Take(o) Two

Can hardly believe that another productive and happy week has aready gone by here in Takeo. We've continued every day with the fencing project, despite temperatures in the humid mid 30s most of the time. The last few uprights of the 56 metre run were nailed into place on Thursday, this last week's work being thanks mainly to the continuing efforts of Andy, Bun Seng and the NFO's handyman-cum-security guard, Sao, because considerable numbers of the volunteers who'd been working on the project departed mid-week - some just for a short break and others for pastures new. 



Sao Provides the Finishing Touches.....



.....While Andy Provides a Gate.

 Those of us on the sanding and varnishing team (which now includes a new intake of a couple of Swedish girls, an Aussie girl lucky enough to live in the wonderful Byron Bay, and two Spanish girls, Paula and Maria, both with a great sense of humour. Paula speaks really good English, having honed her language skills whilst working for a couple of years at the Holiday Inn in Sutton, south-east London, of all places. This is the town where I mis-spent my teenage years, and where my parents still live. So, there you are, mum and dad, you're truly on the map as far as Paula is concerned anyway. Though she says she wouldn't want to go back to live there, she said she had really enjoyed her time in Sutton - which she compares very favourably (and quite rightly) to nearby Croydon - Sutton being "not quite so rough" apparently! Not the most whole-hearted of praise for the place, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.



Khouy with Sarah and Darren

 One of the highlights of this week for us has been a brief rendezvous with little Khouy on Tuesday. I'd spent the morning at one of the local schools, at the request of 3 of the girls in my French class, and, on my way through the playground to get into the school, had spotted Khouy in the distance, across the other side of this pretty vast space, standing with some of the younger children. It was 6.45 (A.M! - school starts at 7 a.m, 6 days a week here), and I wasn't at all sure that I'd seen correctly, but my 3 hosts verified that this little figure was, indeed, Khouy. I'm not sure why none of we volunteers who'd enquired after him at the orphanage had not been told that he was still in the nearby school every day, but doubtless there are good reasons. Anyway, to cut a long story short, two of the other long-term volunteers who'd spent so much time with Khouy last year, Sarah and Darren, had that very day also learnt, by another route, that he was there, and had waited for him at the school gates at the lunch break (11 am over here). Although at first he was very reluctant even to make eye contact with them, they carefully won him round, and took him, and a couple of his 'cousins', off to a little cafe half-way between the school and the orphanage, where we also joined them. He slowly became animated (well, as far as he ever is), and we chatted together (again, so far as we could, with his very limited speech, even in Khmer, never mind English) and we even managed to get a smile or two out of him. We were all pleased to see that, though still very thin, he has grown a little taller and did look pretty healthy - mind you, he gobbled down a bowl of noodle soup as though it might be his last! As he didn't need to get back to school until 1.30 pm, Sarah and Darren ventured a little further, by bringing him into the orphanage to play for a while - not to the delight of all of the children, it must be said, though most of them took little interest either way. It was difficult to gauge the reaction of Bun Seng, who is a bit inscrutable at the best of times. He certainly didn't turn Khouy away, and nor did he remonstrate with Sarah and Darren. After Khouy had been returned to school, Bun Seng did, though, explain that there is to be another meeting with Social Services within the next couple of weeks, before any decision is made about Khouy's possible return to NFO. That's fine by us - we were just pleased to see the little lad again.

As for my visit to the school, this was very different from the one we'd both experienced last year at the large, very make-shift schoolroom out in a remote village called 'Little Po', and which had one teacher for its 180 children. This school - one of at least two dozen we've seen here in Takeo - was much more 'conventional'. It comprises a number of breeze-block and rendered single-storey buildings, each with a tin roof and maybe 2 or 3 classrooms per building - with perhaps 9 classrooms in all. All the children across the whole country wear the same uniform: a white shirt and dark blue (or sometimes dark grey) trousers or skirts. Each class here has around 40 pupils per teacher - though, strangely, of varying ages - seems they're streamed by ability rather than age. At the start of each day, each class is cleaned, tidied and swept out by a small team of the pupils of that class, on a rota basis, whilst the rest of the children assemble in the large, concreted playground to sing the national anthem whilst the flag is run up the large flapole. For some reason, I wasn't allowed to attend this ceremony, and sat outside the classroom, watching the little workers inside at their chores, until our class and their teacher turned up. The first hour of the day was a Khmer language lesson, and, though the 3 girls' teacher had agreed that I could attend for the morning, I was a little surprised that she sat me at a small desk right at the back of the room, and neither introduced me to the class, nor referred to or involved me in any way at all. Although she speaks no English or French, my 3 little hosts all do so, and could therefore have acted as interpreters, and I'm therefore not at all sure why the teacher did not think it appropriate to make use of this unusual 'resource' in her class. For the first hour's Khmer language lesson, I clearly had absolutely no idea what the children were learning. It was, neverthless, interesting to observe the classroom management techniques of the teacher, who, though diminutive in stature, clearly had a great 'presence' and wielded her authority with little more than the occasional imperious glance or hard stare at children whose attention was wavering. After a 15-minute play break - during which the children played some kind of 'British bulldog' chasing game - there was half an hour of French with an older woman, with a shockingly bad French accent and grasp of French grammar, who had nothing like the same authority or discipline as the class's regular teacher (who stayed at the back of the class, near to me, marking scripts and occasionally intervening to keep order). After another 15-minute play break, they then did an hour of maths, in this case using the rules of BODMAS, which took me right back to my school in Sutton a good 50-something years ago!

