Another Creature Feature

As promised (threatened?), here are some more pictures of the wee beasties we share our daily lives with. Some cute, some cuddly, some creepy; some sweet, some scary, some stunning; some petty, some pretty big and some petty horrible. You've been warned. Let's start with cute and cuddly.

Perry was having dinner with a friend recently on a night stop in Kampong Cham en route back from the upper Mekong when this spider decided to join the party. After watching us for about 5 minutes and ignoring our efforts to move it on, it was finally scared off by the arrival of a Buddhist monk who was joining us. Probably didn't realise that monks are vegetarians. A little later, one of its buddies climbed up the back of Perry's trousers and bit him on the leg. This stung (quite a lot actually) and led to the interjection of Anglo Saxon into what had previously been a conversation in English with the odd word of Khmer. Perhaps slightly surprisingly, the monk knew the word and found the whole episode rather humorous. Perry now has a large red mark with two holes left by the mandibles on the back of his thigh. We're keeping an eye on it but so far Perry has shown no signs of climbing up walls or battling evil super-villains. And the spider? Well, it came off worse. Dead before it even left the trousers.

Because I squished it, obviously! But at least it wasn't one of these, as their bite is very nasty indeed. We've mentioned the millipedes that trundle around everywhere in the jungle eating the decomposing leaves; they're harmless and interesting to watch. This, on the other hand is a centipede. Much less often seen, thankfully, as they're carnivorous and highly poisonous. We almost stepped on this one while walking at night in Kep but, luckily, saw it in the light from Perry's head torch. It was well over a foot (30 cm) long and we gave it a wide berth.

So let's stay on the ground for a while and see what else we can find. Ah yes, time for cute. We present: Babe III - Life in Cambodia.

Sadly, I suspect that this little piggy will go whee whee whee all the way to the pot. Luckily for the puppy, it lives on an island nowhere near the Vietnamese border otherwise its fate would possibly be the same (yes, they do...)

Cambodians, on the other hand, treat their dogs as either pets or working animals - most of the beasts on the farms are there to work. The buffalo below is just taking a break from its day job; it will shortly be back in front of a cart or a plough.

Buffaloes are huge - imagine a bull on steroids, or Arnold Schwarzenegger with horns. Despite their reputation in the rest of the world as unpredictable and dangerous, the ones here seem to be very docile. Which is more than can be said for these little monsters.

Ants are everywhere in Cambodia. They range from almost invisibly small to, frankly, bloody huge. And even the little ones burn like hell when they bite - if they can get through the skin. For some reason, they don't seem to be able to penetrate Perry, but Sarah is one of their favourite snacks. Add to that their perception that a towel makes an ideal nest and you can begin to see the problem. Here's a close up of one of the bigger variety.

Time to go to the water and another beast you find everywhere here: crabs. They're in the sea, the mangroves, the rivers and even the ponds. Luckily, they haven't found the bathrooms yet (although Perry did share a shower with a hermit crab on Koh Chang island recently).

The amateur naturalists among you might like to count all the crabs in the picture above. It's a lot easier when they're moving! There are all sorts of them, including swimming crabs that scoot by as you watch. Some are quite stunning, like the one below in among the mangrove roots. This being Cambodia, we can also report that all are delicious.

Good job the feeling's not mutual.



Staying with the water, another thing that gets eaten are the snails. But are they worth it? Well, the one below was the size of a grapefruit and eats rice plants, so it's a win-win for the Cambodians (though, sadly, not for the snails).

Cambodians also eat frogs, although I think I might hesitate a bit before putting these two on my plate.

And what else do we find in the water? Elephants, of course.

Yes, ha-ha. Actually, there were three in the pool with us.

The great thing about elephants is that they attract butterflies.

And dragonflies.

Think we're kidding? What do you think that wet stuff is? Yes, butterflies love elephant p***.

That's why humans ride up on top of them.

The only drawback with being at this level is that it brings you up close and personal with the tree dwellers.

Let's stick with the jungle for a little while and see what else we can find. Well, for a start, there are lizards everywhere. Some of them get quite large.

And there are beautiful insects, as well as scary ones. Mind you, some of the dragonflies are the size of small helicopters.



The monkeys are easier to hear than see, but they sometimes come to the edge of the forest to forage.

The birds too are hard to spot, though they are to be found everywhere. The kingfishers along the Mekong are spectacular... ly difficult to photograph! This is the best we've done so far.

On the other hand, there are minah birds everywhere that don't care about whether you've got a camera or not, so long as there's food to steal.

There are so many beasts here that it can drive you up the wall. But even then you can't escape. We thought tree frogs were supposed to live in trees.

Thanks to these two, we're now inundated (again) with baby geckos. Time to check the toaster.

And we're not done yet. We were sitting minding our own business the other evening when we were joined by a bat. Despite our opening all the doors, it flew round and round our apartment until it found its natural roosting place. Our ceiling.

