Return of the Green Rice Fields

Well Australia Day Weekend was a blast in the Penh. Friday night I headed to the Ambassadors residence for the official Australia Day reception. Since most of my friends were not invited because either they weren’t Australian or were not connected the embassy I wasn't planning to go but since all the Australian volunteers were invited I figured I would find someone there.

All in all it was a bit of a fizzer, it was pissing down and was far too formal for my liking. On the upside my country director was there and got a bit sozzled which was quite amusing and I met up with Kat who is the new AusAID person posted to Phnom Penh who I used to work with in Canberra.

I am pretty sure I do not want to go back to AusAID by the end of that night, not because anything had happened but because I saw this fake lifestyle of taxpayer funded soirees and ridiculously sized houses. Very seductive but I figure I am too young to sell out...yet. But watch this space when i have to seriously consider my future : ) There was also this complete idiot guy from the foreign affairs department who pretty much told us we were tresspassing a few minutes after the scheduled closing of the party and then came out and accused of us of stealing flowers! The next day was a kickass bbq with friends and I bought a new couch on the Sunday.

The other exciting news was I have moved hotels. The old place has a new guy at front desk who was just a grumpy shit who didnt help me at all and kept putting me in the underground room (no natural light messes with you big time!). So Sharon (Cristy’s friend who works for CARE) put me up for the weekend and Cristy introduced me to the Golden Street Mafia [ ok an explanation – there is this street of hotels all owned by the same family and all named golden something like golden bridge, golden star etc. The problem is that they are well located and well priced so they have become a bit precious about who stays there so you kinda have to be introduced and they make an effort to give you a room – strange I know but its high season so everything is filling up].

This week I went on a 3 day field trip with Ratha and Sokhom to the provinces of Kampot then up to Kandal then back to Kampong Speu to check on the construction of box culverts to divert water flow on canals and roads. Ratha and Sokhom are the two 'bad boys' of the office so it was inevitable it would end up with loads of drinking. Also heard a lot of office gossip which was interesting oh and what I thought was a really cool saying "the cat is the teacher of the tiger" - not really sure what it means but seems profound :)

We were walking along one of the roads to inspect the structure in the rice fields and Ratha pointed at a tree and said that in Pol Pot times they ate the berry of this tree a lot. He then told me the story of his family. They were living in Phnom Penh but were moved by the Khmer Rouge out to Prey Veng to work on the rice fields in '75 when he was about 9 years old. Prey Veng is near the Vietnam border and the KR got increasingly paranoid that anyone in that area was working for the Vietnamese (who was their enemy). So they decided to move his group over to Pursat on the other side of the country. They slept overnight in Phnom Penh and were given kromas (traditional multiuse cloth) that were dotted in red or blue. They arrived in Pursat and the people who were living there told his family that they needed to destroy their kromas immediately. The people who were given the red ones were executed immediately on arrival while the blue ones (which they had) would be executed later. His family was relatively 'lucky' as they lost only one member of the family.

The KR divided the people into two groups, the 'old people' who were people living in the villages and the traditional farmers and the 'new people' were those living in the cities. It was mainly the 'new people'that were seen as traitors and executed or worked to death. Interestingly enough we often pass Pol Pot era water gates and culverts in many areas like this one.

Oh and my friend Kurt sent around a map of the areas of Cambodia that had been bombed by the USA during the Vietnam War (which was kept an official secret). It covers pretty much all the South and the border with Vietnam which is interesting because I have often wondered why i keep seeing bomb casings in areas far away from the Vietnam border. To put this into perspective officially the USA dropped 2,756,941 tonnes of bombs on Cambodia from '70 to '73. In the whole of WWII the allies dropped just over 2 million tonnes of bombs.

On a less depressing note we had a funny incident happen in Kandal Province. We travelled deep into Kandal to Leuk Desk close to the Vietnam border. The tributaries and canals running off the Mekong penetrate this area frequently so there are many bridges that are questionable which we considered crossing in our 4WD...

Then bit the bullet and did...

We had to hop on a motorbike to get to our destination as the car could not get any further. Whipping through this village was loads of fun but the ride was equally terrifying! I think I spent more time in mid air than sitting on the seat but I clung to the metal bar and was okay and managed to land back on the seat everytime i was thrown up in the air :) Ratha enjoyed driving and kept freaking me out and say "oh my god oh my god" whenever we went over a bump.

Needless to say down the end of a large canal in the way out rice fields (this area is still conducting the late harvest so it was nice to see some green) the motorbike got a flat tyre. So we had to wheel the bike all the way back along the canal and through the village to have the tyre replaced. It was a little awkward as this was as country as villages are in Cambodia so people were just perplexed as to why I was there. Eventually we found a pool hall in the village and a few hours and parts later we were ready to go.

We headed back to Kampong Speu to investigate a bridge that had been damaged by a WFP food delivery. We did an assessment and the transporting company will have to pay to repair it.

On a personal note I have moved house but I will do a seperate post with piccies on that. In sad news one of our colleaugues' 8 month of daughter passed away last week which was a tragedy. I can't imagine anything so heartbreaking. Death seems to be following me around as I came into the office the other day and there was a funeral next door. Apparently the daughter in law of the nice old man next door had passed away due to complications of AIDS - his son had died the same way a few years earlier.

The weather is hot and is going to get hotter. There are frequent power outages now but luckily the office has a generator. Oh and I heard today that Vannak, one my good friends at the office and one of the drivers, has got another job and is leaving us this month.

Oh and I have to share this photo with you. Ratha got great pleasure in teaching me how to pick the sex of a palm tree. This photo is of a family of palm trees, the husband, the wife, the daughter and the baby :)

Ok Ciao!