Pchum Ben holiday - Melaka part 1

For Pchum Ben, a Buddhist holiday that took place in October and is about paying respect to ancestors, Gordon and I decided to leave Cambodia and explore a wee bit more of the big wide world. After much debate - after all Vietnam, Laos and Burma are close by and China, Japan, Bali and even Australia are not that far away - we settled on Singapore and Melaka (Malacca), a port town in Malaysia.

Flights to Singapore were under $100 each, return, so it was with slight trepidation that I waited to board the Tiger Airways flight. However all passed without hiccup and the flight was pretty good. A gold star for Singapore's budget airline.

We arrived in Singapore but were immediately heading to Melaka. After a slick journey on the MRT (their under- and overground system) and a friendly greeting by our bus company rep I was worried I might not want to return to Phnom Penh. In Singapore you can walk on the pavements - and they're not cracked and broken, or filled with rubbish, or have motos bearing down on you as they spot a shortcut through the traffic. I thought it was probably a good thing we left the city sharpish!

Our four hour bus to Melaka was one of the most luxurious buses I think I've ever been on. Super comfy seats that reclined to practically horizontal. Bliss! There was one other person on the bus when we got on - a Scottish guy from Glasgow. What are the chances. He had left his job at Bauer Radio (radios Clyde, Tay, Forth etc) and was travelling for a few months.

Melaka is an historical port town and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Malay, Chinese, Indian, Dutch and Portuguese influences abound which makes for some fabulous food.

After dropping off bags we headed down towards Jonker Street where they have a night market every weekend.

he hates when I take pics of him eating

tasty fried noodles

one end of Jonker Walk - the end with the MASSIVE stage

hustle and bustle on Jonker Street - taken right beside the MASSIVE stage

Jonker Street is lined with food stalls and market stalls selling all kinds of wonderful stuff. We did a spot of Christmas shopping as well as buying some new bike lights, me an Angry Birds t-shirt (it's awesome) and Gordon lots and lots of snacks.

The buildings and streets in Melaka are a photographer's delight and I spent most of the next few days with my camera glued to my face. 

dragon on Kampong Kling mosque

top of Kampong Kling mosque

I particularly loved all the buildings in the Chinese part of town.

They'd used the Chinese lanterns to form the body of the dragon the
whole way down the street. The photo doesn't do it justice.

We went on a boat trip down the river, passing all the amazing decorated buildings along the way. Right at the end we also finally saw one of the monitor lizards that are meant to be all over the town. I managed to snap a quick photograph but it is not of a high enough quality to make the blog so you'll just have to take our word for it. (Dad has also requested that I put less photos in the blog as when he prints the blog out for my Gran to read it's getting to be too many pages. Don't say I don't listen to you Pops!)

Part two of our Melaka trip to follow, I hope, shortly. In the meantime, here are some more shots of lovely things that tickled my fancy...

multi-lingual!

Haaallllooooooo!!!!!!

Haalllooooooo!!!!! Not so much in Phnom Penh, but in the rural areas, you will be cycling along a dirt road and a little kid will wave his hand and shout Haallllooooooo at you. As will his siblings and friends. Your role is to wave back just as vigorously and reply in the same manner.

What is strange about this little conversation is that rather than saying hello in a way that would be normal, you find yourself imitating their style and barking Hallooooo back at them with a hand wave nearly as manic as Paul's in the opening credits to The Wonder Years. Sometimes, they will feel brave and ask for your name or how you are. Obviously, we're not speeding past like Bradley Wiggins or Chris Hoy so there is generally time for us to answer. However, if we do and then ask them the same question, this usually results in them running away - about as fast as Paul in the opening credits to The Wonder Years.

This time, they weren't so scared of the lanky white boy and I ended up with two kids sitting on my rear wheel rack.

In Phnom Penh, foreigners are all a little bit more common, so this happens infrequently. But when it does, you get that little feeling again of happiness that you live in a country where people are so happy to see you that they scream at you. And if you scream back, it makes them even happier - with a little tinge of fear at the crazy white people on bikes.

Except one slightly chubby kid in Phnom Penh. It is rare that you see naked kids in Phnom Penh, but cycling home one night, I was passing (slowly) this unusually chubby kid who was naked, and maybe slightly too old to be naked - about 5 or so. Sitting in front of older siblings, he raised his hand and bellowed haaallloooo at me. Slightly unsure about this one, I tentatively replied hello rather soberly. At which point, he showed me one of his bare cheeks, slapped it and blew a raspberry. The next time I passed him, he tried it again, but this time there was not even a hiya in return to his shriek.

I'm going to post this before another month passes without me writing a blog, this despite me having so much more to say than just hello. But anyway, I always think it's nice just to say hello.

