Oh No It Isn't!

On 6th December I, together with a good group of VSOers and many other people (around 3000) of different nationalities, including Cambodian amputees, gathered at Angkor Wat for another half marathon, 10k, 5k, 3k, depending on level of fitness/sanity. I had been determined to do the half this year but when it was clear that we would be returning less than 2 weeks before from a long trip back to UK, with little opportunity for training, I went for the 10k again. What a great morning - this is Angkor Wat as we watched the sunrise, 15 min or so before start time.

This is a group of us at the end of our race

Just before Christmas, the local am dram group, the Phnom Penh Players, put on a pantomime, co -written and directed by our friend Adam. Snow White and the Jackson Five. It was brilliant. Unfortunately I haven't got many photos as I didn't like to take them during the performance, but it was enormous fun. I did the makeup and there was a 'chorus' of sweet little dwarves, children of some of the expats advisers and consultants who live in Phnom Penh.

Perry was the Evil Henchman and loomed on and of fthe stage at various key points in a dark suit and sunglasses looking menacing. He did have a nasty moment the first time he went off into the wings and realised it was completely black with his sunglasses on, but I don't think anything was too badly damaged. All the songs were clever rewrites of Michael Jackson songs to fit the predictably convoluted plot, and very funny. The star of the show was without doubt the deliciously Wicked Queen aka Raymond the Philippino lawyer, pictured below in his fabulous stage makeup (not by me but a professional makeup artist). I think I'd borrowed his lippy without asking again at this point.

A few days later, it was Christmas. A normal working day, and last year we did just that, but this year we decided to take a couple of days and go to Kratie to see our friend Susan. There are quite a few other volunteers there and the plan was to get together and make things as Christmassy as possible with food either brought by us from UK or made in Kratie with great ingenuity, lots of games, and a roast dinner on Christmas day evening at Joe's Cafe, run by an exceedingly camp and affable guy from Chicago. On Boxing Day, Perry & I would finally go and see the endangered Mekong River dolphins while there are still some to see.

First we had to get there:

All was going well, the bus was what I like to call a 'turn it up' bus - the air con was blowing arctic the whole way, with the mostly Khmer passengers suffering from hypothermia, the recorded karaoke tracks on the television were at full volume, and every time we stopped, more people got on and we all breathed in a bit more. Still, no problem until about 15k from Kratie at 3pm when we stopped by the side of the road for no apparent reason. It soon did become apparent however, when we saw all the coolant pouring out into the road. It wasn't a bad spot at all, the sun was not too fierce, a traveling snack van pulled up and sold us cakes and drinks, and we were not next to either someone's house, land, or impenetrable forest - we could wander into the scrubby woodland & avail ourselves of the bushes etc. There was very pleasant company, and all in all quite a picnic air. You may just be able to make out, behind our fixed grins, that the name of the bus company is the Sorya Transport Company, pronounced Sorrier. As in you couldn't be sorrier if you use them. But that joke, which was quite funny nearly 2 years ago when we first used them is getting a bit old now...

However, after about a hour, when we had watched the driver & his buddies take everything mechanical possible out of the back of the bus, take it apart and put it together again...twice...with the compulsory blows with a hammer at intervals, and we had then watched them give up and try blocking the leak by shoving a kramer (the ubiquitous checked scarf) down the pipe, I felt action was called for.

[Short digression here- all repair jobs here demand the use of a hammer, it doesn't usually help]

So I called Suzy, at the time on her way back from a remote health centre on her motorbike, to ask if she could arrange for someone to pick us up. Yes she could, Hak would be there in his tuktuk. I worked out this should take about 40min. After about 25 min there was that peculiarly Cambodian call of 'we go now!' which does mean just that, in any given situation. You can have been hanging around for hours with no indication that anything will ever happen again, and then some mysterious part of the puzzle will turn up and they go now... without you if you are not damn quick. We had a brief domestic incident about whether we could grapple the boy in charge of bags into finding ours and unloading them (not likely to be fair), and a speedy debate about the fairness to our approaching white knight, and decided that if we wanted to be reunited with our luggage we had better get on the bus.

