A ride in the country

As an impromptu idea, i thought i would go for a nice long bike ride on the Saturday morning then catch a bus up to Phnom Penh to meet some friends. There is this nice resevoir i calculated to be about an hour bike ride south of Kampong Speu with some flooded trees and things in it which looked nice when we drove past.

So my alarm went off at 6am and predictably my good intentions went out the window and snoozed to a much more civilised nine am. The ride down was quite nice, it threatened to rain but held off.

This is the public park area that Kampong Speu town has, between my house and market. As you can see its not really much use as its almost always flooded!

It was really great to be able to stop and have a look at all the things i drive past but never get to stop to see.
However the road i go down is National Road 4 connecting to Sihanoukville port which means the road is chockers with trucks and buses make it a bit unsafe.
There are also random road signs which makes things interesting.

I think my bike isnt really big enough for me so i was having some real issues when i arrived at the place after 1.5 hours riding.

The area is full of quarries taking down whole mountains. My colleaugue noted that its lucky I came now because in a few years Cambodia won't have any! This particular company is the "Taiwan Kamhwa Crushing Company".

Then i decided quite unwisely to not stop for a rest as time was getting on. The wind picked up and was blowing a gale against me and i stupidly spent all my energy racing this school kid who was going past me. So in the end it took me about 3.5 hours to get back on a very empty tank. I limped into Kampong Speu town and ordered a big 'bai cha' (fried rice).

Maybe long bike rides aren't really my thing!

Anway i went home had a quick shower, hopped in a van with 25 others and soon enough was sipping wine on the mighty mighty mekong!

Kamla Wati Prasad - Rest in Peace

We will always love you and miss you.

Laos – Land of eery silences and Beauty

On the occasion of the Pchum Benh holidays (a remembrance period for the dead where you are meant to visit as many pagodas as you can in fifteen days) I decided was a great opportunity to fill a gap in my South East Asia traveling experience and head for the much lauded People’s Democratic Republic of Laos (yes – one of the last examples of pseudo-communism).

It was off to a less than auspicious start, arriving at the airport to be told that my ticket was for two days time, seems I hadn’t thought checking the date on the ticket was necessary. But nevertheless a few phone calls to my travel agent and he was able to sort it.

My old supervisor at AusAID, Simon, had been posted there a few months ago so the main reason was to see him in Vientiane. He and one of his daughters picked me up and we grabbed some pizza and headed back to his place. He has a lovely family and his kids decided for some reason decided I looked like Harry Potter and called me that the rest of the trip!

Vientiane is a bit of a creepy city, its so quiet and there is no energy in the air like in Cambodia, in fact I was a little depressed by it all so I was glad I was staying with Simon and his family. We visited the Patuxai a bizarre Arc De Triumphe meets a Laos Disney Princess structure made out of pure concrete (concrete the Americans had donated to build a new airport but I guess there were artistic differences). You can walk up all the way but most of it reminds me seedy car park stairs complete with urine stench. Worth it for novelty value.

The other sight we went to was the Pha Thuat Luang. Yeah it was nice and worth going to but fifteen minutes round and we were done. We decided I had seen more than my fair share of pagodas in Cambodia so we could skip the rest so we just hung around on the weekend which was great.
On the Monday morning I hopped on a van bound for Van Vieng. I had been somewhat dreading visiting Van Vieng as I had read that it was a skanky backpacker place and I HATE backpackers! The bus left at 9am on a Monday and still half the places weren’t open and the streets were empty. I think Kampong Speu is busier than Vientiane!

On the bus I met a nice old guy traveling with his Thai girlfriend so we struck up a convo which was nice. We arrived at Van Vieng and the van stopped at this bungalow style resort along the river with the most amazing mountain scenery. The bungalow was only 8 bucks so I thought bugger it I will take it.

Van Vieng is, as I suspected, a skanky backpacker town sprinkled with dodgy pizza places, banana pancakes and TVs constantly playing ‘Friends’ for the stoners. But it is set in the most amazing scenery so it is well worth going to.

