Apartment hunting

A young Cambodian man picked me up at 09:00 to look at apartments. The first apartment was in a reasonable neighborhood. The stairway up to the apartment had a locked metal bar door at the bottom and a metal barred door on the apartment. For $250 a month it seemed ok. It had a northern exposure and on the first floor with air conditioning, an old washing machine and refrigerator. A big plus is that the landlord speaks English.

Furnished apartments in Phnom Penh are much less furnished than in Kampong Cham, my landlord in Kampong Cham spoiled me.

As we drove to the second apartment, I thought the realtor was talking to me, his hands were on the handlebars and he was speaking. He was speaking in Khmer, because of this I thought" Is he talking to himself?"

We arrived at the next apartment which overlooked the main boulevard in the center of town. The view was very nice the flights of stairs that I had to climb to get there were not so nice. The entrance was too dark and the exposure was to the south and east, it would be to hot in the dry season.

The next apartment was three blocks from my office, I could walk to work. The apartment was nice, predominantly facing north, but the south side of the apartment is open to the sun which would make the kitchen side hot in the dry season.

As we drove to the last and worst to the four I watched the realtor make a phone call, shove the phone up to his ear under his helmet, instant "hands free". Now I know he was talking on the phone not to himself.

Restaurant review Chinese Noodle on Montovong

This was my second time to the Chinese Noodle restaurant on Montovong. I drove up on to the sidewalk and parked my moto. 

I asked the attendant if it would rain, he looked up and said "no rain". I arrived before the evening rush and had a choice of several tables.

The menu is under the glass table top, no matter which side of the table you sit on you have to read half of the menu upside down. I had soup for lunch and wanted something a little more substantive. When I was here before with friends they had ordered green beans with mushrooms. I did not see them on the menu but the waitress said they had them. Another dish caught my eye "spicy potatoes". Where I grew up spicy potatoes meant potatoes with salt and pepper, here it was a little different.

The string beans were the very long beans cut into 1 ½ inch lengths and fried with a few mushrooms. The sauce was thick and stuck to the beans, the dish very tasty. The spicy potatoes were sliced and cut thin looking like a plate full of large toothpicks. The potatoes were pan fried with slivers of carrots and a very generous amount the small very, very hot red peppers sliced crossways. The potatoes were cooked to be just done. My first bite required a quick rinse of the pallet from my ice tea. I picked the remainder of the red peppers out of the potatoes.

Dinner was good and cost $3.00. I arrived back at the guest house, parked my moto and as I went inside it began to rain.

Driving in Phnom Penh

Leaving work I looked left 30 meters to see the intersection clogged with cars and motos. I thought "if I go around the block the intersection up the street will be less crowded." Going around the block was comparatively easy; there was only one car and two motos coming at me in my lane.

Making the left turn onto the main road was easier at this intersection. I swam with the school of motos toward the main boulevard, picking my way from open space to open space. At one point there were six motos abreast coming down the street in the other lane, three with me headed toward the boulevard and two more motos coming at me on the right side. Needless to say the street was crowded.

At one point there was a car trying to turn left, which blocked our lane, I followed another moto that drove up onto the sidewalk for 15 meters and then back onto the road when he was around the car turning left.

Our school of motos reached the main boulevard. I turned right onto the main boulevard, wow there was 100 meters without traffic, this relief was short lived. I came up the next intersection that does not have a traffic light.

As I approached the intersection there were four cars in the intersection crossing the boulevard. These cars were circled with a small school of motos. The cars were almost stopped and the motos were zipping around the cars. I thought, "The intersection is a bit crowded, I will stay off to the far right and sneak around the back of the car that just entered the intersection." That worked quite well.

I was now on the right side of the right hand lane of three lanes going my way. I assume traffic would all be going my way. I forgot that the right side of the right hand lane is really an extension of the lanes going in the opposite direction. That is, if you want to go left and you cannot get across the lanes to go the way you want to, you just go the way you want on this side of the street and if you get a chance you can cross.

There are many more driving rules in Cambodia than in any other countries. I am glad I don't have to take a driver's test here.

Lunch and dinner

Just before lunch time I asked two colleagues where I could find a Khmer restaurant at a reasonable prince. They mentioned two restaurants that were expensive but there was a restaurant where lunch cost $2.00. I thought that would be great, that is only $0.25 more than in Kampong Cham.

The restaurant was a large covered space with a lot of white tables and chairs. We took a seat with another colleague. Lunch was served family style, four different dishes and a large bowl of rice.

The first dish was a soup with an almost woody vegetable stalks, a little beef and a spicy curry like sauce. The next dish was fried vegetables with a few (very few) pieces of beef this dish did not have much flavor. After the fried vegetables we were served a fish covered in diced vegetables. The fish looked very similar to the fish I had in Kampong Cham, the vegetables were not as good, in Kampong Cham there was more pineapple. Our last dish was beef in a peanut sauce with peanuts and more of the woody vegetable stalks.

