Lately our after dinner evening entertainment has involved us watching the toads compete for bugs on our patio for their dinner. As night settles in (which is just around 6:00pm lately) the toads seem to like congregate on our patio to scope out the best spot to grab their dinner, which consists of other insects.
As simple as that may sound, it actually is somewhat entertaining. We just had some friends over for dinner last weekend and I don’t think they believed that it was a worth-while event; until of course they saw it for themselves.
Some of the lil toads get into quite the stance prior to going in for the steal. Once they spot the appetizer of their choice, they hone in on it and stay really still, with one leg cocked as if they are at the starting line of the 400m dash. And just at the right moment, with perfect quickness and agility, they stick their tongue out for the grab, score and touch-down. (and then the crowd roars with excitement!!!!!!!!!) well, at least…… I like to pretend so anyways….
It’s amazing, though. Sometimes the really small toads go for some of the biggest bugs and not just one, … several! We have no idea how they’re able to move after such a feast. But like I said, it’s actually quite entertaining to watch.
Oh god, is it true I just wrote 229 words about our usual evening entertainment involving watching toads eat bugs at night? sigh. yep. This is what our lives have come to.
Friday, December 18, 2009
ATM IN OUR TOWN
Holla! We're moving up in the world. Our bank just finished construction of its new building. AND there's an ATM. 24/7. Visa. all in its own little room WITH AIR CONDITIONING. When I went into it for the first time, I felt so big city and had to ask myself, "Where Am i!?"
This concerns Will a little bit as now it's easier than ever for me to get money. But he'll just have to learn to deal. :)
This concerns Will a little bit as now it's easier than ever for me to get money. But he'll just have to learn to deal. :)
Our Yay (our host grandmother)
A funny lady she is. She’s pretty with it, at age 90. She still weeds in the garden every morning and she still does her own laundry by hand. While I don’t understand much of what she says…….. every once in a while I try and make some sort of conversation with her.
She thinks it’s great I take sewing classes. One day, I asked her if she’d like me to make her a shirt. Her response: “A shirt!? To wear where?” … I guess her point of view is that she’s this very old woman who rarely-to-never leaves the house and why on earth would she need a new shirt!
Then one day I was painting my toe-nails, and I asked her if she’d like me to paint hers…. and her response with her quiet scratchy old voice and a giggle was, “No,….I’m too old.”
Then one afternoon we got on the conversation of having children. I think I’ve mentioned before that she has had 10 of them herself. She told me she started having children at age 20 and stopped at age 34. Then, she asked me how many children I thought I would like to have. I said probably two. She said (with direct translation), “Two?? Good. Easy.” The fact that I’m 28, and have been married for 2 years and don’t have children yet, is a bit odd for most Cambodians as its customary for most to have children right away. But I try to explain to them that I don’t have time to have children right now; but will probably have them once when we go back to the states. In response to that comment, my host grandmother told me something along the lines of: I shouldn’t worry; as she continued to have children until she was 34, and since I only want to have 2 children, it shouldn’t be a problem to wait to start having them until I get home. I told her, “thanks” for the words of advice.
She thinks it’s great I take sewing classes. One day, I asked her if she’d like me to make her a shirt. Her response: “A shirt!? To wear where?” … I guess her point of view is that she’s this very old woman who rarely-to-never leaves the house and why on earth would she need a new shirt!
Then one day I was painting my toe-nails, and I asked her if she’d like me to paint hers…. and her response with her quiet scratchy old voice and a giggle was, “No,….I’m too old.”
Then one afternoon we got on the conversation of having children. I think I’ve mentioned before that she has had 10 of them herself. She told me she started having children at age 20 and stopped at age 34. Then, she asked me how many children I thought I would like to have. I said probably two. She said (with direct translation), “Two?? Good. Easy.” The fact that I’m 28, and have been married for 2 years and don’t have children yet, is a bit odd for most Cambodians as its customary for most to have children right away. But I try to explain to them that I don’t have time to have children right now; but will probably have them once when we go back to the states. In response to that comment, my host grandmother told me something along the lines of: I shouldn’t worry; as she continued to have children until she was 34, and since I only want to have 2 children, it shouldn’t be a problem to wait to start having them until I get home. I told her, “thanks” for the words of advice.
Grasshoppers
Are so unpredictable. It’s apparently their time of year right now, and well they like hangin’ out in the bathroom. You just never know when or where they’re going to jump next while you’re bathing. I mean seriously, I like to be able to bathe without having to worry about dodging the next unpredictable move of the grasshopper. sigh. this too shall pass. ;-)
Lately
So we’re in the midst of the second school year. Things seem to be going well. We’re both teaching grade 10 this year. Will has an environmental club going and soon the basketball season will start. I’ve got a health club “future Cambodian healthcare workers” going as well as a writing club.
Starting up the clubs is usually an interesting task. For my health club I held a meeting of interest, and depending on how many students showed I was going to have them write an essay telling me why they want to work in the health field.
Well, 120+ kids showed up. I was looking for 30. (keep in mind, a lot of times many of the students think they’re going know all and everything if they show up to the foreigners class, mostly via osmosis….it takes them a few times to figure out that, that isn’t the case). But anyway, I went ahead and had them write the essay.
I was able to narrow it down to the best ones. However, I did have to throw out about 40 of the essays, some of which were very well written – but the reason they had to go was because there were exact copies. I’m talkin’ verbatim. They didn’t even try being creative by re-ordering sentences or anything. When the announcement that teacher Stephanie wasn’t accepting people who copied papers or people who allowed people to copy their papers, some of the students were quite upset at this, and some kind of chuckled.
But man some sort of precedent needs to be set. There are little to no consequences for copying or cheating in regards to school work (from what I’ve witnessed at least in my experiences). I’m not sure if it’s cultural, as in they believe that they are ‘helping’ their friends and they truly see nothing wrong with it… or if it’s just been so long since anything has been enforced like this for them. Sigh. I do hope someday that the value of education in this country is realized. With that I do hope that someday they’ll realize that allowing people to copy each other’s work isn’t going to amount in a whole lot of educational learning, and with that it’s going to take a long time for their society to move forward.
Anyway, baby steps. I chose the best students and our club is going along fine. We’ve got a tour lined up of the local health center, and then I hope to arrange a field trip to a modern hospital in Siem Reap, just so they can see what one is like, and expose them to some possible career paths.
My writing club meeting of interest did not have nearly the same amount of interest as the health club. I wonder if it’s because they think I’m strict. Probably. But oh well. With that… baby steps; making small changes with people who are willing to make changes; right? But that club too is going well and I look forward to reading what types of things they write about.
Other than that not too much is new. Our time here is starting to go quickly. Hard to believe we’ve got 8
months left. It sounds like we’ll be going to Bangkok for Christmas with some of our friends. And then Will’s folks are coming in February and after that it’ll be a downhill slope to life back in the US of A. Hard to believe. --- But it’s not quite over yet!
Starting up the clubs is usually an interesting task. For my health club I held a meeting of interest, and depending on how many students showed I was going to have them write an essay telling me why they want to work in the health field.
Well, 120+ kids showed up. I was looking for 30. (keep in mind, a lot of times many of the students think they’re going know all and everything if they show up to the foreigners class, mostly via osmosis….it takes them a few times to figure out that, that isn’t the case). But anyway, I went ahead and had them write the essay.
I was able to narrow it down to the best ones. However, I did have to throw out about 40 of the essays, some of which were very well written – but the reason they had to go was because there were exact copies. I’m talkin’ verbatim. They didn’t even try being creative by re-ordering sentences or anything. When the announcement that teacher Stephanie wasn’t accepting people who copied papers or people who allowed people to copy their papers, some of the students were quite upset at this, and some kind of chuckled.
But man some sort of precedent needs to be set. There are little to no consequences for copying or cheating in regards to school work (from what I’ve witnessed at least in my experiences). I’m not sure if it’s cultural, as in they believe that they are ‘helping’ their friends and they truly see nothing wrong with it… or if it’s just been so long since anything has been enforced like this for them. Sigh. I do hope someday that the value of education in this country is realized. With that I do hope that someday they’ll realize that allowing people to copy each other’s work isn’t going to amount in a whole lot of educational learning, and with that it’s going to take a long time for their society to move forward.
Anyway, baby steps. I chose the best students and our club is going along fine. We’ve got a tour lined up of the local health center, and then I hope to arrange a field trip to a modern hospital in Siem Reap, just so they can see what one is like, and expose them to some possible career paths.
My writing club meeting of interest did not have nearly the same amount of interest as the health club. I wonder if it’s because they think I’m strict. Probably. But oh well. With that… baby steps; making small changes with people who are willing to make changes; right? But that club too is going well and I look forward to reading what types of things they write about.
Other than that not too much is new. Our time here is starting to go quickly. Hard to believe we’ve got 8
months left. It sounds like we’ll be going to Bangkok for Christmas with some of our friends. And then Will’s folks are coming in February and after that it’ll be a downhill slope to life back in the US of A. Hard to believe. --- But it’s not quite over yet!
Quote
“Whoa, your yay (grandma) is 90? That’s like 120 in Khmer years”. – Quoted by our friend Anthony, after meeting our yay. True fact: the average life expectancy for Cambodian people is 58 years old.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Small Things Continued - in preparation for Bon Catin
So prior to setting up the tents in the front yard for this big festival our family was having, I remember walking past our host dad and his brother-in-law having a heated debate about something. I didn’t know what it was they were talking about, nor did I bother asking. As I was walking past to our door, they stopped for a moment and acknowledged my presence; but after I walked past, their talking…with a bit of raised voices continued.
A little later on, I left for my sewing lessons and three hours later when I returned, I saw my host dad’s brother-in-law chopping down half of the beautiful, perfectly healthy, large, fruitful, provider-of-a lot-of-shade-for-the-front-yard, mango tree.
Yep. He was swinging with machete in hand, large blows to one half of the mango tree in our front yard.
I walked past, (he stopped swinging for a moment) smiled at him, didn’t say anything (while internally thought to myself, What in the world is he thinking!!!) and brought Will the news. Will (my very environmentally conscious husband) shook his head and put it in his hands, as I patted his back and went inside the house.
There he was, chopping down half of this large, fruitful mango tree.
It turned out he was chopping it down for the sole purpose of fitting the tent (that everyone would eat under) in that spot which was going to be set up for the festival. Apparently it wasn’t going to fit any other way.
“No. No … let’s not consider setting it up in the yard (perhaps because it was dirt rather than concrete back there!?!?).” “ No –no….. let’s not consider getting a smaller tent.” It seemed that the only solution was to cut down this mango tree, provider of fruit and shade in the front yard.
Sigh. Sometimes it’s really hard to grasp the thought processes, hierarchies and priorities in regards to a lot of things in this country. And sometimes it’s really hard to know and accept that we can’t do anything about many of the things here. We just have to be bystanders and let things happen. Sigh.
Anyway - I haven’t even gotten to the best part.
While I remember hearing the tree fall, (a familiar sound in my head, referencing 3hr Boundary Waters Trip) and saying to Will ‘There it went,’ I do sort of wish I was there to witness it.
Apparently, on its way down the trunk fell and broke our family’s spirit house in half. (A spirit house is a small little temple, almost like a miniature pagoda looking type of thing, usually made of concrete and painted nicely that Buddhists have in front of their houses. They offer food and prayers to it nightly as well as burn incense for offerings to their ancestors who have passed on, and I believe in return the ancestors look out for the house and its members.)
Anyhow, I don’t know all that much about the Buddhist religion..?... but let’s just say that I’m pretty sure I’m glad that it wasn’t ME who was the one who cut down that tree, which in turn broke the spirit house in half. yikes. If that isn’t a sign from the Buddha, I don’t know what is.
Within the hour, a brand new spirit house was delivered and cemented into its old spot. (Our host mom wasn’t going to take any chances) and preparations for the festival continued.
I guess I’ll never know what our host dad’s thoughts were on the whole subject. I never did ask, nor do I really feel comfortable bringing it up. I guess I’d like to think that he was arguing with his brother-in-law to not cut it down; but maybe that’s just something I will have to continue to think in my head.
The festival (which was a day and a half event) is now over, and now in the afternoon the front yard is quite a bit sunnier and hotter.
On the bright side (no pun intended) I guess this means we won’t have to eat as many mangoes during the mango season of next year.
Bon Catin
So our host grandmother decided that this was the year that she was going to throw a “Bon Catin”. Apparently it’s maybe the most important festival that one or a family will throw in a generation in the Buddhist religion. It’s a large festival/party that a family throws in order to raise money to donate as well as give offerings to the pagoda and purchase gifts (new robes, dishes, soap, toothbrushes,/ everyday items) for all of the monks. I believe it’s also a festival in order to prepare for death.
It was quite the festival. All of the family came to the celebration, including grandma’s son that lives in France.
Preparations started several days before. One afternoon I saw the really long broom used for cleaning all the spider & cob webs down from the tall ceilings sitting next to our entrance. (I guess that was our host mother’s hint that we needed to clean). (So we did that). Then tents were set up. Lots of food to be cooked was brought in. And the decorating began.
Everything seemed to go off without a hitch. The loud, loud music started at 5am. When we did finally peek around the corner, we were glad to see only 4 large ‘Peavey’ speakers stacked in the front driveway. (That’s a rather small amount).
