Friday, November 5, 2010

Last week in October

Our normal weekly routine of teaching, eating, sleeping and shopping was interrupted by two things.

Firstly, I managed to loose my phone over the weekend, think it fell out of my pocket while we were coming back from one of the temple visits and fell on to the road never to ring again.  It caused a problem in that the sim card belonged to the school and the ID card to purchase the card was one of the men who works here Mother (westerners are not supposed to buy sim cards).  I had to go to the company head office with a translator and look like a Cambodian lady.  Not really, I don't think they care as long as we buy lots of credit.  The long and the short of it was that, I am now back on air with my old phone number but minus the $20 credit that somehow got used!!

The second event was the two parcels that Sandra received from Australia.  It seems that Mel the lady who runs the school has not received any mail at all during the years they have lived here.  The two parcels were full of food, stickers and some slippers and you should have seen us all crowding around the packages 'oooing' and 'aaring'.  Unfortunately we still have my letter, several others of Sandra missing.  Sandra and I wander down to the Post Office every second day and the ladies in the Post Office have become our best friends although we have about 4 words we can all understand.

Friday was another public holiday.  Would you believe that Cambodia has 19 official holidays and it seems others that are not official.  Friday was the old King's birthday so we had the day off.

Mel had arranged for us to go out into the country to visit one of our students village and the family hired 3 very old and rickety boats to take us through endless flooded rice paddies to a huge dam for a swim and a picnic.

Once again, we were off at sunrise this time squashed into Mel's landrover and the other two ladies who were unable to fit into the car were sitting on the back on one of the Khmer boys motorbike.  We chose the two ladies with the smallest bottoms so you know that narrowed down the choice to two.  And yes you did read it right, they were both on the same bike.

The day was a lot of driving and a lot of sitting down in a very hard boat but a lot of fun.  It was amazing, we travelled a little way up a small river and then turned off into area full of rice about 2 foot high and just endless rows with small channels going off each side.  I have no idea how the guys knew where they were going but they seemed to know.  I kept thinking as we went past the rice that they must have been able to hold their breath for ages when they planted it as their heads would have been under water.  No, it seems that within 2 weeks the whole area will be dry although muddy and they flood the area when need and of course we had just finished the rainy season as well.  It seems that there are two types of rice grown, one takes 110 days from planting to reaping and the other 220 days.  The first is not a good quality grain but a quicker return.  

It was interesting when we sat down for our picnic.  The westerners opened their borrowed esky and took out bread rolls and made salad sandwiches, eat sweet pastries from the bakery and cold water and sat down on the mats provided.  The local took the lid off their large drink container and took out hot rice, they opened the plastic containers that had been in the sun on the boat all morning and took out dried fish and other interesting but smelly items of food, plastic bowls and cutlery and the whole group of about 20 sat and stood around and ate.  The opened up their large esky and gave everyone a beer and enjoyed their meal, think theirs was better than our boring bread rolls.

The younger members of the group immediately went in swimming and of course were joined by us and a great game of throwing weeds and mud over everyone took place for the next hour or so.   It was a great afternoon but quickly followed by 1 hour on the hard boats again to get back to the village.  The rural Cambodians do it hard especially during the wet season as their houses are under water or inaccessible, they have to bring all their animals up to dry land which in most cases is the road outside their houses.  On the whole the people seem quite happy and love to share a joke with you and are more than happy to chat although neither parties have any idea what the other are saying.  The family we stayed with have a DVD play which they all sit around and watch and this is run directly off a car battery.

 
  We certainly have been lucky to be able to visit with two of the local families and visit places that the tourists are not invited.  This is certainly thanks to Mel and her Khmer friends.

Sandra and I decided that we would meet up with Lyn and have a late start on Saturday and we set off to look at the Cambodian Cultural Village which is on the outskirts of Siem Reap.  It is a huge complex with a number of static displays but the main attractions are the live performances showing during the day and evenings.  Unfortunately we were a bit early for the shows and we had to be back at the school by 4pm.  A return visit is certainly a must, next time we will go later in the afternoon and stay the evening.


A view from the top

Saturday evening saw us all going out in 2 tuk tuks driven by 2 of Sandra's students, they are lovely boys and a lot of fun.  We were going out to the local fun park which was out of town and it is at the end of a dead end road and the food sellers move in about 4pm and set up their stalls, the locals come along about 30 minutes later and start buying their food for their picnic.  The food ranges from whole pigs on a spit to stuffed frogs, eggs with fetus, fish of every shape and size, half chickens and countless other delicacies.  There were a number of rides for the children, a ferris wheel and dodgem cars for the older children and stalls where you throw the darts to hit a balloon to win a prize.

We all bought a dart for 1000 riel (25c) and I burst a balloon and was able to choose from a huge array of cans of beer, packets of lollies and all sorts of kitchen items.  No stuffed toys to be seen.  The boys who were with us joined in and won a few prizes. 

We then decided that we would go on the ferris wheel as it was sitting idle.  We paid the 2000 riel and we all climbed into the cages, Sandra was with Minea and I was with Skye.  The driver who was a 10 year old boy cranked up the engine and instead of the sedate rotation around the circle we were expecting, the thing took off and we were literally flying around the circle and all you could hear was the two boys screaming and the women laughing.  The ride seemed to go for ages and there was quite a crowd standing around laughing at us when we staggered off.  We did notice that when we later looked up at the wheel, it had gone back to its previous slow rotation.  Our next stop was the dodgem cars and this was a little more expensive 5000 riel ($1.25) for 20 minutes.  We once again took over the place with the exception of about 5 unlucky locals who were pushed and shoved around the area by crazy ladies.  We had a great time and it wasn't until we watched the next group after us that we realized that they actually spent their time dodging each other and not trying to ram into each other!!

It was great fun and we had a enjoyable time.  Queezy stomache not withstanding.  We will be back for more later on and we will eat next time, it was too early and we made the mistake of seeing the food in daylight.

Sunday was spent have our lesson planning meeting which seems to take up all Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon just seemed to disappear.  Oh well it Monday again and yes we are going to have a sweep for Melbourne Cup.


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