Kayaking, Koh Trong and killing time in Kratie

Kratie has been on our list of places to visit in Cambodia for a while but towards the end of last year we realised that we'd better get our skates on as two of our friends who live there were leaving at the end of the year. Sam and Gilly have kept a blog about their two years in Kratie, which you can read here, and have also featured in our blog.

The weekend we were debating going also turned out to be the opening weekend of Sorya Kayaking Adventures, a new company established by Suzanne, who had been our neighbour here in Phnom Penh. Suzanne had popped back to Phnom Penh and when she told us that weekend was the opening, we knew we had to go.

We arrived at our guesthouse and quickly ordered some food. Gordon's "proper meal" arrived within 10 minutes but I had to wait 50 minutes for pancakes (killing time #1 - okay, so it's not really killing time but I wanted another 'k' for the title and I couldn't figure out to make dolphins or sunsets start with 'k'). We'd been warned the food could sometimes take a while but that was taking the biscuit!

we're great actors

about to start

having a break on a sandbank

It turns out we're appalling. Truly appalling. The smiles above were completely faked for the camera and hide the fact that we fought nearly the whole way. Lesson learned. Solo kayaks next time! However, it was amazing to be out on the river at that time of day, watching the sunset on one side of us, and the clouds light up in a blaze of pink on our other side from the setting sun. Beautiful.

us and the sunset on the Mekong (thanks for the pic Suzanne)

That night a group of us went out for dinner - and waited nearly two hours for food to get to all of us (killing time #2). I was enjoying Kratie, but this was getting ridiculous. When we got back to the guesthouse I learned my second lesson of the day. Don't leave a mosquito coil burning for hours in a non-ventilated room... unless you want to suffocate yourself that is.

Next day, after breakfast with Sam and Gilly's bai sach chrook lady (bai sach chrook = pork and rice - a staple Khmer breakfast and some of my favourite Khmer food), we hopped on the boat over to Koh Trong island where we hired some bikes and went to explore!

lots of houses had these at the front -
to scare away bad spirits I think

 the big jars on the right hold water

big grins at a temple

cows getting a wash with fishing/house boats behind

Later that evening we joined Sam and Gilly, and their two friends who were visiting from home, for a trip to see arguably Kratie's biggest selling point - the dolphins. Kratie is one of the few places you can see the Irrawaddy dolphins and for a time the local community made a good living from the dolphins being close by. However, now the whole thing is government run, and the community don't benefit as much from the tourist money coming in.

I still have reservations about the damage tourists might be doing to the dolphins. We went out on motorboats and, while all the drivers kept a distance, when the dolphins moved off we followed after them. It felt a little like we were harassing them, however, if tourists weren't paying money (some of which does benefit the area) the dolphins wouldn't be protected as much by the fishermen, who would use more dolphin-harmful but bigger-fish-catch fishing methods. There are only an estimated 80-90 dolphins in this part of the river (which runs up to the border with Laos). I suppose as long as safe tourism is there, the community will do what they can to make sure the dolphins will be there too.

Sadly I didn't manage to get any pictures of the dolphins although we did see them. Unlike their bottlenose cousins, they're not show offs and you don't often see more than the top of their head and a glimpse of a fin. WWF has a very short video of the dolphins - I think by the fact that they only have 16 seconds of video footage it shows you how hard they are to catch on film. Here's a picture from t'interweb so you know what I'm talking about.

They're really lovely looking animals but, bizarrely, nearly all the pictures on the internet look like they've been photoshopped. I think it's something to do with their (naturally occurring) Mona Lisa smile.

We went on our dolphin cruise late in the afternoon so we could also be on the water for sunset again. It was another stunner of a sunset.

On the way to the dolphins we'd stopped off to see Wat Sambok, a hilltop pagoda with stunning views over the countryside.

monk statues line the staircase the whole way up

Dinner that evening was something we'd heard lots about from Gilly and Sam - cow on the hill. It's like a table top BBQ. You get a plate of meat with a raw egg (to coat the meat in), a plate of veg and a lump of lard. Lard goes on top of the "hill" ( the silver burner in the photo), meat goes on top of that to be cooked, and the veg goes round the bottom edge in water/fat/oil. It was tasty but definitely a dangerous way to eat. The hot fat spitting out was a bit nippy! Didn't put Gordon off obviously though.

The next day we had a wee cycle round town and visited Wat Roka Kandal, the oldest preserved pagoda in Cambodia and then killed time (#3) waiting on our minibus, which was nearly two hours late. If I'd known it was going to be that late, I'd have ordered some food...

Pchum Ben holiday part 3 - Singapore

(NB These Pchum Ben holiday blogs were meant to come one after the other but that didn't quite happen. We went to Singapore in October...)