We think it must have brought the cobwebs in with it as there surely can't be any other explanation. We finally encouraged it to move on with the help of a very soft broom (so that we wouldn't run any risk of hurting it). It's next choice of roost would have been rather unfortunate if the fan had been switched on!

But we finally encouraged it to leave. Which is a trick we did not succeed in with this kitten that adopted us during a recent short break on Koh Chang island, just across the Thai border.

And you don't get much cuter than that!

VSO is a leading development charity with almost 1,500 skilled professionals currently working in over 34 countries. VSO's unique approach to international development is founded on volunteers, working together and with local communities to fight poverty and achieve lasting change. If you want to learn more about VSO, please visit www.vso.org.uk

Flower Power

We've done a couple of posts on the fauna of Cambodia (and there's more to come...) but, this time, it's the turn of the flora. Being tropical, Cambodia doesn't really have a flower 'season' and different plants bloom throughout the year. That means that you never really get fields of blossoms but, on the other hand, there's usually something stunningly lovely just around the next corner.

For those of you who love the beasts, there are a couple to be found in amongst the flowers...

The water lilies are among the most spectacular flowers here, and can be found just about everywhere. They're sometimes a bit difficult to get up to for a close-up shot, though.

The bloom below isn't a flower: it's a tree blossom.

Just to upset any horticulturalists among you, the orchid below is a wild one. They're just weeds, really...

The flower below is to be found in the deeper reaches of the jungle and looks horribly like it's about to reach out and grab you. Fortunately, it's only a few inches across.

Of course, it's the flowers that are the reason for all the butterflies.

There are all sorts of different tree blossoms, and they're often quite large.

And this one below really needs to wait for the development of scratch-n-sniff internet before you can fully appreciate it. Sleeping near a bed of these is just heavenly.

There are even the most delightful little blooms among the undergrowth. Even the preview of this one is about twice real size.

For those who have struggled to get lilies to bloom in their gardens, they just grow wild here.

Some of the trees are simply stunning. Shame they're also full of spiders (before you wear your eyes out, there isn't one in this shot. As far as we know, anyway).

And you sometimes get extraordinary variety even in what seems to be a single plant.

And now we're running out of things to say, so just enjoy.

Don't worry, the bugs will be back soon. And we've got some good ones!

VSO is a leading development charity with almost 1,500 skilled professionals currently working in over 34 countries. VSO's unique approach to international development is founded on volunteers, working together and with local communities to fight poverty and achieve lasting change. If you want to learn more about VSO, please visit www.vso.org.uk

On Yer Bike!

Some of our more avid readers may have noticed that it's all been a bit quiet on the blog recently. There are a number of reasons for this: we've both been busy (no excuse), gathered interesting collections of internal pets (an excellent opportunity for explosive weight loss) and also been on the road quite a bit. This post is about being on the road - not for work but for recreation.

One of the things our little gang of associates here in Phnom Penh like to do is escape from the city at the weekends on our bicycles. Many of us just have the old-fashioned sit-up-and-beg VSO standards, so trips on these tend to stick to the local roads and don't generally go very far. Some of us kings of the road, on the other hand, have mountain bikes and for us the world is our horizon. Why mountain bikes in a country where the word for mountain and very small, almost unnoticeable hummock (phnom) are the same (and for good reason)? Because they have suspension. And, believe me, you need it.

Actually, we're really talking about Perry here - Sarah a) does yoga on Saturdays; b) is busy teaching English on Sunday mornings; c) doesn't have a mountain bike; and d) is far too sensible (as will become apparent, dear reader, as our story unfolds).

A typical trip will see us taking a ferry across the Mekong, sometimes via one of the islands, into the countryside. The ferries are typically full of mopeds and, just occasionally, a car or two. The one below is a really big one by Mekong standards. No, really - most of them are like extraordinarily ancient landing craft that just about have room for one car. Or an unlimited number of mopeds.

It really is quite extraordinary that you can go from a bustling, hectic city on one side of the river to a total rural backwater on the other. You ride on dirt roads, through villages where a foreigner is sometimes quite a big event. Especially a lost one in what even the Cambodians consider to be the middle of nowhere. But, again, more of that anon. Here's a picture of our intrepid explorers (Adam and Becky, plus Perry's bike) on a typical trip. Yes, we are wondering which is the right way.

Most of the riding is done on roads that are mainly used by motorcycles, like the one below. On the left is the Tonle Sap river; the Mekong is about a kilometre away on the right.

These small roads run between the small villages that the great majority of Cambodians live in: only 10% of the population live in large towns (and most of those are in Phnom Penh).

The bike helmets worn by the gang are mainly to keep the sun off! We often share the track with the animal carts that form the main source of trade in many areas. The chap below was selling pots and pans of all sorts from the back of his ox cart: it looked almost like something from a Disney film.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the road will get much wider, as in the picture below. But such heady rushes don't usually last long.

Yes, that is a child in a mixing bowl on the back of the bike in front of us. You get to see lots of interesting and unusual sights in rural Cambodia.

