‘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!