Nov 2006

It's been a while since my last post but I've been VERY busy! I had a good week w/ mom who randomly decided to visit for a week! It was nice to show her the sites around PP and then we were off to Siem Reap for a long weekend to see the Angkorian temples, which were absolutely amazing. I'll be posting pictures of them when I get a chance. The the following week I was busy getting ready to say goodbye to Cambodia! I can't believe time passed so quickly! I spent most of this week buying goodbye presents for people, setting up a party for the kids at the center, and cramming all my belongings into my 50 litre backpack! It was quite surreal on thursday morning to be sitting on a bus leaving Cambodia! Thursday was overall a pretty stressful day- first, as I was packing, a scorpion crawls out of a box I had on my shelf. I just picked the box up and it fell out and crawled under my backpack. So then I'm like "great, WHAT am I supposed to do now?" Did I mention that it was about 15 min before I had to leave for the bus? Luckily donnai came home a few min later and I went up to her and was like "donnai, in my room, BUG- SCARY BUG"- I finally drew her a picture and shes like "ohhhhh baaaad". So there we are standing on the bed in my room with a tiny can of buy spray and a 6 foot metal duster handle prodding at the backpack! Shes about to poke the backpack when she turns to me and asks "how big"? I demonstrate about 2 inches with my fingers and she heads back upstairs and comes back 2 minutes later w/ a 10 foot metal duster handle (much more suitable!)
donnai and jo: 1, scorpion: 0
So after that whole event was over, I realize that the text message in which jacqui sent the name of the hotel where i'm to meet her in Ho Chi Minh City, has been automatically deleted from our apt phone. Excellent! So an hour later I find myself alone on a bus to Ho Chi Minh City with a dead cell phone, a week-expired cambodian visa and not a clue where I'm supposed to be going when I arrive! I even used my best Khmer to borrow someones phone before we crossed the border but realized jacqui's phone doesn't work now that shes left cambodia (and she also hasn't had working email). Needless to say the day was quite and experience! I came up w/ a plan to go to the main backpacker area in the city where I figured I was likely to find an internet cafe, where I hoped I could check facebook and find a message from her w/ the hotel name. Thank god for luck, facebook, and globalization! I was able to throw on my backpack, find an internet cafe, get the name of the hotel from facebook, and ask directions to it in english! So here I am in Vietnam! More vietnam adventures to come...

So I've had a pretty action-packed week. Last weekend was Bon Om Tuk, which is the giant water festival in Phnom Penh to celebrate the flow of the Tonle Sap changing directions. Over three days (sat-mon) teams from the provinces come with their boats to race. Thousands of people flock to the riverside in PP (Cambodians and foreigners) and watch the races. Despite what I'd heard about problems w/ crowd control, pickpockets, etc... I had a really awesome time! We followed the locals and sat over the wall that lines the riverside and had an excellent view. The boats are crazy! They are all decorated really beautifully and usually have about 50 rowers (although on some big ones I counted 80!) When I joked about wanting to go in one of the boats, I found myself being hoisted into one of the boats by donnai and some boatmen! It was crazy!! All of a sudden i'm standing in this boat with an oar in my hand and all these Cambodians cheering/laughing! It was hilarious! Well at least I now know how to say I want to row in the boat (knoym jung om tuk)!
Last Saturday, Nary (one of the CCASVA street workers) took me to her home outside of PP. It was really sweet. It's amazing how you can travel just 30 min outside PP and be in the middle of nowhere in rural Cambodia. I did, as I had feared, have to choke down a "lovely" home cooked meal at her house. Lucky for me I got to see the chicken we ate when it was bought from the local market with flies swarming all over it! yum! We've developed a saying around here: TGFR (thank god for rice!) Aside from the meal, the day was really cool. I went to a beautiful pagoda with nary's niece and got to see some really beautiful scenery!
On Thursday I was back out for another adventure w/ nary- this time with her husband and Mr. songheng (another street worker.) Now when I was invited to this one the language barrier proved a bit difficult and all I understood was "on Thursday we take you far outside PP to walk by river."- well, it sounded fun and besides, not knowing where you're going is quite the adventure! We ended up in Takiev province, about 30 km outside PP. Despite the constant uncertainty of where we were going, the day was actually really, really fun. We went to Nary's sister's house and had lunch (TGFR again!) and then went to this beautiful river where we went for a boat ride and had a swim. Then we went to see this ancient temple that predates the Angkor wat temples- I got a little taste of what I’ll see next weekend when I go to Siem Reap. I'm really grateful to Nary and Mr. Songheng for taking me out on these excursions and it makes me really glad that I did not just come to Cambodia as a tourist- I wouldn't have gotten to do any of these crazy trips!