And I wonder how many years it has been since anyone last played football on the pitch below. In fact, I wonder if anyone ever did, since it was in the middle of a very small village and Cambodians aren't known for their world-class premier league. Or for playing football at all. Sadly, it was probably some NGO project that, I suspect, was lauded in the press back home as a great success in bringing joy through sport to the disadvantaged people of rural Cambodia.

And then one day, Perry and Adam (a VSO volunteer who is writing a new curriculum for the Ministry of Education) decided to go in a different direction. We had a map that showed that there was an interesting route that went South out of the City (we normally go North), before crossing to the far bank and then turning back North along the river and taking the ferry back across to the centre of Phnom Penh. About 60 km (40 miles) - a nice morning's ride. At least, that was the plan. And to make doubly sure, not only did we take a copy of the route map (a low-resolution print out from Google Earth with some lines scrawled on), but Perry also took along the GPS (yes - a mountain bike with Satnav). And out we set at 7 o'clock on a fine Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, it only took about 10 km to find out that the route (given to us by another cycling group) bore little relationship to reality. We were supposed to follow a small track along the side of the river to the ferry. Unfortunately, the track led instead to a freshly ploughed field. This was not the first time that day that this was to happen to us. No problem, we backtracked for a couple of kilometres and turned inland to the main road. That was sure to take us to the ferry and indeed it did. A ferry, anyway. At this point, we did think to check our location by GPS, as we thought we might have gone a little further than the map suggested. At this point, Perry discovered that the batteries in the GPS were flat. No problem - press on!

We should now start to put things in context. The map below is of the whole of Cambodia. What we ended up doing that day (represented by the red box) is easily measurable on a map of the whole country. In fact, our route was probably traceable from space.

When we got to the far side of the river, we turned left. According to the map, Road No. 151 runs right along the East bank of the River Mekong from the main crossing to the Vietnamese border to the provincial town of Kampong Cham. According to the map. Unfortunately, our section of this major arterial trunk route started to rapidly get smaller and muddier.

And then led into a freshly ploughed field. So we turned back and tried to cut inland for a few kilometres. Straight into a ploughed field. So we turned back again and eventually found a reasonably decent dirt road. Unfortunately, it seemed to be heading away from the river somewhat. At this point,we started to get slightly concerned, so I thumped the GPS and got it to work for long enough to get a fix. OK - only about 39 km to Phnom Penh, no problem.

This little vignette was to be repeated at a number of intervals over the next 7 hours: the only thing that changed was the bearing to Phnom Penh. We had apparently found the Phnom Penh orbital expressway. Unfortunately, it neither went to nor from Phnom Penh, just a constant distance around it. On the wrong side of the River Mekong (did I mention in a previous post that it's one of the biggest rivers in the world?). With no other roads joining it at all.

The map below shows in blue where we had intended to go. With the benefit of hindsight and the most detailed map available, kindly bought for us the following day by Adam's partner Becky (who works for the World Bank and can afford such things) the line in red shows where we actually went. Not 60 km but about 185 (120 miles). We didn't make it back for lunchtime.

But we did see some beautiful sights and met some lovely people in the villages where we stopped for drinks. In one of them, what seemed like the entire village turned out to sit with us. Don't suppose they'd seem many foreigners before. On bikes. Who said they were going to Phnom Penh and was this the right way?

But eventually, there was a junction and we were able to turn back towards the river. And when, after some 10 hours in the saddle, we finally caught sight of the ferry, we were two very slightly relieved teddies.

But the day wasn't over yet: we still had to get back to Phnom Penh. One last thump of the GPS. Oh good, only about 39 km to go. Back onto the main road, where we came directly upon a small stall selling batteries that would fit the GPS - once we actually knew exactly where we were for the first time! And now it was starting to get dark and some ominous looking thunder clouds were looming in the distance (yes, that part of the distance we were trying to head towards - doesn't it always work like that?)

We kept going into the gloom (and, believe me, cycling on an unlit road in Cambodia after dark is not a life-enriching experience) until, about 10 km from the bridge across the Tonle Sap and into the City, the clouds burst with what was a particularly spectacular thunderstorm, even by Cambodian standards. Luckily, we were just passing a little shop, so we dived for cover and considered our options. That took about a nanosecond before I phoned our friend Savin, who drives a tuk tuk (a cross between a moped, a large pram and a taxi) and asked him to come and get us. But even then the day wasn't over: the storm was so severe that Phnom Penh was badly flooded and it took Savin about an hour to get to us, and on the way back through the city both Adam and I agreed that we probably wouldn't have been able to make it through on our bikes.

But finally, at about 9 o'clock, we got back home. What a day out! But what did we learn from the experience? Probably nothing, really. After all, one of us is a management consultant and the other a special needs teacher. We're well beyond any hope of learning

VSO is a leading development charity with almost 1,500 skilled professionals currently working in over 34 countries. VSO's unique approach to international development is founded on volunteers, working together and with local communities to fight poverty and achieve lasting change. If you want to learn more about VSO, please visit www.vso.org.uk