The next day Johnny and I signed up for a one day tour. It ended up with me, Johnny and two English guys on the tour. First up we kayaked for about thirty seconds across the river and then went tubing through this great cave system and crawled through it, lots of fun. Then we kayaked for about an hour through simply breathtaking gullies and things like that. There were some small rapids which were fun, but predictably my kayak capsized when Johnny and I decided to cut through a bend. We then paddled up to this bar on the side of the river which operated this enormously high flying fox thing to jump into the water. First of all terrified by it I thought bugger it and had a go. Lots of fun.

The next day I hopped in another mini-bus bound for Luang Prabang. Unfortunately it was with this absolute twit English woman who also lived in Cambodia who wouldn’t shut up and the frequency of her voice cut through my MP3 player. I avoided her like the plague knowing if she knew I lived in Cambodia as well she would pin me for a few hours. This poor Brazilian guy was next to her and whenever he dozed off, she would watch him to see if he was stirring then start the conversation again. I have to say the mountains we went over and the Hmong villages we went through were among the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen in my life (probably number two :)

Luang Prabang is a beautiful city, sitting alongside the Mekong and Nam Kang rivers. The whole city is a world heritage area which I am not sure is entirely justified. There are many beautiful temples within walking distance of which I visited many.

The national Museum is the former Royal Palace. I have to say it is significantly less opulent than othe Royal Palace's around the joint (Thailand, Cambodia). In fact it seemed more like a manor house than a palace. The last full day there I was booked to go on an elephant tour and waterfall visit but some awful news came through and I left the next morning to Sydney for a week.

Training in the Thum

As the food for work focal point I thought it my duty to inform you of my crazy week of Karaoke, sun and hangovers. Yes it was the annual food for work training when the Kampong Speu boys go off the leash in another province, Kampong Thom.

The drive up there was stunning. There are heaps of flooded plains so you see large trees with only their tips sticking out and people getting around on canoes. One day I want to take a taxi so I can stop and take photos. Luckily the word of the day for me was ‘noumbankchok’- rice noodles and low and behold we had lunch at a rice noodle restaurant. Most of the bridges here were built by the Australian Government so there are kangaroo signs everywhere.

It was three days, two theory (mostly in Khmer) and one practical which was lots of fun wading in the pond but everyone got really sunburnt.
The real fun was at night when we went for dinner and inevitably karaoke. We had dinner at the beef restaurant which was well very meaty. A particular highlight was one dish presented as ‘breast of cow’ which after some enquiries turned out to be the cow udder. Hey it wasn’t that bad!

Afterwards we would proceed to karaoke and I shocked myself at how bad my “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie was. And my hat goes off to Jordan and Peter Andre as singing the theme from Aladdin is very hard!

Some of the Fam in the Bodge

Almost immediately after Simon left, I met up with Mum, Dad, Andrew and Tara in Phnom Penh. They had spent the week in Siem Reap looking at temples then down to the coast at Kep (where it rained the whole time). It was great showing them around although not without its stresses J

A highlight was the Mekong cruise out to the silk island which I had not done before. Also the performance at Sovanna Phum was amazing, this time it had a lot of acrobatic stuff in it which was incredible. When I went with Simon it was folk and classical dancing and with Tess it was the story of the Ramakin in shadow puppet and dance.

We also took a day trip out to Kampong Speu which they loved (weird I know) and had dinner at Ampe Phnom (complete with ant soup and mystery meat which turned out to be deer). The river there is gorgeous and it was great lying in the hammocks. The monkey temple is a bit lame though.

Apart from that have been on a few interesting field trips around Kampong Speu especially in Basedth and Oral which have been great. We had a big mission go to Oral to check out some endemic problems we have been having with the maternal and child health program there which seems to have improved since.

In Basedth we passed over a bridge WFP had built many years ago, which Ratha was quite taken with hence many photos of us all over the bridge.

Life in the speu continues to be wet and muddy which I am ok with. The latest drama has been my cleaner who I suspect is stealing my underwear and WFP shirts…creepy I know. I asked her about it but it was clear my Khmer is not really up to such complex tasks. If she is taking them (repeat….creepy) I think she has realized I have cottoned on to it so I am watching her J