Early the next morning (still Tuesday evening in the UK) we experienced the second highlight of our week. As we mentioned in the last blog entry, we'd set our alarm for 5 a.m. in order to Skype (or be Skyped by?) our friends at the Six Bells Folk 'n' Blues Club in Chiddingly, having thankfully resolved a sound problem which we'd experienced when Roy and Nini tried to Skype us earlier in the week. Though the signal dropped out a few times as Chris and Simon moved around the pub with the laptop, we saw and heard enough of each other to get the strange sense of being in two places at the same time! We heard some snatches of good music, lots of 'cheers-es' and other greetings from some of the regulars, and, in the background, many very familiar loud bursts of laughter from Paul Newman - "probably the best landlord in the world " (you need to say that in the style of that Heineken advert, to get the real effect of course). It was worth waking up early for - especially as we got back to sleep after about 25 minutes on-line - and, as was pointed out to us, this half-way-round the-world link-up was yet another 'first' for this great little club which Chris started up in The Bells well over 20 years ago. We're now just waiting to hear from Chris about the money that was raised that night for NFO. So, a great big 'thank you' to everyone involved in that evening's fun.

Oh, and just one anecdote especially for Cameron, Dylan, Lucca and Rui: you might like to know that this week I've taught some of the children in my English class the "found a peanut song", which you have all loved to sing along to with me (oh yes, you have - don't argue with me!). After the first practice (for the rest of you, it's about someone who eats a peanut he found in a dustbin, and ends up having to have an operation to remove it), as these 12-15 year-olds began to realise the humour of the song, they suddenly all stood up and made up their own next verse after the "operation" verse, which went as follows: "take the poo out, take the poo out, take the poo out just now"! NOT the official version, I have to tell you all, looking primly over the top of my glasses! Anyway, it turns out that Serai, one of the 14 year-old lads here, had had to have an operation a few months ago, after eating an under-ripe bread-fruit (we think) which then set like concrete in his intestine, and had been given this expression by one of the English volunteers at the time, by way of explanation for the procedure he'd undergone!!

Good job we're having to leave the orphanage for a few days now, to get our visa renewed in Sihanoukville, so I can recover from the shock of such naughtiness!


Some Children Play Snakes and Ladders....



.....While Others Have a Massive Water Fight!

N.F.O.

Let Fencing Commence!

Sunday Morning, 20 November, and we're sitting in our thankfully air-conditioned guest-house bedroom, relaxing after a busy, satisfying and fun week here at New Futures Orphanage (NFO) in Takeo once again.
Since we got really 'stuck in' on Tuesday, we've been working almost all day every day as part of a team busily erecting a wooden picket-style fence all around the fish-pond within the orphanage compound. Andy has paired up with a young, hard-working German lad, Thomas, and they, and another 4 or 6 pairs of volunteers at any time, have been doing all the digging of holes and concreting-in of posts, and the sawing and hammering up of the hundreds of thin fencing panels. Meanwhile, another team of volunteers, about 10-12 of us including me, have been doing the job of sanding down the very rough timber panels, prior to their erection, to prevent splinters and get them ready for painting once erected. In the four days we've been here so far, we've managed to install about 40 metres of fencing along two sides of the pond. A number of us have pooled together to buy the raw materials - sand, cement, paint, timber fencing posts and panels. Timber over here seems ludicrously expensive by our standards - and crap quality, too! Not sure of the reason for this, though we know there's much concern about the massive (often illegal) logging and resultant deforestation in many of the smaller countries of SE Asia - maybe it's related to satisfying the hugh and insatiable demand of their very powerful and rapidly-developing neighbour, China. The timber we're buying comes in 4 to 5-metre lengths, which Andy and Thomas have taken charge of sawing into one-metre lengths, and is delivered here by horse and cart as we need it -  whereas the horse looked fairly healthy for over here, the cart-driver looked damned near ready for the knacker's yard!