After the joy that was Melaka (blog part 1 and part 2) we got on the bus back to Singapore already having had a great holiday. The border crossing on both occasions was brilliant. Quick and easy with just a short walk from the bus into passport control for exiting one country, a wee drive to the next passport control for entering the next country and then you were on your way.

street art in Chinatown

Chinatown

We stayed in a lovely hostel in Chinatown but it was a bump back to reality with the price. Our three night stay in Melaka, in a private room, was the same price as one night for two beds in a 16 bed shared dorm. Ouch. However, the hostel did have a massage chair that you could use for free and an endless supply of bread and Nutella. Silver linings!

our hostel was just up this street

All the Chinese medicine stacked up outside...

...the Chinese medicine shop

old meets new in Chinatown

 dragon heads

the Buddha's tooth temple - we didn't actually go in

Chinatown was, again, a photographic highlight of the city, however Little India in Singapore was far more visually exciting than in Melaka. We happened to be there when Deepavali (Divali), the Festival of Lights, was being celebrated.

the entrance to Little India

the entrance to Little India

colourful houses in Little India

Deepavali market stall

Deepavali market stall

Deepavali market stalls

Little India's Deepavali decorations lit up at night

There are endless things to do in Singapore, day and night, but most are fairly costly and, after doing so much in Melaka, we were happy to take it easy. One thing we did do was go to the Changi Museum, which is dedicated to Singapore's history during the Second World War. It was an interesting museum but more exciting was getting the train, and then the bus across town to the museum. Public transport doesn't exist in Cambodia so it was a real novelty. And it's all very nice, clean public transport too.

Another nice thing about Singapore was that we could walk around and feel completely safe, even late at night. Both of us feel safe in Cambodia but you do have to take care of bags in case of opportunist bag-snatchers, and I don't like to flash my big camera for similar reasons.  

One night we wandered down to the riverside to see the Supertree Grove at Gardens by the Bay. This is right beside Marina Bay Sands - an uber expensive, fancy pants hotel that is forever advertising on TV (with a terrible, but very catchy, jingle). As I googled the web address of the hotel I found, on wonderful Wiki, that it is the world's most expensive standalone casino property at $8 billion, including the cost of the land. Turns out fancy pants doesn't even begin to describe it! Anyway, they very kindly don't charge you for walking through the hotel (at a walkway half way up the building) so we did that. And it's also free to take photos, so we did that too!

The Singapore Flyer (bit like the London Eye) with the gardens to the right

Marina Bay Sands hotel on the left, and the Singapore Flyer again

Supertree Grove - they have a light and sound show which was  very pretty. And free.
I assume you can see the Singapore trend developing...

The flower shaped ArtScience Museum, in
front of the hotel and part of the hotel resort

we thought the ArtScience museum was rather reminiscent of this
art installation we saw in Buenos Aires a few years ago

On our other full day we bought a picnic and went to explore the Botanic Gardens. Neither of us are particularly interested in gardens but we couldn't miss a chance for a bit of nature (even if it is 'structured' nature.) What a delight grass is, I tell you. 

picnic with a view 

spot tiny me in the picture!

I could be mean and say he was trying to find the gardens....

After the gardens we walked down to Orchard Road - the fancy shopping district of Singapore. It's only expensive if you buy something.

We're not in Kansas any more Toto!

We narrowly missed out on the free limo back to the airport.

We'd decided to get an early flight out of Singapore so that we could have an extra night in the city and fly back to Phnom Penh in the morning and go into work straight away. Great idea - on paper. Not so great when you realise that you have to wake up at 4am and then pay for a taxi (rather than get the bus) to the airport. However, Singapore airport is delightful - where else do you wander through orchids and fish ponds?

Way back at the start of these Pchum Ben holiday blogs you may remember that, after a few hours in Singapore, I was beginning to worry that I might never want to return to Phnom Penh. At one point (in Melaka) while looking at what we would do in Singapore I even startd looking at a marketing job at Singapore Zoo. And people know I'm not a big fan of zoos. However, while we enjoyed Singapore, it was really nice to return to the familiarity of 'the Penh'. It may be dirtier and more chaotic but it's home and I love it. 

The King Father's Funeral - A glimpse of Cambodia's past

We were out of the country when the King Father died in October, and we missed witnessing the huge numbers of Cambodians who made their way from throughout the country to pay their respects at the Royal Palace. Catching up with what had happened also meant learning about the relationship between the people and their King Father.

Claire had been told that foreigners who have only been here for a couple of years would find it hard to understand how big a part the King Father had played in the lives of Cambodians over the last decades, and without this we could not understand their sense of loss.

This is where the King Father's cremation happened.
It was built during the 3 months mourning period. 