Eventually, we got dressed up and joined in the festivities. The first day the monks come and do blessings and prayers. People come dressed in white shirts and women in their traditional samputs (or skirts). Everyone donates a certain amount of money, and I guess standard (or what we were told) was $2.50 a person. Or some people (perhaps those without as much money) can pay in rice. They just bring a bunch of rice and dump it into a container for the collection. After you pay and sign the guest book, they give you a favor (usually some sort of wrapped treat like wafers or cookies or something of the like).
After the morning blessings we all ate lunch… and then later again dinner.
The second day consisted of more prayers again in the morning, lunch around noon and then after lunch was the parade around town which ended at the pagoda.
It was quite interesting. Yaey’s family for the most part has done pretty well for themselves. A lot of these parades I see people walking, but ours was a train of cars. There was one truck with a bunch of what I would say would be the equivalent of nuns were in the back, along with the live music and dancers (and loudspeakers which were taken from our driveway and put in back) and fired up with a loud generator.
Then the cars followed with flags & lots of decorations (Will held the flag out of our car window) and we paraded around the town, past the market, past the main road and finally back to the pagoda that our family regularly goes to. Then all of us got out with the several gifts and offerings to be donated and we paraded around the pagoda three times and after that went in for the final blessings and donations.
After observing the much chanting and prayer, the event was over with and we headed back to our house to unwind and relax, as anyone does after any big event.
It was quite interesting to watch and be a part of it. Grandma thought it was a success and she said she was VERY happy with how it all turned out.
We were very happy when the music that had been going for a day and a half straight finally ceased.
And everything returned back to normal.
Hurricane Ketsana Peters Out near us
October 1, 2009
So about a week after we got back from our vacation, we started to have some really heavy rains. We had heard about the floods in the Philippines on the radio and sure enough a few days later strong winds came through Cambodia. Kampong Thom province had some really strong winds and I guess several houses blew over and 9 people died. While no houses blew over in our area that we knew of, we did lose a few papaya trees to the strong winds and our neighbor’s front shack in their front yard blew down. Then a day or so later the rain started.
It kept raining, at first quite hard for several hours. It continued on through the night with lightning and fairly strong winds. It had not let up that morning and while a bit lighter throughout the day, it rained for an entire 21 hours straight.
Around 3pm that afternoon, Will went on a bike ride just to get out of the house for a little bit. He came back about 10 minutes later and told me I should come along and check out some of the town.
We went over to one of the bridges over River Puok. It was raging really pretty fast and pretty high; lots of branches just sweeping along the water. Then we were going to go over to a small dam to the north of town a little bit. On the way, we passed by a recycling place – who was beginning to slowly lose all of their goods to be recycled to the rising water in the yard. Then we went by the 1st house we lived in for the first month that we were here. They were trying to dam up the water that was slowly beginning to fill into their yard. If you remember from previous posts, this house is on the newly built National Road 6. When they built the road, they built it up quite a bit, several feet higher from the majority of the houses on the road. While they did put in a drainage system; during this particular storm; all the rain was trying to drain into River Puok, got overwhelmed and the water was instead going backwards…into everyone’s yards along the national road, because the river was just too high.
We stopped at our old host family’s house and grabbed some shovels and tried to help with the uphill battle of trying to create a dam. It helped a little, but was only going to help for so long, and finally they told us to stop as it was getting dark. She had asked us if the water was rising at our place. And when we had left, it hadn’t really yet. Our current house (and grounds) is one of the highest on our street, as they put up a cement fence around their lot and filled in quite a bit of dirt in it as well a few years back.
Anyway, our old host mom mentioned, that if it continues to rain like it is; the Tonle Sap Lake will begin to fill up (which is where the Puok River drains) and pretty soon all of that water will continue to creep north, our way and most of the houses will be flooded too. She also mentioned that the alligators will be out b/c the river will be so high. While I was mostly skeptical of the last remark, I guess it was a possibility.
We decided to get back to our house and check on its status rather than continuing our expedition. Approaching it we could see that the rice fields which surround our place were getting pretty full of water, and you could start to see the waterline rise around the cement wall that surrounds our house. Still no water in our yard though.
We decided that, maybe it’d be a good idea to pack a few things and start raising some of our belongings that are on the ground (books, electronics etc) just to take a few precautions. So we did that in case it didn’t stop raining and we had to move upstairs. I worked on that task as Will began to make dinner.
When we sat down to dinner around 7pm, it was already dark, but I took a glance and looked into the yard and noticed that it was mostly covered in water now. We ate dinner quickly and started to take our packing a little more seriously. At 9pm the water had raised an inch. That’s when we decided to elevate our little fridge on some bricks as well as some of our storage trunks.
The rain continued through most of the night. We set an alarm at 12 and 2 just to check on the status to see if we needed to move anything. I remember waking up once and hearing nothing but the sound of water, dripping all over the place. It almost sounded like we were sleeping on a lake. Luckily we were still dry and none had gotten into our house.
The following morning it did stop. Thankfully. Luckily our patio was built high enough. We were 3 inches from having water inside our house, and we were happy that we didn’t have to deal with that mess. The entire yard was full. All of the newly planted flowers were under water. All the weeding that the grandmother and I worked on…were under water too.
I talked to our host dad, and while we were the only ones on our street without water in it at 6am, he mentioned that if it continued to rain today, we most likely would have water in our house too.
I decided to get out and grab some food incase the rain would continue on though the day. When I got to the market area, it was completely flooded. The main part of the market was knee deep in water. Some of the sellers moved out into the streets to sell some of their goods. I was able to buy quite a few vegetables…and a little later, I saw a crowd of people hovered around another seller. She was selling pork (the only one around)… people were getting antsy and pushing and shoving and putting money in the seller’s face. No one was taking chances on getting some meat to have on hand; nor did they care of the foreigner got any or not. I eventually got my way in and was able to buy some. But yea, you’d see people buying huge boxes of raman noodles, or other dried goods, and bringing back what they could incase the rains should continue.
Later on, Will and I went out to tour the town via bike. Most Everything on the north side of road 6 was flooded. The road acted as a solid dam. Many houses were knee, some even waist deep in water. Those who paved and raised their ground after the road construction was finished were happy they did; but in some places that wasn’t even enough.
We got over to our school and the entrance to that was thigh-deep on me. The main office building wasn’t under water but many of the classrooms were. The basketball court was under water and so was the little guard stand at the front gate. Across the street, a new house had just laid a cement driveway. Will did comment on the poor methods of laying cement that they do in this country, and the flood made it a prime example. Many places skip putting in metal rebar to help support the cement, and then they only pour it about 2” thick. – So this brand new, probably 3 week old driveway was crumbling and washing away right before their eyes.
The entrance to the Artisans De Angkor Silk farm was quite a bit under water. We witnessed a tour bus full of people that stopped at the entrance with its blinker on for quite a while, as the driver was on the phone pondering whether or not to take the chance of trying to drive the bus over the dirt road covered in a few feet of water.
There were tons of kids playing in the water, building make-shift rafts floating around. Luckily most of the water wasn’t rushing and there weren’t any big currents or anything. But I guess the cleanliness of the water may have been something people should’ve considered a little more. Near the recycling place on the 2nd day, we saw them floating on bags stuffed with empty plastic bottles, trying to round up even more of the trash that had floated away.
It was quite the scene in our town for the few days after. School was delayed a week. It took a good solid week before things got back to normal.
Eventually things did dry out. It was a bit smelly for a few of those days, but the town was happy to not have any heavy rain showers so they could get their homes and businesses back in order.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Singapore
So, ideally we would have had a little more time to explore this city. (We really could’ve used a little more time to explore this city, as it took us almost an entire afternoon to just figure out the regular mass-transit system). Had we caught the 12:30pm bus the day before, we would’ve been able to have at least another night in the town, but that just didn’t work out. Oh well. We worked with what we were able to work with.
We got in, and first things’ first, we found a hotel in the heart of the city. We found a room at the SE Asia Hotel right sort of in the Chinatown area. Had we done more research – we would’ve booked something earlier as Singapore was hosting the “F1 Formula Night Series” a HUGE car racing event (which turns out it was a pretty big deal, I guess even Biance (current famous singer popular with many youngsters today for the grandparents reading this post) was going to be there. (Who knew!!??....HA I guess not Peace Corps volunteers’ living in Cambodia, whose only connection to the world is ‘Radio Australia’). Anyway – we were lucky to find a room; and lucky for us we only were going to be there one night.
We got showered up and got in contact with a friend I wanted to meet. Five years back, my father was diagnosed with CML (Chronic Myelogeneos Leukemia)… and anyway – there was an online support group, and the person who started it is a very kind person named Anjana, who happens to live in Singapore. Her husband has had CML for 8 years now and the post is still going and still supports people with CML all over the world. She was very much a wealth of support and promising information in regards to this type of cancer, and helped me and my family (and many, many other people) at very scary times in their lives. So I felt it would be nice, that since we were in the area, I could at least pay a visit. (Which we did. Eventually.)
So, Singapore is a very, very large (and expensive) city. It also is a meticulously clean city. (I believe chewing gum is outlawed there, and it’s a $1000 fine if one gets caught littering. ($1USD = $0.75 SD). I guess if you want a place to be clean, slap a really expensive fine to keep it that way and then enforce it. (Enforce being key word here.) With those rules in place, it made it quite a pleasant city to visit. (We’re used to much dirtier places where we currently come from [the wild, wild west]). Anyway…..We walked around, and found a spot in China town to grab some lunch. We were thinking that for that afternoon before we met Anjana and her husband Roy for dinner, we would go and visit the famous Singapore Zoo. But before that, we thought that we had better go and try to find bus tickets back to Kuala Lumpur as our flight was an early one the day after the next. We wanted to be back at least one night before; and we didn’t want to have the issue that we had (having the 12:30pm train to Singapore be sold out and having to take the 2am train instead) …. when trying to get back to KL. So, we thought that was a good idea.
Well. Let me repeat ‘so, Singapore is a very, very large (and expensive) city’. There aren’t any cheap tuk tuk rides to get you around this place. It has a very huge functioning mass transit system. They’ve got a very efficient MRT (subway/monorail system)…as well as a city bus system. Which is great – and in all honesty experiencing all of it for the few hours we were in that town, they truly do have a very efficient system and it does transport people (hundreds of thousands of people) every day, every few minutes or so getting everyone where they want to be. With that said, learning the names of stops, routes, parts of towns and how to get to who, what, where was a bit of an undertaking in itself. It took us 2 hours to find the place where we could get tickets back to KL (which apparently wasn’t as big of a deal as they’ve got buses departing every half hour). And well, I could tell Will’s frustrations were at the boiling point when we got turned around on a map and were walking in the complete opposite direction for a ways on the way to the station. (Keep in mind we didn’t have that great of sleep on the night train, and now we were dealing with a huge hustling and bustling city, very unfamiliar to us and our current lifestyle…which pretty much made you feel…. well…. very small…on all levels and in all respect.)
Once we found out that bus tickets weren’t going to be an issue – we definitely didn’t have time to put what would have been our money’s worth into the zoo (before we were to meet our friends for dinner). So instead we tried our luck again with the city’s transport system and tried to check out a few of the hot spots in the city. After some navigating… and I use the term ‘navigating’ lightly… (I mentioned before they were setting up for the F1 series, in which the racetracks were along city streets so some of the transportation options were blocked or detoured).,…we eventually made our way to the Esplande center, and walked around there. Unfortunately no shows were happening and even the art gallery of the center was in transition between exhibitions. By that time, with our current luck taken into consideration, we decided we’d better get a move onto getting to the spot where Roy said he’d pick us up at 6pm.
The lesson we learned that afternoon was that it takes a LONG time to get from place to place in Singapore (especially if you’re new to the system) and secondly that it would be ideal to have more than 24 hours in such a place. One of Will’s favorite quotes is ‘all’s 20/20 in hindsight’. Sigh. Oh well. We originally were going to have more time, but that’s not how the cookie crumbled this trip so we did the best with what we had and tried to soak up as much as we could.
We were able to meet Roy at the entrance of the Singapore zoo about a half hour later than we had planned, but it worked out just fine. He drove us to their flat and Anjana had a pizza waiting for us and we actually had a very nice evening just relaxing and visiting with them. They were very nice company and they were adamant about having us come to visit and stay with them for at least a week so we could truly get the full taste of Singapore. We’ll have to see what the timing and wallet says to us at the end of our service and see if we can accept that offer or not. There were many more things we would have loved to have seen there, so I guess we shall see. ;-).
But yes, after that we caught the bus back to the MRT station, and took the MRT (subway) back to our part of the city and headed back to the SE Asia hotel for the night. We were wiped. Nothing like getting off a 2am night train; heading into Singapore; trying to navigate and figure out the transit system and then have to get back to bed in time to leave the town the next day at a decent hour.
Well… actually the next morning we were able to have a complimentary breakfast at our hotel and looked at the city map and saw we were within walking distance to the Singapore Art Museum, so decided to go and do that before we headed back to KL. I’m glad we did, they had a wide range of interesting exhibits and it made our trip to town seem that much more worthwhile. Not to mention, Will bought a small Indian Food cookbook at the gift shop in which we’ve been experimenting making all sorts of different Indian dishes from. So yes, the morning was a success. We hopped on the bus to Johor and from there we were able to catch a bus back to KL.