Sanding School

Celebrating the First 40 Metres

Samnung Assists Thomas

There's one little 5- or 6-year old boy here, Samnung, who's been desperate to be involved in all this work alongside the adults, and who takes it very seriously indeed - unlike some of the others kids, who like to 'dabble' for a while before wandering off, to find something more exciting to do. Samnung's behaviour reminds us of young Forest, our 6-year-old neighbour in The Quad, who's also always been keen to get involved in a very serious way, in any grown-up work - especially in what Sandra might call "manny-type work". Both Samnung and Forest seem to have an almost innate sense of what needs doing, how to do it, and how to use the appropriate tools in the right way. Both of them, too, have real 'staying power' when it comes to seeing the job through. Absolutey fascinating to see! Perhaps the two of them should get together in a few years' time, to set up their own international construction business?!

In between sessions of sanding, I've also been taking two 45-minute classes each day - an English 'Intermediate' class for six or seven 10-14 year-olds, and, at the specific request of some the children, a French 'Beginners' class (just as well - mine is pretty rusty!) for eight very keen 12-15 year-olds. It would be good to see more of the kind of dedication to task which Samnung has displayed in the fence-building by those children who come to the classes - most of whom seem to have the concentration span of a gnat!   The French classes seem more popular than the English ones - mainly, I think, because they're unusual here in the orphanage.   Of course, I do need to remember that the children are volunteers, not conscripts, in these classes, as they are over and above anything they do in school.   However, it's quite difficult to keep their attention, and to stop them shouting out to other children in the play area, or to other volunteers who turn up to look in at what we're doing - and to stop them pulling each other's shirts or pigtails (now then, where else does that seem a familiar behaviour set...?).  

The most bizarre distraction activity I've experienced so far was on Wednesday when, just as the English class was assembled and I was about to begin, a young lad called Potich suddenly leapt onto the low fence surrounding the classroom and dived from there straight into the pond, swimming under water for several metres and coming up again, the other side of the pond, clutching a huge cat-fish!   After everyone had gathered round to admire his catch, and he'd taken it round to the women who do the cooking here, Potich came back, dripping, and took his seat in the classroom as if this interruption were nothing of note.

Catfish Landed

There have, of course, also been many opportunities for us simply to play with, or talk with, some of the younger children. The number of children in residence is slightly down on last year - 44 at the moment, compared with 54 last year - because one or two have been returned to live with their extended families, and no less than 7 of the older ones are now, thanks to many sponsors from all around the world, studying at universities or vocational colleges, mainly in the capital, Phnom Penh.

What's the Time, Mr Wolf?

There are also about a half-dozen very young children who've been taken in this year - each around 5 or 6 years old - though, sadly for us, little 'Khouy', to whom we lost our hearts last year, is not here at the moment.
You may remember that Khouy was the little boy who'd been found wandering all alone and scavenging to survive in the jungle, resulting in him having a parasite in the gut when he was found. Somehow, Social Services found out that his mother was dead, and his father 'crazy'. Not surprisingly, his behaviour was not at all child-like when we first got to know him, and he was something of a loner, unable to express any kind of emotion, and unable to mix with the other children particularly well. It now appears, from what we've learned, that Khouy had been found guilty (though, in our view, with scant evidence other than denunciations by some of the other children, and by Bunseng, the live-in Cambodian manager) of stealing from children and volunteers. Apparently, too, after several unsuccessful attempts to get him to 'understand and mend his ways', the Social Services here negotiated a deal with an 'uncle' of Khouy's to take him in, at least temporarily. This decision was taken partly as a form of punishment for Khouy himself, but partly also to act as an example to other children. Just this week, however, Neville, the orphanage's Director, has been to visit Khouy in his uncle's village (in which Khouy is living in conditions of much greater poverty, and doubtless much harsher regime altogether, than would be the case in the orphanage), and Khouy has apparently for the first time expressed remorse and a desperate desire to return to NFO. So, Neville is now minded to take him back 'on parole', and we're really hoping that he might return whilst we're still here. Neville says that he and Bunseng had no alternative, having sought help from Social Services, but to accept their way of handling the problem. However, we - and indeed one or two of the other volunteers who have also lost their hearts to this little lad - are seriously worried that he may have been innocent all along, and that this punishment may have compounded the trauma he's experienced in his short and pretty difficult life already.

On a more positive note, however, there are also many successes to report for NFO. Certainly, Neville has continued being seriously successful in fund-raising for the orphanage since we were last here, and in attracting volunteer helpers from all over the world. Indeed, when we first arrived on Monday afternoon, we were rather taken aback at just how many volunteers were here this year. Over 30 volunteers in all, from all four of the UK's member countries, including an Englishman who lives in Croatia, from Germany and America, including an American woman who lives in Montenegro, and many from Australia, including one whose family emigrated there from Serbia - so, quite a good representation from the former Yugoslavia! These numbers are, however, slowly decreasing, as significant numbers of them had planned their visit to coincide with attending the wedding of Nou, the young Cambodian woman who is the administrator here, and who got married last Saturday- to a young English lad who'd been a long-term volunteer here over the past couple of years.

