Stung Treng.

Stung Treng.

So, we are finally in Stung Treng to begin work as a VSO volunteer, in Angela’s case, and a house sorter (in the short term) in my case. We travelled up from Phnom Penh on Saturday 23^rdApril getting up at 3.30am to meet a mini bus at 4.30 am.VSO arranged our transport which was organised around how much baggage and belongings we had to transport to our placement to begin living there for the next two years.In our case we had numerous large bags, pillows, water filter (‘plant pot’ and plastic bucket) a hammock including supporting metal frame and a bicycle.

When travelling by mini bus in Cambodia you buy a seat or rather half a seat, if you want a full seat it is two tickets, anyway we had 5 seats which was the whole of the back of the vehicle the idea being we would sit alongside our stuff.Once our luggage was loaded our excess was put on another bus that appeared and disappeared into the night with no explanation on when we would see it again,followed by the bicycle being tied on the outside of our bus with string.

It was a pleasant journey up to Stung Treng stopping for breakfast 8am (rice and fried pork) arriving about 11.30am.We stopped briefly to be reunited with our bits off the other bus and then continued to our house in the bus.

The contract not starting until the Monday meant we stayed with another VSO volunteer, Wendy, until then .We got the keys and Angela went off for her first day at the hospital and I started to unpack and arrange things in the house.

We are living out of the town centre about 6 minutes bicycle ride away from the hospital sharing a house with a Cambodian family i.e. Dad ,Mum, son ,daughter,Grandmother and 2 dogs.

By sharing, I mean the house is divided with a communal steel folding door which has numerous gaps and is padlocked, us on one side and the family on the other. Being Cambodia things are not straight forward in this arrangement and it is early days in coming to a happy co-existence.Mrs X keeps walking in uninvited and marches about with a critical eye, her main concerns are;we will block the toilet,then the sink,will blow the house up via cooking gas and the electrics will fuse and burn the house down.Mr X is concerned with security; the perimeter is fenced and topped with razor wire and the gates locked at all times, he does speak some English and said he is concerned people are coming to rob him.The children are really nice and we hope to teach them English, again they wonder in at will. Grand mother is really placid and seems to live in the garage and sometimes stands outside the locked gate unable to get in.It’s early days and it will all fall into place I am sure.

We have two bathrooms and seemingly water needs to be stored in each .In the upstairs one (i.e. the one we have been told not to use ‘as it gets blocked easily’) there are 4 big bins full of water.

Quite what the scenario for urgently wanting 30 gallons of cold water in a small room like that is I have yet to find out. In the downstairs bathroom there is a concrete tank with an open top half full, (but still must be 80 gallons),of water it is big enough to climb in,( maybe later when I have gone crazy with the heat). So why all this stored water? Apparently the main water could go off and this is back up to flush the toilet (for 3 months?). However, it hasn’t been explained to us: why would we need to know?

Plenty of time for more on the house in the future but imagine the following in the UK:

Upstairs on our large landing area there is a large windowwithout curtains, which looks into the Cambodian side of the house. It’sa bit like a divided ‘Big Brother’ house where each group goes about their living but can be observed by the others. We need to buy a curtain as a priority.

On Tuesday we went to the P.Statn.to register as outsiders living in town for 2 years.

The P.Comr. made us very welcome, he was in his office watching the biggest TV I’ve seen in Cambodia, he was interested in The Thai/Cambodia boarder dispute and told me via our Interrupter that they are not frightened of the Thais and showed me a picture of a Cambodian mobile multi rocket launcher.He had numerous weapons in his office and what I imagined to be approx. 400 tins of condensed milk in cardboard boxes.

Today, Wednesday, Angela took over the motorbike from one of the volunteers who is leaving. It is the usual Honda Dream and looks to be ready for a service.

We went to the Volunteer’s house at 7.30 am me giving Angela a ‘backie’ on the bicycle,the locals thought it hilarious,Angela hung on by pinching my skin. Angela bravely rode off on the motorbike to work and I went abicycle ride, which turned into me giving my first English lesson to a local. I rodeout of town along astraight road passing the Stung Treng Catholic church then passed a small stall/café from which a young Cambodia shouted ‘Hello where are you from?’ I stopped and he pressed me an iced sugar cane drink and then we chatted for 45 minutes about whatever he was interested in e.g. Man. Utd, my family, how many countries are in Europe, the Second World War, the seasons in England V Cambodia, where the pretty girls of the world live and which countries I have visited.I explained various things about myself and introduced him to the concept of C.A.D. and what it meant in practical terms.He is called Pich, whichhe explained means diamond and he is in the first year of high school although I guessed he is about 16y.o..He would like to work in China and would like to travel as a Tour Guide,I will go out there again for he liked to practise his English and I tried a little Kamai and all in all it was welcoming.

