A lovely bike ride by the Mekong

After living in Stung Treng for twenty months, we have not yet exhausted areas to explore within cycling distance of our house.

A couple of months ago, Angela, Linda and I decided to go exploring on our bikes, setting off about 8 am one Saturday morning. The sun was already up and it was hot but we covered up with clothing and sunscreen and pushed on.

Linda has some detailed maps of Stung Treng and surrounding villages and our eye had been taken by the West bank of the Mekong, in particular a large island in the middle of the river.

The usual ferry we use to cross the Mekong had just motored off (using a naked engine similar to a wagon without a silencer) but we had a backup plan, which was cycle out of town and catch a smaller boat across which Angela had used before on her travels to Health centers. We weren’t to know it was the first of four ferries we took that day, all of them different and adding greatly to the fun and spirit of adventure.

 

 

Small ferry crossing the Mekong with our bikes on board.

Once across we were on familiar ground at Thala Borivit district, landing South of the town. Of the town, Lonely Planet says:

For all its past glories, there is very little to see today. It is hardly worth the effort for the casual visitor, but Temple fiends may feel the urge to tick it off.

How unkind, the temple reference refers to local concentrations of old temples dated between the 6^th and 9^th Centuries.

 

I found it hard to believe but this ancient structure is claimed to be older than the Temples of Angkor Watt.

 

 

A Sacred stone cow which again pre-dates Angkor Watt.

We cycled South along the river bank passing wooden house on stilts with really friendly Cambodian people outside surprised, but delighted to see, crazy Barrangs cycling in the heat.

Hello! What your name?- next house- Hello!, What your name?- interspersed with- ......where you go?

I then had a rear wheel puncture and being the practical lad I am, I had brought a few bike tools and a new inner tube. However, VSO bikes are fiddly things to work on especially the rear wheel so whenever possible we let the local repairman do the job with his special tools.

We stopped by a sort of repair place, the repairman wasn’t in, unbeknown to us a phone call had been made and the repairman appeared.

Soon we were on our way halted by a small tributary feeding the Mekong. This location had the smallest ferry of the day powered by the operator pulling on ropes. In this case three children aged maybe 10 y.o. pulled us across; smiles, embarrassment and pride in the job all the way.

At this point I was on unfamiliar ground, we came to the point at which the new bridge under construction will strike the West bank, more on the new bridge another time.

 

The Bridge crossing on the West bank of the Mekong.Construction underway for completion in a year or two.

 

We were searching for a ferry crossing to put us on a large island we could see lying of our bank of the Mekong.

 

A possible ferry landing point? Let's ask the locals.

 

We found a probable site and Linda asked some curious locals to phone the ferry driver (I could see the ferry moored to the side of the island, off in the distance).I watched and imagined the driver waking in the shade to the sound of his mobile, mumbling something and shaking off the sleep as he coached the oily engine into life.

 

Here comes the ferry so we make our way down to the river with our bikes.

Slowly the ferry came across and picked us up.

 

Linda and Angela on the ferry with their bikes.

 

What a lovely island we had discovered. We cycled east across the island from bank to bank, maybe 10 mins cycling.

 

Peaceful cycling across the island to the far side.

 

 We turned and rode down the island some way, stopping for a rest on a patch of grass by the river.

 

No traffic insight.

 

Soon a crowd had gathered whispering and growing bolder edging nearer to us. Crazy barangs why lie there when you can rest at our house? An older women shouted, well it sounded as if she was shouting but it was probably just the passion in her invitation coming through.

 

A well earned rest on a Kamai families raised platform.

 

We followed and were hosted by a lovely Kamai family who peeled us Pomaloes and let us rest on their sleeping platform; they went off to continue harvesting the rice crop.

The children stayed practising their English language and having their photos taken, finally asking us for some dollars- ah well.

 

Curious local children wondering what we are doing lying on the ground in the sun- why would you do that?

We retraced the track and found another departure point for the 4^th and last ferry of the day, again a friendly local phoned and the ferry motored across from the mainland to pick us up.

 

The ferry had motored from the mainland to come and pick us up.

Once across with the bikes unloaded we were back on the mainland South of Stung Treng town having travelled in an anti-clockwise direction. Returning along a familiar road passing the prison and new bridge construction site, we completed the loop back to town.

 

The new bridge under construction it will take a year or two to finish and then it will have a big impact on the local area- the ferries will be mostly redundant and a lot more traffic will pass through the area.

