Up Country

No sooner had we settled in to our appartment than we split up again. Sarah settled down to work in earnest (of which more anon), while Perry went off to Kampong Cham to do the main bulk of his language training.

Kampong Cham is a smallish town about 120 km northeast of Phnom Penh and situated on the River Mekong. It's an awful lot quiter than Phnom Penh and proved to be a good location for learning, exploring and, from time to time, socialising. A typical day would start at about 7 with breakfast at the communal house where most of the crowd were staying. Then off to class at 8 for 4 hours solid slog. Then lunch back at the house, followed by revision or, quite often, a wee nap. Most afternoons the more foolhardy amongst the crowd (yes, that does include Perry, but how nice of you to ask) then went off exploring on our bikes. Much of the countryside was delightful and we also gained a bit of an insight into rural Cambodian life. The picture below was taken from the top of a hill, looking down on the Mekong.

You can see what appear to be beaches in the distance. They're not - at least, most of the time, they're not. What you can see is the bottom of the river, which is at its lowest level at the height of the dry season. In a couple of months, the water level will be 15 metres (that's nearly 50 feet) higher. For what this means to Cambodians, see the next picture.

This is the bamboo bridge that runs across from just south of Kampong Cham to an island in the Mekong. It may look rickety. It is. Nonetheless, both Perry and Sarah cycled across it, avoiding the workmen who are constantly maintaining and repairing it, and without (quite) falling into the river. When the rainy season comes, the river washes the bridge away. This happens every year, and every year they rebuild it anew. Frankly, it felt as if you could wash it away with a garden hose. But, apart from the bicycles and motorbikes, it's constantly being crossed by ponies and carts, motorcycles with trailers and even cars (our view on that one is that there's no bloody way on Earth...). Perry has a great video clip he took while cycling across holding on with one hand. It almost ends tragically as he loses control of both camera and bike. Unfortunately, we can't post it as he had the sound recording on.

Sarah came up for the Khmer New Year weekend (12 - 14 April) and the whole gang made a bit of a party of it. One of the highlights was a boat trip up the Mekong, with exploring and, for the stout hearted, swimming. In the evening, we put on a barbecue and played our favourite music (jokingly called Mekong Island Discs). All agreed that it was a particularly fine day. In the photo below, Sarah is boarding the boat. The gangplank was fairly rotten, but then so was most of the timber on the boat. Sarah managed not to fall in and the pump on the boat worked just faster than the leaks.

As part of the in-country training, Perry got to spend a weekend staying with a Cambodian family in a small village some distance out of Kampong Cham along the banks of the River Mekong. It was a great opportunity to see Cambodian village life and to try using the Khmer (with mixed success and quite a lot of laughter). The picture below shows a typical village scene. Outside of the towns (and even in them in many cases), most Cambodian houses are still the traditional style, made of wood and up on stilts. Like all the wood in Cambodia, that used in the houses has often seen better days. Perry particularly remembers one ominous crunching, splitting noise as he was going upstairs in the dark. Hope the family eventually found the broken bit.

Oh yes, after we finished our afternoon's exploring, we had dinner and then either played games or occasionally went to one of the two rather fine bars on the waterfront. No need to say too much, but some of the crowd now know what time the sun comes up in Cambodia. Those games can be terribly addictive.

More soon. In the meantime, please don't forget the need to keep supporting VSO through our Justgiving page at www.justgiving.com/jagoteers.