Sports in Cambodia

When I walk through a market here, I sometimes find a Cambodian quietly sidling up beside me to measure themselves against my shoulder. Their friends are usually found having a friendly giggle a few yards away. Cambodia is a nation of small people which makes volleyball, a sport for tall people, a very strange choice of national sport.

The best volleyball court in the world; literally on the riverbank of the Mekong in Kompong Cham. That's my knee that you can see as I'm sit on the wall above drinking a beer. 

At about 5pm every day throughout the country, men will finish work and gather for a game of volleyball. Probably due to a reliance on manual labour, the impressive athleticism of Cambodians allows them to be springing upwards to spike the ball better than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. It's pretty serious stuff, especially as there is always at least $5 riding on the outcome. Unfortunately, Cambodia does still get whacked when they play internationals against giants.

People rise with the sun to get their exercise in before it hots up. So at 6am you will find people playing another favourite sport - kick a shuttle-cock type thing about - better described in this video I took. Some of them are ridiculously talented, letting it go over their heads, and kicking it from behind their head through arms raised above their heads to another person. I felt very privileged to be asked to join once, then felt very ashamed as I disproved a widespread Cambodian belief that foreigners are always better at everything.

A great thing about Cambodia is that exercise often takes place in the streets or pavements. Walking down the road can involve dodging flying shuttlecocks as a security guard and friend, or a mother and daughter, or a husband and wife are playing badminton (without a net). It reminds of playing 'kerbie' (throwing a ball from one side of the road to hit off the kerb on the other side) when I was young.

6am on a Sunday morning at the riverside

Being Asia, ping pong is a big favourite and ping pong halls are full most days. Apart from the one that I go to with friends, which is usually empty and obviously not a place for serious players. Ping pong seems to bring out the best of the Cambodian array of shrieks and yelps that they enjoy using to show whatever emotion they're having (usually disagreement, disapproval, disgust etc). I've also never know ping pong to be as sweaty as it is in ping pong. One of the guys I play with (Paul!) is like a (lawn) tennis player and actually changes his shirt between games.

Whilst volleyball is the sport most played by men, badminton by women and couples etc, the one that is the most watched and revered is Cambodian boxing (pradal serey, which translates as free fighting) which they will tell you pre-dates Thai boxing. When it is on, the cafes with TVs are packed full of men watching and betting. At one of the halls near the Olympic Stadium we watched some junior and club matches, which included one guy taking a dive for some cash. It was quite hilarious. He was flat out on the canvas in a star shape and then as soon as the ref counted ten, he jumped up smiling and fresh, hopped over the ropes and jogged past a guy who gave him an envelope on his way to get changed. This fight we filmed was a bit more real as you can tell by the way one of the guys move towards the other after they've taken a tumble.

The six-aside pitch, with top notch astroturf, where I play on a Saturday or Sunday.  It's in the city but down some little lanes and alleys so that you feel that you are in the middle of the countryside. They very patiently put up with my moaning about them never coming back (trow mao kroway - must come back - is my favourite phrase).

Thankfully for me, football has arrived here and I usually play every week with a group of Cambodians who I met through work. Two hours in the sun usually drains me of all liquid that my body had and requires me to drink ten coconuts in an effort to rehydrate. And having a 7:30am kick off for a game of 11s was a bit of a shock to the system. At first, due to the size difference, I felt like a Dad playing with twelve year-olds so to prevent me from accidentally hurting them, I sometimes join them in playing barefoot. It's definitely one way to feel a bit Cambodian - from the feet up.

Gordon

Ratanakiri part 2 - with the rest of the gang!

Anna has two geckos (tukkai in Khmer) that live in her house - Gordon and (I forget, maybe) Glenda. She pointed out to me the lovely little snuggle/sigh sound they make at the end of their calls. Hard to explain unless you've heard it. It actually made me laugh out loud one night in bed it's so darn adorable. Anyway, above is a pic of two of the moth/mosquito/fly munching guys in action at the restaurant next door where we went for dinner when Gordon, Andy and Ellen arrived. They're pretty big and, supposedly, if they bite you, you can't get them off you for at least an hour. But I love them.