Among the fund-raising successes, NFO has been given money from a charity called CamKids (which we understand is a project supported by the UK's 'pub landlord' comedian, Al Murray) to equip the library with more books and resources, and rent a piece of land next to the orphanage which is being turned into a play park for both the orphanage and the local children in Takeo. Another funder has provided a huge piece of soft-play equipment (the kind which you might see in a 'Whacky Warehouse' or 'Monkey Biscuits' in the UK, as well as for a bouncy castle, which Neville is planning to erect in time for the Christmas festivities (still seems an odd celebration for this Buddhist country, but ah well!). Yet another benefactor has provided sufficient money to supply the orphanage with food for a whole year! Because of this success, we're planning to spend our 'Children in Need' donation this year , together with the money which some of you have already given us for NFO (you know who you are, so please let us know if you DON'T want your money spent this way), partly to pay for the fencing materials, but also to buy rice for distribution to the children in the very poor villages spread around Takeo province where NFO also sponsors some of the village schools.

Fencing Project Co-ordinator Needs Beer!

On the social side of life, Thursday evening we were involved in a celebratory party for the departure of three of the long-term volunteers here - two from the UK and one from Australia. About 20 of us went out to a new local outdoor restaurant (which doubles as a car-wash during the day!), part-owned by Bunseng, the orphanage's live-in manager, and his brother. After a great meal, and lots of beer, accompanied by VERY loud music and a huge outdoor make-shift screen showing music videos, we were all ferried by tuk-tuk to a local Karaoke bar (oh joy!) for a 'lively' finale to the evening! We left to go back to our guest-house at about midnight, but we learned later that most of the others stayed on until about 2 am, and then stayed up partying until about 4 am. (That probably explained why there were so few teams working on the fence project on Friday!).

In closing this blog, we've just heard that next Tuesday  - 22 November - Chris & Simon have organised a benefit evening at the Six Bells Folk 'n' Blues Club in aid of NFO here in Cambodia. And it's to be Skyped-out to us here in our bedroom ('cos it'll be 5 in the morning here while you're all tucking-into your Harveys!). So get along there if you can - it'll be a great fun evening!

Bye for Now!

'Friends Reunited'

Since we left Battambang on Saturday morning, 'friends (or at least acquaintances) reunited' has been a recurring theme. We decided to travel down to New Futures Orphanage in Takeo via an overnight stop in Siem Reap (gateway to the Angkor Wat complex) and another back in Phnom Penh. This was partly to avoid having to go back anywhere near to that hideous town of Pursat, and partly because we remembered (correctly, we were glad to confirm) that there was a long stretch on the east side of the Tonle Sap Lake with particularly beautiful countryside. It was also interesting to see just how quickly the flooding is now subsiding in most places. The dry season is definitely upon us: we've had no rain for over a week, and the temperature has maintained around the low 30s the whole time we've been here (though we've heard it's likely to climb to the mid-high 30s later this week!).

Paddy Fields - Before and After

In Siem Reap, we stayed in a particularly funky little hotel (The Golden Temple Villa), with a delightful, but tiny, jungle-like garden, within easy walking distance of the bustling city centre. So, on Saturday evening, we decided to return to the 'street food' area of the town centre, where we had eaten some particularly good Cambodian food last year, accompanied by Michel, a charming young Swiss man who was on our Intrepid Tour with us, and who has since brought his girlfriend, Priska, over to visit us in Sussex. (By the way, when we said we had dined 'accompanied by Michel' we mean that all three of us were dining together, not that Michel was a side-dish!) Anyway, at the street-food restaurant, it was interesting to see just how many of the staff we recognised from last year - including the very flamboyant lady-boy waiter/ess, who was every bit as friendly and flirtatious with everyone as s/he had been last year.

A 'Funky Little Hotel'

Our Favourite Lady-Boy (on left)

Food Now MUCH Better than Pursat - whatever your taste!

Then, back in Phnom Penh for an overnight stay on Sunday, we were amazed and delighted to bump into Nak, the Cambodian man who had been our Intrepid Travel tour guide for a whole month last year. We've maintained e-mail contact with him from time to time since then, and had tried to make arrangements to meet up this year, only to learn that he was busy with another tour until well into December. What none of us had realised when we tried to make those arrangements was that, by pure coincidence, we would all be in Phnom Penh on exactly the same day - and walking down exactly the same street at exactly the same time of the evening, too! We know that there are only 14.5 million people living in Cambodia - a very low number indeed by comparison with the UK; nevertheless, this amazing coincidence left all three of us absolutely gob-smacked and laughing out loud - much to the entertainment of people walking by. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time together before he had to rush off with his group - though we have agreed to keep in closer contact from now on, just in case we're in the same town in the same country again at some point.