Take care
Chooks

Culture vulture

After nearly ten years working the arts, and being lucky enough to see some form of great performance at least once a week for the last seven years at Horsecross, I wondered how I'd get on with a reduced dose of culture in my life moving here. I wasn't expecting that there would be nothing cultural to do here, far from it, but I knew that I wouldn't have as much or as easy access to it. Sitting at my desk at the Concert Hall I would regularly be able to listen in on rehearsals or walk a few steps and pop my head into the auditorium to see what was going on onstage. Knowing some of the great music and theatre performances I've missed since leaving Horsecross has made me a little homesick so I've really enjoyed the cultural fixes I've had here in Phnom Penh.

Unsurprisingly, the Khmer arts had a rough time of it during the Pol Pot regime. Artists were killed, along with other intellectuals, and there was no place for the arts, unless you count propaganda songs. After the overthrow of the regime the arts slowly, slowly began to come back to life with the handful of survivors who remembered the traditional dance, music, arts and crafts.

A few weeks ago we went to Sovanna Phum Theatre to watch one of their shows. Sovanna Phum have resurrected traditional music, dance and shadow puppetry. While there was sadly no shadow puppets in the performance we saw (next time!), there was drumming - all the musicians looked like they were having a ball -  dance, and the monkeys. Who were hilarious ...

This last pic shows me trying to play the Sralay - the guy to the right is the musician and he was really kind, letting me have a go. It's a bit like an oboe but you play with the reed actually in your mouth and it's perpendicular, not horizotal. Hard to explain, even harder to play. AND you need to be able to do circular breathing to play it! Fascinating to try.

Another night we went to the circus! A tent had been specially built and acrobats from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos came to the city for three nights to perform.

never a good sign when there are
more performers than spectators

me and the circus tent

The show was meant to start at 5pm but when we got there at 4.50pm, to make sure that we got good seats, only about 20 people were there - in a 1000 seat tent... We waited till after 6pm and still nothing had started. We also wanted to go the opening of an arts festival that happened to be on the same night. Our City Festival is ten days of mostly contemporary visual art and architecture. I'd been helping them with press, and giving my two cents worth about design, so was invited to the private opening at the beautiful UNESCO building.

UNESCO building

So, we decided to scoot over to the opening, hear the speeches, watch the dance performance, look at the art, scoff some brownies and a glass of wine and then head back to the circus for just after 7pm.

We still saw over an hour of circus action - some of it amazing, others less so, but all in all a great night for $3!

amazing feat - firing an arrow from a bow into a balloon using your feet while doing a handstand! (Cambodia)

clowns from Laos

aerial silk acrobatics from Cambodia

the finale, complete with hula hoops covered in tinsel. Love it!

The next night we went to see Khmer Arts Ensemble, which was part of Our City Festival. The Ensemble are a Khmer traditional dance group who only perform in Cambodia every now and then. As this was part of the Festival the tickets were free and there was a bus to take us out to Takhmao (in Kandal province - one more province ticked off!). Their outdoor theatre is absolutely stunning - this is the backdrop

photo from Vinh Dao taken from Our City Festival Facebook page

We weren't allowed to take photos of the performance but I've borrowed some from the Festival's facebook page (all photos by Vinh Dao). All the dancing was done to live music and, while there wasn't a lot of jaw dropping 'how do they DO that?' moves, it was quite beautiful. 

The really unbelievable thing was the hand movements, or more specifically, the back bend of the hands. Hopefully you can get an idea of them from this photo. I can't even force my hand into these shapes, never mind do it while dancing!

And so, we hopped back on the bus and on to our other event of the night. And talk about one extreme to the next.

We went to a fundraiser for Tiny Toones. The website explains properly what TT do but basically street kids can go every day, for free, learn break dancing, hip hop, English, Khmer, computing and maths. These are some of the most disadvantaged, marginalised kids who don't really have great prospects in life - many will be begging or scavenging to help what family they have. Lots will take drugs. TT really does prove the power of the arts in transforming people's lives.

And so for the extremes. We went from a very sedate, beautiful structured evening to a hip hop night in a dark, smoky (yup, those rules haven't quite reached here) pub. It's very strange seeing eight year old kids in a pub...

We didn't see their whole show but did manage to see the older TT members do their final show (video above). They had a space about 3m square to dance in - very impressive!

-----

It's taken a while to write this and since then we've been to more cultural goings ons. And like buses, they all seem to come along at once!  On Friday we saw Tiny Toones again, this time dancing with a French company called Racines Carrées. It was another free show (loving the free stuff!) and absolutely brilliant. Gordon said at the end that he thought it was the best dance thing he'd ever seen. There were no pictures allowed and I'm not even going to begin to try and describe it - suffice to say, smart, impressive, funny and great hip hop dancing. And there was a tuk tuk on stage. Excellent stuff.

Then the NEXT night (which is actually last night as I type) we finally got to see the Battambang circus school, Phare Ponleu Selpak (which means, the brightness of art). They're another organisation that is using the arts for social good, helping young people out of poverty by training them to become professional artists and performers. They've got a temporary website here as their other one had been hacked (even this temporary one is one of the best websites I've seen in Cambodia...) I think the Cambodian performers we saw at the circus (in the big circus tent) were all from PPS.

