Hey, where did the last two weeks go?

hi,
we did actually have a week off in there somewhere, but just catching up on emails about stuff we needed to do seemed to take up all the available time during which we might have blogged.

So, we finished team 2, with only one medical evacuation. We've now finished two houses, and the third is flying up at a rate of knots. We did have a scary moment yesterday, when trying to raise the second of four frames of wooden pillars - the second is the tallest and also the heaviest, and while getting it from nearly horizontal to vertical, a rope slipped and we almost killed everyboody! That's a slight exaggeration, but it is a miracle that the injuries amount to one laceration and one bruised shoulder. (Among the locals, not any of us) Amzing how once you start treating a local guy for a minor laceration, you suddenly have presented to you a cut thumb from four day ago, a kid with a sore throat and a woman with something in her eye.

no time left!

bye,

Help, I've got termites!

My laptop seem to be full of termites. I get rid of them as soon as the emerge onto the screen or keyboard, but as for the others.....





Anyone out there in ITland think that this might be a problem?





In other news, my time's up: Ihave 20 hungry volunteers to get fed, and I'm in a very nice winebar with free wifi. Time Iwent.





Sorry guys, the piccies will have to wait.





Again.

Except this one. We weren't mucking about when we named the blog.

Time off

After our first team of volunteers depart, we have a full week before the next one arrives. We spend Sunday afternoon relaxing by the pool in a leisure club, which serves either cold red wine or warm white wine, besides ice cream and snacks. Then Monday is a full debrief of the whole programme – what worked, what didn’t, what can be arranged better and whose responsibility it is to make that happen. On Tuesday we write reports/balance books etc, and then on Wednesday, Rob and I set off for Kratie, in eastern Cambodia, to see the Mekong dolphins. It takes seven hours on the bus to get there. We stumble off the bus, find a café and order orange juices. The café we have stumbled into is actually a community project – guesthouse, restaurant, tour operator. They make a big effort to source everything locally, where possible, develop picture recipes to teach illiterate rural women how to make shakes and smoothies, and have a push to reduce their environmental footprint. We eat there several times, in order to support their work, although the menu promises cook your own buffalo steak, and does not in fact deliver this (we don’t have…maybe tomorrow…)

The following day, we have a luxurious lie in until at least 8am, and then wander down to the Star in the Community guesthouse for pancakes and coffee. We are too late to hire bikes from there, but they point us to a place two blocks down that rents out bikes for a dollar: proper metal shoppers with Sturmey-Archer gears. We pick up a map of Koh Trong – a large island in the Mekong parallel to Kratie Town, and manhandle our bikes down a steep dirt slope to the ferry, a rickety wooden fishing boat that has a worryingly large amount of Mekong sloshing about in the bottom. At the other side, the dry season has exposed about a quarter of a mile of sand banks around the island, and the slog to push metal bikes through burning hot river sand is the hardest work of the day.

Having eventually reached the island proper, we stop in the shade to drink water and get our bearings. Then we set off on a packed dirt track, passing dozens of children who wave and shout hello! There are butterflies and dragonflies. We pass a pagoda, and ancient stupa (burial monument) and bamboo groves and jackfuit trees (jackfruit grow to very large sizes on tiny little twigs surprisinglly low down the trunk) At lunchtime, we park the bikes at the top of the bank on the west side, using the rope lock we were given to tie the frames together, change into our swimming costumes and scramble down the dirt banks to the Mekong, for a paddle and a packed lunch. Brie sandwiches, hurrah! We watch some of the local boys bringing their cattle to the river to drink, and splashing about in the water with them. There is a village made of houses on boats floating downstream of us. After lunch, we pick up our bags, retrace our steps, and it’s at this point that I ask the important question: Where’s the key?

Well, it was me that locked it…. After ten minutes of desperation, I find the key lying in the ground where we changed our clothes. It’s attached to a yellow cellophane ribbon (which I could easily have attached to something), and the ground here is deep loose dirt strewn with bamboo leaves and twigs, some of which are also yellow, so it takes three false starts and a small miracle to find it at all.

After the hard slog back across the sands and up the river bank, we have exactly enough time to return the bikes, get a cold drink and a shower, and meet our arranged transport to see the dolphins. This is via motorbike taxi: one person on the back of one small motorbike with a local driver. Don’t even ask about crash helmets, which are technically legal, but not enforced. Mission Direct policy states that these are not to be used, but we’re on time off and Rob Safety said I could, m’lud.

(As I’m typing this on Saturday, we get a phonecall to say one of our team is in hospital after taking a fall off a moto, although he’s talking to us, so it can’t be too bad.) We take about half an hour to travel the 15km north to Kampi, weaving in and out of other motos, chickens, and at one point swerving off the tarmac entirely to make room for an oncoming truck. We pass rural houses, some run down thatch, some shiny new wood, most dusty. One has ceramic cobras by the door, possibly something to do with the legend of the Buddha being sheltered from a rainstorm by a huge cobra, so that he could meditate in peace.

As for the dolphins, they are well worth the trip: I’ll let Rob blog about them.

Worrying noises to hear: your moto driver yawning. Still, he took one hand off the handlebars to cover his mouth….umm…

Riel money

The Cambodian unit of currency is the riel. 100 riel will buy an A4 photocopy. This is the smallest denomination bill I have yet seen, there are also 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000. There may be others I haven't encountered yet. 10,000 – 20,000 riel gets you a main course in most restaurants.

This is obviously an impractical currency for large purchases, so the majority of transactions are done in good ole US greenbacks. The riel-dollar rate is fixed at, for all practical purposes, 4,000 riel to the dollar.