That same evening, we experienced a little incident which resulted in us being reunited the next morning with another 'good friend' of ours - this time, our bank debit card! We'd been to an ATM machine near to our hotel, and had successfully received the money we'd requested, together with a receipt, but the machine then 'ate' the card, and refused to give it up! Not surprisingly, we were quite distressed at this turn of events (though we've taken care to open one of those pre-paid debit accounts, which means that, should the card fall into the wrong hands, there is a relatively small and finite amount to which anyone might get access). We were also reassured by Blair, a Cambodian-resident Englishman who is part of the CHOICE organisation we met here last week, and whom we bumped into a few minutes later, that this is a not uncommon occurrence here, to which there is a fairly common and almost always satisfactory solution. So, we imnmediately elicited the help of our hotel's wonderful reception staff in helping us sort this out, and got Chabbi, a very competent and friendly receptionist with particularly good English, to phone the bank on our behalf. Bear in mind that this was 6.15 pm on a Sunday evening, and the end of the annual Water Festival in Phnom Penh, when we tell you that a real person actually answered the phone at the bank! No 'dial 1 for this, dial 2 for that' malarky. Anyway, this person told Chabbi that she should phone back on Monday morning at 8.30 am, when the staff on duty would arrange to collect the card from the ATM and return it to us, in return for an 'admin fee' of $5. Sure enough, the next morning, we did exactly that (Chabbi having also postponed our bus trip to Takeo until the afternoon). We were instructed to take a tuk-tuk to the bank's HQ about 10 minutes' drive away, present to them our passports, pay the $5 and, lo and behold, we were reunited with our card, exactly as promised! Now, the cynic in me did wonder whether this is some SBC bank ruse to get more money out of foreigners - though at only $5 a time, it can hardly be worth their while. On the other hand, can any of you imagine such a quick and easy solution happening in any of the UK-based banks or building societies? Not sure I can.

Well, after that morning's 'excitement', and only slightly later than planned, we finally got the bus down to Takeo, and arrived at the Orphanage here late afternoon on Monday. We've therefore only had time to say a quick hello to everyone (though most of the older children were still at school), so we hope to blog again towards the end of this week, with news of what's happening here. Oh, but we have already learned that we shall be reunited later this week with Debbie, one of the volunteers who was here with us last year - the woman who brought over a whole suitcase full of football shirts, to the evident delight of all of the boys in NFO. So, looks like the theme continues ...

I Look Down on Them, Because I Have So Much Blue......

And I Look Down on Him, Because I Have Some Blue...

I Know My Place!

Land of the Lost Stick

That's what the name Battambang (pronounced Bat-dam-bong) really means. It comes from an ancient legend about a peasant who finds a stick which seems to have magic powers, and he uses it, greedily and selfishly, to overthrow and then kill the King. The newly self-appointed, and unpopular King is later met in battle by the dead King's son, the Prince, who has been given a magic, flying white stallion by a religious hermit (yeah I know, but then, the marijuana over here is said to be amongst the best in the world...!). Anyway, In the battle, in which the Prince is victorious and rightfully returned to the throne, the greedy peasant loses his stick, but manages to escape and is never seen again. Bizarrely enough (as if it isn't already bizarre enough), the mythical villain later becomes affectionately adopted by the locals as Ta Dambong (Grandfather Stick), and a gynormous statue of him now graces one of the main roundabouts on the way into the town, around the bottom of which families will often come to leave Ta Dambong their 'offerings'. On the day we were there, a family were offering two whole roasted pigs, a fruit and vegetable salad large enough to feed half the town, and, of course, several of the inevitable conical marigold-covered flower arrangements.

Bat-Dambong

Pork Scratchings, Anyone?

Battambang is a pleasant enough city today, with charming French colonial architecture and a relaxed, convivial atmosphere in the markets, restaurants and bars around town. The wide riverfront promenade on the West bank, rather like that in Phnom Penh, is attractively paved and planted, and there are several hill-top temples in the lush countryside surrounding the city. (We climbed around 650 steps in total, at Wat Banan and Phnom Sampeou, on our tuk-tuk tour.) When we say 'hill-top', though, it's worth bearing in mind that, topographically-speaking, Battambang province is the Netherlands of Cambodia, with a 'hill' often being little more than a mound, and a 'mountain', it's said locally, being any piece of land not under water after a downpour!