As is the custom at most Khmer meals when food is served you start eating and stop talking. Not a word was said until we were done eating except "more rice?"

After riding my moto home, I walked to dinner. A new Indian restaurant just opened next to the guest house. It is possible that I was their first customer; they were still connecting the billboard to electricity while I was eating dinner. after I ordered one of the staff hopped on a moto and returned five minutes later with a bag of what appeared to be vegetables.

I ordered a Chicken Tali that came with rice, yogurt, spinach panier, garnishes, chicken marsala and lentils. Spicing of the dishes was just right. I ordered a butter nana assuming it would be small. I was wrong, it was the size of a large, platter.

A miss is as good as a mile

Looking at my computer I saw that it was 17:00, how did it get that late, I thought it was about 16:00. Leaving work, my plan was to ride around the neighborhood to see if there were any apartments for rent. After riding two blocks I realized that I needed 120% of my concentration focused on the road and traffic.

My father told me "a miss is as good as a mile"; I think that's the prevailing attitude here. Taking a crowded narrow road from the office area to the main boulevard I dodged cars and motos.

When I reached the main Boulevard I turned right. While driving on the boulevard I felt like I was in a herd of 1,000 horses stampeding to the next traffic light. Not all of us were going the same direction; two motos were going against traffic. Spotting my turn I carefully eased to the left side of the left hand lane. I stopped to let two cars go the other direction pass and I relaxed for a moment thinking "I am almost home". Just as I began my turn, WHOOSH, a moto went speeding past me on the left. That was close.

When I got off of my moto it felt reassuring to have both feet on firm ground. I will look for an apartment in non-rush hour times.

New Job!

This was my last week working for KAPE in Kampong Cham. Next week I will be working for Digital Divide Data in Phnom Penh.

The change was very unexpected. Three weeks ago as part of the research for a business plan for KAPE I went to Digital Divide Data to determine their organization structure. After the meeting I purchased a copy of the "Cambodian Dally" an English language newspaper. While thumbing through the paper there was an advertisement for Digital Divide Data; they were looking for a senior project manager in IT. I thought this must be destiny and indicated that I should start looking for my next position; my volunteer assignment would be ending in about six months.

Sending off my CV I thought this the first of many. About a week later I received an e-mail that Digital Divide Data was interested in my background and experience. I had two telephone interviews and they wanted me to start last Monday. I had things that must be finished for KAPE and I needed a week.

Last week was busy, finishing the business plan for the social enterprise and change e-mail from an in house server to an internet service provider (ISP) in the USA. Wednesday noon I handed in the business plan and Friday we completed the conversion to the new ISP.

Monday was moving day.

From the palm tree to you

Coconuts are everywhere, from time to time I see them laying in the road, one had fallen off of a moto as it is going to the market. Below is a photo of one of the older modes of transportation for coconuts. I don't know how old the bicycle is but it has seen better days.

Green coconuts have a very nice juice; the locals say it is a very healthy drink. A nurse friend said it was a very good electrolyte replacement drink. They can be purchase at most of the small shops, from vendors on bicycles and in restaurants. The one shown below is in a restaurant, when you purchase one from the bicycle, it is not as nicely carved.

In shops in the countryside they cost about $0.25 the one in the restaurant was $1.00.

Saturday evening in Seim Reap

After I finished shooting at Angkor Wat, Dara drove us to the area that people go to after work. It is a two kilometer long boulevard with service roads on both sides. The edges of the service roads were filled with food stalls. These stalls are very much like djemaa el fna in Marrakech, the proprietors put the stalls up in the afternoon and tear them down after closing in the middle of the night.

When you have a crowd there will be someone selling just about anything. This is a Cambodian discount store

The whole family will come on its moto and they need something to keep the kids entertained. Note how the peddle cars are suspended

What would an evening be without food? Dara and I were there late in the afternoon and only a few of the food stands were serving. We sampled some of the young lady's offerings. 

After sampling I went back to the hotel and said goodbye to Dara. The weather was the best it had been all day and now it was almost dark.

Saturday at the Angkor Complex

In the middle of the night I was awake for two or more hours, this left me feeling exhausted when getting out of bed. Looking out at the sky there was a low heavy overcast, not a good day for photographs. Dara my tuk tuk driver picked me up at 06:30.

Dara and I discussed where to go in the Angkor complex. Showing him the photo of the tree growing over a building he knew what part of complex it was in. We drove to the entrance of Angkor where I purchased my $20.00 day pass. There were several warnings, "once you pay there is no getting your money back, if you lose the pass there is no refunds or no new ticket" and "the complex closes at 6:30 PM".