The drawback is that riels are effectively used in place of cents, so for a 6.50 transaction, you hand over a $20and get back a $10, 3 $1's and 2,000 Riel. Or, for a 3,000 riel purchase, you hand over a dollar bill and get 1,000 riel in change.

This all works fabulously if your change required is 25c, 50c, or 75c, but if you need 80c change you'll get either 3,000 or 3,500 riel. I have seen 100 riel notes.

I am still in the process of mastering the quick change mental arithmetic to work out if my change is correct, also the occasional heart attack moment where you ask the price and get a number but not a currency.

Siem Reap

Rob and I travel up to Siem Reap (town serving the Angkor Wat complex) a day before the rest of the team, in order to set up various practical arrangements. We board the Mekong Express Limousine Bus near the waterfront in Phnom Penh. Rob is vaguely disappointed that the promised hostess on the bus is actually a soft spoken young gentleman who points out sights and places of interest in both Cambodian and English along the 314km from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. We get a breakfast box consisting of pasty like item and currant bun, as well as free water. The air conditioning is set to arctic – one of the things I thought I'd never hear myself say in this country is 'How nice to get out of the bus to warm up.' Onboard entertainment is a video DVD playing Mr Bean, Cambodian pop videos (there's an awful lot of melancholy lasses what have been abandoned by some bloke, and are now dying of TB. Or something) and a sort of Cambodian version of the Chuckle Brothers.

On arrival, we are literally mobbed by tuktuk drivers offering to drive us in to town for $1. At one point two or three have physically got hold of me and are dragging me away from Rob, who is likewise bodily moved towards tuktuks. We settle on one, who drives us to the hotel swiftly and then gives us his phone number – you wouldn't normally get a tuktuk for a $1, it's a sweetener to get the lucrative full day driving you about Angkor Wat, which is a few km to the north, and requires transport between different temples.

We settle in to the hotel, which is made of pavilions of two up, two down dotted about a garden full of palm trees and brilliant pink flowers. The effect is of seclusion and calm. Having checked the bookings for the team and ascertained that no free transfers are available, we organise our bus driver (friend of a friend of our Phnom Penh driver) to pick up the team from the boat and drive us about on Sunday. We begin footslogging about the town, checking prices and locations of different restaurants. We stop for a drink in Butterflies – advertised as an oasis of calm full of 1500 tropical butterflies (which are caught thrice weekly by local children, thus enabling them to earn money to go to school) I see two butterflies, possible the same one twice. It's dark brown all over. Also, building work is taking place next door. However, I do try a rice wine, which is about as strong and sweet as sherry, and rather fine.

We continue across the river to the old market area. Here are more restaurants, almost al doing both Khmer food and pizza/pasta. Pub street is lined with, well, pubs all aimed at the tourist market. We skip Molly Malone's authentic Oirish pub and proceed to the Balcony cafe, where we drink wine and sketch out a plan of where to take our team.

We also see some gorgeous silk boutiques, some fair trade, all quite pricy. I see a sign on a market stall offering traditional scarves for $3-$4, whereas I have seen the same in Phnom Penh for $1.25. Such is Siem Reap – the only place many people will see in Cambodia, often as part of a tour through Thailand, for which all money will go to the Thai tour operator. Siem Reap itself (ironically, the name actually means Victory over the Thai) is a dusty town consisting of about three roads. The main temples themselves are located 7km north, on a fairly shiny new road, with a big ticket control area where webcams take a photo of each visitor which is immediately printed onto your $20 one-day ticket. The temples are surrounded by children and women demanding that you buy their bracelets/trinkets/silks. If you tell a child to go away, they will often stop and ask you where you are from. If you say England, they reel off in perfect English facts about the population and capital, and then demand that since they have told you all about your country, you must now buy postcards. Buying anything immediately unleashes a torrent of other voices pointing out that their trinkets are a different colour, and must also be purchased.

Another feature of Angkor Wat are the groups of maimed and disabled men who sit near the main tourist routes, playing beautiful music on traditional instruments. Deprived of their ability to work by landmine injuries, they busk away, begging tips and selling CD’s for $5.

Typical day part 2

After picnic lunch and a quick pitstop at the hotel to freshen up, we head to the afternoon’s activity, which is usually helping out with a project at New Life Fellowship, a lively church in Phnom Penh. One of their main services to the community is providing free English lessons, which we help with by giving students the chance to break into small groups and practice a conversation, which they wouldn’t normally be able to do. They also run a play area for kids from the slums on a Thursday afternoon, where we help wash grubby children, supervise them playing and give out food parcels (this is a standard part of NLF’s programme) We also donate new clothes for the kids. On Fridays, NLF visit the slums, and donate more clothing or flipflops, building relationships with the families and inviting kids to come to Joy Club on the following Thursday. We have been saving empty water bottles – the kids can sell them for a few hundred riel to recycling plants, and by bringing oiur empties, we save them having to dig through rubbish on the streets.

After a few hours, it’s time for an early dinner, in a convenient restaurant. Usually Rob orders a selection of dishes, and everyone shares. Then it’s back to the hotel before 8pm, for tea and coffees and a chat before bed, and up again at 5 the next morning…

Myn

One down, four to go

I am plagued by poor internet cafes. the messages I want to provide, I never quite manage.

Anyway, here are some piccies of the first house (Godwilling).


OK, no. that's not going to work. Maybe another time.

Take my word for it, we've built a house. The second team arrive tomorrow, and there's 15 of em.

Should be interesting.

Also, we've been to Kratie, and seen the ever depleting Mekong River dolphins. Look on Google Images if you want a picture.