We didn’t arrive back to KL until about 9 that evening. We remembered seeing a hotel that was really close to the airport when we first flew in and thought it’d be great to just stay there as the airport is an hour and a half outside the main part of the city. So banking on that, once we got to town, we grabbed one last dinner at the Subway (yes, fast-food-subway-sandwich-subway. it had been over a year) then took a bus to the airport. We arrived around 11:30pm, walked over to the hotel only to find a long line to the counter. We waited in line and sure enough, got to the front to learn that they were fully booked for the night.
My heart sank. (I was looking forward to one last night in an air-conditioned room and more so, a good night’s rest before we flew back to Cambodia.) We grabbed our bags, and begrudgingly walked back to the main airport, claimed some chairs in the waiting area and then took turns watching luggage, and walking around. After my shift of trying to sleep for an hour or so, I decided maybe it was better just to stay up. So I did. Will grabbed one of those big carts to haul luggage around, we put all of our bags on it and we went to the various fast food places that were open 24-7 in the airport to grab snacks. Then, Will pushed me in the luggage cart over to the 7-11 shop (as it was the only place you could buy a beer)…(yes mom and dad, I was a little concerned that we might get in trouble about the whole 28yr-old-riding-in-the-luggage-cart-thing; but it turns out that pretty much everyone on the graveyard shift at 3 o’clock in the morning just chuckled at us and couldn’t have cared a bit that we were doing what we could do to pass the time)–and we sat down and had a few beers while we waited. Then we went back to the hotel’s lobby and used their internet (for free) – no one seemed to care there either, and then soon enough it was two hours before we needed to check-in for our flight, so we grabbed a sausage and egg biscuit at McDonalds and then went on our way to check in.
Quite the night it was, but we made it. Will quacked for the window seat in the plane, but the man couldn’t even stay awake through take off. I’m not joking, he was snoring before they took the seatbelt sign off.
Two hours later we landed back in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It was about 8am and I was ecstatic to find that the Dairy Queen was open at the airport. We were the only customers in at that hour – but we both ordered blizzards, and enjoyed and appreciated the ice-cream while we waited for our tuk tuk to pick us up.
Quite the unforgettable vacation it was. But as always, it’s nice to sleep in your own bed. We got back, said hello to the family, crawled into bed and slept until about 4pm that afternoon.
Train to Singapore.
Finally! We were on the train to Singapore. No sleeper cars left, but we were able to get some seats that were in the midrange. This train was quite a bit nicer than the train we took while in Vietnam. It was fairly clean, seemed newer, had a whole separate dining car with several different types of snacks and treats available. Oh and the air-conditioning worked. Actually, it worked almost a little too well. I seriously thought it was going to snow in there. I had put on every possible layer of clothes I could, just to keep warm. I looked pretty ridiculous, but didn’t really care. The only other thing was that in this section of the train, they didn’t bother turning off the lights at night, so that was kind of a bummer at 2am, when I was hoping to try and catch some extra zzz’s before we got to the big city. I was in and out, but I’m pretty sure Will didn’t sleep at all. Around 6am it started to get light and we could look out the window. Man a lot of Malaysia is covered in palm oil plantations. But slowly and slowly, we started to see a lot more buildings and houses, before we knew it, we were at the town of Johor, which is the last town before you cross the waterway into Singapore.
small things continued
So we were in a grocery market in a town called Jerentut killing some time while waiting for our train to go to Singapore. We had gotten off the boat from the rainforest in time to catch a bus to Jerentut to make the 12:30pm train to Singapore. BUT unfortunately that one was sold out and we had to wait until the next one, which was at 2AM. Yes that’s right. The next train wasn’t until 2:00 in the AM. We had an entire 14 hours to kill in this small little town kind of in the middle of no-where. If you read the most recent entry of “small things” (not to be confused with the last entry of ‘small things continued’)… you’ll know that we already spent more time in this town than we had intended, but this time decided to actually get a room at a guesthouse and try to go to bed early to catch at least a few hours of good rest. We were thankful we did. It was nice to be able to put our things down and get out a bit.
We did some walking around and checked out the local shops (I even found a new pair of jeans!) The grocery market was definitely a step up from the markets in the local towns of Cambodia. It wasn’t completely up to what super-market standards would be in the states; but almost. It was still partially open air; but there were real check-out counters (for the entire mart), shelves for all the goods inside and things were spread about in an organized manner, with aisles, a clean floor and everything. Anyway, we were at the checkout line and one of the locals…actually kind of a scraggly lookin’ guy; the type of person that you hope doesn’t continue conversation with you for too long; but you’re willing to acknowledge and at least exchange a few words with for a bit. Anyway…he had asked us (the obvious foreigners) where we were from. We told him we were from the States, but currently live in Cambodia. And out of his mouth with a deep scraggly voice, in sort of a slow drawn out question with a bit of surprise came, “Cambodia? Cambodia’s a terrible country!” and he said nothing else. We kind of laughed and said, ‘Oh, it’s got its ups and downs’…and we were on our way. Anyway, it was just kind of funny to hear that from a local, a scraggly local no less, in another country in the region. Obviously Cambodia is a developing country and it’s got a ways to go; but it also has the history to justify where it’s at, and it’s also got some really wonderful things going for it. I guess it just wasn’t the response we were expecting to come out of this guy’s mouth. Ahh well.
That night, we decided to catch dinner at a Chinese restaurant across the street from where we had breakfast just four mornings before…and Will finally said, “You know, I really kinda like this town!”
We did some walking around and checked out the local shops (I even found a new pair of jeans!) The grocery market was definitely a step up from the markets in the local towns of Cambodia. It wasn’t completely up to what super-market standards would be in the states; but almost. It was still partially open air; but there were real check-out counters (for the entire mart), shelves for all the goods inside and things were spread about in an organized manner, with aisles, a clean floor and everything. Anyway, we were at the checkout line and one of the locals…actually kind of a scraggly lookin’ guy; the type of person that you hope doesn’t continue conversation with you for too long; but you’re willing to acknowledge and at least exchange a few words with for a bit. Anyway…he had asked us (the obvious foreigners) where we were from. We told him we were from the States, but currently live in Cambodia. And out of his mouth with a deep scraggly voice, in sort of a slow drawn out question with a bit of surprise came, “Cambodia? Cambodia’s a terrible country!” and he said nothing else. We kind of laughed and said, ‘Oh, it’s got its ups and downs’…and we were on our way. Anyway, it was just kind of funny to hear that from a local, a scraggly local no less, in another country in the region. Obviously Cambodia is a developing country and it’s got a ways to go; but it also has the history to justify where it’s at, and it’s also got some really wonderful things going for it. I guess it just wasn’t the response we were expecting to come out of this guy’s mouth. Ahh well.
That night, we decided to catch dinner at a Chinese restaurant across the street from where we had breakfast just four mornings before…and Will finally said, “You know, I really kinda like this town!”
Taman Negara Continued.
On our third full day in the park we decided to go for a longer hike; 17k (11mi) roundtrip excursion into the rain forest. We got up early and headed out just as the sun was coming up. We were able to see some interesting looking birds. I’m not sure the species, but almost peacock-esque? We saw different tracks for many animals, and some monkeys, way up high in the trees, and some huge flowers. This hike involved a waist deep river crossing to a final point where there were some small falls and rapids. We had packed a delightful lunch of pb&j and enjoyed it on the rocky shore; and afterwards took a mini nap while listening to the water rush by. After we had enough rest, we turned around and went back. We wanted to make sure to be back to our place for the afternoon rain, which we were able to do. When we got back to the main entrance area, we toured the park’s information center. Apparently Taman Negara, is home to many species of animals, including the Asian Elephant and even Tigers. (While it would’ve been pretty sweet to spot one of those animals, to be honest I’m glad we never did…as I’m not sure I’d want to try to figure out what my next move would be in that scenario, besides the obvious grab for the camera (which I’m sure is what I would’ve done), but then what, ya know?
But yes, after we made it back, we went to our bungalow, grabbed a shower, caught an early dinner and crashed pretty hard after our full days hike.
The following morning we caught an early breakfast and hopped on one of the long wooden motor-powered canoe-like boats for a 3 hour ride back through the rainforest to the jetty. It’s always a nice change of pace to travel by boat. It gives you a different outlook on the scenery. It was nice to see the park from the water, not to mention we were able to spot some wild cow along the shore. We made it back just in time to catch the next bus to a small town called Jerentut, which is where we wanted to hop on the 12:30 train to Singapore.
But yes, after we made it back, we went to our bungalow, grabbed a shower, caught an early dinner and crashed pretty hard after our full days hike.
The following morning we caught an early breakfast and hopped on one of the long wooden motor-powered canoe-like boats for a 3 hour ride back through the rainforest to the jetty. It’s always a nice change of pace to travel by boat. It gives you a different outlook on the scenery. It was nice to see the park from the water, not to mention we were able to spot some wild cow along the shore. We made it back just in time to catch the next bus to a small town called Jerentut, which is where we wanted to hop on the 12:30 train to Singapore.
interjection: small things continued
So there was this mini mart, very small of a grocery store in Kuala Tehan, the entry town to Taman Negara National Rainforest. And the two times we went in there, there were grade-school aged kids manning the front counter.
The first time we went into pay for something, Will and I had just finished a pretty big hike, and we were both pretty sweaty & smelly (Will particularly). Anyway, we went to pay for the large water that we wanted to buy, and this kid, maybe a 5th grade-aged boy rang it up for us. He told us the price, then when Will handed him some Ringgit (the Malay note) the boy took the money slowly & kind of slyly,… and I watched him as he brought it slowly under his nose and sniffed it. It really was quite bizarre,…. but it made me laugh out loud. After he smelled it, he put it into the cash register and said ‘Thanks’.
The second time we went into the shop it was to buy some snacks. It was one of the only places open as many were fasting for Ramadan, which is from dawn till dusk. So we decided to grab some extra food to hold us over until dinner time. This time, we went to the front counter and a girl, probably his sister, a few years older anyways was sitting there. We also happened to notice the 36” or so flat screen that was also on the front counter. From the moment we walked in the shop, picked up the goods and stood at the counter, the girls eyes had not left the tv screen. She was completely glued to it. I’m not joking we stood right in front of her, about 2.5 feet away, even did a small wave or two and she didn’t notice we were there until a minute or so after. Once she finally did break her stare, she jumped with a startle and said “sorry! I didn’t see you” and then rang up our purchase and told us to “come again” with a smile.
That too made us walk away with a chuckle.
The first time we went into pay for something, Will and I had just finished a pretty big hike, and we were both pretty sweaty & smelly (Will particularly). Anyway, we went to pay for the large water that we wanted to buy, and this kid, maybe a 5th grade-aged boy rang it up for us. He told us the price, then when Will handed him some Ringgit (the Malay note) the boy took the money slowly & kind of slyly,… and I watched him as he brought it slowly under his nose and sniffed it. It really was quite bizarre,…. but it made me laugh out loud. After he smelled it, he put it into the cash register and said ‘Thanks’.
The second time we went into the shop it was to buy some snacks. It was one of the only places open as many were fasting for Ramadan, which is from dawn till dusk. So we decided to grab some extra food to hold us over until dinner time. This time, we went to the front counter and a girl, probably his sister, a few years older anyways was sitting there. We also happened to notice the 36” or so flat screen that was also on the front counter. From the moment we walked in the shop, picked up the goods and stood at the counter, the girls eyes had not left the tv screen. She was completely glued to it. I’m not joking we stood right in front of her, about 2.5 feet away, even did a small wave or two and she didn’t notice we were there until a minute or so after. Once she finally did break her stare, she jumped with a startle and said “sorry! I didn’t see you” and then rang up our purchase and told us to “come again” with a smile.
That too made us walk away with a chuckle.
Taman Negara National Forest
Taman Negara National Forest is one of the oldest rainforests in the entire world. Untouched by natural disasters and left alone by the ice age, this is one of the most intact, well conserved rainforests on the globe. To say the least it was everything I had ever imagined a rain forest to be. It made me feel like I was stepping right into the movie ‘Ferngully’ – if I can even count that as a reference. But I remember watching that movie as a child and thinking it would be so amazing to go to a place like that. And finally this trip to Malaysia and to Taman Negara did bring me to a place like that.
We liked it quite a bit there, as we stayed for four nights exploring the many trails that this well preserved park had to offer. We found some local family run lodging tucked back down a small hill called the Durian (while one may feel a little hesitant by the name), it actually was decent, it had clean bamboo bungalows with nice gardens and landscaping around it. I might have to say that this might’ve been the smallest space of a room I’ve ever stayed in, yet maybe the nicest small place I’ve ever stayed. It did have a bathroom connected, a little porch and mosquito nets draped over real mattresses all for $7/night. Things like that are bonuses when you’re traveling on the cheap… and really, they way they had it all set up was really quite cute and quaint.
The first day we got in, we went for a hike around some of the closer trails. It was nice to finally get out on a hike. I don’t think either of us realized how much we missed going on hikes til we actually got to go on one. It had been a while. And, when I say jungle, I mean thick, lush, green, shady, huge leaves, many vines, tall trees, mosquito flyin, monkey climbin, tropical bird perchin, leeches on the ground floor, canopy covered jungle of a rain forest. Lots of green.