I phoned Suzy and asked her to assure Hak that we would pay him for the full journey and he could just turn round in his tuk tuk and head back - I had a sinking feeling that this would be a mistake, and lo and behold about half a mile down the road - ppsshhclunk. At this stage it was about 4.45. I called Suzy, she called Hak, he was now on his way back to Kratie & would be late for his evening job if he turned back. What about motorbikes? This was arranged (bearing in mind Suzy was still trying to drive home herself). Another 10 mins of fiddling about ... ' We go now'. Oh no we don't!! After a somewhat terse exchange of views (no way was I getting back on that sodding bus and having half of Kratie aimlessly searching for us on random modes of transport), our bags were left, and so were we, much to the amusement of the other passengers and the bewilderment of the villagers who were starting to assemble at a safe distance, bemused by the pair of idiot barangs standing by the side of a darkening unlit country road with 2 kitbags & 2 bike helmets.

Reader - they mocked us.

Not in an overt way of course, but they mocked all the same, standing in small groups, looking our way and grinning, but AT us rather than WITH us. I am fairly sure that at least one man had a phone, and mates with motos, because every few minutes, one would stop hopefully next to us. Now, it did then strike us that we had absolutely no idea what our real moto drivers, sent from Kratie, would look like. It was a pretty good bet that they wouldn't have any English and my Khmer isn't really up to complex discussions about whether they had actually been sent by someone in Kratie, and anyway whatever you say to a moto driver, he just grins broadly and says YES (Ba!) with complete confidence thus: ' Do you know where I live?' - Ba! Do you know where I live in Reading, Berkshire? - Ba! Are you a complete stranger to Phnom Penh and thus have no idea where you are yourself - Ba!

However, aha! we did know which direction Kratie was, and these guys were all coming from where we'd just been, and also our guys should turn up as a pair. So we waited, and dismissed motos, much to the growing amusement and incredulity of the villagers. Perry was getting very nervous, what with it getting dark, and no lights, and the prospect of either being taken captive by the village (not really likely) or killed in a horrific accident on an unlit road once we eventually got our moto lifts (quite likely, to be fair again). But he's just a big scaredy cat. A lady in a Lexus tried very hard to give us a lift and was obviously amazed by our stupidity. She announced that it would be fine, we could easily call our guesthouse and cancel the lifts we had ordered. Try explaining to a middle class Cambodian lady that we were not staying in a guest house but with a friend who had already sent out one abortive rescue mission while surreptitiously kicking your husband on the shin to stop him accepting her offer. Anyway, our heroes finally turned up and after a very pleasant ride through a beautiful Kratie sunset, we arrived at our destination. Much to our annoyance we did not pass the wretched bus broken down on the way, but found out later that it had stopped at every farm on the way to fill up with water and so did not arrive much before us.

When I say 'our' destination that's not exactly accurate. As we approached the turn off for Suzy's house I very clearly said 'turn left here', in very clear khmer (and it really is impossible not to understand that very simple direction, especially when accompanied by vigorous pointing) Once we'd sailed past, I then tried the same with 'go back', 'next to the wat', 'Suzy's house' etc and could see Perry doing the same. What did we know? We obviously wanted to go to Joe's cafe and meet Mr. Hak. Who told them to turn round, go back, next to the wat and to Suzy's house. We paid them about 3 times what they could have expected and with quick glances at each other to ascertain that we really were giving them that each, they zoomed off before we changed our minds.

As we entered Suzy's courtyard, we noticed that it was all very dark, maybe she was not back yet? As we walked up the wooden staircase we heard a despondent wailing coming from inside as she emerged from the gloom in a towel, 'There's no f.....g power and there's no f.....g water! (I would like to report that she used the word 'flaming' but she is a New Zealander, so no one would believe me). That was to be the scenario for the next 3 days over Christmas as soon as the sun went down.

