‘What are you missing the most?’

We were asked this question yesterday, but a dutch couple we’d met. I didn’t need to reflect on that one: “My friends”.

On trying to love somewhere

The last week has been pretty cool, though not altogether successful. The King’s birthday brings with it yet another public holiday, this one taking most a week so we decided we’d skip town and explore Cambodia a bit. We settled on going to the remote mountain forest area of Mondulkiri, to visit an elephant conservation project there, and to tie this in with a day and a half in Kratie, which is famous for being home to some of the endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins.

The thing is that even after just two weeks of Pursat we were starting to feel really jaded and in need of a few creature comforts. As it turned out we rather out-did ourselves with our first choice. A few days in a really swish place in Phnom Penh for Mel’s birthday – in fact we accidentally booked an insanely posh room, complete with its own swimming pool, more of a large plunge pool actually but a nice surprise all the same.

Then it was on to the beautiful, temperate, lush mountains of Mondulkiri where we spent a day trekking around the forest with a handful of elephants*, watching them wandering around (knocking down the odd tree as they went) and doing the stuff elephants like to do, like wallowing in ponds and throwing water and mud all over themselves. We also got to get up really close and feed them watermelons, mangoes and pineapples. That was pretty mind-blowing, and well worth the fairly pricey $50 for the day. Marred unfortunately by the fact that Mel had eaten something dodgy on the way from Phnom Penh which had her feeling pretty unwell the whole time and meant she found it really hard to keep any food down the whole time we were in Mondulkiri. First night ate at a place run by a tottally batty dutch woman, with more than a few expletive-laden colourful stories about her life living in Cambodia. We also stayed at a fairly wacky place set up by a eco-loving European and her similarly nuts-about-nature khmer husband. Instead of a hotel they have a selection of A-frame huts on stilts in a field populated by a menagerie consisting of plump chickens (say bye-bye to that lie-in!), cats, a big gorgeous well-kempt Alsatian, several horses, including an absolutely gorgeous stallion. At the entrance to their field they have a round-shaped thatched wooden bar/restaurant (with no walls, of course), with some very fairy-tale style nobbly chairs and tables, including a few hammocks. Various of the animals also enjoyed frequenting the bar, including not only the cats and the dog, but also the stallion which we were led to believe was hanging around in the hope of some meusli, but ‘never pooping or peeing in the bar’. Which was quite a relief really. Add to all that the colourful and exotic-looking planting surrounding and throughout the place and the dazed children-of-nature-in-a-dream demeanour of our hosts and the place seemed pretty surreal in a somehow slightly kitch kind of way.

After another white-knuckle bus journey during which even the bus driver was clearly not totally convinced he would be able to get the bus through, we got to Kratie – a place where the only game in town is going to see dolphins of whom its pretty much impossible to get more than a second-long glimpse somewhere a long way off from wherever you are. Most people hire a boat to go out into the middle of the water, though from what I could see this doesn’t actually improve your chances of seeing anything. But it does at least help you feel like you’ve made an effort, and are therefore not to blame for the fact that you aren’t really seeing a great deal.

We went with a little clutch of other westerners, and after about half an hour of sitting in silence and whipping your head around whenever someone pointed cried out ‘over there’, only to see a little fin barely arch out of the water and the disappear almost immediately. I think we all at some point claimed to have ‘got one’ of a dolphin with our varied array of photographic and video equipment, but I think in truth none of us actually did, certainly not anything worth actually looking at again. I did succeed in getting a few pictures of Mel’s finger pointing out toward a bit flat expanse of dolphin-less water. So anyway we then gave up on the dolphins and took up the boatsman’s offer of relieving us all of a dollar each to go and see the ‘rapids’. Well as it turned out I wouldn’t have described what we were taken to as ‘rapids’, or even as ‘quite-fast-reallys’, but the water was certainly ‘going somewhere’ and after a little goading we all plunged in and sat around chatting in the two-foot of water (the german in the group even brought his passport, and money, in his money belt). And somehow this made it all worthwhile.

It was quite a relief to be able to talk to some other westerners. And so having set out to try and de-stress and to try to see the country that will be our home for the next two years in a more positive light, we didn’t quite manage either. Though we did have a nice time, despite the hotels all being a rough, and Mel feeling ill half the time.

Maybe that’s how this experience will shape up, tough but with a few little gems sparkling through. There ARE definitely things we like, just lots of other things that are annoying/frustrating/tiresome. It’s still early days, so perhaps with more time to acclimatise we can come to like it in a more wholehearted way – it’s just difficult to imagine that right now.