But MAN. The size of some of these trees was just unreal. The buttresses were even just as impressive; and the way the roots jetted out a ways, and you looked up and up and up until you could see the tree tops – it was like you were in a wonderland of its own. That afternoon we took a hike up to one of the hilltops (which that day too, I don’t think we realized how ‘out of hiking shape’ we were til we climbed to the top of a scenic look out.) We sure were gasping for air, holding onto vines on the climb up. But drenched in sweat, we made it to the top for a pretty fantastic panoramic view of nothing but hills of rain forest greenery for miles.
After that, we followed a few signs to the park’s famous Canopy Walk Bridge. It claims to be the world’s longest canopy walk, with a 400m long, 40m high rope-drawn-plank bridge that walks you along the canopy of the forest. It was up there for sure, and I’m not going to lie, my subtle ‘fear of heights’ wasn’t going to stop me from walking across it; yet ‘my subtle fear of heights’ also didn’t cease to remind me that I do have, well… a subtle fear of heights. But yea; we were up there. Even as high as it was, the trees still towered above us, while we towered above everything below us. We even were lucky enough to spot a tropical great horned bill bird from the bridge. It was quite the canopy walk.
After that we started our way back. It was just nice to be hiking around in the forest, as we used to do a bit of it back home.
We went back, had some dinner on one of the floating restaurants on the river that separated the park from the small town; went back to our bungalow, showered and crashed. A full day it was.
The second day we went for a smaller hike…to a small bat cave. On the way we accidentally walked to the edge of a village of native people who live off the land in the rain forest (which the tour guides were charging $30USD to take you there, but we managed to find accidentally on our own). We decided not to draw attention to ourselves and just kept on with our hike. We also stumbled across tons of HUGE ants and termites crawling all over the forest floor. NOT to mention the many, many, Many, tiny leeches. You couldn’t feel the little buggers until it was too late. They’d fill up on blood from your feet or your legs (or somehow my stomach) far before you even knew what happened. Many of them were small enough to weasel through your socks straight to the skin; and then when we’d take off our shoes only to find blood dripping down our feet. To say the least; they were NOT the favorite part of my rain forest experience!??!! However I was able to keep distracted enough by the surrounding scenery which trumped the fact that in a very paranoid fashion I was constantly checking my legs and feet every 7 minutes or so for leeches. (Seriously). Anyway, we hiked on until we found the cave, which was a bit smaller than we had expected. After a few steps in and seeing the bats which lined the ceiling of the cave, I decided that a small look was sufficient enough for me and that I’d wait for Will to scope it out a little further to decide whether it was worth it or not to go any farther. He went in; grabbed a few snapshots, came out and said that I probably wouldn’t like it and at that point I trusted his judgment. He said mostly it was just alotta bats hanging upside down, a rather large toad (bigger than his hand) – some murky pools of water below and a lot of dampness. With that we turned around, hiked our way out, grabbed some lunch and spent the afternoon on a “shoot the rapids” boat trip in a super long motor powered canoe.
small things
So that night-train got us to Jerentut, which is where we could hop a bus to the rain forest the following morning. We had received advice from some ladies who worked for Tourism in Kuala Terengganu that there would be a place for us to rest at the train station, as we’d be arriving rather early. We thought it’d be a great idea to take the night train to save money on a motel, and be able to travel over a large part of the country simultaneously…. so we decided to do that. Well. We arrived at the train station at just around 2 in the morning… looked around to see nothing other than a food stall, some benches, under a pretty much open air waiting area for the trains….. and then we did see in one of the windows near the ticket office a room with some couches and cots. We went and asked if those rooms were for rent or something. Turned out that, no, they were not for rent or something…. they were for staff only.
SoOOOoo… too tired to try and venture out into the city, not to mention we were on too much of a budget to want to pay for a room for 4 hours (our bus left at 6am)…. we decided to grab some bench space a little farther from the office and plopped down there.
I guess, let me say that, that experience has made me forever grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to have different types of employment throughout my life, and have always been able to always have a shelter over my head when I sleep. Let’s keep in mind this was a bit different from sleeping under the stars on a camping trip. We were on the edge of town, sleeping on metal bleacher style benches under a covered section of the waiting area for trains, with some fluorescent street lamps down the way shining through the night. Needless to say, I hardly got any sleep. At one point in the night, I told Will we’d have to keep this in mind (the whole sleeping on a bench outside) as a form of discipline for our kids someday, should they ever want to drop out of school. He said, “yea… Maybe.”
Anyhow, we made it through the night…and at the first hint of dawn, grabbed our bags and went to the first open restaurant (a Chinese place, with nobody speaking English)…the lady brought us a bunch of items on a tray, and we pointed to what we were brave enough to try at that hour…and were able to get some breakfast in. After that we were on our way to the bus station.
SoOOOoo… too tired to try and venture out into the city, not to mention we were on too much of a budget to want to pay for a room for 4 hours (our bus left at 6am)…. we decided to grab some bench space a little farther from the office and plopped down there.
I guess, let me say that, that experience has made me forever grateful that I’ve been lucky enough to have different types of employment throughout my life, and have always been able to always have a shelter over my head when I sleep. Let’s keep in mind this was a bit different from sleeping under the stars on a camping trip. We were on the edge of town, sleeping on metal bleacher style benches under a covered section of the waiting area for trains, with some fluorescent street lamps down the way shining through the night. Needless to say, I hardly got any sleep. At one point in the night, I told Will we’d have to keep this in mind (the whole sleeping on a bench outside) as a form of discipline for our kids someday, should they ever want to drop out of school. He said, “yea… Maybe.”
Anyhow, we made it through the night…and at the first hint of dawn, grabbed our bags and went to the first open restaurant (a Chinese place, with nobody speaking English)…the lady brought us a bunch of items on a tray, and we pointed to what we were brave enough to try at that hour…and were able to get some breakfast in. After that we were on our way to the bus station.
To Perhentian Kecil Island
Early morning we were on the 1 and a half hour bus ride to Kuala Besut Jetty. We got there in time to catch the 10 o’clock ferry to the island. Those were some fast motor boats that get ya there, over some really beautifully clear blue water I tell ya.
There were several different places to stay around the island, but we chose to go to Long Beach. On this side there were lots of choices of chalets and bungalows to stay at, not to mention a nice long stretch of a white sandy beach. We chose to stay at the rock garden, which happened to have some very newly constructed chalets propped up on the hill which had a spectacular view from the sliding glass doors that lined the wall facing the ocean. It was truly a great view, and there was nothing like layin in bed and looking to your left through the big picture window and seeing the crystal clear waters and an island off in the distance first thing when you woke up in the morning.
We took a day long snorkeling trip which was really pretty great. There were some amazing corals in the middle of the ocean and all sorts of beautifully colored fish. There’s nothing quite like the sensation of snorkeling, especially in clear tropical waters like this. It truly feels like you’re flying and floating in a completely new colorful world. So many interesting plants and shapes of the corals under the water, and there were tons of truly beautifully colored fish of many sizes. It was unreal. Usually I’d be a bit squeamish to be swimming around with that many fish, but they were so beautiful to look at it didn’t bother me at all to be a part of their world for a bit. Our guide took us to a few different spots throughout the day. One spot we chased after small reef sharks. To be honest, at first I was a bit nervous about chasing after sharks, but apparently these are small and harmless. Sure enough we were able to spot a few. Then later we were taken to a spot where sea turtles swim and we saw three different ones that we were able to swim along with which was really pretty cool …just this big ol turtle swimming along goin’ about his way. The last place they took us wasn’t a snorkel spot, but it was a small stretch of beach with the whitest sand and bluest aquamarine water you’d ever seen. You needed sunglasses to look out onto it, but it was the perfect little spot to end our day of snorkeling with a little swimming and relaxing on the beach.
After we got back we walked around and checked out the different menus that the restaurants had to offer. We were walking up this one path and I heard Will say, “Whoa! Did you see that?” I looked up and just saw the tail of a rather large looking reptile cross the path about 30m in front of us. I asked “ehhh… so are there Alligators on this island?” I guess… we both didn’t see why there wouldn’t be, and neither of us really knew the answer to that question. But still – a bit unnerving seeing the tail of that size waddle across the pathway (and not in a fence or anything). Later on we did find out that it was just a monitor lizard. Which are rather large lizards…that live in the area. (I don’t know if I was supposed to feel better about that or not…but I guess it made me feel a little bit better.) You know.. you’re supposed to feel better when locals say, “Oh- don’t worry, it’s just a monitor lizard.” ……………….. ha. Just.
That night, we went to a place called Bingtang View restaurant (which was on the same path that we saw the monitor lizard). It had a nice atmosphere and pretty good view of the bay and some decent music playing. I ordered a pasta dish and Will ordered Tom Yam soup. The Tom Yam soup (a Thai dish) was absolutely delicious. It had a wide variety of seafood in it with some nice spices and lemongrass and we both thought that was the best meal of the entire trip. We finished off with a banana bread desert that was covered in custard; which was a very nice way to end the meal.
I’m so very glad I thought to bring our head lamps for our walk back to our chalet. (This was the same walk that we saw the monitor lizard on earlier that day, and I was feeling a bit leery of walking that path in the complete dark.) Anyway, half-way back to the beach, I was shining my light down on the ground keeping a keen eye on things, and then all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of Will stepping on something that sort of looked like a stick. It was very dark, maybe an inch in diameter, but it clicked in my brain that it was a little shiny, or at least my light caught a slight reflection off it. About a millisecond later as my light shined closer, I noticed the yellow stripes on it and immediately jumped three feet in the air and yelled “SNAKE!” and in the next millisecond, no kidding sprinted about 50m away, road-runner-cartoon-character style with nothing but a cloud of dust behind me!! I think I could’ve won nationals in the presidential fitness awards had someone been timing me. Seriously!
Apparently it started wrapping up Will’s leg, and I yelled at him, “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR…GET THE [insert really loud swear word here] OUTTA THERE!!!” Then he yelled, “My flip flops, I can’t find my other flip flop!!” -- (While these red-flip flops were a steal at 6000r (USD $1.50), and they were the first pair of shoes he had found in Cambodia to fit his size 13 feet) -- I yelled, “REALLY!??! FLIP FLOPS!? REALLY!!? Are you crazy?!? Ditch the flops and GIT over here NOW …. and we can come back and look for them tomorrow!!!! Are you NUTS!?”
Will being Will, was able to find his other flip flop, and then ran over to where I was at. We continued running until we reached the beach where there was a little more light to inspect his leg, and (after our adrenalin settled down) we were able to look closely and find out that luckily the snake didn’t strike. He said to me, “Man, you got outta there fast!”
I said, “I know!”
He said, “It’s nice to know you’d stay and take care of me if I really was bitten.”
I said, “I guess I just don’t really like snakes! It was my body’s instinctive move … I didn’t even think of what I was doing - I just ran. I’m sorry!” He laughed.
Then I said, “But don’t worry, if I saw you go down, I would’ve gone back. I promise.”
He said, “Well that’s comforting to know.”
We have yet to look it up to see if it was poisonous or anything, luckily it didn’t matter… but I guess you should treat any snake like it would be. I am glad to report we didn’t see any other creepy creatures on the island. And that night as I lay in bed, I wondered if I could’ve been a sprinter track star if they unleashed a bunch of fast snakes at the starting line every time the gun went off. Hrrrm. It’s something to ponder I guess.
. . .
Our last day on the island started out with a morning swim in the clear blue waters below our chalet. Then we went for some breakfast and after that, Will went on a small hike up to where they had some wind-power generators, and I laid on the beach to soak up a little bit of sun and the scenery. 4 o’clock that afternoon we were back on a fast ferry to the jetty to catch a taxi to a small town about an hour away to take the night train down to Jerentut which is where we could take a bus to one of the entrances of Teman Negara National Rainforest.
Malaysia
We managed to take just about every mode of transportation on this vacation. Aeroplanes, taxis, buses, cars, trains, boats, ferries, monorails, subways, elevators AND yes even escalators. The following posts tell a little bit about the REST of our travels after departing Kuala Lumpur. I hope you enjoy.
. . .
I’ll always have a place in my heart for Cambodia. While I really do enjoy it here, despite the hardships I’ve had, and the things we deal with on a daily basis; ... I must say that we most definitely live in the wild, wild, west of SE Asia. Not that’ I’ve seen all there is to see in SE Asia, but I’ve now been to Vietnam, Malaysia & Singapore (and the Thailand Airport, but I know that doesn’t really count) but still, after travelling in and around a few of these other countries, I do feel as though we currently live in the wild, wild west. On this trip we didn’t see a whole lot of motos with 40 chickens hanging upside down, tied onto the back travelling down the road, or huge squealing pigs on the back of a moto, nor tractors carrying a semi-truck load of bamboo shelves tied together cruising slowly down the road, nor people honking their horns as a means of general traffic safety. There just wasn’t a whole lot of that going on.
After a few days in Kuala Lumpur (which like I mentioned in an earlier post, was a city with a bit of some culture shock for us…with all the buildings, transportation, modern amenities etc.)… we headed on a bus to go to the North Eastern part of the country. After a few days in the city it was nice to get into the countryside and see what some of that was like. Some of it was quite rural and somewhat comparable to the Cambodian countryside; although I do have to mention we did see a lot more air conditioning units in some of these smaller houses. (It’s amazing what a little oil off the coast of your country can do for it, ya know?) Also, in much of the countryside there were MANY, many palm oil plantations. They may be one of the top exporting countries of palm oil in the world? Anyways—lots and lots of rows of palm oil trees lined the majority of the countryside that we saw. (There is a bit of controversy on all the palm oil plantations as they have cut down many, many rainforests to make these plantations….so keep that in mind when you enjoy your next bite of Nutella, or use your next product containing palm oil. Nonetheless, it’s a major crop and palm oil is used in many products that are consumed daily by millions of people.) And this is where a lot of it comes from. Anyway….on our bus, we headed up to a bigger town called Kuala Terengganu on the North East coast.
