of our new island friends and exchanging traveler's stories, we are such backpackers now. The friends had in fact planned to stay for a few days, so came prepared, and very generously gave us some sun tan lotion and made sure we were not totally wild looking. The next morning we were woken up by the gentle sound of waves lapping against the shore and had our morning shower in the sea. Breakfast was followed by more lazing, this time in the shade (Friday and I are now both nicely tanned but still unable to fully worship the sun, pasty people that we are) before heading back to the mainland ... BLISS!

I will stop with my island description there because we do still want to have friends and family when we come back and I fear if we carry on gloating you will all no longer talk to us ...

After getting back to the mainland, we only had half a day left which to G's delight we spent on a windy beach so he could indulge his “surfer dude” fantasy while I was being a beach bunny (is there such a thing or is that actual a real animal???? Replies to this questions are welcome!) before today making our way to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. Right now I am sitting on the balcony of our little guest house, with a view of the National Museum and a crossing that was just made for people watching – I have lost of count of how many ladies in pj's sitting on motorbikes I have seen. Myself being a fan of wearing the pj's at all hours of the day but having been mocked for still wearing them past noon have the biggest admiration for the Cambodia ladies who think nothing of not only wearing them way past noon but also going about their daily business in them ... spotting them has become somewhat of a sport for us, the record is two of them on one motorbike, which in our game of weird motorbike luggage trumps two monks on a bike (they are a dime a dozen) but I have not yet given up hope of seeing three such clad ladies on a bike which would in turn trump the monks and crown me queen of the game ... once again I digress ...

G is sitting next to me right now, furiously engaged in writing postcards. Tomorrow we have a busy day ahead of us, including an early start (arghh shock horror) - the National Museum for that last dose of Angkorian history, the Royal Palace with its Silver Pavilion held together by sellotape (... yeah, also not quite sure about that ... ) and then to do some last minute souvenir shopping in one of the famous markets (all those who do not want a Cambodian carving, say so now!). And then we head off to my third home, Honki Town (first being, the original Fatherland, Germany; second being the Motherland, England; third being ... Honki Town) which we are both looking forward to A LOT!!!!

Reading over this again I dread to think what Editor G (aka my good friend Friday, although Friday could not read and would not dare to question Robinson, hmmm) will say ... “too many brackets” would be one thing, and “why am I now being called Friday” and finally “no way will you win motorbike trumps”

More from us soon, if you are indeed still reading this .....

Love and miss you all

Cxx and her friend Friday

Beach buddies

Whenever we told people about my sabbatical, everyone assumed we were going to be spending the entire time lazing on a beach …. but it’s only now, 5 months in, that we are doing that!!!! We have arrived in Sihanoukville, Cambodia’s answer to Thailand’s beaches, and have joined the scores of gap yearers soaking up the sun and living the easy life.

Yesterday, after a slow start to the day and an amazing breakfast at our guest house (home-made muesli and real bread and ham), we made our way to remote and empty Otres Beach, a bumpy tuck-tuck ride away from the main drag. There are still a few beach shacks for food and sun loungers but far less people and – Greg’s day – a windsurf rental place!!!! While I spent the day being a lady of leisure, reading and dozing in the sun, Greg was out a surfer dude. In between our individual pursuits, we drank beer and snacked on fresh crab and langoustines, that ladies sell and peel for you along the beach. The day was rounded off with an amazing sea food bbq on the main beach, a whole load of drinks and dancing til the small hours of the night, under the stars and rain (it is the rainy season after all). Both G and I felt as if we had stepped back in time and were reliving our uni days, dancing to club anthems and few party classics (Faye, G made a valiant effort to match our crazy dancing to “Its raining men” but it just wasn’t the same without you… sorry G, still love you though!!!!) Today our heads (well, mine really, I am such a lightweight) hurts but hey … what can you do?

Off to work on my tan now, while G will perfects his windsurfing.