The show was about a girl called Sokha who survived the Khmer Rouge regime, escaped to the refugee camps (I presume) moved abroad but then came back to Cambodia to help other survivors. Or this is what I took from it as there was no talking. It seems strange to say this about a circus, but it was one of the most moving things I've seen. Simple facial gestures, body movements and symbolic actions conveyed so much and I really found myself welling up at points. 

he's balancing on a board on a metal tube. With two people standing on his shoulders!

that's five men being held up by one...

The girl who played Sokha, and frankly the star of the show for me, was also the girl that we saw shooting the arrow into a ballon, with her feet, while balancing on her hands, at the circus night above. She did the same trick in this show but it was so much more impressive. The segment showed her falling asleep after she had left Cambodia and then the, really rather scary, Khmer Rouge invading her dreams and giving her nightmares. She then proceeded to 'dance' with the dream Khmer Rouge soldier, finally overcoming her dark dreams (symbolised by a balloon draped in dark material) by shooting them with an arrow. From her feet. While balancing on her hands. As you do.

She's sort of upside down here - face down into the ground,  body curved up and over
 then with the guy balancing on her hips!

beautiful acro-balancing

shooting a balloon while doing a handstand. I never quite managed that one in the playground at school...

It was impressively acrobatic, the live music and live painting (!) were brilliant and the acting was also top notch. Another fantastic night out.

So, I'm really pleased to say that I'm managing to get my cultural fixes here in the Penh. What's been great (and this is not meant to sound patronising) is the best things I've seen are the Cambodian arts. The Western arts I've seen here have been lacking. We went to one classical recital by a European trio which left me a bit cold (and not just because of the extreme air conditioning) and heard a European jazz duo which was frankly terrible (and cold - what is it with excessive air-conditioning!). There's a European jazz group who I really liked, even if the lead singer was doing his best to be Jamie Cullum, however, they perform in a bar on the Riverside which is full of old, generally fat, white men dining and drinking with young, generally beautiful, tiny Cambodian girls/women which is all a bit depressing. I'm a big fan of Khmer arts and looking forward to exploring it more. I'd love to give some of it a go so I'm off to start bending my fingers backward. If you hear squeals of pain, you know what it is!

Birthday fun at the Olympic Stadium

Sam and Gilly are two volunteers who are based in Kratie. They are the couple who've inspired our competition to see who can visit the most provinces (Gordon is currently in the lead after his work trip to Siem Reap).

A few weekend's ago it was Sam's birthday and and we were invited to the celebrations here in the big smoke! It started with drinks and snacks at the VSO office (ok, that was actually to welcome the new volunteers who had just arrived but it couldn't have been timed better), then headed out for dinner on the Friday (pics of the fantastic ectoplasm cake plus Sam's take on his birthday weekend here). Saturday afternoon Sam and Gilly were off to the Olympic Stadium and invited us to join them for some fun at the pool.

Gordon is a massive fan of the Stadium and has been wanting to swim there for ages. We went a few weeks ago after work, finally determined to take a dip. Sadly the pool was closed. We did get a chance to see the Cambodian Olympic team in training. There were just swimming laps so it wasn't particularly inspiring to watch however there were two guys there who must be potential (or previous?) Paralympians. One had no legs and one had half of one leg. And they were the fastest in the pool! Now that was inspiring.

Anyway, this was the day for swimming. But first we decided to watch Sam throw himself off the 10 metre diving board and take some pics. And then I took some more pics. Rather a lot more. I'd forgotten how much fun my DSLR is (thanks dad) and took one or two more than necessary thanks to the joy of burst mode!

Sam at the top of the 10m diving board

cowabunga!

You have to look pretty closely to find Sam in this photo. Fluke capture!
(I know this doesn't fit on the page but I had to make it big enough that you could see it)

There were loads of young Khmer guys jumping off the 10m board so I ended up taking quite a lot of pictures of them too...

Some of the jumps were jaw-dropping and squeal inducing (on my part, not theirs). After spending so much time taking photos I only ended up swimming for a short time - and 50 metre pools are knackering so after three lengths I was happily done (I haven't been swimming properly since I came here - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

The swimming pool - where there wasn't much swimming action from Gordon or I

Slightly later in the evening - after swimming - with the sun starting to set

There were some young kids in the pool who decided they wanted their photo taken too

not quite as impressive

After the pool we went to watch the sunset in the main part of the Stadium

Samean and Gilly

aerobics... 

 aerobics...

and more aerobics! Plus lots of people walking or running along the steps/seats
 (the swimming pool is just behind this bit)

our next subjects muscling in on the photo action early

We met some more photogenic kids who we persuaded to have their photos taken...

And as the sun set over the Stadium we headed off our separate ways... Sam and Gilly for birthday steaks and Gordon and I for fantastic pizza with Ken and Samean. Happy days.