 

 

*the elephants we saw are being looked after by the project after being poorly treated by their owners.. it seems as a general rule where Elephants are worked they are usually highly prized and there a real love and respect for the animals, but that there are many misconceptions that lead to ill-treatment – things like the consensus that a good owner keeps their elephant clean all the time (‘to keep off the bugs’) when in fact the mud that elephants like to cake themselves in acts as a natural barrier against insects.

Mel’s news!

A few weeks ago I was on the phone to my contact at VSO and she asked, ‘does your partner have marketing skills and would she like a job?’.. which was altogether I think the strangest start to an interview process Mel has ever had. The job was to take on the position in Pursat being vacated by the person whose house we have taken on - she had decided to go back home to Kenya as her young daughter kept getting ill and she couldn’t bear to be so far away.

Anyway I explained that Mel’s marketing experience was fairly limited but would they consider her anyway, which was fine. So we sent off her CV and a couple of days later we heard that they really liked the CV and she had been approved from the VSO side, so the funding for Mel’s position was there, and the final step was for the NGO Mel was to be placed with to rubber stamp the deal.

We were still waiting to hear when we went to have a look around the organisation during a few days we had in Pursat town, away from the language training. Mel and I both (for different reasons) went to meet the whole organisation, and to our astonishment in front of the entire staff of the organisation it was quite casually announced: ‘actually the board has approved your post, when can you start’… So it was jubiliation all round on the way home.

When we got back to Phnom Penh a few days later I set about arranging a surprise party for Mel, which was no mean feat given we were living in each other’s pockets. I barely had the opportunity to send the few surreptitious texts to my partners in crime – a few of Mel’s friends here who I’d roped in to help me out. On the appointed day of the party, however, we happened to share a ride with the head of VSO Cambodia, Alice, on our way to meet the British Ambassador (interesting guy, but that’s another story). We happened to mention Mel’s new position and her face dropped and she explained that there had been a mix-up in communication and that the funds for Mel’s post had already been allocated elsewhere so it was quite possible it might not go ahead after all. Our heart’s sank – mine not least thinking of all the effort everyone had put into arranging the party. But I had to call it off and we went for quiet ‘cheer-up-Mel’ drinks instead.

Well to cut a long story short, some four weeks of waiting later it all went through, the money was found from somewhere, still not quite sure of all the details but Mel started two days ago, and so far seems to be going really well. Is quite a stretch for Mel as it’s pretty different work to anything she’s ever done before – but she came to Cambodia looking for a change of direction… and she’s certainly got that!

On Cambodian culture (when it clashes with Westerners!)

An interesting thing just happened… am in this coffee place near our hotel… the service is quite slow even for Cambodia… these two Americans just came in with a Cambodian guy… they ordered some food and sat down, after a little while the food appeared but I think at least one of the orders was wrong and they felt they’d waited too long. So one of their party kept going up to the bar and raising his voice in English and waving his arms around. He kept saying something about needing to get back to work.. until eventually he gave them a final earful, and the whole group left.. refusing to pay. The Cambodian in the group went up to try and pay but was told not to by the American.

It may be that they are indeed here on work but I reckon they’re pretty new here cos it really wasn’t that much of a wait by Cambodian standards. Plus when they came in they were trying to ask if this place is a ‘franchise’… which seemed a little naïve, I don’t know about you but I don’t know the word ‘franchise’ in many other languages! Plus this place definitely feels like quite a one off.. it’s actually the poshest place in town pretty much, it does Lavazza coffee, ‘New Zealand Natural’ ice cream, as well as fried chicken served with rice (which is quite a western-style dish I think from a Cambodian viewpoint).

Another oddity is if they are here on work, Cambodian lunch-breaks are generally two hours, so I’d guess they’d squandered their time… the two hours by they way is I think traditionally so you can have a siesta or at least a break from work out of the heat of the hottest sun of the day, many people eat with their families, but in practice it often means people have a little more time to do things like go and work on a second job!

The other thing is that there aren’t many place open today as currently everything is closed for Cambodian new year, so unless their Cambodian counterpart is particularly familiar with the town they’ll be going hungry, plus of course wherever they go they’ll have to wait.

The Cambodian guy with them didn’t say much, but I think he probably sees the Americans as higher ranked than him, either they are his employers or else just more senior in the pecking order.. so it would not have been polite for him to overtly speak out.. in Cambodian terms he most probably gave them all the cues that they were making asses of themselves but I expect they didn’t notice. It was interesting that he still tried to pay, and I have a feeling he gave a mild apology in Khmer as he left, or rather what he said sounded like an explanation in a relatively patient (rather than scolding) tone of voice.