Love and miss you all

Cxxxx

Battambang beer snacks

Disgusting aren't they! We found these – together with stacks of deep fried toads and similar delicacies - at a road side stall in Battambang, a provincial capital on the other side of the great lake from Siem Reap. We didn't eat any...
We had traveled up on Tuesday by river boat, a seven hour trip through pretty floating villages, after finally leaving Siem Reap. We'd been there for a month and both felt sad to leave.
The night before, Catherine had left her last lesson at Chey with a huge pile of gifts and cards from the kids (see separate blog entry). After wiping away the tears, she and I had a farewell dinner with Lori and packed our bags.
The van came at 6.30am and took us to the edge of Tonle Sap, the big fresh-water lake that links the middle of Cambodia with the Mekong river. The journey takes 6-9 hours depending on the water level. The first hour was across open water, flat and glassy to the horizon. The next six took us along a narrow bendy river clogged with hyacinth plants and edged with bamboo houses on stilts. We passed through villages with floating shops and schools, and past the open front doors of countless tiny house boats. We were a dozen tourists, all clutching the Lonely Planet and swapping tips on cheap hostels, and a handful of Khmer passengers with bags of rice and children.
Along the whole the river there were kids everywhere, normally naked, swimming and jumping in, waving hello to the tourists. In one place a group were sliding down a mud chute on the river bank. In another they had made a human pyramid which collapsed in screams of laughter as we passed by, all very cute (apart from the one that threw stones at us, the little xxxx...)
As we approached town the houses became more permanent and surrounded by rubbish. It wasn't far off a slum by the end, though still built on twenty-feet high stilts.
Once in Battambang, a driver whisked us from the throng of touts to our hotel, which billed itself as the finest western-run boutique guesthouse in Battambang but turned out to be a horrible grimy dump (ah the joys of internet booking!)
We toured the town and its piles of fried cockroaches by bicycle, returning after dinner to find the hotel owner's infant son and Cambodian mother in law asleep on the floor of the bar, while the owner sat in silence at the bar with two drunk ex-pats and a third slumped over a card table, snoring atmospherically.
We decided the best thing to do was head asap to the beach, which is where we are now, in a nice place with pink walls. Next post from Sihanoukville...

Motorbike luggage - part 2

On our 7 hour drive from Battambang to Sihanoukville we spotted more interesting motorbike luggage which we wanted to share. We saw:
- two trees
- a rag and bone man carrying brooms and clothes and rags and similar stuff
- a lady on a drip, her co-passenger was holding up the drip
- a stack of wooden planks carried across the bike

Watch this space, there is bound to be more!!!!

School's out ....

My last day at Chey school, where I have been teaching kids how to use a computer, turned out to be a rather overwhelming experience and a great examples of how kids here respond to even the slightest bit of attention.

My last day was supposed to be Thursday last week but the kids more or less begged me to come back on Monday, for a proper farewell ... they wanted to give me presents, and boy did they give me presents!!!!!! Our Monday lesson ended 15 minutes earlier that normally and we then just chatted about all sorts of stuff, they had clearly all prepared questions that they wanted to ask me - how many brothers and sisters I have and what I do when I am not in Cambodia and what is my favorite food and if Greg is my sweetheart :)

At the end of the lesson, Rithy (the actual teacher) divided up the boys and the girls and first the boys were allowed to give me presents and then the girls. I was utterly overwhelmed, each child had written me a card and given me a present ... mangos, a pen, a used cuddly toy (someone had clearly given up their own), a shawl, hankies, soap, tooth paste, a necklace, a hair clip - have a look at the picture!!!!! All this gifts must have cost them money, so I was more than a little overwhelmed ... and, me being me, I of course cried which they all thought was very funny :) The thing that is most staggering is, that this generosity comes from a set of children who have next to nothing and after I had only taught them for one hour a day for only 3 weeks - that alone tells you quite a bit about the people of Cambodia!