However, we had a lovely time, a lot of it by candlelight! This is Roger who played us jazzed-up snippets of Christmas carols for us to guess at the lunch party he & Suzannah put on for us all on Christmas Day, with great games they had devised to keep us fully amused. I can't believe how incredibly bad I was at that game!

Holly and I on our 3rd piece of Christmas cake. Actually - looks like she'd finished the cake by then and was on to the mince pies...

On Boxing Day, we went out in a boat, just the two of us and the boatman, to see the Mekong River Dolphins. After seeing quite a few swimming near us, we moored up on the far side of the river for about 30min and sat in the lovely quiet (an incredible luxury after the continuous noise in PP) with just the splashing of the current and the dolphins as they come up to breathe. Unlike sea dolphins, they do not come out of the water completely, so this photo (like the other 15 or so identical ones) is not just a demonstration of slapdash camera skills on our part - this is as much as you see of them. It was very peaceful and special to be there, but very sad to know that there may not be any way to stop their population decline, especially as it is not exactly clear as to the cause for their stopping breeding. Like all environmentally highly specialised animals they are extremely sensitive to changes, and up-river damming, some pollution from mining and pesticides and maybe some fishing issues are all contributory factors.

After that, Suzy led us on her moto, Perry driving another with me on the back, on a great tour of the area. We visited the 100 pillar wat, with its beautiful paintings of the life of the Buddha (all wats contain this painted theme, but these were very well done)

These are the traditional instruments used in ceremonies, weddings and funerals. Sadly, more often than not in Phnom Penh, these have been replaced by noisily distorted recordings, but not always. I recently went to the funeral of the father of one of our DAC staff, and they used a real band of musicians - so much more soothing!

Suzy & Perry thought it would be very amusing to take a photo of me being a wat granny having a doze on the lovely cool marble floor of the outside pagoda. In my defence, it had been a long hot day, and I had not a wink of sleep the night before, as the stinking cold I started just before Christmas decided to turn into a sore throat of evil proportions. I took the nap after having joined in with some sort of ceremony (hard to tell what but who cares!) to which we were welcomed effusively by a lovely old man who proceeded to bless us extravagantly - maybe we were the 100th visitors that year or something. Anyway, we were made to feel part of the place, and I could have rested there for the rest of the day, however...

There were still sights to see and, as one of them was on the way back, it would have been foolish not to. We were quite tired, and Perry's knees a bit cramped from the bike, and as the name of the wat had the word Phnom in it(hill) and it was on Sambok Mountain, there were a few questions about how one reached it. There were a few steps according to Suzy. How many? Ooh, about..25. Oh really. Never trust a Kiwi.

That was the first flight, being petty I counted them. 67 I recall. There were 2 more flights after that. However, it was a lovely peaceful place, Suzy sometimes spends Sunday afternoons there writing or reading. That's when I really wish it was easier to get out of Phnom Penh. This is the view from the top, with the river in the background - quite low this year already, but still very wide.

Next day it was back on the bus and back to Phnom Penh. This bus had no aircon and my seat backed on to the engine which blew hot air at me all the wayback for 6 hours. It was also the only window with no curtain to shade against the sun. The karaoke t.v didn't work either though, so can't complain.

We went back to work for a week and then had New Year with my colleagues at the beach - more of that next blog. During that break in our gadding about, Perry was awarded a 'gold' medal by the government for his work at the Fisheries Department - very well deserved too. However, the box for the medal arrived about 2 weeks later, and he is still expecting the certificate which will tell him what it was actually for. Very Cambodian. As for how he feels about receiving a medal from His Excellency the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, I think his look speaks volumes...

By the way, the Minister was standing on a stage. A quite high stage. After all, we do have to look up to him...

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