The King Father was a man who was anointed King by the French when aged only 18, but rather than be a puppet, he won independence for his country. Then instead of sitting and enjoying his position, he abdicated to become Prime Minister creating a period which is  thought of as the golden era of modern Cambodia. The Sihanouk Era of the 50s and 60s is the yardstick against which Cambodia currently measures itself; the dream to which Cambodia has never  returned.

Respect for authority is a characteristic that is definitely more ingrained in Cambodia than in European/North American cultures, but even Cambodians who recognised the mistakes and faults of the King Father (he was a bit too closely aligned with the Khmer Rouge initially), told us that they would weep uncontrollably when thinking of his death. He not only won them independence in the 50s, but he brought them back together again after the horrors of the 70s and the 80s, when he returned as King.

The King Father though the ages - lapels that you should buy to wear with a white top to show respect

During the 90s, there were still deep divisions in Cambodia; the Khmer Rouge was fighting and there was even an armed battle in Phnom Penh overthrowing the then first prime minister. But above this was the King Father, then King, who was the unifying figure, the moral authority that all Cambodians listened to.

It was in 2004 that he became the King Father, as he abdicated and one of his sons was appointed (by a council; it is not a hereditary monarchy) King, but his place as head of the Cambodian family remained.

You see trucks full of people every day, usually garment or construction workers, but this was for the funeral. 

So when his funeral was due to take place on Feb 1st - 4th, it was expected that Phnom Penh would be overcome with maybe a million-plus Cambodians coming to pay respects. This led foreigners, and some Cambodians, in Phnom Penh to plot their escape from the city but before we made ours, Claire and I got up early to walk the streets of Phnom Penh and witness the funeral procession.

Flanking the streets ready for the procession

Because of the procession, cars and motos had been banned from a section of the city and we walked the streets with thousands of Cambodians in a serene, peaceful and even happy atmosphere. Along with others, we stopped and looked at monkeys above our heads playing on telephone wires. We passed the Independence Monument and strolled across what is usually the busiest road and into the park. We wandered into the huge Wat beside the Royal Palace and through tree lined streets spotting things that you normally pass by. All the time surrounded by people who seemed to have something to celebrate rather than just commemorate.

It felt as if this was what the city could have been like back in the Sihanouk Era; his funeral was not just helping Cambodian remember those golden times, but were actually giving Cambodians one more experience of them.

A picture of the King Father in the procession

4x4s rule the road in Cambodia. They honk their horn and stop for nothing.  They are a symbol of wealth, power and being above the law. 

We ended the morning watching the procession with a host of Cambodians, including a bunch of little kids who had commandeered, for a better view, the roof and bonnet of a now too ubiquitous 4x4. There was no better symbol of the Sihanouk era reigning once again, if even just for a morning.

Gordon

Cambodia hosts USA vs China

We live in a flat above a family who live in the two ground floor apartments. Gran and Grandpa (the owners), live in one, and their daughter and her husband live in the other. We generally have small conversations, only ever in the courtyard, discussing whether we are going out to eat or what food we have bought to cook; how hot it is or whether it will rain; and lately, when our parents are coming to visit or have they left yet. All stuff we can manage and then there is a realisation that the conversation can go no further, we say thank you, smile, bob our heads and scurry away.

But one day, who would have believed it, change happened.

Of the six flats you can see, ours is bottom left - kind of above my Dad's head.

This year, Cambodia is the chair of ASEAN (kind of like Asia's EU or Africa Union) meaning that Cambodia had a much larger role in regional affairs, and played host to lots of conferences and motorcades. And it was as Obama's plane arrived into Phnom Penh that Gran, going straight past the usual conversations, invited Claire into her home to watch Obama step onto the tarmac and into a motorcade that would snake through Phnom Penh.

The arrival of Obama had been talked about for weeks before. People began preparing protests to appeal for his help with land and human rights issues, or to release prisoners believed to be innocent. The media began speculating about who he would meet while in Cambodia and what he would say. The US Presidential election even became news.

In an interesting aside, my boss wanted Obama to win the election because he felt wars would be more likely if Romney won. 

But for the other 50 weeks of the year, it is not Obama or America that dominates, but China. In 2011, Chinese investment totalled $1.9bn, ten times that of the US. In 2012, China has given $500m in soft loans and grants to Cambodia, plus a $24m gift that Cambodia can use as it wants. Behind these numbers are the Chinese people and businesses playing a larger role in every day life, such as building a major new bridge that will replace one built by the Japanese.

The 2012 investments came at the same time as China was showing "appreciation", in the words of the Cambodian Secretary of State for Finance, for how Cambodia kept the issue of sovereignty over some islands in the South China Sea off the ASEAN agenda. This dispute involves Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia (all ASEAN members) and China (not a member but attends meetings).