Both Greg and I are very very happy to have spent as much time as we did in Siem Reap, working in the schools and getting to know actual people. It has made a huge difference to our experience of Cambodia and will certainly be one of the highlights of our trip.

Take care
Cxxx

What a day …

Yesterday will have to go down as one of the most memorable days of our trip so far, every part of the day was utterly amazing and quite a few were utterly bizarre!

For once, the day started supper early with a 4:45 alarm, to get us into a hot air balloon to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Unfortunately a cloud decided to drift right in front of the sun just as we got up but it was still amazing to see the temples shrouded in early morning mist and once again appreciate the scale of it and how it is surrounded by forest.

After a pretty dreadful breakfast we clambered into our air conditioned car – a novel experience after doing all other visits by bike – and set off to Banteay Srei … on the way we passed Pre Rup, another temple, and because there was no one there decided to have a look around there first. Having visited all other temples with at least a few other people milling around, wandering around this one all on our own was a fantastic experience. The temple is built of bricks which were covered with carved sandstone most of which has now fallen off. It is set up in a pyramid-like structure which means you can climb all the way up to the top and have this amazing view over the surrounding area. Without the sandstone I found its stark appearance really appealing.

Banteay Srei however was a totally different story – tiny in comparison to other temples, it makes up what it lacks in size with its ornate carvings. The bas-reliefs here are extremely deep, going 10cm into the stone in exquisite detail … reading over this I do sound a bit like a guide book, I do apologize but it really was rather special :-) The carved scenes are the usual Buddhist and Hindu myths featured in most of the temples but here, because they are so deep and the sandstone is pink (!!!! made for me clearly), they do look very different and come to life even more. Greg took some great detail pictures of things like individual toes, which you can also see below. What was upsetting was the amount of looting that had gone on, some even done by a French government officer, and how destructive it is. We saw one really detailed pediment in which the central figures head had been chopped of and is now no doubt gracing the mantle piece of some head honcho somewhere … all of a sudden I found myself supporting the Iranian approach of hacking off thieves hands.

From Banteay Srei we moved on to Kabal Spean, another 20 minute drive away in the mountains. This site is not a temple but a river with lingas (regular readers will remember that a linga is the male symbol of fertility … eager beavers might want to know that the female symbol of fertility is a box shape called a yoni) and bas-reliefs of Shiva and Vishnu and crocodiles and other mythological symbols carved into the river bed. Because it is still only the start of the rainy season, the river bed was quite dry but the hike up to the river – some of the hardest 1500m I have had to hike – was spectacular, leading us on a path through dense jungle, over boulders and giant tree routs, and we had been warned NOT to veer off the beaten path because of the continued risk of land mines.

Hot and sweaty, armed with our 4th 1.5litre bottle of water (and it was only 11am) we got back into the car (air con seemed like the best thing since sliced bread at this stage, although … after weeks of eating only somewhat soggy baguette (the French would be outraged), sliced bread sounds pretty nice) …er … anyway, where was I? Ahh yes, we got back into the car and drove off to Beng Melea, which one Cambodian guide had said was his favorite …and how right he was!!!! Totally off the beaten track, a good 1.5hours away from Siem Reap and expensive to get to, only few people make it out here but to me it was the highlight of our trip. The temple is in total disrepair because no restoration or jungle clearing has ever been undertaken, huge stone boulders are scattered everywhere and trees are growing out of the walls. There is no “visiting trail” through the temple like there are at the others so to explore it you hire a local guide and start climbing over stones and trees and crawling through caved in galleries … which was really fantastic and gave you totally new angles to explore things at. In some areas there are wooden gangways which were erected by a film team a few years ago when part of “Two Brothers” was filmed here (Raisig clan, this movie was made by the same director as “The Bear”, maybe we should have another crying session and watch this one when I am home in the summer?) Overall, this temple was by far the most amazing of the temples that we have visited.