French Governor's Residence, 1907

Wat Banan

Battambang is a City which DOES do things by halves, though. Again like Phnom Penh, the road layout is a grid system, with north-south streets being numbered and east-west streets being named. The first north-south street to the West of the river is, not surprisingly, Street 1. But then you have Street 1-and-a-half, Street 2, and Street 2-a-half. There's absolutely no sign that these 'and-a-half' streets are in-fills, in that they seem to be just as old as their neighbouring streets, and these are the only two such logical but also nonsensical examples: all the others are whole numbers.

On our first evening here, we strolled along the riverfront, watching several sessions of outdoor aerobics or judo classes along the promenade, as well as numerous family groups playing with their children. On our second day, our tuk-tuk driver, Mr Nicky, took us on a tour of the surrounding countryside, which took in two of the hill-top Wats, Bannan and Ek Phnom (the word phnom, incidentally, itself means hill). As last year, in every little rural village we tuk-tukked through, all the children would come running out of their bamboo-and-rattan stilt-houses, beaming and waving, and calling out 'he-llo' and 'bye-bye', laughing and waving until we were out of sight.

But by far the BEST part of our tour was a trip on the local Bamboo Train, known as 'The Norrie'. The Norrie is a crude assembly of bamboo/wood platform, with wooden struts resting on the axles of salvaged ralway rolling stock wheels - or even old battle tank wheels - with an engine at the back with a fan-belt attached to a flywheel on the axle. The sense of speed, no doubt heightened by the low centre of gravity - the platform, on which we sat cross-legged, is only eighteen inches above the incredibly warped track - is exhilaratingly frightening. (Apparently, the 6hp engines get up to 30km per hour.) And the noise from the metal wheels is ear-splitting. Forget trying to have a conversation, or the idea of a gentle click-clack noise you might remember of trains of old: this is more like the noise of an industrial circular saw beside your ear, and a great clunk-clunk every time you go over a 'join' (often with gaps of well over an inch) in the rails. The bamboo train runs on a single-track railway, so, whenever a 'down' train meets an 'up' train, the protocol is that the lighter laden Norrie gives way to the heavier one. In our case, which happened four or five times on our 12km journey, the driver of the lighter Norrie dismantles the bamboo platform, removes the axles from the track and places it on the bank while the heavier Norrie goes past. At this point, the dismantled Norrie is put back together again, returned to the track, and continues its journey! A really great experience - and one which may well soon be a thing of the past, as an Australan company has now been given a 30-year lease to build and run a new national rail network on which the trains will be running at speeds of around 80k per hour - no match at all for these lovely little creatures.

All Aboard!

On our return from the tuk-tuk trip, we stopped by the roadside, along with dozens of others, to wait for dusk. In the hillside in front of us was a huge cave and, as the sun went down, suddenly the cave spewed forth the start of a truly massive plume of bats, streaming out over surrounding flat countryside for their early evening feast of insects. There must have been millions and millions of bats, as this vast plume of bats (flying in tight formation rather like starlings coming home to roost over Brighton pier), continued to spew out for at least the 20 minutes that we stayed put, and was still continuing as we disappeared into the sunset back to the city. A fantastic sight!

Bats!

Yesterday evening, we went to a truly breath-taking performance at a local multi-arts arts centre for disadvantaged children, known as 'The Circus'. Yes, it was in a 'big top', but it was basically a display by some phenomenally talented (and incredibly strong!) teenage gymnasts and jugglers, who put on some stunning, occasionally comical, sometimes heart-stopping, visually colourful gymnastic/balletic acts and 'plays'. This multi-arts centre, called Phare Ponlue Selpak (Fire, Life, Art), was founded in 1994 by returning refugees from the Khmer Rouge era, in an area where families were living in extreme poverty. It focused on social and educational activities such as art, music and theatre, involving whole families as well as children who had been abandoned or orphaned. It started as a physical education class, including martial arts and gymnastics, and attracted around 30 children to its residential educational centre. Today over 130 are in residence, whose psycho-social needs are assessed and, hopefully at least partly met, through arts and culture.   )The organistion also provides free education to a further 1,300 children, funded by donations and fund-raising. Some performances from the circus are available on YouTube - search for Phareps, or go to their website: www.phareps.org. to see some images.   I'm sure you'll be amazed and delighted if you find them on-line - and a few of them are travelling to London next July for a show in the UK.

Today is our last full day in Battambang. Tomorrow, we take the bus to Siem Reap, before going on to Takeo via Phnom Penh. Bye for now.

Pursat Just Got Miles Better...

... about 90 miles in fact, as we're now in Battambang!

We left Pursat promptly at 11.45 am on Tuesday, on the 10.30 a.m. bus (yep!), and arrived in Battambang, a little shaken and stirred, at about 3.30 pm.