Wait, wait, wait…. let me rewind and go back to our BUS ride. This too was a bit of culture shock. Here we were on this double-decker bus, seemed really quite new and nice; spotlessly clean, air-conditioned with even a garbage can on board. The ride was an 8 hour bus ride; but it was completely quiet; almost everyone slept and there was no annoying karaoke music the entire ride. NOR did the bus driver honk his blaring horn once; not even Once! I do suppose that’s partly because Malaysia has actual traffic rules, and there’s no need to really honk on a divided highway when everyone’s following traffic rules.
Anyhow, it was probably one of the nicest bus rides we had been on in a long time. Quite the contrast from the usual trip in a bus cross country in Cambodia.
We went to one rest stop; (this was before we had figured out that a lot of the people were fasting for Ramadan during the day) and wondered why no one was eating. We wondered if we could eat on the bus (b/c no one else was) – but we did and didn’t get in trouble. Anyway, we got off the bus and I went to find the bathroom. I saw a sign with a woman wearing a headscarf; and figured that’s the way I should go. I walked into this room; that most definitely was not a bathroom. I saw places that you could shower, or wash up and then a large square sort of stage, platform – or maybe altar is the best word. It took me a few moments to realize that I was in a Muslim prayer room. Embarrassed, (luckily no one was in there) I walked out and later found the actual bathroom.
We made it to Kuala Terengganu after about 8 hours. Walked around. It was a pretty decent sized small city. It even had a KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut. It had a small strip of a China town, which was the only place you could get a beer (Muslims don’t drink alcohol). It definitely didn’t have many tourists and those that did stop through were mostly on their way to some waterfalls, or to the islands. In the eastern part of the country you’ll find a lot more predominately Muslim communities, and this one lived up to that fact.
The first night, after we found a place to stay, we were able to catch the dusk Ramadan feast that the city had. Food tents were set up everywhere and they had quite the array of things to eat at a really good price. We sampled all kinds of things. They had lots of chicken dishes, some things paired with rice; lots of different types of pastries, and meats and sandwiches with many different types of sauces. A lot of them had a bit more of a sweet quality than we’re used to, but for the most part everything was pretty good. We picked up a few items that they bagged up for us to take over to the park and enjoy. We chose a bench by a tree and ate up and enjoyed. It was interesting to observe this type of a community gathering. At least compared to what we’re used to in the states; if there’s a gathering with food tents in the park… I guess we’re used to some sort of entertainment, or music or something going on…but here everyone just had their food – and sat quietly and ate it in the park. There was little to no commotion, just everyone enjoying their dinner on a peaceful evening.
I guess that night was the most that I had felt out of place on the entire trip… being it was a predominantly Muslim town; nearly ALL the women were wearing head scarves, and I also noticed that they all their limbs were covered with long pants and long sleeves. While I felt as though I was dressed pretty conservatively (at least it’s good enough for in Cambodia) I had capri’s on and my knees were covered, and my shoulders were covered as well;…but I did feel different having my neck and collar bone showing, my hair, and even the small part of my leg that was exposed. It was such a different feeling and it did make me feel a bit self conscious. Later that night I read in our tour guide book, that in some of the north eastern parts of the country, women should take note of what the locals are wearing, and dress conservatively and when appropriate have all limbs covered. It was such a different feeling, and I guess was the first time I had been in a place or situation that made me feel like that.
On that note, despite the very conservative dress that women wear; it Also was interesting to observe their fashions and trends. Even though they’re very much covered up in cloth, it doesn’t mean that they don’t get to make their outfits look pretty. I noticed many different patterns and colors of headscarves and robes that they wore, and in the local pharmacy shops they sold many of the same brands of makeup you could find back home. There were LOTS of different shoe stores with tons of different fashionable shoes available. So despite the very traditional ways of dress they had, it was interesting to see that the women still had many ways of expressing themselves in what they wear.
We spent two nights in Kuala Terengganu. The city had a trolly-sort of tour bus that’d take you to points of interest in the town for free. We went to the National Museum which had quite a display of things in regards to country’s history, as well as a very nice garden and landscape area and a maritime section dedicated to traditional boats on display. The next stop was the Masjid Kristal (Crystal Mosque) but actually, that was around lunch time and I think that the bus driver had just stopped there only to pray. Regardless, it was an interesting structure made of steel and glass, near the river. After that we just strolled around. We went to China town for dinner the 2nd night and then just relaxed in our hotel room as the next day we were off to the Kuala Besut Jetty by bus to catch a ferry to Perhentian Kecil Island.
On a side note….one of the reasons we left Cambodia during this time period was because Pchum Ben, a 15 day religious festival was taking place at that time. Not that we have anything against the religious festivals in Cambodia (or anywhere really); but it just so happens that our house is 50m from a Pagoda; and during any sort of festival they tend to blast music out of about 14 loudspeakers stacked on top of each other starting at 4am until late into the night. Anyhow- in an effort to avoid that and get some extra sleep we thought it’d be great to schedule our vacation over that time.
Well, turns out that in the Muslim religion in Malaysia, during Ramadan, it is also customary to broadcast over loudspeakers chants and songs in the early morning and late in the evening. While we thought we were escaping such customs, it turns out it was quite similar in Malaysia. (Except for the fact that they had better quality loudspeakers, so the sound was a little more crisp. Again, it’s amazing what a little oil of the coast of your country will do for it.) Oh well. For the most part we were staying in places that were fairly well enclosed, so the volume of it all wasn’t too much of a bother.
. . .
I’ll always have a place in my heart for Cambodia. While I really do enjoy it here, despite the hardships I’ve had, and the things we deal with on a daily basis; ... I must say that we most definitely live in the wild, wild, west of SE Asia. Not that’ I’ve seen all there is to see in SE Asia, but I’ve now been to Vietnam, Malaysia & Singapore (and the Thailand Airport, but I know that doesn’t really count) but still, after travelling in and around a few of these other countries, I do feel as though we currently live in the wild, wild west. On this trip we didn’t see a whole lot of motos with 40 chickens hanging upside down, tied onto the back travelling down the road, or huge squealing pigs on the back of a moto, nor tractors carrying a semi-truck load of bamboo shelves tied together cruising slowly down the road, nor people honking their horns as a means of general traffic safety. There just wasn’t a whole lot of that going on.
After a few days in Kuala Lumpur (which like I mentioned in an earlier post, was a city with a bit of some culture shock for us…with all the buildings, transportation, modern amenities etc.)… we headed on a bus to go to the North Eastern part of the country. After a few days in the city it was nice to get into the countryside and see what some of that was like. Some of it was quite rural and somewhat comparable to the Cambodian countryside; although I do have to mention we did see a lot more air conditioning units in some of these smaller houses. (It’s amazing what a little oil off the coast of your country can do for it, ya know?) Also, in much of the countryside there were MANY, many palm oil plantations. They may be one of the top exporting countries of palm oil in the world? Anyways—lots and lots of rows of palm oil trees lined the majority of the countryside that we saw. (There is a bit of controversy on all the palm oil plantations as they have cut down many, many rainforests to make these plantations….so keep that in mind when you enjoy your next bite of Nutella, or use your next product containing palm oil. Nonetheless, it’s a major crop and palm oil is used in many products that are consumed daily by millions of people.) And this is where a lot of it comes from. Anyway….on our bus, we headed up to a bigger town called Kuala Terengganu on the North East coast.
Wait, wait, wait…. let me rewind and go back to our BUS ride. This too was a bit of culture shock. Here we were on this double-decker bus, seemed really quite new and nice; spotlessly clean, air-conditioned with even a garbage can on board. The ride was an 8 hour bus ride; but it was completely quiet; almost everyone slept and there was no annoying karaoke music the entire ride. NOR did the bus driver honk his blaring horn once; not even Once! I do suppose that’s partly because Malaysia has actual traffic rules, and there’s no need to really honk on a divided highway when everyone’s following traffic rules.
Anyhow, it was probably one of the nicest bus rides we had been on in a long time. Quite the contrast from the usual trip in a bus cross country in Cambodia.
We went to one rest stop; (this was before we had figured out that a lot of the people were fasting for Ramadan during the day) and wondered why no one was eating. We wondered if we could eat on the bus (b/c no one else was) – but we did and didn’t get in trouble. Anyway, we got off the bus and I went to find the bathroom. I saw a sign with a woman wearing a headscarf; and figured that’s the way I should go. I walked into this room; that most definitely was not a bathroom. I saw places that you could shower, or wash up and then a large square sort of stage, platform – or maybe altar is the best word. It took me a few moments to realize that I was in a Muslim prayer room. Embarrassed, (luckily no one was in there) I walked out and later found the actual bathroom.
We made it to Kuala Terengganu after about 8 hours. Walked around. It was a pretty decent sized small city. It even had a KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut. It had a small strip of a China town, which was the only place you could get a beer (Muslims don’t drink alcohol). It definitely didn’t have many tourists and those that did stop through were mostly on their way to some waterfalls, or to the islands. In the eastern part of the country you’ll find a lot more predominately Muslim communities, and this one lived up to that fact.
The first night, after we found a place to stay, we were able to catch the dusk Ramadan feast that the city had. Food tents were set up everywhere and they had quite the array of things to eat at a really good price. We sampled all kinds of things. They had lots of chicken dishes, some things paired with rice; lots of different types of pastries, and meats and sandwiches with many different types of sauces. A lot of them had a bit more of a sweet quality than we’re used to, but for the most part everything was pretty good. We picked up a few items that they bagged up for us to take over to the park and enjoy. We chose a bench by a tree and ate up and enjoyed. It was interesting to observe this type of a community gathering. At least compared to what we’re used to in the states; if there’s a gathering with food tents in the park… I guess we’re used to some sort of entertainment, or music or something going on…but here everyone just had their food – and sat quietly and ate it in the park. There was little to no commotion, just everyone enjoying their dinner on a peaceful evening.
I guess that night was the most that I had felt out of place on the entire trip… being it was a predominantly Muslim town; nearly ALL the women were wearing head scarves, and I also noticed that they all their limbs were covered with long pants and long sleeves. While I felt as though I was dressed pretty conservatively (at least it’s good enough for in Cambodia) I had capri’s on and my knees were covered, and my shoulders were covered as well;…but I did feel different having my neck and collar bone showing, my hair, and even the small part of my leg that was exposed. It was such a different feeling and it did make me feel a bit self conscious. Later that night I read in our tour guide book, that in some of the north eastern parts of the country, women should take note of what the locals are wearing, and dress conservatively and when appropriate have all limbs covered. It was such a different feeling, and I guess was the first time I had been in a place or situation that made me feel like that.
On that note, despite the very conservative dress that women wear; it Also was interesting to observe their fashions and trends. Even though they’re very much covered up in cloth, it doesn’t mean that they don’t get to make their outfits look pretty. I noticed many different patterns and colors of headscarves and robes that they wore, and in the local pharmacy shops they sold many of the same brands of makeup you could find back home. There were LOTS of different shoe stores with tons of different fashionable shoes available. So despite the very traditional ways of dress they had, it was interesting to see that the women still had many ways of expressing themselves in what they wear.
We spent two nights in Kuala Terengganu. The city had a trolly-sort of tour bus that’d take you to points of interest in the town for free. We went to the National Museum which had quite a display of things in regards to country’s history, as well as a very nice garden and landscape area and a maritime section dedicated to traditional boats on display. The next stop was the Masjid Kristal (Crystal Mosque) but actually, that was around lunch time and I think that the bus driver had just stopped there only to pray. Regardless, it was an interesting structure made of steel and glass, near the river. After that we just strolled around. We went to China town for dinner the 2nd night and then just relaxed in our hotel room as the next day we were off to the Kuala Besut Jetty by bus to catch a ferry to Perhentian Kecil Island.
On a side note….one of the reasons we left Cambodia during this time period was because Pchum Ben, a 15 day religious festival was taking place at that time. Not that we have anything against the religious festivals in Cambodia (or anywhere really); but it just so happens that our house is 50m from a Pagoda; and during any sort of festival they tend to blast music out of about 14 loudspeakers stacked on top of each other starting at 4am until late into the night. Anyhow- in an effort to avoid that and get some extra sleep we thought it’d be great to schedule our vacation over that time.
Well, turns out that in the Muslim religion in Malaysia, during Ramadan, it is also customary to broadcast over loudspeakers chants and songs in the early morning and late in the evening. While we thought we were escaping such customs, it turns out it was quite similar in Malaysia. (Except for the fact that they had better quality loudspeakers, so the sound was a little more crisp. Again, it’s amazing what a little oil of the coast of your country will do for it.) Oh well. For the most part we were staying in places that were fairly well enclosed, so the volume of it all wasn’t too much of a bother.