A 1.5 hour car ride back threw us straight into our next adventure … the opening party of the Golden Banana’s Boutique Resort. Granted, the name is somewhat questionable but they do know how to party. The party started off quite sedately with some pretty amazing traditional Khmer dancing (our favorite Apsaras were out in full force), heated up with free booze, bar snacks and an Ibiza-style rave with a scientist-cum-DJ (weird right???) from Bangkok and culminating in a drag show, courtesy of the Siem Reapean lady-boys of the night. Seeing a Cambodia drag queen in a basque and bejeweled thong perform high kicks on a balcony to the sound of “And all that jazz” from Chicago has to be one of the more surreal memories of this trip …… oh and there was also a “lady” in a floor length gold lame dress giving her rendition of Beyonce’s “Listen” ….. bizarre does not even begin to describe the spectacle!

The day ended with far too many drinks in ZoneOne, a Siem Reap nightclub full of locals knocking back vodka and dancing to music that makes Eurotrash seem cultured … as some of you will know, I have never been one to turn my nose up to bad music (Aqua “Barbie Girl” anyone?) but this was BAD BAD BAD by even my standards …. so bad it was good again. We danced away for a few hours, including a few slow dance turns around the dancefloor to some Khmer power ballads but had to call it a night just before our tuc tuc turned into a pumpkin and got to bed at around midnight, very drunk and utterly exhausted by this day.

Anyway, I have gone on for ages and editor Greg will tell me off for forgetting all the rules of good journalism (not fair! – ed), but you have to admit … a day like this deserve a detailed blog, no??

Take care all of you

Love
C

Banteay Srea pics

Motorbike luggage

Last month Sky News ran a piece on its “strange news” column about six people riding on one motorbike. They have obviously not been to Cambodia; here you can see almost anything being carried on a trusty ‘moto’, regardless of comfort, safety or apparently the laws of physics. Seeing whole families, including mum, dad, and three children, or a cargo of three robed monks riding pillion, is quite normal. Here is a list of some of the odder things we have seen in only a month here:

a basket of squealing piglets
one hundred chickens tied upside in pairs by their feet
a crocodile (spotted by Jeff)
a cow
three dead pigs
large dining table
pane of glass 1.5m x 1m
stack of food boxes
four car tyres, worn as a Michelin suit (spotted by Lori)
five foot wide bunch of coconuts

Please feel free to post extras for this list!

End of term

With next week’s holiday for the king’s birthday, this was my last week teaching and C has her last computer lesson on Monday. I’ve been saying farewell to my Khmer teaching colleagues and handing over textbooks, coloured crayons and other goodies. The main impression I’ll take away is that all the students – from rural primary kids at Chey who could hardly say their names, to ambitious tuk tuk drivers at the ACE evening school in town – were very enthusiastic about learning English, which made them easy to teach and a lot of fun. Thanks to Simone and Rithi at the Chey school (and Lori), Shally and Togh at the Volunteer school (VDPCA), and the long-suffering students there and at ACE. No more homework, I promise (from me at least).
G

One of the hidden queens (pls note the lipstick)

Busy bees

Hello boys and girls

sorry that we have been MIA for the past few days, I know some of you actually check our blog every day ... believe it or not, but we have actually been really busy.