I think this is the quintessential impression many westerners give of themselves in Cambodia, inscrutable and brash.

One month in!

As of today (9th April) we have been here exactly one month. We’re going out to eat some Khmer food to celebrate later (?!?).

So what’s it like to be 1 month in? Difficult to describe. A big swirl of paradoxical feelings. Have this sense that everything’s normalised too quickly.

In the first few weeks everything felt quite alien, although simultaneously surprisingly familiar, perhaps from having visited Vietnam before, perhaps because in my naivety I kind of expected nothing to work quite the same... does that sound mad? So the fact that you can go and sit in a cafe, and order a fanta (in English) and go back to your hotel room, switch on HBO and watch American movies (yesterday we watched Jo versus the Mountain, which was actually quite entertaining), gives everything this veener of familiarity. Operating in English as well keeps the ground steady under our feet – not forgetting of course that there are two of us, and we’ve made our own little bubble of normal that we walk around in.

So I’m both relieved and disappointed. Everything is strange and yet familiar. I find myself wishing we had gone somewhere that was MORE of a challenge culturally, and yet I know I would feel the same feelings of rapid normalisation there too.

I can’t quite shake this notion that we prepared, or rather we WERE prepared (by VSO), too well. Isn’t an adventure supposed to be full of the unexpected?

And yet I remind myself also that though I may relish the excitement, the ‘experience’ isn’t actually what brought me here. That I came here because I wanted to help in some way, and you look around and it’s undoubtable that help is needed and done right can be useful
in a straightforward
practical
kind of way…

 

Ok, so here’s some perfect timing, right. Mel’s just interrupted my typing with a case in point (though she’s no idea what I’m typing about): I’m sitting in our favourite bar at the moment, The Mekong Crossing – we call it ‘Joe’s’ after its American co-proprietor. And I’m writing this on my laptop, in fact I’m sipping a lovely banana smoothie in case you’re curious – slightly naughty given one of the ingredients is ice, which you’re supposed to steer clear of. The bar has a great view of the Mekong river, into which (our view that is) a few moments ago a guy just casually strolled, turned his back to us to face the river and urinated.
So here’s my point: a few days ago I was jogging along the same path and someone did the same. My reaction? I was mildly appalled, though after a few moments I thought to myself ‘Why not I suppose’. Now it’s happened again and Mel just saw it for her first time. Her reaction: the same as I had.
And yet to me it seemed already so commonplace. In fact I found it hard to even recall my own reaction, though it was only a day or two ago.

 

But here’s the flipside, and it’s paradoxical again. I’m finding that right now while I’m rueing the loss of a certain sense of wonder (and the little tinge of fear and distaste that came with it), the familiarity that’s creeping in is helping me chill out, relax, stop thinking so much about everything I do, and to start to notice and enjoy my surroundings in a way I couldn’t before. So the other day we went on a ride into the countryside on a tuk-tuk, a kind of motorbike-drawn cart, and I started to realise how beautiful I find traditional Khmer houses, which are generally wooden and sit on stilts to keep them from the floods – I remember them from stories my mum told me about Vietnam and Laos growing up.

And today we were walking through the market and I couldn’t help but appreciate the sight of all the fantastic fruit and vegetables and other goods laid out, often just on trays on the floor. They just look fantastic to me.

It’s difficult to explain, but perhaps you understand.

 

 

 

- the view across the Mekong from Joe’s

Monkey

It turns out that a monkey lives in the trees opposite our hotel. He seems quite a civilised sort of chap, sometimes to be seen strolling casually up and down the boulevard, sometimes nibbling pensively on a banana. I hear from a local guide that he is of the banana-eating persuasion. Apparently other monkeys are given to eating much more exotic foodstuffs, such as mango and sugar cane. But not our monkey, he’s just not that kind of monkey.

A confession

Sometimes, while sitting in our Khmer language class, I catch myself wishing for break-time.

Opening a bank account

So I think I’ve had four bank accounts so far – two in the UK, one in GermanyCambodia.
(which may still be open, for all I know!!), and now (fanfare please) one in

Actually I did also have another one with the Co-Operative bank but that doesn’t really count since all I did once it was open was spend the overdraft and never touched it again except to pay the overdraft and close the account.

