Getting into a Routine

So my daily routine is beginning to look something like this-

Wake up at 6 30 and appreciate small window of coolness.

Copy up notes from yesterdays class in blue book (I have serious moleskin envy which has entered my wish list along with nice soap, lotion without skin whitener, Cotton tops that cover all appropriate areas and an external hard drive to cadge other people’s film on).

Take a cold shower, hot not available in my room unless you count the drip of lukewarm water from the pipe and the ant’s nest in the showerhead.

Go to Hotel lobby to access Internet, check emails, facebook, BBC & download podcasts (Archers of particular importance, got to keep abreast of Ambridge).

Go for walk and have a Kafe-teuk doh ko-teuk kok - Khmer iced coffee with condensed milk - LUSH.

Find a cheap $1 breakfast - eat it.

Sit in cafe making one lime juice teuk kok last 3 hours.

Try to learn khmer language, test each other and be lulled into a false sense of security that you might actually be progressing.

Cycle to class, sweat (alot).

First hour - realise that you know none of the words you thought you did in your own private study but appreciate air-con and take 30 minutes just to cool down.

First break, cycle to cafe - drink Kafe K'moa - black khmer coffee AKA rocket fuel and eat noodle soup.

Second hour lesson - learn new words+/grammar at such a pace that your head implodes.

Second break - stand on the veranda outside of class stunned whilst being stared at my Cambodian pupils of University and trying not to offend any near by monks.

Third lesson - reach hysteria, laughter better than tears but both options are available.

Cycle home - stop on way and eat cheap Khmer dinner. Try not to drink Angkor beer as suspect this is negatively impacting on language learning.

Cycle past Cambodian Aerobics and man practicing tapak takraw on the banks of the Mekong.

Skype/revise/watch film in make shift cinema (laptop in someone's room)/listen to podcast/read/laundry/chat.

Give up on beer abstinence and go and sit on pavement by Mekong River drinking beer PRN.

Cold Shower.

Bed.

Repeat 6 days a week until fluent in Khmer.

My biggest regret is I still haven't made it to the aerobics.

Maybe tomorrow......

They don't celebrate birthdays in Cambodia

I have reached the point in my life when I can no longer call myself mid-thirties, but I did it in style on the banks of the Mekong river in Cambodia.

We had a lazy Sunday with a leisurely cycle ride to bamboo bridge that connects Kampong Cham to an island in the middle of the Mekong. After initial apprehension we were all converted to the strength of Bamboo. Although Katie's squeals of terror could still be heard from a distance.

Katie (AKA my astral twin) and I stretched out our Birthday over 3 nights even though Dara told us that they don't celebrate birthdays in Cambodia and they all get older every new year (April). I'm not sure if this means that I'll be 39 by May. Dara brought us all pineapple on a stick and then made us suffer for 4 hours of language teaching, it isn't getting any easier.

Beers by the Mekong with our motley crew before we headed off for a meal at the local Khmer restaurant where the lovely Louise & Neil had ordered a cake for us. A great surprise and a birthday just isn't a birthday without cake.

The meat cleaver to cut the cake was a little bit of over kill though.

We finished off the evening back at the river for 75 cent beers & wearing down my iPhone battery to 0% for a sound track to accompany us..... 

Happy days........

Khmer School

 My fellow Khmer language learners, left to right, Louise, me, Neil, Dara (the Stig of Khmer language teaching), Katie & Pete.

 The 7 minute cycle to school, avoiding the crazy motos & other road users(including dogs, chickens and stray children).

 The Bridge over the River Mekong (or in Khmer - Spean Kizuna)

My favourite corner shop

Khmer Language learning has started in earnest. The good things are that Dara is an enthusiastic teacher with a great sense of humour and a large reserve of patience. Good to that Khmer is not a tonal language, has no tenses, words are constructed with common sense if a tad long e.g teuk doh koh translates as water breast cow - milk!
Also good 4 hours every afternoon with mornings to lie in and study. We have two favourite spots Smile and Destiny cafe where we make the iced Khmer coffee with condensed tek doh koh and/or lemon & ice last as long as possible and amuse the staff with our attempts at Khmer.
Learning a new language 22 years after the last attempt (school girl french) is challenging and frustrating. You can have whole rally of one particular sound with Dara & never get it right and other times he tells you its 'clear'. My barang ears can't hear all the consonants & vowels of the Khmer language but I try!
Trips to the Market - P'sar - to buy washing powder, coat hangers, a note book & a present for Katie my astral twin are all good practice. No one understands my spoken Khmer but that's ok because I can't understand them either (yet).
The VSO regulation bike are real bone shakers but it great being mobile and quite literally cool. You have to keep your wits about you and I was even able to shock one moto driver who cut me up and apologised by responding in Khmer "no problem".
It's been clearly established early on that I a shit magnet with the formation of the phrase "the est factor". So no surprises that I was at the epicentre of the first bike RTC. Scrages only - my specialist skills were not required.