Here are the highlights of the last few days:
hearing tales of how the deputy general director of water at Apsara was able to fill the Northern Baray (an ancient, Angkorian water reservoir) with water for the first time in 500 years, against all odds and after teams from India and Australia had failed to do the same ... guess who was a happy bunny!
looking at “general interest” pictures on a laptop and telling a teacher about space rockets and the moon landing ... he looked at me as if I was insane
going for dinner with two deputy general directors of Apsara and being given the low down on office politics ... a career in tabloid journalism clearly beckons for both G and I
seeing a rainbow connecting the only two clouds in an otherwise baby-blue sky (Faye, I think I have found where the care bears live!!!!!!)
hearing about the disastrous impact of ill conceived “restoration work” being undertaken by well meaning teams ... removing lichen from bas-reliefs with acid and leveling century old dikes for no real reason whatsoever are just two examples
being given mangos by the kids I teach how to use a computer ... may not sound like much but a) they are delicious and b) its a pretty big thing to give for them
visiting the “hospital temple” (actually called Neak Pean) with an Apsara archaeologist who gave us far more information about the temple than any guide book could ever do; he even pointed out some ancient drainage systems and how they used to work as well as background on how the temple's religion was changed from Buddhism to Hinduism – carvings of Buddha just had their arms and head chopped off and were remodeled into lingas (male symbols of fertility)
revisiting Preah Khan (a former Buddhist monastry temple) and being taken down an Alice rabbit hole, clambering over stones Tomb-Raider-style to see two totally hidden bas-reliefs of Jayavarman VII's two wives ... Lonely Planet made no mention of this!
.... and these are just a few things and my favourites, G has a whole load more

As you can see we are trying to cram in as much as we can since we have decided to leave Siem Reap a little earlier – today is a public holiday (Buddha's birthday) and most of next week is also off because its the King's b'day, which means all our projects will be closed and so it makes sense to move on. We plan to take a boat to Battambang, which is supposed to be an utterly amazing boat journey through swampland. Battambang itself is the provincial capital of Battambang province and it is supposed to have loads of great colonial architecture. So I look forward to seeing that. We will just spend a day there before heading down to Shinoukville, billed as “Cambodia's answer to Thailand's beaches” .... we will be meeting up with some people who we got to know here in Siem Reap for a birthday party and generally chilling on the beach. There is also a great coral reef for snorkeling; wind for G to get some windsurfing done; some tiny uninhabited islands to visit as well as cocktails to drink and seafood to eat on the beach ....
But before we do that, we have a hard core sightseeing day ahead of us tomorrow so watch this space :)
Take care and as they say in Cambodia, good luck to you!
Cxxx

Cambodian wedding

We are just back from the wedding of Rithi, a teacher at Chey school, and his girlfriend of four years, which was huge fun! It was in a small village in the middle of padi fields. The ceremony took place in the bride's parent's house and the party under a colourful marquee, where most of the village and we three foreigners (Catherine, Lori and I) squeezed around a dozen tables and got rapidly drunk.
We learnt that in Khmer weddings the rice is for eating not throwing. Guests throw coconut flower seeds over the happy couple (and any foreigners) instead, and we ate the rice later with delicious beef, salad and cat fish. We didn't understand much of the ceremony, but it included a lot of chanting and seed throwing, and fantastic gong beating － I hope the video gives some idea.
The priest wet several pieces of red string and tied them around the couple's wrists, with a third being snapped and thrown out of the window to symbolise a clean slate. Gifts were offered, including a pig's head that we saw later on the back of the priest's bicycle, and silver boxes containing “special water” for the two mothers.
We sat on the floor without showing our feet – boy does that hurt if you're not used to it!
Afterwards, the groom and bride did their first of four clothes changes and the party went outside to the marquee.
We sat by the entrance with a good view of the receiving line where the other guests arrived wearing their best clothes and toothy grins. One gentleman sported a number of throat and face tattoos which Lori said marks him as an old Khmer soldier. I didn't like to ask more, as he looked fairly scary and Lori's friend Ponheary was with us, who had lost her father to the Khmer Rouge somewhere near this village.
Everyone seemed keen for us to drink beer, so I did my best to oblige. To help things along, a huge sound system blasted Cambodian pop into the tent at ear-splitting volume and our glasses were constantly topped up with ice, which dilutes things a bit and keeps the hangover away. The glasses were frequently emptied in one, so it didn't take long for the dancing to start. We were all dragged reluctantly to the dance floor and circled around it to Cambodian hip hop.
Yesterday someone explained to us that Khmer grooms pay for their weddings from guest donations, which are carefully and publicly recorded in a book that stays in the family's house for future reference. The system means favours can always be returned and doubles as a savings scheme; the groom pays for his wedding in installments every time he goes to someone else's. The head teacher from the VDPCA school said his wedding last year – a large one with 700 people- cost $1,500 but raised $5,000, a decent nest-egg when the average wage is $30 a month.
Today's wedding was smaller but still lavish: at least two traditional costumes for each of the eight-person bridal party and the whole village fed. From the way the party looked when we left, it's probably still going on now.
G