So things are moving along OK as Angela confronts the realities of being a Volunteer and we both experience living in another culture. Maybe one of the immediate work differences for her has been in the content of the Hospital meetings she attends each day. She had to suppress the giggles when the management discussed that the patient visitors seem determine to break the toilets by standing on them and blocking them with fish bones, not a problem in Morecambe Bay N.H.S.(Mmm… back onto blocked toilets again!).

There are no photos in this blog as I am in an internet shop and want to keep the uploading to a min. If you are wondering about any aspect of our Cambodian adventure and you would like further insight please let us know and I will put it in a future blog.

Motorbike Training .

Our Group (Andrea missing) ready for training.

We are together for the 7/8 weeks of ICT

Edwin,Chris, Paul ,Angela, Vicky and Kim

After our brief motorbike training in the UK we were given a further days training now we are in Cambodia to include bike maintenance, buying a bike , typical prices for servicing and tactics to adopt when stopped by the Traffic police (pay up as little as poss).

Angela AKA The Stig 

We practised tight turns and emergency stops in the hotel carpark and then went out onto the roads to experience Cambodian traffic.

A typical Cambodian bike we will be riding ;semi automatic gear box

In the afternoon we drove out to a disused aeroplane runway and did some riding on the rough gravel surface.

Then Angela and I took it in turns to carry each other as a pillion passenger- who would have thought it me on the back of Angelas motorbike!!

Ready to roll down the runway

Angela on the runway

Relaxing afterwards with a plastic bag of squeezed sugar cane juice ,ice and lime

My First Cambodian Haircut

In the grounds of the Hotel where we were staying whilst in Kampong Cham I noticed that every few days a hotel employee got out a chair and started cutting workmates hair in the late afternoon. I asked if it was possible to have mine cut- yes no problem-$1.

How could I explain what style I wanted, how much off, over the ears, off the ears etc., we hadn’t covered a trip to the barbers in our language class?

All thoughts irrelevant, I sat down, the hand powered clippers were picked up and off we went or rather off the hair went much to the amusement of the local crowd who were to watch from start to finish.

 After the hair was cut, I had a shoulder massage, shave with a cut throat razor and my nazzle hair trimmed (with a small pair of scissors not the hand clippers).

The finished job was checked in the mirror of the motorbike I had been sat next to.

 A long way from a ‘Julie haircut’ but problem solved for a few weeks.

Kids project and Coconut dance

Recently our group of Volunteers were invited to a celebration to mark the opening of a new classroom and centre for the Mekong Kampuchea Kids project. It is a project organised and run by the Buddhism for Social Development Action (BSDA) group.

Have toilet - will travel!

Photo taken on the journey there-steady now!!

The BSDA is a Cambodian run NGO that was established in 2005 after criticism from the villagers around the Wat Nakor Bachey temple west of Kampong Cham City where we are staying.

The locals felt that the monks would preach altruism in theory but hardly ever practise it.

Seven monks founded the organisation financing it privately throughout the first 3 years until their work had been noticed and international donors started to provide funding.

The BSDA’s programmes now cover a large scope including education and vocational training for orphans and vulnerable children, communities and democracy development and work with Drug users etc.

We arrived 6pm and were seated at a table with a good view of the musicians and the stage.

Really nice food and soft drinks were served and 6 performances were given including traditional dance/storytelling and also a play illustrating the need for a centre and how it then developed to arrive at the building we were seated outside that evening.

The fish dish was especially tasty

note the egg and chips plate on the left -bit weird!

 The essence of the tale was rescuing underprivileged children from crime and poverty and providing them with an opportunity for a brighter future through self-help and learning.

All these people had a part in the play - very complicated at times and all in Khmer.

We left having enjoyed the evening and the generosity of the monks and the BSDA.

The clippy cloppy coconut dance to plinky plonky music.

Monkey dance

(Bit dark sorry)

Sunday at Leisure

26^th March we arrived back in Kampong Cham to resume our language training classes.

In the evenings before it goes dark there are many street vendors selling tasty snacks and one of our favourites is the pineapple on a stick. One of these costs 500 Riels, approx. 8p.