Before we left Pursat, however, we decided  - foolishly, after the first night's experience - to try breakfast at the hotel's 'restaurant'.   (Oh, and by the way, folks, your food orders are on their way to you by tuk-tuk, so get those plates warming, and the wine in the chiller - apart from Sandra, of course, who's no doubt scouring Harvey Nicks as we speak for suitable shoes and bags...).   Well, we each ordered chicken noddle soup, usually a staple breakfast over here, together with one black coffee and one Liptons Tea (why is it that Liptons is ubiquitous everywhere outside of the UK, but as rare as rocking-horse pooh in the UK?)  Anyway, both the tea and the coffee smelt, even before they got it to the table, and then tasted, seriously of undiluted anti-freeze or paint stripper.   So, we pushed our drinks to one side - though not far enough away NOT to be able to smell it all the time - while we looked, with increasing horror, into the 'kitchen' area where our noddle soup was being prepared and cooked.   This morning, they'd opened the huge garage-like rolling door (which should have given us a clue) at the back of the restaurant, to reveal a massive hangar-sized industrial unit, complete with all kinds of industrial tools, rows and rows of tyres hanging on ceiling-hung brackets, and several huge oil-drums full of god-know-what chemicals, and, strewn all over the dusty floor, bits of motor-bike or truck-parts.    In fact, it looked like a really scruffy version of son-in-law Matt's Bromsgrove Body Repairs workshop (sorry about the comparison, Matt, it's for illustrative purposes only!).  In one corner of this vast workshop, however, there was a filthy worktop and a large, thick-walled clay pot full of burning charcoal, on which our soup was being prepared and cooked!   Surprise, surprise, when it arrived, it smelt of exactly the same industrial chemicals as had our tea and coffee....   As they used to say in the NoW before it was abandoned by that nice Mr Murdoch, at this stage we made our excuses and left.

Will blog again when we've had more chance to explore Battambang - and will hopefully add some photos, too.

Oh, but we forgot to mention, for Cath, Matt, Lucca and Rui, that we scored 165 in our "I-Spy at the Airport" book which you bought us - 150 points at Heathrow, and a further 15 for spotting 'Person with Sign' when we arrived at Ponchentrong Airport in Cambodia.   Phone the Guinness Book of Records immediately!

The Future is Blue - Reflections on Cambodia's Nouveau Riche.

We're staying overnight in a fairly unlovely town called Pursat, on the West side of the great inland sea which is the Tonle Sap Lake in North-West Cambodia.   (We decided against a possible visit to the flooded village outside of Phnom Penh yesterday (Sunday), mainly to prevent any recurrence of the colly-wobbles which we'd experienced only a day or two into our arrival in Cambodia.)      Our original plan had been to spend only two nights in Phnom Penh, and then go straight down to the orphanage in Takeo - that visit intended to be our only 'retracing' of last year's steps.   However, Neville at the orphanage e-mailed us shortly before we left the UK, asking us to postpone our visit there until after 11th November, because one of the young Cambodian women we met last year, called Nou (pronounced Noy, we seem to recall), is getting married on that day, and all their accommodation is full this week with wedding guests.

So, we've decided to explore Battambang province for a few days, and have stopped part-way in Pursat, after a 5 hour bus journey (for only US$5 - around £3.50 - per ticket, amazingly) from Phnom Penh.   On our way through and from the capital, we were struck by a new trend in construction styles and colours, in the newly-built houses for the middle classes - once again flourishing after the Khmer Rouge years.   And the same trend applies to many of the 'posh' hotel resorts (which are starting to destroy any sense of 'place' or local flavour, rather like the UK's High Streets these days, and parts of Vietnam we saw last year) as well as to the many new high(ish)-rise office-blocks housing mainly telecoms or finance/banking companies springing up in many places.   This new trend is definitely Blue!   Many of the rooves of these buildings are of cobalt, or maybe royal-blue sculputured tiling, and most of the windows - often covering a large part of the frontages and surrounded by steel or aluminium frames - are tinted a similar shade of blue to the roof, and 'mirrored' to boot, so that you cannot see in from outside, but presumably they can see out to what must be a sickly-looking outdoor vista.   Coupled with a penchant for painted rendering on the walls which ranges from ochre yellow through mustard, sapphron and marigold yellow, this produces, to our eyes anyway, a particularly gaudy and tacky-looking mixture.   But it's obviously the way to demonstrate one's wealth as ostentatiously as possible to others:  even in the poorest of shanty towns we passed through, those with the slightlty less ramshackle wooden shacks, but with obviously a riel or two to spare, are painting their wooden shutters, gable-ends, corrugated-tin rooves, or even the wooden stilts, still standing in several feet of water, in a similar range of colour combinations.   Yuk!