My first account was with ‘TSB’ for storing my precious £2-a-week pocket-money. And I’m guessing the next account I open will be in laid-back-Australia – where I expect all you have to do is turn up at the bank with a friendly smile and can of Ozzy beer and they’ll give you an account on the spot.. fair dinkum… probably.

One thing you learn quite quickly about the whole process is that it’s much, much harder if you’re a Johnny Foreigner. We’re not trust-worthy you see. Unlike fifteen year old boys (I don’t remember having the slightest difficulty opening my first account!).

In Germany, where the official form and the rubber stamp reign supreme, I had to get a stamped form from both the local authorities and my university to open the account. Sounds straight-forward enough, right? Except that to complete your registration with either, you actually needed forms from the other! Plus the local government office would only deign to let you have such a form if you turned up on the morning of the correct day of the week - and of course the only way of finding out the correct day is to actually visit!

To add to the fun to register with the university I had to queue up a total of FOUR times in the same office. Made both easier and more frustrating by the fact that all the queues were all next to each other. At each window you would collect a new form, and have any you already had decorated with various scribbles and stamps. Then you could proceed to the next queue to go to some other little window to queue up for more of the same.

When I finally reached the bank with the appropriate pieces of paper a rather stern lady directed me to a particular queue in a manner that said ‘well isn’t it obvious?’. Whereupon reaching the front of said queue (and of course collecting a couple of rubber stamp-marks) I was advised I needed to take a few steps across the bank to join a further queue to complete the process!

No blooming wonder Kafka was German!

So after that, I was blithely confident about the process of opening a Cambodian account. After Germany, I reasoned, this is going to be a piece of cake.

Well, I wasn’t quite right.

The first thing I learned, prior to my arrival in Pursat, was that to open the account I needed a letter from my employer, which would be written for me before I arrived to meet my new boss. Except when I arrived it took some fifteen minutes discussion to discover that although initially we were told that the letter was of course written, the actual state of affairs was that the letter had been requested that day. And of course my boss, the director, doesn’t speak English so the letter would subsequently need translation. So I said I would be happy to wait until the next day - seeing as that seemed to be my only option! And that's when the fun really began.

As you will have guessed of course, the letter had in fact not yet been wrtten, so in the course of my meeting with the director the next day he also dictated it out in Khmer, which was translated straight into English. The director also explained that under Cambodian regulations foreigners are not supposed to be able to obtain a bank account until they’ve been in the country for three months. And also no-one could work out the house address, neither my landlord, or landlady knew it - and even my new colleagues (their office is on the same street as our new house) could not even confirm the road name. ‘The bank is going to love this’ I thought to myself, in spite of the assurances that no-one bothers about postal addresses in Cambodia, since your post is delivered to your post office rather than your address.

I should point out that Pursat, where I was to open the account, is a pretty small town. It’s all ramshackle buildings and dust and it takes about five minutes to cycle from one end to the other. It has one bank, and is the home of the one-and-only internet café in the whole province.

So we later merrily headed off to the bank with my passport my official letter and a faint sense of hope that my ‘white’ face would help smoothe things along. Well that last thing at least didn’t quite have the intended effect. Once we got to the front of the queue we were advised that, although apparetnly the lack of address posed no problem, the regulations had been changed and that, seeing as I was a foreigner, we would need an official document certifying my residence in Pursat, which could be obtained from my landlord.

So we jumped on our motorbikes and headed to the workshop of my landlord-to-be. Luckily he was there and listened attentively for the ten or so minutes it seemed to take to explain to him the situation. After a little discussion he explained that he was not able to issue the form himself but that this could be obtained from the village leader so he and a colleague headed off to negotiate this with the village leader. And we were left to sit on some diminutive plastic chairs, and sweat, and chat, and drink the little bottles of complementary water I seemed to have been amassing over the course of the day.

The chairs were of the type Mel has dubbed ‘the national chair of Cambodia’ because they’re absolutely everywhere, every house has some, every school, every business, they litter the streets, the cafes and bars. They’re pretty small, Cambodian’s being a bit shorter anyway, but they also seem to do sitting differently too, they don’t like being too far from the floor – which judging by their chairs may well be because you can never quite trust them to actually hold your weight!

When they returned from their discussions with the Village Leader the news was not fantastic. The village leader had said he could not give me the certificate I needed without first seeing my signed lease agreement. This was a bit of an issue, given the main reason to want to open the account in the first place was so that I could have my deposit transferred, in order to secure said lease on said!

So without the bank account - no lease – but I needed the lease to get the bank account! Stumped!