A day with Apsara

Here we are again, back from an adventure with Mr Khuon, aka Apsara-Man. Ever since we started volunteering at Apsara Mr Khuon, deputy general director responsible for Land and Habitat Management in Angkor Park, has taken us under his wing and is spending a lot of time and effort in explaining the whole operation to us ... and it has been much appreciated since it is giving us a totally unique insight into Angkor and the machinery behind it. Both G and I feel that it is making a huge difference to our Cambodia experience.
Apsara was called into life by Unesco when the Angkor area was made a World Heritage Site in 1994, with the mandate to preserve the monuments. However, since then it has been realized that the monuments and their preservation for mankind are closely linked to the wellbeing of the people who live around them in the park. Therefore, Apsara's mandate was expanded to also be responsible for the sustainable development of the park and the people that live in it.
And this was what today was all about:
Mr Khuon, an urban planner by training with extensive experience in the field, has initiated a number of projects all aimed at improving the living conditions of the park inhabitants, some of whom are desperately poor. The thinking is that because the people are so poor they are engaging in activities that ultimately threaten the monuments such as cutting trees for firewood and to clear farm land and illegally settling in the park, which puts an additional strain on the already stretched water table and in turn destabilizes the monuments. Some of Mr Khuon's projects are small, aimed at “quick wins” to get the population on board with other initiatives and build trust with Apsara... where things aren't rosy right now.
The largest project under his umbrella is the construction of an eco village for sustainable development called Run Ta-Ek, into which he hopes to migrate some of the park's growing population and thus develop a new community outside of the park. The project is aimed at young families, whose parents are living in the park. Due to planning restrictions, these young families would not be able to build their own houses in the park (they could only stay living with their parents) and by granting them not only a plot of land for a house and garden in the new community, but also one hectare of rice paddy, Apsara is hoping to lure them out of the park. We visited the site of Run Ta-Ek today but right now it is very difficult to imagine it all since there is just a huge hole which will be the community's fishing lake that is being deepened and that is about it ... yet people are supposed to move there in June. Both G and I have a number of concerns re this project, not least of all because by his own admission Mr Khuon's is basing this project on housing developments that were built in the 60's and 70's in the UK ...and we all know where that ended.
I feel somewhat disloyal towards Apsara and dear Mr Khuon, who is making such an effort with us, but I can not help but feel jaded and cynical re the development work that is being done here. I have spent quite a bit of my time at Apsara reading up about these different development project, focusing on a report that describes phase one of a project aimed at reducing the poverty of park inhabitants which Apsara is running the the government of New Zealand. The document is very wordy and worthy, full of good intentions, plans to consult the populations but very little in terms of action and what they will actually do. I got to the end of the 75 page document and was only able to find three action points: we will
1)increase the capabilities of Apsara and the park population ..... no comments on what these might be and how this might be done
2)map the land in the park because right now no one knows were one plot begins and another ends ... no comment on how this will help alleviate poverty
3)provide vocational training to get people into the tourism industry ... yet in the same sentence the document says that without English it is very hard, and still ... there is no mention of teaching English anywhere in the document ...
I end this day with a new found respect for all my friends who at the end of a 3-year course of Development Studies at Sussex University did not sell their soul to financial journalist but instead are out there saving the world!!!!!!