 

A really enjoyable, successful adventure which I will remember for the beautiful countryside, the peaceful river, the smiling friendly, happy, curious Cambodians living along our route.

I would recommend the trip to any visitors, maybe next time it wouldn’t go as smoothly, but who knows all part of the adventure?

 

 

Bringing on 2013 Cambodia

Been having problems with loading pics onto the blog site but all seems OK now so back in business.

All went according to plan for the Xmas hols and we had a lovely time in Laos staying on the islands of Don Det and Don Khon. We stayed in lovely but basic bungalows which had a double bed and cement finish bathroom with cold shower and running insects.
Xmas day we managed a full turkey dinner with roast potatoes, gravy etc then lots of dancing. Because we were in a restaurant there were many new people to meet and share the experience with.

 

Xmas Day dinner on the Island of Don Det Laos.

 

When we weren't eating and drinking we were cycling on lovely sandy paths around the islands.

 

 

New Years Eve party at our rented house. Friends of many Nationalities eating, drinking and talking on the balcony.

Paul, Angela's brother, is staying with us for a few weeks having arrived in the New Year.

 

Andrea, Jane and Paul posing with the super efficient bicycle.

 

To show him some of rural Cambodia , I went with him and Andrea on a motorbike ride along the banks of the Mekong.We met Jane Woodman an Australian who is cycling from Beijing (China) to Melbourne (Australia). We had coffee together and exchanged experiences : her cycling stories and our living and working in Stung Treng.She is a very interesting, friendly positive person and if you are interested in her adventures please visit : www.intrepidcycle.com

The holidays over we finally got back to work; I'm working more or less full time at the hospital now helping Angela on the Infection Control Project which we have blogged about before.
The idea was Paul would come and help me on the bigger parts of the project and this has worked out really well.
Together we discovered the worst hand basin in the Hospital to date:

 

This is in the Pharmacy; being the staff toilet. It leads through an open door to the main body of the Pharmacy where the drugs are stored and dispensed.
 Paul has since replaced the tap and put a more functional waste pipe in. We are standing back now to see if the staff clean the wash basin.
A very satisfying job we have just completed is to replace a large length of broken sewage pipe.

 

Broken sewage pipe discharging directly onto hospital path.

 

The problem has come about because the pipe is on the surface and has been ridden over by motorbikes breaking the plastic pipe.

 

Black stinky mess from pipe- worse in the wet season.

 

The pipe has now been replaced with new and a very satisfying job it was.

 

 



Paul mending the pipe whilst the Cambodians stand and watch

 

New pipe with old piece along side.

 

The repair work is now coming to an end and we have to quickly  work with the Cambodian Hospital staff to try and make things sustainable for when we leave in 5 weeks time. At the moment they report blocked sinks to us and expect us to unblock them - why? its not rocket science. Perhaps some training and handing over all our tools will help.

So I'm please the blog site is working again and will try and keep posting on the run up to us leaving and returning to the UK.



 

Happy Xmas from Stung Treng xxxx

Merry Xmas everybody!

We are spending Xmas in another Country!

We are going to Laos to the 4,000 islands region - never been before so it will be a Christmas with a difference!

Health and Safety and Risk -Alien Concepts for Cambodians

There are some extremely high risk activities in Stung Treng which the locals see as part of everyday life such as:

• 28 people crammed into an old minibus with 12 seats (plus boxes chickens furniture etc.)
• 4 very drunk lads going home in the black darkness, on potholed streets, all on the same motorbike
• Children swimming in the Mekong river which is the main sewer never mind the added risk of Bilharzia

Have a look at the following photos and imagine what would happen in England! EU regulations eat your heart out!

Motorbike Safety?

Having survived one of the greatest risks of all,that of being born. you then face a journey home from hospital on the back of a motorbike. Dad is driving in the front with all the luggage including the bed role on his lap. New mum with wool hat on of course is riding side saddle in the middle while grandma is managing to balance on the back with the baby in her arms. They ride away without a care over rough roads full of pot-holes.

Where to start! None of the three have helmets on. The child in the middle has an IVI drip up which  his sister on the back is helpfully holding up. The young woman driving has flip-flops on. Sadly as the roads are improved there is a growing trend for serious motorbike accidents. Mainly young men riding too fast often after drinking beer or whiskey. As they have no helmet and no safety gear they often don't survive. These deaths are reported every Monday morning at the hospital management meeting I attend. It is the law to wear a helmet but everyone says you don't need to bother after 11am as the police will have gone home for the day  - missed the point entirely.