Though we've been here less than a week now, we've also noticed that Andy has a new form of salutation or greeting from the locals this year.   Instead of last year's "Happy Buddha Belly" calls he experienced, particularly in Vietnam, people we pass in the street are smiling and calling out "Hello Papa".  We're choosing to believe that it's a sign of respect and veneration for his advancing years - especially given that he's a good 18 months older than the average life expectancy here in Cambodia (62 for men and 65 for women) - but who knows?   There ARE other Westerners around of advanced years and grey hair, so it's not a completely unknown phenomonen here.   And no-one (yet) has chosen to call me 'Mama' or anything resembling Grannie - just let them dare!! - but maybe that's because I still have 18 months until I'm 65...?  

That said, however, there WAS an incident yesterday afternoon which might be relevant.   We were sitting by the river-front in Pnom Penh (Sisowath Quay) to enjoy our first beer for two days, and being badgered almost continuously by the dozens of very young childen who come by trying to sell books from plastic boxes, like supermarket baskets, tied around their necks with scarves.    One little cheeky chap, probably no older than our six-and-a-half year-old grandson, Rui, came by and made the usual spiel, expecting - and accepting with their usual good humour - a rejection from us, before moving on.   About 10 minutes later, he returned on the grounds that we might have "chain your mines" by then.   As we laughed at this renewed sales pitch (a new twist on the usual rote-learned speech) , and I picked up my beer to take a swig, this tiny lad pointed and wagged his finger at me, and went away smiling and pointing at the beer, saying "You be care-ful with that".

But now, folks, we need your help.   What would you have ordered from the wonderful menu we were presented with this evening, here in Pursat, where, it would seem, absolutely nobody speaks any English at all (sorry to sound so boorish, but it IS unusual)?   Ah..., but first let us set the scene.   Here we are in one of only two hotels in this weird town (most of which looks rather like a giant landfill site, and whose best feature, with hindsight now, reading between the lines of the Lonely Planet Guide, is its vertiginous concrete dam!).  The hotel has its own restaurant outside, across the broken concrete forecourt.   This almost deserted restaurant is full of huge, lacquered dark-wooden tables, each with its own filthy tablecloth, and, behind a large (blue!) counter in the middle of the room, a half dozen young girls (waitresses, we presumed) sitting chewing gum and giggling at us.  Outside, on the broken concrete forecourt is a 40-something Cambodian woman, in some way connected with these young giggling girls, and pushing around in a wheelchair an elderly, completely bald woman (her mother?) who rants loudly, continuously and rapidly in Khmer, at what seems to us anyway to be imaginary people all around her - rather like a scene out of Monthy Python or Little Britain at least.    After quite a lot of sign-language from us, mostly met with more giggling from the gaggle of girls, we are presented with an English language translation of the menu.  So, we can choose from Spacey Veg. Soup; Bread with Cary cooked fish; Rolled while fried noddle; Jam with bread and batter (same price as all the other main courses); Fried ginger with frock; or Rutty fried chcken.   Okay, over to you ....

Over and out for the time being.   Oh, except that: we're absolutely amazed that we got away with that deliberately provocative remark about our landlady/laundress - actually, our wonderful, dearest friend and next-door neighbour, Sandra.   We can only presume that her preoccupation with the current OFSTED inspection led to the lack of the kind of verbal explosion we had anticipated, or that she is having similar difficulties to Mike, our computer guru, who's reported this evening that the blog won't accept his attempts to add comments to it at the moment.   He's on the case, though, and hopefully will report via the blog, in case anyone else is experiencing the same.   Meanwhile, all the best, Sandra, with OFSTED - and, if you don't get another 'outstanding' from them this time, just refer them to us - we'll sort them out!

Pinch, Punch, First Day of the Month* ...

... time to return.   To South-East Asia, that is, for the second of our major retirement adventures.   It's Tuesday, 1st November 2011, and we're looking out at the gorgeous autumn colours in the trees here in The Quad whilst waiting for our chauffeur (my mum) to come and whisk us off to Heathrow for our flight to Pnhom Penh this evening.  

(* Anyone else remember this childhood game which we used to play on the first day of each month way back when?)

As last year, we'll be posting blogs fairly regularly, and we hope you'll enjoy the travels along with us.   Our first port of call is Cambodia and, after spending a few days in Phnom Penh (not forgetting to pronounce the 'p' at the beginning of each word, you may remember from last year's blog**, so as not to offend the Khmer people!), we're heading off down to work at the New Futures orphanage in Takeo once again.   After that, maybe a trip to the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, and then on to pastures new in Malaysia and Indonesia.

(** For those of you who have asked about last year's blog, by the way, the address then was simply http://www.andyandbarbara.blogspot.com/.)

Seat belts on?   Then away we go......