Obama, Hun Sen (PM of Cambodia), Wen Jiabao (Premier of China)

So it was considering all of these things that I asked my boss, Rithy, whether more Cambodians have heard of Barack Obama or Wen Jiabao or Hu Jintao. He had no doubt that it was Obama. And whilst Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao have come and gone with motorcades, flags and fanfare, Gran had never invited us to watch these on TV. In fact, I'm not sure they were even on TV.

I bet if you asked the Cambodian youth, especially in Phnom Penh, if they want to live a life like people in China or America do, they would choose America. Whilst China has cash, America has allure.

Gordon

PS, just referring back to paragraph one, if you are ever in Cambodia and somebody asks you whether you will fry your eggs, just say yes rather than trying to explain scrambled eggs in Khmer.

A New Year surprise in Siem Reap

I had heard about Pub Street in Siem Reap before seeing it and it evoked hazy memories of alcohol soaked holidays in Gran Canaria and Crete when I was 20. I feared that I when I saw it in its (drunken, pink) flesh, it could be enough to make me ashamed of my own kind.

It isn't subtle and certainly is full of tourists wanting a drink, but it is more a street of restaurants and bars where you can sit and relax than pubs full of ripened Westerners belching lager. But this was in August, and we were going there for Hogmanay (New Year's Eve to non-Scottish readers), so any kind of transformation could occur.

Pub (St)reet, Siem Reap. There is also one on the road next to it with flashing neon arrows pointing the way just in case you were drunk enough not to find it. 

Apart from wealthier people in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, Cambodian youth are usually home by 9pm, the family reins proving strong. The importance of the family also means that traditional  celebrations take place at the family home rather than out in the streets. Maybe it is because "International New Year", Khmer New Year is in April, is not a traditional holiday that the celebrations for this holiday weren't traditional either.

We came out of the Old Market at 10pm and to witness a mass of Cambodians standing, dancing and singing in a main street. Occasional waves of cheers and screams rose up over our heads for no obvious reason. Maybe the crescendos were acting like valves releasing the swelling excitement of a public party that Cambodians didn't know how to control.

And this isn't even Pub Street! The view from Blue Pumpkin Cafe

We squirmed into the upstairs of Blue Pumpkin Cafe for ice cream (I had beer) and heard the screams and cheers rising again, prompting us to rush to the window in case they were for Psy performing Gangnam Style live, only to see that nothing had changed. They were just cheering because they wanted to.

And it was this transformation that was astounding. Cambodian behaviour could be stereotyped by rigid rules, family first and no public displays of emotion but here were hundreds of kids aged 16 - 25 whose kindred spirits might be those who danced to Bill Haley and the Comets in the 1950s. Home by 9? These kids were rocking round the clock past midnight.

Check out the 20 sec video that I took: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h91X3kB0hc

Easing through the excitement, we turned the corner into Pub Street to be met by a wall of people and noise. Cambodians were hanging over balconies, standing on pavement-bar tables and jumping up and down to the music. Then we were soaked, proof that young Cambodians knew that some traditions, throwing water during celebrations, were worth keeping.

The Cambodian youngsters in Siem Reap were probably ones who had gone to Siem Reap for the holiday meaning they are wealthier ones and more likely to be exposed to Western ways. Rigid rules are relaxed somewhat when you are not playing in your own town where it can reflect on your family. But this wasn't just a party of wealthy Cambodian tourists, I saw parents with children, very likely from Siem Reap, standing there taking it all in too.


Cambodians had retaken Pub Street, found their own expression of partying and made it a New Year to remember.

From L to R: Khmer guy in hooped polo shirt, Claire (co-author of this wonderful blog), Trish (or Pat, my Mum's cousin who was beginning a cycle ride from Siem Reap to Sihanoukville the next morning at 8am...), Alison (Trish's/Pat's friend - also doing the cycle), Sam (VSO vol and author of Hand-painted signs of Kratie), Gilly (VSO vol, muse for Sam's book), Owen (Sam's brother who was visiting). Gordon took the pic.

Sua s'dey ch'nam tmey (hello new year - what Cambodians say instead of Happy New Year)

Gordon

Anything he can do I can do better

AKA a blog post which could also be called "If he can put up pictures of his pants then so can I!" or, "If the world really is going to end, I'm getting the last word..."

As Gordon mentioned here, in a rather overly-sensationally titled blog 'Pants: how Victoria saved the Beckham's marriage', you go through rather a lot of underwear here, taking a clean pair of knickers every time you have a shower. It's a struggle to find cotton ones here, I was regularly running a bit short, and getting a bit bored, of my plain black and plain white pants so I put out an SOS to my lovely mum.

She didn't let me down.

Yes, those are pants with stars, stripes, polka dots, flowers, and even ice cream cones.

Told you I could do it better! ;-)