Hormel Chili
Sunday, September 27, 2009
So we just had some mashed potatoes, corn and a can of Hormel chili for dinner. The chili was part of a gift basket I received and we had yet to eat it. Who knew just how much that would hit the spot. We discussed if it was the fact that we hadn’t had that combination of flavors in so long was the reason that made it taste so good OR if Hormel Chili is just that good. Hmmmmm. Ya sort of wonder if it’s like when you’re on long camping or backpacking trip; and you’ve hiked hard all day…and then you have the just add water pasta w/ some tuna mixed into it for dinner and it tastes like the best thing ever. I wonder if that’s what this can of Hormel chili was like for me tonight. Or maybe it really Is that good.
Regardless, we were both quite satisfied with dinner tonight.
So we just had some mashed potatoes, corn and a can of Hormel chili for dinner. The chili was part of a gift basket I received and we had yet to eat it. Who knew just how much that would hit the spot. We discussed if it was the fact that we hadn’t had that combination of flavors in so long was the reason that made it taste so good OR if Hormel Chili is just that good. Hmmmmm. Ya sort of wonder if it’s like when you’re on long camping or backpacking trip; and you’ve hiked hard all day…and then you have the just add water pasta w/ some tuna mixed into it for dinner and it tastes like the best thing ever. I wonder if that’s what this can of Hormel chili was like for me tonight. Or maybe it really Is that good.
Regardless, we were both quite satisfied with dinner tonight.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia
A bit of culture shock I must say! It's pretty crazy to be in a modern, busy and hoppin city! We got to Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia yesterday and have been filling our time exploring the sites. Along with all the modern ameneties readily available (a 7-eleven store on every corner; nearly any american food chain you can think of) gi-normous shopping centers, come more expensive prices for everything..(Go figure! I guess the $7 guestrooms we're used to staying in Camboida for, are more like $20 places. Ah well---- we're on vacation and enjoying it!
This place is quite a site to see! This morning we got up early to get some tickets to go to the Petronas Twin Towers (The Kissing Towers)....which were completed in 1996; and at that time were the tallest buildings in the world. (Now Dubai is the winner, w/ NY's Freedom Tower running in 2nd). After that we strolled around town to the tourism center; then to 'Little India' in which they were having a huge sale bazaar... then had some really good indian food for lunch. Now we're breaking for a bit then this afternoon will head to a city forest tour - and then possibly to a movie in one of the 18-cinemas that is in the Mid-Valley- Mega Mall!
Last night we found an outdoor food bazaar in some alleys where we sampled many of the local foods and then we went to the Times Square building - which was quite the shopping center. I haven't seen a place like that in a long time; it had an imax, cinema, small amusement park and I believe 10 floors. Pretty spectacular.... AND SO very different from the current place we live in. - The Mall of America is probably bigger, but this was more condensed into a sky-scraper situation so the shops just seemed to go up and up and up!
It is a very modern and very clean city... and we'll enjoy our time here while we can. We're going to head up to one of the islands on the NE coast of the peninsula for a little snorkelling vacation followed by some time in the rainforest. Sounds like we'll sneak over to Singapore for a day or two as well. So far... so good! I'll try to keep posted!
This place is quite a site to see! This morning we got up early to get some tickets to go to the Petronas Twin Towers (The Kissing Towers)....which were completed in 1996; and at that time were the tallest buildings in the world. (Now Dubai is the winner, w/ NY's Freedom Tower running in 2nd). After that we strolled around town to the tourism center; then to 'Little India' in which they were having a huge sale bazaar... then had some really good indian food for lunch. Now we're breaking for a bit then this afternoon will head to a city forest tour - and then possibly to a movie in one of the 18-cinemas that is in the Mid-Valley- Mega Mall!
Last night we found an outdoor food bazaar in some alleys where we sampled many of the local foods and then we went to the Times Square building - which was quite the shopping center. I haven't seen a place like that in a long time; it had an imax, cinema, small amusement park and I believe 10 floors. Pretty spectacular.... AND SO very different from the current place we live in. - The Mall of America is probably bigger, but this was more condensed into a sky-scraper situation so the shops just seemed to go up and up and up!
It is a very modern and very clean city... and we'll enjoy our time here while we can. We're going to head up to one of the islands on the NE coast of the peninsula for a little snorkelling vacation followed by some time in the rainforest. Sounds like we'll sneak over to Singapore for a day or two as well. So far... so good! I'll try to keep posted!
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
So tomorrow we’re heading off in an aero plane at 8:30am to go to Kuala Lumpur. We’re planning to do some sightseeing in Malaysia for the next two weeks and intend on spending some time in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and then some time exploring one of the main national forests on the peninsula (which includes some rainforest and great waterfalls) and then also rounding up the trip at some islands off the northeast coast. It should be good! It’s sort of an end-of-summer-before-school-starts-late-2nd-anniversary trip. We’re pretty excited to say the least! I’m sure I’ll have a few stories to tell once it’s all said and done. Until then, over and out….
The last few weeks
So Mid-August we headed down to the southwestern part of the country to a province named Takeo. The K3 (Kampuchea group 3) volunteers arrived last July and we were down there helping with their training. They brought 10 of us from K2 to observe their teaching practicum and give them feedback from our knowledge bank as we of course know everything there is to know about teaching English in this country. Well, maybe not quite; but we did our best to provide good advice. We were down there for a week and it was a nice (pc paid) way to get to see another part of this country, spend time with some other volunteers and not to mention meets the entire crew of new trainees.
Takeo seemed like a decent province. Getting down there from Phnom Penh involved an interesting bus with an interesting bus ride. It was a small; AC broken automobile, and no place for Will and me to put our bikes but the back row of seats. (Luckily they were empty; but we did have to pay half fare for them). We decided to travel cross country with our bikes as they would be useful. Which they were; but in the end we sort of felt like they might’ve been more of a hassle than they were worth. Oh well. Live and learn. Half way through the hot crowded bus ride, the bus had quit and several of the passengers got out to help push and jump start it. We got it goin and we were on the road again and made it to our final destination, Takeo Provincial town.
The provincial town was actually pretty decent. It was on a river and had a nice feel. Plus there was a Tela Mart (which we frequented to purchase tubs of ice-cream) AND there was a small restaurant called “My Burger” which served American food and in all honesty wasn’t too bad. The burgers really did have a decent flavor, with a toasted sesame bun and all…however the meat patty was really quite small. (like really small.) Nonetheless we ate them without complaint as a change up from the standard Khmer meal is always nice. They also had fried chicken which rivaled KFC, and they also had hot dogs. Not a bad little joint for a provincial town of this size.
After observing practicum we headed down to our friend Emily’s site to hold a sports and health clinic at her school. Overall it went pretty well. We covered the importance of stretching and warming up, practiced basketball drills as well as other games involving plenty of exercise, went on a nature hike in the mountains behind her school and followed up everything with a session on nutrition. The attendees were sort of young; but they had a blast the entire time AND they got free transportation to the high-school via horse cart. Quite a trip!
After that week finished up we headed down south with another PCV Matt to Kah Tonsay for a few relaxing days together hanging out with good company.
We finally made it all the way back up to our province and settled in only for a week and a half (enough time for me to finish my 2nd sewing project: a skirt) as well as finish up the summer session English course for teachers. Before we knew it, we were packing our bags to head out of town for one last hurrah of the summer… which I’m sure I’ll report on once we return. : )
That’s all for now til next time!
Takeo seemed like a decent province. Getting down there from Phnom Penh involved an interesting bus with an interesting bus ride. It was a small; AC broken automobile, and no place for Will and me to put our bikes but the back row of seats. (Luckily they were empty; but we did have to pay half fare for them). We decided to travel cross country with our bikes as they would be useful. Which they were; but in the end we sort of felt like they might’ve been more of a hassle than they were worth. Oh well. Live and learn. Half way through the hot crowded bus ride, the bus had quit and several of the passengers got out to help push and jump start it. We got it goin and we were on the road again and made it to our final destination, Takeo Provincial town.
The provincial town was actually pretty decent. It was on a river and had a nice feel. Plus there was a Tela Mart (which we frequented to purchase tubs of ice-cream) AND there was a small restaurant called “My Burger” which served American food and in all honesty wasn’t too bad. The burgers really did have a decent flavor, with a toasted sesame bun and all…however the meat patty was really quite small. (like really small.) Nonetheless we ate them without complaint as a change up from the standard Khmer meal is always nice. They also had fried chicken which rivaled KFC, and they also had hot dogs. Not a bad little joint for a provincial town of this size.
After observing practicum we headed down to our friend Emily’s site to hold a sports and health clinic at her school. Overall it went pretty well. We covered the importance of stretching and warming up, practiced basketball drills as well as other games involving plenty of exercise, went on a nature hike in the mountains behind her school and followed up everything with a session on nutrition. The attendees were sort of young; but they had a blast the entire time AND they got free transportation to the high-school via horse cart. Quite a trip!
After that week finished up we headed down south with another PCV Matt to Kah Tonsay for a few relaxing days together hanging out with good company.
We finally made it all the way back up to our province and settled in only for a week and a half (enough time for me to finish my 2nd sewing project: a skirt) as well as finish up the summer session English course for teachers. Before we knew it, we were packing our bags to head out of town for one last hurrah of the summer… which I’m sure I’ll report on once we return. : )
That’s all for now til next time!
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
On Sewing...
So forget starting slow with straight lines, such as making placemats or napkins; we're right onto my first button-down shirt! We measured, drew onto paper the pattern... and today I've got my sleeves on. Tomorrow the collar...
I'll let ya know when I've got my first full fall line of clothes.
I'll let ya know when I've got my first full fall line of clothes.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
To Takeo
We're headed to Takeo next week to help with the Teaching Practicum for the new volunteers....should be alright & nice to meet all the new people in country!
Cleaver, our one-finned-fish
It was kind of ironic, as just last week I was asking Will if he thought Cleaver (our little mosquito-larvae-eatin'-guppy-of-a-fish) could ever get caught in the spout of our water tank that we use for doing laundry.
Well, on Sunday morning I was doing laundry as usual, filling up my washing basin, and all of a sudden the water stopped. I got up and looked in the tank, and there was plenty of water (it is the rainy season now). Then I looked at my bin, then I looked in the tank again....... and then it dawned on me that Cleaver was no where to be seen in the tank. Feelings of panic rushed to my head. I stood up, not knowing what to do.....then finally came to the realization that Cleaver, was most likely caught in the spout.
Will said to stick something up the spout. I grabbed an old tooth brush, but it couldn't reach that far back. Then poo came around the corner, and we told him what we thought had happened; he then grabbed a small stick, stuck it up there---and sure enough....first came out one fin, then came out Cleaver... scales all scraped up but still flopping around in pain.
I felt horrible; but Will joked that we'd be having fish for lunch.
He was still movin around a bit, albeit sore we decided to put him in the tank to see if he'd make it through the night. He made it through the night...and seems to still be swimmin' around today.
I'm not sure if he was just sucked into the spout, or if he was trying to find a path to freedom. Hard sayin not knowin.... but hopefully he learned his lesson.
Well, on Sunday morning I was doing laundry as usual, filling up my washing basin, and all of a sudden the water stopped. I got up and looked in the tank, and there was plenty of water (it is the rainy season now). Then I looked at my bin, then I looked in the tank again....... and then it dawned on me that Cleaver was no where to be seen in the tank. Feelings of panic rushed to my head. I stood up, not knowing what to do.....then finally came to the realization that Cleaver, was most likely caught in the spout.
Will said to stick something up the spout. I grabbed an old tooth brush, but it couldn't reach that far back. Then poo came around the corner, and we told him what we thought had happened; he then grabbed a small stick, stuck it up there---and sure enough....first came out one fin, then came out Cleaver... scales all scraped up but still flopping around in pain.
I felt horrible; but Will joked that we'd be having fish for lunch.
He was still movin around a bit, albeit sore we decided to put him in the tank to see if he'd make it through the night. He made it through the night...and seems to still be swimmin' around today.
I'm not sure if he was just sucked into the spout, or if he was trying to find a path to freedom. Hard sayin not knowin.... but hopefully he learned his lesson.
The things they put on motos
I’ve seen my fair share of things riding or strapped onto the back of motos since I’ve been in this country. The usual grocery run from the market, a family of 5 or even 6 (with an infant in someone’s arms), pigs in a cage, a whole row of live chickens hanging by their feet, bed mattresses folded in half, but never have I seen what I saw today while riding home from my English class for teachers.
Today, I saw a woman riding a moto, with a package strapped on back (nothing out of the ordinary); but riding on TOP of the package, not strapped in or in any sort of a container was her small white dog, balancing on its own, on the moving moto. I thought to myself, I’ve seen plenty of dogs in the back of pickup trucks, but this was a first…a dog on the back seat of a moving, travelling motorcycle. It seemed to be balanced alright, but it did look a bit scared for its life. Nonetheless they passed me and went on down the road into the sunset. And like many things I experience in this country….that was all there was to that.
Today, I saw a woman riding a moto, with a package strapped on back (nothing out of the ordinary); but riding on TOP of the package, not strapped in or in any sort of a container was her small white dog, balancing on its own, on the moving moto. I thought to myself, I’ve seen plenty of dogs in the back of pickup trucks, but this was a first…a dog on the back seat of a moving, travelling motorcycle. It seemed to be balanced alright, but it did look a bit scared for its life. Nonetheless they passed me and went on down the road into the sunset. And like many things I experience in this country….that was all there was to that.