Another very filling snack can be bought typically at a market stall where they are cooked over charcoal burners.

The food is packaged and cooked in Banana leaves and inside is sticky rice covering a piece of cooked banana, really tasty and very filling maybe costing the equivalent of  20p,

It would certainly be sufficient for lunch.

The following Sunday was our day off from classes so we decided our group would go on a bike ride over the Bamboo Bridge to explore the island. Sunday morning 8.30am it seemed everybody had the same idea and it was very busy on the bridge.

Where's Angela?

We had a long ride across the island and were amazed at how big the island was with hundreds of families permanently living there and making a living by farming and growing manly tobacco. We saw many crops being gathered and put onto racks to dry.

We cycled for nearly 2 hours and didn’t get to the far end of the island.

In the afternoon we went again as our group of 7, on an organised boat trip to an island to visit a typical village and have a look around.

It was nice to relax on the boat and observe many families living on their boats and fishing in various ways.

On the island we walked into the village and were made very welcome, shown the tobacco being put onto sticks to be racked up to dry.

 and offered a slurp of tea by the village elders.

We wondered through the fields looking at the various crops they grow-tobbacco, corn, morning glory and millet.

We were given a demonstration of how the dried tobacco is shaved down into small strips.

Back onto the boat for the return cruise in the cool of the evening.

This picture shows one of the piers holding up the bridge on the river adjacent to our hotel.

If you look closely you can see the water mark on the circular column which shows how far the river rises in the wet season it is difficult to imagine the volume of water when the river is so high.

Crossing the Mekong to a village Health Clinic

Finally we got a glimpse of what we really came to Cambodia for – the Countries Maternity Service, or at least a village health clinic which refers into the main Stung Treng Hospital.

At 7.30am, Chris and I met Luisa our VSO host for the week and Sithon her assistant/interpreter,(VA) down by the jetty for a short ferry ride across the Mekong River.

Getting onto the ferry involves walking the plank which is OK but how I will every ride a motorbike across the plank as the locals do without flinching I really don’t know. People, motor bikes, livestock, produce for sale, everything gets put on the same ferry again without any fuss or bother.

View from our seat on the ferry

Getting off the ferry

A short walk from where the ferry unloads is the Health Clinic. Outside the clinic is a diagram illustrating various ailments which presumable you can attend the clinic with.

''I'm sure I've got some of those problems Angela!''

Photo shows the clinic –on the left is the labour ward, then a couple of consulting rooms, a two bedded ward , the parentcraft/waiting room and the dispensary is far right.

The labour ward has only one bed but has a lovely view out of the window.

It also has a sink with running water and a clean delivery trolley. They have a new bag and mask for neonatal resuscitation which they have all recently had training with thanks to a national Initiative called ‘Breathe Easy’.

The clinic sterilises its own instruments using this autoclave –how spoilt I have been with HSSD and disposable instruments! I would need careful instructions to use this without it exploding.

It was great to meet some of the staff. The director of the clinic was very welcoming and the three midwives in their pink uniforms were very friendly. They are all ‘Primary’ midwives who have had a basic one year training fairly recently I think.

The clinic currently only has about 3 or 4 women a month giving birth here but they are trying to encourage more to attend instead of giving birth at home with an untrained T.B.A.(traditional birth attendant) or just relatives.

In the parent craft room a village class of women were discussing child care, including the benefits of ‘skin to skin’ (mother to baby) immediately after birth in promoting exclusive breast feeding. The breast feeding rates are quite high, health workers are promoting exclusive breast feeding for 6 months in line with W.H.O. recommendations.

All in all, a fascinating visit.

After sampling various Khmer puddings at a stall in the village (my favourite looked like beans in syrup with chilled coconut cream) we headed back to the ferry.

This time we shared the ferry with twenty large bags of stone but it didn’t sink!

Photo shows bags of stones. Also see the engine which the Captain stands above in order to view the river ahead of the boat along the top of the cabin roof. He therefore needs to steer  the boat with his foot  on the Tiller –the throttle is attached to a piece of string in his hand –simple but very effective. The engine was similar to one you might find in a bus but this one only had about a foot of exhaust pipe so was quite noisy.

We also noted that Whoopi Goldbergh was collecting the fares wearing a traditional Khmer women’s hat and face mask –to prevent skin from tanning and filter air to breathe.

Returning along the Jetty to Stung Treng town