Again a very young child with an IVI drip up which dad has hung up in the tree while the child plays on the slide. It is easy to send a child into heart failure and even death by over infusing him with IV fluids - in Europe its normal to control the rate by using a failsafe drip counter machine which prevents over infusion. Here children are all over town with various drips up running at various uncontrolled rates.

Men at Work?

This is a gem mine. The hole is about half a metre wide and there are foot holes in the sides to help you climb down about 5metres before crawling along horizontally to the gem seam. When you have finished with this hole you just walk away from it and dig another leaving the old one as a trap for unsuspecting folk to fall down.

This is one of our assistants in our office sawing a piece of metal pipe. Note his bare foot and hand  holding the pipe while the hacksaw skids about over the pipe,all balancing on the edge of the desk. The following week, at home,  he drove a screw driver into his hand down to the bones -he then had to get it sutured with no anesthetic as usual.

The two boys driving the Road roller are about 12 years old. The traffic dodges around it while it rolls up and down the road outside the cafe we were at.

Building scaffolding Cambodian style -I wonder if he will put safety end boards and  grab rails around it?

Scary Creatures:

This buffalo and her calf have just been chased out of the hospital again. It seems to be her favourite place and you often meet them roaming along the hospital covered walkways -you need to be very careful not to come between her and her calf -she has rather large horns.

I like to think our house is fairly safe but these two were some of the residents. The  spider is about 12cm across and bites. The scorpion was found in the clothes washing bowl. Chris bravely got rid of both. We also have rats or birds in the roof space and lizards everywhere -kitchen bedroom etc. but they aren't really scary.

Children at play

Depending on your point of view these boys are either just enjoying themselves on a hot day or are risking their lives climbing up a slippy rockface and jumping into a rocky pool at the foot of a waterfall.

Travelling Safely?

This is our bus. The front tire had a complete blowout - see shredded tyre in foreground. But not to worry they soon  fitted the spare which has not even 1mm of tread on it -completely smooth -perfect for the poor roads?

This is the runway and helicopter landing pad. Luckily planes are rare

If you do have an accident you then have to weigh-up whether it's safer to just go home and consult the local medicine man or to admit yourself to the Health Centre above or to be carried on the back of a motorbike for 2hours on a rough road to the hospital- difficult decision.

Lawnmower engine V the Mighty Mekong

We have visited the Khone Falls area, on and above the Cambodian/Laos border, twice; once in the Wet season and again in the Dry season and what a contrast in the scenery.

 

 

Say Cheese!!!! (happy cow cheese)

We went up to the falls in a small boat in August 2011 during the Wet season. The Mekong was in flood with water pouring down from Laos and the boat’s engine wasn’t strong enough to overpower the river current and make positive headway, at times we were moving backwards.

When I say engine we are not talking Mercury 20 HP outboard motor , no on the stern there is a homemade affair consisting of lawnmower- type engine , 18 foot of steel tube with a propellor welded to the end.(You should expect me to be critical, I'm an engineer)

We didn’t know when we cast off; in truth the river conditions and size of the boat made the journey very risky and it was only the skill of the local boatman which prevented us from capsizing on numerous occasions. Many times we had to cheat; creeping along the leeside of partly submerged trees and bushes. The boatman refueled direct from a dirty plastic container whilst his helper restrained the boat by him clinging to a partly submerged tree trunk.

 

Helper clinging to tree branches to keep us head into the current

 

As it turned out, the closest we could get to the falls was maybe 300 metres downstream and the atmosphere in the boat was tense as we dared to moor and take quick pictures.

 

The closest we could get to the huge natural barrier to Navigation.

 

We experienced close at hand the Mekong’s pure unrestrained aggression as millions of litres of water crashed over the rocks and into Cambodia every second.

 

 

Poor pic quality due to hands shaking with tension!

 

It was a spectacular sight but the relief was palpable when we cast off , swung round and the boat withdrew, helped on the return journey by the river current.

April 2012 and the Dry season gave entirely different conditions at the falls. Our friends from the UK, Pauline, Graham and Sarah were staying with us and we rode motorbikes up the brown roads following the Western bank of the Mekong to the Laos border region.

 

 

Slow down for the Buffalo crossing

 

 

Chris , Angela, Graham and Sarah, Pauline taking the pic

 

 This time the river was so low we could walk over the huge rocks and leap over the smaller cascades. Fun but difficult in sandals, the rocks were razor sharp.