Word of the Day: s’mau
I’ve decided to take the baby steps of realizing my third grade dream of becoming a fashion designer.
Well, maybe I won’t go as far as becoming a fashion designer, but I have always wanted to learn to sew and I thought what better time and place to learn. There is a really good seamstress practically every corner you turn in the market, and they can whip out clothes in no time.
With the help of my co-teacher, we found a sewing teacher who trains people to become seamstresses’ and tailors. He sent me a text message one day telling me he found someone who could teach me and then told me the price, which was quite a bit higher than what I had imagined paying for lessons. (However, the people learning from this teacher ARE learning from her to have this be their trade) – So I guess putting it into that perspective, the price seemed fair. Anyway, the text message from my co-teacher simply stated the price and it said “for this price, you will know all.” I had to chuckle inside, imagining the Asian/English accent of my co-teacher saying ‘you will know all’ in regards to paying one flat price. It almost sounded like some sort of fortune cookie message. Anyway. I guess you can’t really beat that,…. if I can pay a set price to “know all” I might as well take it and run.
But yes, interestingly enough, the flat price (to know all) is for no set amount of time. Each of the students study with her daily from 8am, break for lunch at 11-2, and then study until 5pm from Monday to Saturday (and Sundays if they want). And they will continue to study with her until they know all there is to know about sewing.
Anyhow, I’ve managed to get myself caught up into this, but have limited my time to 3 hours in the mornings from Monday – Friday, as I’m continuing my English class for teachers in the afternoons. And I must say, so far it has been going well.
The only catch about the whole thing is that my teacher (Kim Heang), doesn’t speak any English.
I’ve written out as many different possible sewing vocabulary words and sat down with the kids that study at our house every night to get the pronunciation of those words. But nothing really gets ya prepared for when the teacher starts throwing instructions at you and you’re supposed to know what they mean and perform right then and there on the spot. That’s when I promptly say “Somtoh, Khnyom jet Khmer tiek tiek, sohm bunghangm knyom” ( Sorry, I only know Khmer a little, please show me!?” And she does…and I think that’s pretty much how this whole learning thing is going to go.
My first day was spent with some time getting to know the pedal-powered sewing machine. The machine itself is a Jerome (sp?) brand which actually seems pretty solid. However, the pedal portion of the machine is the good old Singer brand. I was able to get used to the rhythm of the pedal, learned NOT to turn the wheel in reverse to reverse the material (it does have its own reverse lever) and practiced having the foot and the needle of the machine take material back and forth. Eventually we put some thread in there and I started practicing sewing straight lines. Which after several runs, she seemed pretty satisfied with my performance.
The last two days however, I’ve spent practicing sewing button-holes.
By hand.
I asked her if they make them on the machine (which I know is one of the features on the machine Will bought me for Christmas 2 years ago)…….. and she said “Yes” (in Khmer)… and then said, “But first you will learn how to sew them by hand.” (In my head, I was like, “Are you Kidding ME??! REALLY?”) – but then thought to myself that I like this teacher...., straight to the chase, down to the basics, and nothing like starting from the very beginning. After all, the art of sewing is something that the people of my gender have mastered for generations and generations and, if they could do it, so can I, right? ( At least that’s my attitude as of right now; let me remind you I’m only at day 3.)
Anyhow, I spent my last 6 hours of lessons practicing stitches to sew around the hole of a button-hole.
By hand.
Dang she makes it look so easy. She can do it so fast, with perfect little stitches in a matter of just a few minutes. Then, she handed over the material for me to try. Things like that are so awkward to hold at first, and you really just need to practice it to get your own rhythm and learn how to hold the fabric, needle and thread simultaneously, until it turns into its own dance. I was onto my second one and she came over and checked on me and kept saying, “jet sa’aht” (nearly right/pretty) – but then kept on saying “s’mau, s’mau” - and I had no idea what that meant…and told her I didn’t understand. Then another student, about 22 years old – who can mutter out a few words in English –…started saying, umm…um… as if she knew what the word was but couldn’t think of it and then all of a sudden her facial expression changed as if a light bulb turned on and started saying, “Equal! It means Equal!”
I laughed out loud. Mostly at myself because my stitches did look really pretty bad compared to hers. So after all of that, my teacher was just trying to nicely tell me that my stitches need to be more equal. Ha.
At that point, I thought to myself it’s going to be quite the ride getting through this course. I need to get on the horse of learning some more basic instructional vocabulary if I want to make this easier. But at the same time, I’m sure it’ll be pretty interesting along the way. The teacher most definitely seems very nice and very patient… and speaks with a calm voice when giving me instructions. (Whether or not I understand the instructions is key question). Regardless, the atmosphere is great. It’s not too crowded and is on the lower level of a house with many windows and a nice cross breeze coming through it. The ladies listen to music on the radio…talk and are simply hard at work on each of their own projects…and they’re able to joke around with me, the strange ‘barang’ (foreigner) who for some reason, unknown to them, wants to learn how to sew.
I brought home my practice material with about 14 different button holes and showed it to Will yesterday, and he said “That’s what you did the entire three hours!?”. I said, yep.
Today went better and my stitches were looking “sa’aht cheeung m’sal meing” – “Prettier than yesterday” – which is good for me…….. AND at the end of class I was instructed to buy some fabric that I’ll apparently learn how to cut into the pieces for making a shirt. So MAAAAYYBEEE I passed the button-hole-sewing-by-hand-test? Maybe not.?
But either way, more importantly, I do NOW know the word for Equal.
Well, maybe I won’t go as far as becoming a fashion designer, but I have always wanted to learn to sew and I thought what better time and place to learn. There is a really good seamstress practically every corner you turn in the market, and they can whip out clothes in no time.
With the help of my co-teacher, we found a sewing teacher who trains people to become seamstresses’ and tailors. He sent me a text message one day telling me he found someone who could teach me and then told me the price, which was quite a bit higher than what I had imagined paying for lessons. (However, the people learning from this teacher ARE learning from her to have this be their trade) – So I guess putting it into that perspective, the price seemed fair. Anyway, the text message from my co-teacher simply stated the price and it said “for this price, you will know all.” I had to chuckle inside, imagining the Asian/English accent of my co-teacher saying ‘you will know all’ in regards to paying one flat price. It almost sounded like some sort of fortune cookie message. Anyway. I guess you can’t really beat that,…. if I can pay a set price to “know all” I might as well take it and run.
But yes, interestingly enough, the flat price (to know all) is for no set amount of time. Each of the students study with her daily from 8am, break for lunch at 11-2, and then study until 5pm from Monday to Saturday (and Sundays if they want). And they will continue to study with her until they know all there is to know about sewing.
Anyhow, I’ve managed to get myself caught up into this, but have limited my time to 3 hours in the mornings from Monday – Friday, as I’m continuing my English class for teachers in the afternoons. And I must say, so far it has been going well.
The only catch about the whole thing is that my teacher (Kim Heang), doesn’t speak any English.
I’ve written out as many different possible sewing vocabulary words and sat down with the kids that study at our house every night to get the pronunciation of those words. But nothing really gets ya prepared for when the teacher starts throwing instructions at you and you’re supposed to know what they mean and perform right then and there on the spot. That’s when I promptly say “Somtoh, Khnyom jet Khmer tiek tiek, sohm bunghangm knyom” ( Sorry, I only know Khmer a little, please show me!?” And she does…and I think that’s pretty much how this whole learning thing is going to go.
My first day was spent with some time getting to know the pedal-powered sewing machine. The machine itself is a Jerome (sp?) brand which actually seems pretty solid. However, the pedal portion of the machine is the good old Singer brand. I was able to get used to the rhythm of the pedal, learned NOT to turn the wheel in reverse to reverse the material (it does have its own reverse lever) and practiced having the foot and the needle of the machine take material back and forth. Eventually we put some thread in there and I started practicing sewing straight lines. Which after several runs, she seemed pretty satisfied with my performance.
The last two days however, I’ve spent practicing sewing button-holes.
By hand.
I asked her if they make them on the machine (which I know is one of the features on the machine Will bought me for Christmas 2 years ago)…….. and she said “Yes” (in Khmer)… and then said, “But first you will learn how to sew them by hand.” (In my head, I was like, “Are you Kidding ME??! REALLY?”) – but then thought to myself that I like this teacher...., straight to the chase, down to the basics, and nothing like starting from the very beginning. After all, the art of sewing is something that the people of my gender have mastered for generations and generations and, if they could do it, so can I, right? ( At least that’s my attitude as of right now; let me remind you I’m only at day 3.)
Anyhow, I spent my last 6 hours of lessons practicing stitches to sew around the hole of a button-hole.
By hand.
Dang she makes it look so easy. She can do it so fast, with perfect little stitches in a matter of just a few minutes. Then, she handed over the material for me to try. Things like that are so awkward to hold at first, and you really just need to practice it to get your own rhythm and learn how to hold the fabric, needle and thread simultaneously, until it turns into its own dance. I was onto my second one and she came over and checked on me and kept saying, “jet sa’aht” (nearly right/pretty) – but then kept on saying “s’mau, s’mau” - and I had no idea what that meant…and told her I didn’t understand. Then another student, about 22 years old – who can mutter out a few words in English –…started saying, umm…um… as if she knew what the word was but couldn’t think of it and then all of a sudden her facial expression changed as if a light bulb turned on and started saying, “Equal! It means Equal!”
I laughed out loud. Mostly at myself because my stitches did look really pretty bad compared to hers. So after all of that, my teacher was just trying to nicely tell me that my stitches need to be more equal. Ha.
At that point, I thought to myself it’s going to be quite the ride getting through this course. I need to get on the horse of learning some more basic instructional vocabulary if I want to make this easier. But at the same time, I’m sure it’ll be pretty interesting along the way. The teacher most definitely seems very nice and very patient… and speaks with a calm voice when giving me instructions. (Whether or not I understand the instructions is key question). Regardless, the atmosphere is great. It’s not too crowded and is on the lower level of a house with many windows and a nice cross breeze coming through it. The ladies listen to music on the radio…talk and are simply hard at work on each of their own projects…and they’re able to joke around with me, the strange ‘barang’ (foreigner) who for some reason, unknown to them, wants to learn how to sew.
I brought home my practice material with about 14 different button holes and showed it to Will yesterday, and he said “That’s what you did the entire three hours!?”. I said, yep.
Today went better and my stitches were looking “sa’aht cheeung m’sal meing” – “Prettier than yesterday” – which is good for me…….. AND at the end of class I was instructed to buy some fabric that I’ll apparently learn how to cut into the pieces for making a shirt. So MAAAAYYBEEE I passed the button-hole-sewing-by-hand-test? Maybe not.?
But either way, more importantly, I do NOW know the word for Equal.
One Year Mark – July 23
So our year in country anniversary was just last week. Hard to believe, but also, it’s not. Time goes by so fast and so slow in this country. A lot of it has to with how busy you are, and or how happy you are.
At this point I can honestly say we’ve got a much better outlook than maybe we did in March – when everything just seemed so frustrating. We now know what to expect (or at least have a general idea) of how things work, when people study, when it’s hot, and how to go about things, so that definitely feels good. And now, we are actually the veterans of the crew. All of K1 is gone (the first group of volunteers) and – the K3s (Kampchua, PCVs group 3) arrived in country on July 24th. I wasn’t down there for the arrival, but talking to a few volunteers who were, said that being at their initial orientation was a bit refreshing. It was nice to be there answering the very same questions we were asking a year ago and realizing how much it is that we have grown since we were in their shoes. They spent time explaining that many of the things they were asking about aren’t that big of a deal once you go through with it.
So yea, here we are…one down, one to go. Hard to believe. It’s a good feeling.
At this point I can honestly say we’ve got a much better outlook than maybe we did in March – when everything just seemed so frustrating. We now know what to expect (or at least have a general idea) of how things work, when people study, when it’s hot, and how to go about things, so that definitely feels good. And now, we are actually the veterans of the crew. All of K1 is gone (the first group of volunteers) and – the K3s (Kampchua, PCVs group 3) arrived in country on July 24th. I wasn’t down there for the arrival, but talking to a few volunteers who were, said that being at their initial orientation was a bit refreshing. It was nice to be there answering the very same questions we were asking a year ago and realizing how much it is that we have grown since we were in their shoes. They spent time explaining that many of the things they were asking about aren’t that big of a deal once you go through with it.
So yea, here we are…one down, one to go. Hard to believe. It’s a good feeling.
Tree Planting at the High School
Will had planted the seed in his co-teachers head about getting a tree planting project done at some point. They had been talking about a tree planting for quite a while. After they discussed a tree planting project, his counterpart contacted the community forestry office and scheduled a meeting. At the meeting they were offered one hundred hard wood trees ranging in size from half a meter tall to almost two meters. The deputy school director took them in his truck to pick up the trees the following day. Four days later the school director organized 50 students to help plant the trees under the supervision of an agriculture teacher. They had all of the trees planted and watered in less than two hours. The school director was very excited and has requested that they plant one hundred more trees in October, which the community forestry office has agreed to supply. The project was a great success.
