Trying to curb our enthusiasm... but loving Cambodia so far! A dream of a journey here on Thai Airlines through Bangkok, & arrived Thursday 9am to the first of many beautiful Cambodian smiles from Pisit, the VSO admin assistant here in Phnom Penh. Through baggage, passport & visa stuff in about 15 min (eat your heart out Heathrow!) & on to the programme office where we are based ‘til the majority of our group go on to Kampong Cham on Wednesday. Sarah will stay here at the office until Perry comes back in a week or so for a visit to choose our house here together.
Trying to tell of all we have done, seen & learned even in this few days would take many pages, so here are some sketches & impressions: warm, humid air, a couple of real tropical downpours – unusual at this very hot dry time of the year. What looks like madness on the road is in fact akin to a river flowing; apart from at very big junctions there are no lights & no-one signals, everyone just launches out into the stream & behaves much as we do when we walk down the street, avoiding each other & using commonsense – also not too fast.
DELICIOUS food, prepared here by 3 lovely ladies who sit on the kitchen floor with big bowls of beautiful vegetables, fresh herbs & ginger, chopping & shredding to produce plates of aromatic fish, meat, noodles & fragrant rice, & outside in the myriad of stalls, cafes & restaurants.
The river front: wide calm where the 3 rivers meet, Vietnamese fishing boats punting along, trees & rice paddies far on the other side. Children playing on the pavement while their families sell from stalls – yes I suppose they should be at school... Mothers with disabled children & amputees up at the temple of Wat Phnom; the beautiful sweet smile on the handsome face of the man of about our age with a double above knee amputation (wonder which country made the mine that did that in a rice field) will stay with us.
Lovely tall flowering trees, little birds, big fruit bats, sweet little geckos, the gentle temple elephant who consumed an enormous bunch of bananas from us with one curve of her trunk.
Last night we went to a traditional masked dance theatre; gorgeous costumes, choreography, a great 5 piece band & the chance to hear beautifully enunciated Cambodian - we even recognised a word or two! Oh yes, we have also had some training in between all the important stuff like exploring the city & eating & drinking! Sarah has met women from her office & will be taken along there on Wednesday – apparently they are extremely busy (think the research for the report is a bit behind schedule) – so looking forward to getting really stuck in there.
On a girly note – though Perry actually mentioned it! – our skin, hair & digestive systems all seem to be really benefitting from the lovely soft water & the very healthy diet, no dairy produce seems to be doing us no harm at all & the odd cold beer is purely medicinal of course.
So far, we have no working phones but will have soon & there are plenty of internet cafes which is where we will go later on to get this off Sarah’s lovely new laptop & out to any of you who have dropped by to see how we are doing.
Photos will follow soon!
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