Borey Bokor Kampot

... with several bands of plastic. Was pretty nice sitting around with the family and being included in their tradition, also nice to make small talk with the family members that I haven't seen for a while. The first night at the house was probably the most awkward meal I've ever experienced and all I could say was "My name is Chrissy", "I'm from America" and "Please, no more rice!". And today I could sit with them and tell them about my new assignment in Prey Veng ...

... many roadside vendors and grab a coffee. Not your normal starbucks variety since this one comes in a small plastic bag, layers of sugar, ice, condensed milk, and a little bit of coffee but it's tastey and costs about 30 cents.

It's only a short walk to my LCF's (Language Cross-Cultural Facilitator) house but it's a pretty one, thin path between the open rice fields that are a rich bright green at the moment because of the rain this past week. My LCF is a ...

... there was another bus waiting for us which was pretty impressive!




On arrival we got a Tuk tuk from bus & booked into Bokor Mt Lodge for $30 a night. It is on the riverfront & inc breakfast & is a lovely old french colonial building.

The streets along the riverfront has many decrepit French buildings in various stages of dis-repair. The town ...

... tournament, Football for Peace, held for all the schools in the area. A pretty big deal. Hundreds of kids played their little hearts out in a gruelling round-robin, only mildly disturbed by torrential rain that left the fields as well churned mud baths. The tournament was organised by a local NGO,Teang Tnaut, that supports local families affected by the masses of forced evictions implemented by local authorities in dubious property development deals. I helped make the prize ribbons :)

... a trip up there to see the old Bokor Hill station. Early the next morning we were bundled into the bed of a truck and vigorously bounced around in the rain as it slowly climbed the mountain. This area was the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge and the evidence is still there. The old royal summer house is full of bullet holes and the Casino built by the French in the twenties was apparently used for torture. The place is made more atmospheric by the mist ...

... That may not be fair, but I'm not here to provide balanced arguments, just my experiences through my eyes and in and then out of my brain. Everything he said would include at least one digression, and any digression made would normally include 4 digressions, often, into abstract, conceptual nothings, black holes that left him looking like a fool, he was unable to make a point, bottle the answer, say anything without saying everything else, his questions and viewpoints were based ...

... in at the rental agency and borrowed one each for the last time.
We decided to check out the beaches further along the highway towards Sihanoukville. Before we did so, we went out of the gate passing the son of the Ta Eng's owner. He was taking a rest with eyes closed swinging vigorously in a hammock close-by. Hammocking is a pastime which Cambodians think nothing of indulging in.
We soon accelerated and cruised along ...

... to have expensive things, so how could they know what it is to be without.'
When I've uploaded the pics, you can judge for yourself.

Johannes had been thumbing through some magazines the next morning when I came down, and alerted me to an article in a French one about a French explorer called Silvain Tesson who walks everywhere around the world:
'It's how we used to travel, and always traveled,' he said in an interview ...

It was nice and convenient getting up and going downstairs to sit in the restaurant area and order some breakfast which, in my case, was ice tea and something else I can't remember what. Anyway, in a hot climate you wouldn't want to order any hot beverage. We'll, a contingent of three jabbering French tourists sitting at another table close-by probably ordered hot coffee.
Johannes came down - eventually - and said he needed to find a hole in the wall to get some ...

'It's amazing how honest Cambodians are. I forgot to take the change and one of the store workers came running over with the discrepancy,' Johannes said something like this, and eagerly said so.
Of course, there are people with differing degrees of honesty all over the world, but it makes all the difference when you hear it about a country that has got a bad name from somewhere. I think, having experienced the country, that Cambodians are among the world's ...