The entrance to Ta Prohm (where the tree grows over the building) was blocked and covered with scaffolding. There were steps that took me up and over the old wall, this gave me a good view of some of the trees. The Sarlao tree has a very white back with pock marks, I took several photos of them.

When the sky is white in addition to photographing details without the sky I try silhouettes against the white sky. The large trees and their canopies made good silhouette subjects.

Below is the building with the tree growing over it.

From Ta Prohm we drove to the wall of elephants around the Byaon temple. It was sprinkling as I headed to see what details were on the walls. Most of the walls around the outside of the grounds were next to a swamp, no photos there.

After going into the temple grounds it started to rain. On the way out I passed through a corridor that had beautiful carvings on the walls. It was raining too hard to take photos. I went back to the tuktuk to wait. I found the tuktuk parked with 15 others. When I found Dara, he was asleep in the back seat his head on a child's stuffed bear pillow.

In the parking area a Barang (foreigner) is like blood to sharks. Within 10 seconds of reaching my tuk tuk there were five children wanting to sell things. I politely said no. I took some photos of the kids.

I wanted to photograph some of the carvings I had seen in the rain so we waited for the rain to let up. After about 30 minute the rain becomes a light mist. I walked back to the corridor and photographed.

After lunch Dara drove me to the main Angkor Wat temple entrance where I wanted to photograph the detailed mural carvings in the back of the buildings. There are two long walls (I guess they are 100 or more meters long). They were not easy to photograph.

The rain and white sky did not wash me out completely.

Siem Reap

After my meeting in Siem Reap I found a moto to take me to my hotel. I asked if the driver knew where the hotel was, he said yes. He meant no. I had a reasonable idea where the hotel was and I had a map, we found the hotel without really getting lost. The Mandalay inn is very nice; my room was like a large Persian room; that means there was enough room to walk around in this bed. The ceiling fan is a bit noisy but I did not notice that, someone's air conditioner outside drowned out the fan noise. Glad I brought my ear plugs.

My room was on a a corner with two windows. The air conditioner noise made me thinks I had air conditioning even though there was only a fan. A breeze gave nice cross ventilation.

Leaving the hotel looking for a moto to take me to the KAPE office, I spotted a young man sitting on a moto. I asked if he could take me. Wouldn't you know it, usually I am hounded with "Need a Moto" "Want a Tuk Tuk". This man was not a moto driver, just someone sitting on his moto waiting for a friend.

Finding a real moto after a short walk I called my KAPE colleague and he gave the driver instructions. After the driver hung up, he asked his colleagues something in Khmer. This was an omen of what was to come. The moto driver may have been new to the moto game or was not familiar with the part of town we were headed. On the way we stopped twice and I called my KAPE colleague again to give more directions. As we were bumping along a road under construction, the KAPE driver came up on his moto. I said "follow him". I made it. Because I had not seen a moto close to the KAPE office I asked the driver to wait. Going back to the hotel was much faster than finding the KAPE office.

Siem Reap is a tourist town and the Mandalay inn is about three blocks from one of the main restaurant and market areas. Looking for dinner, I walked around a bit to see what was available. An Indian restaurant caught my nose. I had a very good dinner for six dollars.

After dinner I walked two blocks to the Quick Mart. I had forgotten shampoo and the hotel only provided tiny pink bars of soap. I picked up shampoo and a few other items and stood in line for checkout. When it was my turn the woman behind the counter scanned some of the items and had trouble scanning the bottle of water, the label was wet. She set it aside and scanned two more items; one of these did not scan either. I was waiting for her to key in the codes. She just rang it up. I did not argue, I just paid the bill and walked out.

I went back to my room, put in my earplugs and hoped for a good night's sleep.

To Siem Reap

07:00 the moto pulled up and honked. I was not expecting moto for 15 minutes. I let him into the driveway and finished packing and getting dressed. At the station I met the KAPE accountant from Siem Reap. We would be taking the same bus to Siem Reap.

About 07:40 the 07:30 bus to Siem Reap pulled up to the bus stop. We boarded and I took my customary aisle seat. We drove around the block and parked and then more passengers boarded. Today I was able to convince the iPod to be louder than the bus music system. I listened to my favorite photography podcast.

It seems that most of my assumptions have been wrong, and today was no exception. I had assumed that the trip to Siem Reap would take around three hours. When we pulled into a rest stop just a little more than an hour into the trip I wondered if I had underestimated the time for the journey.

Back on the road I finished the first podcast, and listened to two more before we pulled into another rest area. I asked my colleague when we would arrive in Siem Reap. He said 13:30. Oops. I had a 12:30 appointment. I tried to reach the person I would be meeting but there was no answer.

