The dusty highway

Hi Everyone

So i have finally returned to Kampong Speu after two weeks on the road, criss crossing the country for work and just this morning back from another great weekend in Singapore with Mark, Tara, Amali and Dilan. I have to say i am so happy to be back in my own bed!

The first part of this foray was over to Prey Veng (other side of Phnom Penh) for the annual Food-For-Work workshop. I had never been to this town before and had pretty much assumed it was a bit of a s*ithole based on reviews of others, but its actually a really charming town. As usual, whenever we go to a new town the guys always want to do a city tour so we drove around and saw the sights, including this massive reservoir.

Turns out its not a reservoir, but a low lying piece of land that fills up when the Mekong and its tributaries flood. We also reflected that almost without a doubt, every town is miles more picturesque than Kampong Speu. I still love the speu, but it ain't exactly a pretty place!

It was bloody hot for the field exercises but as always lots of fun. I particularly like this training cos i get to hang out with Chantheoun and Narin (the Disaster Risk Reduction section in Phnom Penh) whom i get on really well with.

Midway through the training, we took refuge and ate our lunch at a pagoda, in the monk's dining room. I once again earnt a lifetime of baldness by wearing my hat inside the compound. The guys were discussing the girl's at the karaoke place the night before and then realised there was a Buddha shrine nearby. Piseth then made a small prayer asking that all his sins be placed on the Barang (foreigner)!. As if i dont have enough to worry about! Everyone also had a bit of a snooze.

So much time with my crew means of course hitting the Karaoke bars repeatedly. I have slowed down on my K consumption but I went crazy this time. Most of the places were very seedy but there was this quite classy place where i bust out ten songs in an evening (great hits such as " Hello" , " House of the Rising Sun" , " Unchained Melody" and "Black or White" to name a few). Mony and I did a duet of " I Just Called to Say I Love You" which was highly acclaimed : )

Some of the guys (the drivers) were not attending the training and sent an SMS over dinner one night. " We are very sad. We are at the office drinking beer and eating dog". Make of that what you will.

After a weekend in Phnom Penh (mainly beginning my shopping for stuff to take back to Oz), we zipped over to Kampong Thom province for HIV/AIDS Home Based Care training. This wasn't nearly as fun as the other training but its useful for our partners to network and receive best practice. I had sent a couple of stinging emails to the head of Health and Nutrition Unit because of a few cock ups that have happened in our area so i was concerned it might be awkward but it turned out okay.

On the way up I had to ring a journalist to clarify why some of our schools had started the school breakfast a bit later than our press release. I was really nervous because i know how journalists misquote things and this particular paper was notorious for targetting WFP (probably because the editor runs a competitor to our school breakfast program). Anyway, the article came out the next day and i was mostly happy with it.

At the first coffee break of the training, I came out and everyone was craning their necks out the windows. When i elbowed my in i saw there were tens of trucks of troops moving along the road, as well as countless supply trucks. You may remember i mentioned that Thai troops moved in Cambodian territory a few months back, caused by a disagreement of the border demarcation and a particular temple called Preah Vihear (something i want to visit in December). Well they kind of never moved.

By 1pm that day everyone's mobile phones were going off. Cambodia and Thailand were now at war. Rumours were flying everywhere and the staff based in Siem Reap (quite a distance from the action) were mulling over driving back and moving their famillies. There was even a rumour that the Vietnamese Army had arrived on the scene to support the Cambodians (despite the logisitical impossibility of them doing so). I got a call from my friend who works at a large international agency and they had removed all their staff from all provinces bordering Thailand and reports that many villages along the very long border with Thailand were being evacuated. And worst of all, a lot of the action seemed to be not very far from a plot of land i bought earlier this year! (as if my shares being decimated in the financial crisis wasn't enough!).

So the real story? The Thais were stalling on withdrawing their forces (they have their own internal problems going on that feed into all this) , so Hun Sen (Cambodian PM) signed orders that Cambodian troops can fire on any Thai troops inside Cambodia. There was only one small, localised firefight that resulted in two (rumoured three) Khmer casualties and 10 Thais were captured. The Thai's were already tetchy because the week before two of their soldiers lost their legs stepping on landmines (they claimed the Cambodian's laid fresh ones but more likely it was one of the thousands still left there by the Khmer Rouge - who were karmically enough supported by the Thais).

It was amazing to see nationalism inflame so rapidly. If i was a Thai i wouldnt have felt safe being in that room. Thankfully things seem to have calmed down.

So after this training (and a lighter karaoke schedule) I zipped down to Phnom Penh for a meeting to introduce the new Country Director to AusAID. I have been here for almost two years and the old director/deputy country director never used these contacts I had when i was fresh and knew more about AusAID! A little frustrating but hey.

After another meeting on Friday I popped over to Singapore for a weekend. This is the last of my flurry of trips i booked when homesick a few months ago but i will be back again before i leave Asia. When i got out of the airport, my heart sank a little. I think the combination of knowing im leaving and the exhaustion of the last two weeks (including a lovely 4:45am wake up that morning) made me feel a little less than enthusiastic about the bodge.

But the Bodge must have been listening because the share-van i flagged down was half full of monks. Monks generally have to travel in the back seats or up with the driver because people sit on both sides of the seats in the middle and they can't sit next to women cos they is dirty. Anyway, so i was slotted in the back with three monks and after a while started making half khmer/half english chit chat with a monk a bit younger than me. He then pulls out some books and asks me to teach him grammar. We went through the book and it soon became apparent i had no idea what a preposition was. So for the rest of the trip, we did his homework on selecting the main verb and the helping verb.

Just when you feel down, the bodge has a way of picking you back up again!

Oh and this is the latest critter to join my menagerie living in my house : )