Catching UP
I finished up helping out at the JPA school which turned out pretty well. While I’m glad to be done, I will miss the little munchkins; regardless of their teachers ability to control how quiet they were during class time. They still were pretty darn cute. I took a week off (mostly to catch up on all the laundry I hadn’t had time to do) – and also just to transition into the long vacation mode of summer and figure out how I’m going to approach the upcoming months. I’m back in gear with the teachers as we’ve started our English for Teachers course again, this time meeting 5 days a week. Then I’ve also started taking sewing lessons (see entry: Word of the Day: s’mau). Then last week I sort of got into a landscaping mode. Besides learning that no one seems to sell flower seeds anywhere, I was able to drop more money into purchasing plants and potted flowers from the local plant nursery in town than I had intended to. Oops. Oh well our patio area does look really nice now all decorated w/ flowers). But I guess I will wait before I go on my next plant and flower spending spree.
As for Will, besides his tree-planting project, he has been spending a fair amount of time practicing the fundamentals of basketball with the high-school team. We’re in the midst of planning an itinerary for our upcoming vacation to Malaysia which we’re taking in September. It’s sort of a late anniversary vacation, right before school starts AND also during the Pchum Ben holiday in Cambodia (which usually consists of all of the Pagodas blasting really loud ceremonial music starting at 4am in the morning) – and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that we live 50m away from a Pagoda. So we purposely planned on being out of the country at that time. Other than that not too much new to report. We’re definitely in the rainy season, and well I’ve already written about how much we like the rain here. Temperatures are so much more tolerable.
I guess that’s all for now until the next interesting thing comes our way to write about. We hope everyone’s well back home…..
over and out.
As for Will, besides his tree-planting project, he has been spending a fair amount of time practicing the fundamentals of basketball with the high-school team. We’re in the midst of planning an itinerary for our upcoming vacation to Malaysia which we’re taking in September. It’s sort of a late anniversary vacation, right before school starts AND also during the Pchum Ben holiday in Cambodia (which usually consists of all of the Pagodas blasting really loud ceremonial music starting at 4am in the morning) – and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that we live 50m away from a Pagoda. So we purposely planned on being out of the country at that time. Other than that not too much new to report. We’re definitely in the rainy season, and well I’ve already written about how much we like the rain here. Temperatures are so much more tolerable.
I guess that’s all for now until the next interesting thing comes our way to write about. We hope everyone’s well back home…..
over and out.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Toleration.
Nearly a year in, I’ve noticed that my tolerance for certain things, (I’m mostly referring to creatures and insects) has increased. For example, if there is bug in my drink, a few dead ants in my rice or even the mouse that I saw run under my bed last night prior to going to sleep doesn’t seem to bother me nearly as much as it would have a year ago, OR even six months ago. I seem to have no problem finishing my beverage after I fish out a little beetle or fly that has made its way in. The ants in the rice … well just put a little extra sauce over it…ya won’t taste it, I PROMISE!... And yes--- last night I was sitting in the living room reading… and I sawr out of the corner of my eye that little black shadow of a scurry run across the floor into the bedroom, right underneath the bed. I calmly told Will, who was already reading, tucked underneath the mosquito net that a mouse ran under the bed. He replied “Ok, thanks”. I said, don’t you want to set the trap?” He replied, “I’ll do it in the morning.” I sighed… got up, put on my headlamp and went outside into the light rain to get our large rat-sized trap which has been rusting outside since the start of the rainy season. I brought it into the kitchen. I looked at it. Set it (without thinking) and THEN carefully put a big glob of peanut butter on it. Cursing myself for not doing the PB thing before the setting it thing, I grabbed two sets of long kitchen tongs to carry the trap into the living room and set it in its place. I popped into the bedroom to tell my beloved husband that the trap was set. He said “You look great babe” – while looking at me in my headlamp, my nightgown and two kitchen tongs clenched in my hands. I sighed, put my tongs and headlamp away and crawled into bed. I did make sure that the net was tightly tucked in on all four sides of the bed, but other than that I managed to NOT lose any sleep over the ordeal. I woke up this morning to PB left untouched on my trap. Ah well. Maybe we’ll get em, maybe we won’t. Whether or not this extra tolerance is a good or bad thing…. I’m not sure…. but at least I’m not hopping on top of the furniture as often while asking Will to rescue me.
Volunteering at JPA school
To fill my time during the month of July, I signed up to be a volunteer teacher at the Jay Pritzker Academy here in Siem Reap Province. The school is about 4-5k away from Puok and I heard about the opportunity through a few K1 volunteers who’ve taken full time jobs there. It’s really quite the place, and I can confidently say it’s the nicest elementary and secondary school in Cambodia. It was funded by Jay Pritzker and basically it’s for bright students from poor families to attend. It has state of the art facilities, its own cafeteria, and no more than 30 kids in each classroom. The idea is that as long as the students do well and continue to progress…they will finish elementary, middle and high-school there and hopefully go on to university, possibly in the US and be able to get good jobs, and hopefully return to Cambodia and become new leaders, doctors, engineers etc. in their own country.
Today was my 4th day on the job, and I can assure you it’s quite a bit different from what I’ve been doing the past few months here. I have my own desk, with a computer that’s hooked up to a large-screen TV on the wall, where I can show videos that are related to the lessons in the textbooks. The students that are chosen to go there get full uniforms, back packs, shoes and three square meals a day. There are actual full color text-books for the students to read from … AND I have free access to a copy machine to give worksheets to the students. Not to mention, it has bathrooms with toilets that flush. (Did I mention Puok High School has 2 bathrooms (that don't flush) for 5000 students?????) Again…a complete world away from what we have access to in our government schools….just 4-5k nearby.
I admit there are a few things that catch me throughout some of the lessons. We are teaching from American textbooks and well the other day one of the vocab words was “vacuum cleaner” and well….that was a bit hard to explain to some of these 2nd graders whom I’m sure have never seen carpet in their lives, or “drain” (from a tub) and well… these children don’t take baths in bathtubs, they dump buckets of water over their bodies from the well…and “quarter” for money; and there hasn’t been coin money in this country for years. BUT if you can get over that (which we do) they seem to be coming along quite well. I was impressed with these 2nd graders ability to read. The comprehension maybe isn’t all the way there BUT they have been learning phonics and can read and write and pronounce things correctly which has been a Nice breath of fresh air. I’m able to speak at a rather quick speed and they are able to understand me, which too is some fresh air.
Anyway, we’ll see what the next 2 weeks bring. But it’s nice to be doing something for a bit…and the 2nd graders are pretty adorable. They’ve got it pretty darn good at this school, but I also know they’ve got it pretty darn hard life at home. Let’s hope this school can make a positive difference in their lives. I’m pretty sure it already has.
Today was my 4th day on the job, and I can assure you it’s quite a bit different from what I’ve been doing the past few months here. I have my own desk, with a computer that’s hooked up to a large-screen TV on the wall, where I can show videos that are related to the lessons in the textbooks. The students that are chosen to go there get full uniforms, back packs, shoes and three square meals a day. There are actual full color text-books for the students to read from … AND I have free access to a copy machine to give worksheets to the students. Not to mention, it has bathrooms with toilets that flush. (Did I mention Puok High School has 2 bathrooms (that don't flush) for 5000 students?????) Again…a complete world away from what we have access to in our government schools….just 4-5k nearby.
I admit there are a few things that catch me throughout some of the lessons. We are teaching from American textbooks and well the other day one of the vocab words was “vacuum cleaner” and well….that was a bit hard to explain to some of these 2nd graders whom I’m sure have never seen carpet in their lives, or “drain” (from a tub) and well… these children don’t take baths in bathtubs, they dump buckets of water over their bodies from the well…and “quarter” for money; and there hasn’t been coin money in this country for years. BUT if you can get over that (which we do) they seem to be coming along quite well. I was impressed with these 2nd graders ability to read. The comprehension maybe isn’t all the way there BUT they have been learning phonics and can read and write and pronounce things correctly which has been a Nice breath of fresh air. I’m able to speak at a rather quick speed and they are able to understand me, which too is some fresh air.
Anyway, we’ll see what the next 2 weeks bring. But it’s nice to be doing something for a bit…and the 2nd graders are pretty adorable. They’ve got it pretty darn good at this school, but I also know they’ve got it pretty darn hard life at home. Let’s hope this school can make a positive difference in their lives. I’m pretty sure it already has.
The 4th
We spent the forth in Phnom Penh. A few other volunteers and I sang the Khmer National Anthem, and one of the volunteers Matt, sang the Star Spangled Banner at an event on the 3rd that the US Embassy was hosting. Everything went off without a hitch and we hope to be invited back next year! Then we also sang for their ‘fun 4th’ on Saturday which went well too. It was a nice little soirée with American food, and probable the most Americans in one place that we’ve all seen since we left the states. They had several different food stalls ranging from KFC, to places where you could get burgers and pulled pork, corn dogs, icecream and cake. They had a live band playing cover songs, circus performers and other random entertainment. They also had a raffle. I’d say there was nearly a thousand people there over the course of the afternoon… and out of the 15 Peace Corps volunteers that were there, we won our fair share of raffle prizes. The prizes ranged from web-cams, to a basket full of beer & nice pilsner glasses, to air-tickets, to gift certificates to blackberry phones. The PCVs scored on a basket of beer, web-cam, and Will and I won a gift certificate for a champagne breakfast at the famous Raffles hotel in Phnom Penh. (It’s the hotel Jacque O stayed at during her visit to Cambodia). Needless to say we were pretty excited about that…
Overall it was a nice weekend, and a nice way to spend the fourth. There weren’t any fireworks, but I guess the embassy was trying to save some money. (Who isn’t these days?)
Overall it was a nice weekend, and a nice way to spend the fourth. There weren’t any fireworks, but I guess the embassy was trying to save some money. (Who isn’t these days?)
Thought Of The Day
I look forward to the time when half of the dirt pile that I’ve just swept up from the living room floor isn’t moving……………………… (As in alive, moving insects.)
Garden Reported.
We’ve been eating green beans and peppers out of the garden. The tomatoes have small fruits on them and we’ve got one eggplant startin’ to show. That’s the report on that.
Small Things Continued...
So, there was an awards ceremony at the end of the school year for all of the students. The top 3 students of each class got an award, as well as the class monitors. Any teachers retiring got an award as well as outgoing volunteers.
We got to sit up front at the ceremony along with the rest of the teachers. We also got to hand out a few of the gifts (which I think was an honor, but not quite sure?) But it made us feel a little bit important nonetheless.
Anyhow, as we were patiently waiting for the ceremony to conclude, we noticed the gift that one of the retiring teachers received. She opened up her package, and I believe it was a few sarongs, two notebooks, a few pens and two bags of straight up MSG.
Never in my life would have I ever imagined receiving MSG as a parting gift. Ahh well.
. . .
It was a nice ceremony and didn’t last painfully long. We were also proud to see that two of the three kids that come to study at our house, and also spend time with us nearly each evening received the top student award in their class. Srey Nich (a 7th grade girl) and Sounapet, a 7th grade boy.
I’ve written about little Sounapet before. He’s a bit small for is age (he’s 11 or 12, but has the body of a full sized average 6 or 7 yr. old boy in the states. Not sure if it is malnutrition or what) –but he’s a bright kid, quite cute, can sing, dance, is pretty athletic and has a smile that could win over anyone.I’d take him home if I could. Anyway,… when they called his name, several students cheered and lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ took over the crowd. We didn’t realize how popular the little guy is; but apparently so. I guess I could’ve guessed it by his charm; but it was nice to see that he was so well loved by the rest of his class despite being the smallest (even out of the girls) in his class.
So that’s it. The school year is officially over. We now know what to expect in the coming year. We’ve learned many lessons and will have a better grasp as to where our services can be best put. I admit, it’s gone by fast…and it was not at all what we were expecting…but what is in life, right? Now….onto summer. (Or the ‘long vacation’ as they call it. It’s pretty much summer year round.)
We got to sit up front at the ceremony along with the rest of the teachers. We also got to hand out a few of the gifts (which I think was an honor, but not quite sure?) But it made us feel a little bit important nonetheless.
Anyhow, as we were patiently waiting for the ceremony to conclude, we noticed the gift that one of the retiring teachers received. She opened up her package, and I believe it was a few sarongs, two notebooks, a few pens and two bags of straight up MSG.
Never in my life would have I ever imagined receiving MSG as a parting gift. Ahh well.
. . .
It was a nice ceremony and didn’t last painfully long. We were also proud to see that two of the three kids that come to study at our house, and also spend time with us nearly each evening received the top student award in their class. Srey Nich (a 7th grade girl) and Sounapet, a 7th grade boy.
I’ve written about little Sounapet before. He’s a bit small for is age (he’s 11 or 12, but has the body of a full sized average 6 or 7 yr. old boy in the states. Not sure if it is malnutrition or what) –but he’s a bright kid, quite cute, can sing, dance, is pretty athletic and has a smile that could win over anyone.I’d take him home if I could. Anyway,… when they called his name, several students cheered and lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ took over the crowd. We didn’t realize how popular the little guy is; but apparently so. I guess I could’ve guessed it by his charm; but it was nice to see that he was so well loved by the rest of his class despite being the smallest (even out of the girls) in his class.
So that’s it. The school year is officially over. We now know what to expect in the coming year. We’ve learned many lessons and will have a better grasp as to where our services can be best put. I admit, it’s gone by fast…and it was not at all what we were expecting…but what is in life, right? Now….onto summer. (Or the ‘long vacation’ as they call it. It’s pretty much summer year round.)
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