Now this is intensive language training but it become even more compressed yesterday when we asked to cut class early to go to the wat to see the dancing. No photos of this I'm afraid but I will try to acquire from the Gill of bike incident, if she's forgiven me the scrages.(Above is one of Gill's photos I'm stolen, the joys of free wifi and lazy sunday afternoons). We did 3 hours work into 2 which was more than my aging brain could handle but the dancing children were worth it.

 Louse, Caleb, Pete, Peter, Neil & Gill, night market $1 noodles.

Warm Angkor Beer through a straw, is there a better way to spend a saturday night?

Yesterday ended with more warm beers sat by the Mekong discussing personality tests, land rights, logging, corruption, development work and the meaning of life.

42......

Leaving Phnom Penh

So we have left Phnom Penh for Kampong Cham and due to start language lessons with Dara, the Stig of Cambodian language learning, this afternoon.
The bus journey to Kampong Cham was eventful in an understated English way. It's been a while since I've travelled on a bus in Asia and I'd forgotten not to watch the road. It was hard as Katie & I were wedged into the front passenger seats with an excellent view of all 27 near misses we experienced. On only three occasions did I allow an involuntary muffled scream to escape. I may be an emergency doc but there isn't an awful lot I'd be able to do for a bus v cyclist.
There was an impressive bullseye crack to the windscreen that you can see a tendril of in the above photo but with the VSO standard issue motorbike helmets & luggage wedging us in to our seats I'm not sure we would have been propelled forward to add to it in the event of a head on collision with a truck.
Kampong Cham is quieter than Phnom Penh and I'm feeling confident that the roads will be navigable on our new VSO issued bicycles.
No Raid or mossie nets in our rooms at the Mekong Hotel here so the battle of the Mosquitos doesn't look by being won any time soon.
At dinner last night I experienced the most random hawking so far, three 10 year olds with weighing scales and varying price ranges to way you. I told them I know I am heavy and didn't really need to pay them 500 R, 1000R, or $1 to find this out. However after an iced coffee this morning with the 'wrong ice' my Cambodia weight loss plan may commence!
I've read the Peace Corp manual on adults learning a foreign language and it would appear I possess pretty much all of the traits that act as blocks to learning. So this perfectionist, wanting to speak fluently, not prepared to make mistakes or look like an idiot is off to deconstruct herself before 1 30 pm.
leah sen heuy!

Dengue, Malaria & Japanese Encephalitis

I'm sorry to start off on a medical matter, you can take the doctor out of the hospital but.....
It's just that after our gentle easing into Cambodia living for the last week I have found the biggest leap of thinking to be my relationship with the mosquitoes.
You may think you have sprayed your room with Raid, you use the mosquito net to the best of your 'long-nose' abilities and you 50% DEET-up as often as you can remember but those little buggers still get you somehow.
Now in the UK this would only be a minor inconvenience but of course here the insects are packing heat.
I know no-one really wants to see my swollen ankles but I really needed to share this bite, it is my best ever and I'll know in 7 days time if the delightful day biting mosquito that did this tested positive for Dengue. By it's purplish hue I was already convinced I had haemorrhagic fever.
So it is all about the entomology for me currently.
I can filter my water and wash my food, I can use the mosquito net despite the heat (which is incidentally 'cool' at present), I can render myself a gooey, smelly, sticky blob with DEET and I can use Raid as if it is going out of fashion BUT can I and will I win the battle of the mosquito?! I think we all know the answer to that one.
This will be the first and last 'bite' photo I promise and no fungal infections will be shared either ever!
Thank you for patience......

3 nights in Phnom Penh

Well I have been in Phnom Penh for 3 nights and 2 days now and have found a nice air conditioned coffee shop with wifi right next door to VSO. My caffeine and internet withdrawal programme will just have to wait a few more days.
Me and my 11 fellow VSO newbies are being broken in gently with cyclotours of the city and a day off today.
The real work will start next week when on Wednesday we will take ourselves and our over sized baggage to Kampong Cham where are intensive language training and coffee shop/wifi withdrawals begins.
Wish me luck!