Thankfully my landlord was willing to break with convention and sign the lease without the money. So with a little sense of dare-devil-ish-ness about us, having broken the rules just a little bit, off we then set to undertake the painstaking process of signing the lease on the house.

Signing your rental agreement in Cambodia is an altogether different affair to what you might expect. Partly you are supposed to negotiate, often extensively, over the price – luckily we had already done that part with the landlady the day before. The women generally being the ones who own businesses – this despite Cambodia being a male-orientated society. That’s a balance that will take a while for me to get my head around!

So all that was left to do was complete the process of going around the place with the landlord negotiating what changes or additions they were willing to make before we moved in. This often takes several hours, but we were in a hurry so managed to get it all wrapped up in just over an hour.

That done, we set for the village administration office to get the certificate the bank needed. As we drew up to the place on our scooters I spied a couple of people who were just leaving who glum-facedly informed us the administration had gone to a workshop. Yes, they were supposed to be there, like we’d been told they would be, but, no, they didn't know where they were or when they'd be back.

It’s actually accepted practice because of the pitifully low wages of officials that they supplement their wages with attending workshops and training, which they are paid extra to attend, and taking bribes.

We tried calling the officials but to no avail. Now what. We sat around helplessly for about ten minutes. I should point out that throughout all of this we were a team of between four and six: myself, a contact from VSO, two office staff from my new workplace, and at various points we were joined the head of finance and at points of course also my landlord. What a hapless posse we must have seemed – six of us, and yet we still coulnd’t manage to get a simple bank account opened. Things were getting frustrating. My mood sank.

Eventually we resolved to go back to the bank and plead with them to let me have the account anyway without the official form.

At the bank the atmosphere among our team was tense, this was our last shot, the culmination of collectively tens of hours of work, hanging on the say-so of a disinterested-looking bank clerk. Initially things looked good, she started tapping away on a keyboard and even got a colleague involved, the two of them conferring and tapping things into their respective computers. But then things took a turn for the worse. She asked again for the form we didn’t have, and when we still couldn’t produce it (where did she think we would magic it from?!?) she tried calling the office of the village leader, perhaps disbelieving of our story – of course she couldn’t get through either and things ground to a hault. She called her boss for advice.

Then a glimmer of hope. Though her boss didn’t seem to be particularly helpful, we could all tell from the tone of her voice that she was on our side. I couldn’t understand a word of course, but I imagined how she was rebutting his objections and deftly parrying his counter-arguments. She seemed to be on the phone for an interminable time, and gave no sign of the state of affairs when she finally put down the receiver. However, a few minutes later came the breakthrough, she asked for my passport, and a colleague turned to me and said ‘It may be possible’. I smiled but didn't want to count my chickens too early.

Sure enough, though, within about ten minutes I was shown an account number. The deed was done!

So after about two and a half hours, five motorbike trips, and having pretty much exhausted all of our patience and ingenuity – we finally succeeded in opening my fourth bank account!

I thanked everyone profusely and even did a bit of back slapping in my excitement.

Actually the story doesn’t quite finish there though, because no more than a few hours later the bank called me saying that they had forgotten to get me to sign one of the forms, so I returned the next day only to find that my signature on the return visit was not sufficiently similar to the day previously. Luckily the clerk was understanding and let me have a few practices until I could get them a bit more uniform and I re-signed everything. Then a few days later while I was on the bus back to the capital, Phnom Penh, I also got word that the original letter from my employer was supposed to have had my passport number on it and that everything was going to go wrong if I didn’t get the number to them immediately. Luckily Mel remembered that my passport number was on my ID card in my wallet, so we managed to get it through to them – and that’s as much as I’ve heard… for now…

First Blog, First Post

First things first: thanks to everyone who took part for the fantastic send off. I'm so glad I got to see so many of you, and particular thanks to all the people who came from London and Brighton and to my sister and to Hal for making it so far. The party was just awesome, and finishing our last night as UK residents with everyone joining in on 'Hey Girl' a-la-samba-batucada was just the greatest, most fitting, fun outro to living in the UK that I could have wished for. Put a grin on my face and kept the tears from my eyes!

The scene after getting home that night was pretty hectic, still lots of stuff to sort, throw out, box, and store. We were already over our baggage allowance, and we kept finding things and going "Oh lord how come I haven't already packed this!". Got it done with a little help from my sis. Finally hit the sack at 4... ready for 6am rise... (this after nearly six weeks of night-after-night of getting 3-6hours every night - good lord I was tired, but having something of the enormity of this VSO adventure thing to look forward to just kept me going and going).