 

The Same falls this time in the dry season.

 

We enjoyed a refreshing swim; having to keep our valuable close by.

 

 

Chris swimming ,(left of pic), Sarah (centre right of pic)

 

 

An effort to stay anchored in the strong current 

Lovely temperature - now how do I get out?- strong current/bare,sensitive feet- sharp rocks?

 

Then we rushed two hours South; retracing our route to catch the last ferry across to Stung Treng.

Wish you were here?

Recently, when Michael and Laura came over for a holiday, we went for a few days to Sihanoukville.
This place is a long way from Stung Treng which is probably why we had been in Country 18 months before we went for this, the first time.

I'm quoting mainly from the guide book here:

Named in honour of the then - king, Sihanoukville was hacked out of the jungle in the late 1950's to create Cambodia's first and only deep - water port, strategically vital because it meant that the countries international trade no longer had to pass through Vietnam's Mekong Delta. During the 1960's the city experienced a tourism miniboom.
The main attractions here, in addition to the islands, are the beaches ringing the headland. On weekday's it is possible to have stretches of casuarina and coconut - palm - shaded sand to yourself.

After Michael and Laura had left we decided to stay on a couple of more days to treat ourselves with some money our good friends Pauline, Graham and Sarah had given to us.

In the morning we decided to explore the beaches:

 

Chris forgot his hat and had to shelter under a towel

 

 

It was very hot but the beaches were spectacular. The above picture was taken on Occheuteal Beach along from where we were staying near Serendipity Beach. I remeber the morning as being very hot and you would soon burn without sunscreen on .

Our idea was to carry on walking along the beach to its southern end ( the fishing village here was recently removed by the government) and to carry on up and over the small headland to arrive at Otres Beach.

 





Getting closer to Otres Beach.

 

 

By now we were getting hot and bothered , there wasn't any sign of a cafe or bar to rest in the shade and have a cool drink. Then when we got to Otres Beach - Bingo! we found somewhere:

 

 

 

 

I think this beach bar is called Indigo at Otres - only been opened a few months, it was idyllic.

 After being in Stung Treng town for 18 months we could'nt get over what it was like to sit in comfort on the beach gazing out to sea. We felt a bit guilty- we are Volunteer's meant to be roughing it.

 

 

 

The view from our seats in the bar.

 

Apparently small beach shack type accomodation is available for 15$ a night.

 

We spent an hour or so sitting, well  aware that this was the last beach/ sea for a few months.

 

Wish you were there now ?

 



                         

Typical Monday morning in Hospital

There are usually a lot of people about in Stung Treng hospital on a Monday morning.
Basically for treatment in the hospital the patient has to pay before they go home. The exception to this is if they are very poor and have a card signed by their Commune chief ( I think) to say that they are from a poor family and cannot afford to pay. The system is means tested and questions such things as :do you have a metal roof on your house?; do you have walls on your house?; how many Buffallo do you own? If you own a buffallo forget the card - you pay.
Anyway, because the Admin staff do not work at the weekend nobody is allowed to go home and they have to wait in the hospital until Monday morning - the first chance to pay for your treatment.

 

No more beds on the ward so the Women with newborn babies lie on the floor in the reception area.

 

This Monday morning I was called to the Maternity unit with Angela as there were 29 Women with new babies and no water in the toilets ie no means of washing etc. The reception area looked like a temporary disaster relief area with women, babies and visitors lying on the floor.

 

Inside the main entrance door a new mother and her family wait to go home.

 

 

This area a few weeks ago was regularly flooded as water leaked out of the walls. I have been able to stop this hence the people can lie on the floors but I have so far been unable to find the leak, the pipes are buried in concrete walls.

 

 

 

So why had the water been turned off?

He who shall remain nameless had turned off the water to the bathrooms as one washbasin had been blocked again by , yes you've guessed it, rice.

We turned the water back on and showed the Cleaner for this area how to unblock the washbasins, but more inportantly, provided a new plunger and sieve for her to do the job on a regular basis as the need arises.

10 am we usually go for a coffee over the road from the main exit and watch the new mums go home on the back of a motorbike.

So, father driving the bike then all the equipment they used for the stay including rolled up mat to lie on, then mother sits on side saddle holding the new born baby in her arms,off they go into the mid- morning chaos of the market traffic.Oh! I hope they paid first - otherwise they are classified by the Management as having escaped!