The next day we hopped on some motos and went in search of waterfalls and lakes. Bliss.

Gordon with his trusty moto driver, Ellen

swimming in Yeak Lom, the crater lake

beautiful waterfall...

...which we went swimming in!

another stunning waterfall

And now for something completely different. I'd like to now apologise to my mum for putting this up. Please don't think you raised me badly! These t-shirts need some comment though.

One of the things Gordon and I have noticed is the English slogan t-shirts that so many people wear here. They are regularly inappropriate, borderline pornographic and almost always with spelling mistakes. Who makes them? Who for? And who is the proof-reader?!  (another particular favourite of mine was a girl in a "Charnel" t-shirt, complete with diamante and interlinking C's. I only wish I'd had my camera)

This one was at the same football ground for the final of the four day event. At first we thought he was just a spectator and then we spotted him out on the field. Organising things.

Yup. That's him in front of the banner. Directing the winners of all the sports
down the middle of the pitch to the podium.

And because no blog is complete without some kind of mention of food, here's some kind of weird milkshake type drink with black jelly bits in it to finish us off.

Ratanakiri

This post was meant to follow in swift succession of the Mondulkiri blog however, as ever, life got in the way so it's taken far longer than usual...

After Mondulkiri (for me) it was off to another northern province, Ratanakiri.

We went to visit Anna (blog here), another volunteer who joined VSO Cambodia the same time as us. She's in Ratanakiri (RTK) working as a Community Development Adviser. We teamed up with two other volunteers who started the same time as us to have a mini reunion in a very lovely part of Cambodge. Travel in Cambodia mostly goes through Phnom Penh so the two other vols, Andy (blog here) and Ellen (blog here but it's in Dutch so you may find it kinda difficult to understand), who live in the north-west of the country had a 6-10 hour journey down to Phnom Penh and then another 6-8 hour journey up to Ratanakiri in the north-east. Anyway...

I got to the capital, Banlung, a few days before the others so I headed out with Anna on a trip to visit a school director. The school was about 45 minutes away by moto and my transport for the day was kindly provided by Anna's volunteer assistant (a volunteer's Khmer sidekick who translates not just the language but everything that goes on that we don't understand) Narin.

After the school we stopped for a ubiquitous iced coffee with condensed milk - delicious, although I can barely manage half as the caffeine gives me heart palpitations - and Narin asked what we were going to do now. We both presumed we'd be heading back to Banlung but then Narin suggested that we go and visit another crater lake...

One of the main attractions in Banlung is the beautiful crater lake, Yeak Lom. Anna and I had gone there the night I arrived for a quick cool-down dip and I was definitely happy to see another one. 45 minutes later we arrived here:

Narin and Anna beside the lake

Sadly with no swimmers we couldn't go in - and, as the top pic shows, the deck was also broken so we couldn't even sit and dangle our feet in. We did however have a swarm of bees (they must have been killer bees the noise they were making) fly over the trees above our heads. Anna and I were both for bolting but Narin very calmly just told us to stay still. He explained we were fine in the trees as they wouldn't fly down to us - but it's a problem when people are working in the field. Scary!

On the journey we passed kilometres upon kilometres of rubber plantations. While I know they're not good for the environment, and many people have lost their homes because land as been cleared to make way for them, there's still something that appeals to me about the long straight lines of them with their little cups to catch the rubber and their winding lines where the bark has been cut.

That afternoon we went to a football match, part of a big sports weekend that Anna's work, the Education Office, was hosting. Neither of us are particular footie fans but it was another great chance to experience something new.

As this is going to turn into another epic blog I'm going to do this half of the trip, before the others arrived and then do another when the rest of the gang got here. Here are some more photos...

Narin popped by the next morning, got some jackfruit out the tree and cut it all up for us!

He then was passing later in the afternoon after picking up a chicken coop.
I guess he knew we'd get a kick out of it being on the back of a moto so he dropped in again.

and the only picture I took of Anna's beautiful house - complete with
coconut, jackfruit, durian, mango, avocado etc trees in the garden

Just as I took this picture the minibus arrived to drop off Gordon, Ellen and Andy - but that's for part two...