After a nervous are-we-going-to-be-there-in-time drive to Heathrow Airport; Aunt, Uncle, Sister and a friend of Mel's saw us off. (Paula: thanks again for the lift.) Shed a few tears as we set off, not out of sadness, more out of fondness and the momentousness-of-the-moment. Despite the grinding fatigue and my head bidding me to 'keep it together - stay focussed' my emotions were soaring: a heady mix of nerves, and excitement.

I mean, this is something I've wanted to do since I can remember. I kept thinking to myself: "This is it!" And I gripped Mel's hand as I watched our takeoff of the window. "This is IT!"

OUR FIRST CAMBODIAN
Some 12-14 hours later (I lose count) and we were touching down in Pnomh Penh. The language tapes I'd promised myself I'd learn on the plane still ringing in my ears, though scant words seemed to have stuck.

There was a Cambodian guy from the VSO office there to meet us, was great to see him, his English was pretty passable - a little mixup with the visas - it turned out there was another VSO on the plane but they'd brought someone-else's visa for her... and a stern-looking border officials told us we were supposed to have passport photos, and I wondered if we were going to have to bribe him (though it seemed unlikely) - we'd been told they could take a photocopy from our passports, and when we explained this he seemed quite satisfied and hurried off to fill out what seemed like a hundred different forms and stamp 20 different stamps on each. He even cracked a sheepish childlike grin when he realised he got one of his stamps wrong - as if he expected we would scold him for his inattention. 'Welcome to Cambodia', I thought to myself.

IN AT THE DEEP END
We all climbed into a VSO pick-up to go to the VSO office. It turns out Cambodia really does look and feel like a slightly poorer version of Vietnam - was wonderfully reassuring to hear the familiar buzz of motorbikes swarming around us.

Our arrival at the office was not quite as smoothe as we'd hoped - in fact a bit calamtous (and slightly embarrassing!). We were exhausted, having barely slept on the plane, and having been told we would have the first afternoon off, were looking forward eagerly to a siesta. But in under an hour we were fetched for our first briefing on admin and orientation, and then told that an hour after that we started our first afternoon of training! We were not best pleased! Even worse there'd been a communication breakdown and we kept being told how we were 'late'! During our first briefing we were even told how they'd gone with all our papers to collect us from the airport several days earlier, how everyone had had to wait around for ages while they tried to work out where we were...

Well after a that I couldn't help but introduce us to everyone with as evocative an explanation as I could muster about how WE were there on the day THEY had requested at the time THEY had requested and that there had NEVER been any other day for our arrival. In fact I was feeling a bit hot-headed about it all and went to make sure my programme director knew the full story and to see if we couldn't get the afternoon off after all.

After airing my grievance in the plainest possible terms, and making sure he was in absolutely no doubt about our innocence in the matter, he nodded sagely, and explained in fairly good English that there was nothing to be done, that since they hadn't known about this no arrangements had been made, and that although some of the briefings we had missed were quite vital, there was no time to catch up on these so we would have to muddle through, and I could choose to miss the afternoon's briefings also if I wished but these were very important and there would be no opportunity to catch up. Fuming though I was, I could see there was no way forward, so I had to concede.

ONLY LATER did I discover that the guy I'd been talking to was in fact called Pisit.... wheras my programme director is called 'PisET' and I'd been ranting on to a completely un-connected member of the office admin staff.... who had obviously listened to me going on and on out of nothing but the sheer politeness for which Cambodians are famed... and not wishing to seem unhelpful thought up the best information he could muster!

Moreover it turned out that catch-up sessions had been arranged, just no-one had actually told us about them, so all was not nearly so bleak as it had at first seemed!

UP-TO-DATE
So that was the first day. A few briefing sessions, and a day or two on we were all piled into a large coach that looked like it had just driven out of the 70s (though thankfully the air-con did still seem to be working just about) ... complete with some really awful cambodian karaoke. The destination was Kampong Cham, which is where we'll be spending the next six or so weeks for language training. On the way we stopped off at a large concrete watering hole ... where we got to see our first fried spiders and cockroaches... our language teacher explained: in the khmer rouge days people got pretty desparate, I couldn't imagine ever making it back to a normal existance, we were so hungry we would eat anything, even leaves off the trees just to having the feeling of having something in your mouth to chew. Thank god those days are gone. And there is real feeling of industriousness that makes me feel hopeful for the future of Cambodia. And I hope will mean my time here won't end up being in vein.