About 20 minutes later the bus pulled over in a small town still about 90 km from Siem Reap. I assumed we were dropping someone off or picking someone up. The driver and his assistant got out. I thought this would be a good time to try my phone call again, away from the bus and music (noise). I stepped out of the bus and tried the call again, still no answer. I sent a short text message to say I would be late.

Hopping back on the bus I listened to a podcast. About five minutes later I noticed several people getting off of the bus. This was becoming a rather long stop to pick someone up. I joined the others outside, and found the driver with only his feet sticking out of the engine compartment. Hmm, this was not looking good.

A number of passengers took seats on chairs and benches under the overhang of a building and watched the driver and his assistant work. Sometime later when I looked up, I saw what looked like a gearbox sitting on the ground next to the bus. This definitely did not look good.

There were enough seats for about half of the passengers to be in the shade. I stood for quite a while but when a chair opened up I took it. We had made two rest stops, but because I assumed we would soon reach Siem Reap, I hadn't eaten anything. I was beginning to question that logic, and saw that there were restaurants across the road. I also knew that crossing the road would be placing my life in the hands of drivers flying by, horns blaring.

I decided I was not all that hungry after all, but wondered how we would get to Siem Reap. Several passengers hailed buses as they passed. Some were full, but about 1/3 of the passengers from my bus managed to get onto other buses. My colleague called the Siem Reap KAPE office and asked them to send the pickup for us.

While waiting I witnessed an interesting aspect of Cambodian culture. Since all the chairs and benches were taken, a woman of 70 years or more took off her flip-flops, placed them next to each other on the ground, and sat on them. I had seen school children do this before. Shortly after the woman sat down, an older man did the same thing. It works well, you have a place to sit and you do not get your pants dirty. You don't need shoes on to sit.

As we sat there, several people rode by. A girl about six rode a bicycle that was quite a bit too big for her. As she passed I could see that she had a block of ice sitting on the carrier on the back of the bicycle.

A few minutes, later another girl rode up on a bicycle with a block of ice in the basket on the front. There was a block of ice, not in a bag, box or container just a block of ice sitting on the carrier of the bicycle dripping a trail of water. A few minutes later, a moto went by with a meter-long block of ice perched crosswise on the moto just in front of the driver's legs. I assumed this must be Cambodian moto air conditioning.

The KAPE pickup truck finally arrived. It was air conditioned. What a relief. I don't know where the driver learned to drive, but he did not have a good understanding of what the gears were for. He started out in second gear, skipped third, went directly to fourth and quickly to fifth. Needless to say, the engine was jumping all over the place with the truck in too high a gear by the time we were underway to Siem Reap. The driver slowed behind a bus waiting for an opportunity to pass.

When I arrived at my meeting in Siem Reap the person was busy and I had to wait for 20 minutes.

The Fridgewhisperer guest post

Every Wednesday for the next few weeks I will be guest blogging at the invitation of Canadian national food writer, Deborah Rankine, aka Chef Deb. We met a couple of years ago when Deb was touring Morocco home kitchens in search of the perfect couscous. She's now asked me to share some of my food-related experiences in Cambodia with readers of her blog, The Fridge Whisperer.

Memories from the Vietnam War

I was in Phnom Penh last week. One evening after work I turned on the TV and watched several programs on the Discovery Channel. One was about the very first WWI fighter planes and pilots. Having flown combat in the skies over Cambodia in 1973 just before the end of hostilities in Cambodia this was emotional for me.

Another program was about a cargo plane that crashed while evacuating orphans from Saigon on the fourth of April 1975. In April, 1975 as the war in Vietnam came to a close I was flying cargo planes in the Pacific, including numerous missions supporting the evacuation of military personnel and civilians from Vietnam. We were flying so much, we did not find out about the accident until later. I did not know any of the crew on the plane that crashed, but a year later, stationed in the Philippines, I had friends who had known some of the flight nurses who died in the baby lift crash.

Being in Phnom Penh, so close to combat action, and considering my own involvement in the final evacuation of Saigon, sent shivers up and down my entire body. Memories of flying into Saigon three days before it fell, the sight of planes taking off, bombing so close you could see smoke from the bombs, fighter jets returning, rearming and taking off again came back to me. It had seemed to take hours to load passengers, knowing the fighting was so close to our operation.

The evacuation planes had no seats, everyone sat on the floor. After take-off, we spiraled up to 20,000 feet to minimize the risk of attack from ground-based missiles. We were to take the refugees to the Philippines, but all of the refugee camps there were full, and we diverted to Wake Island.

From Cambodia to Canada

Every Wednesday for the next few weeks I will be guest blogging at the invitation of Canadian national food writer, Deborah Rankine, aka Chef Deb. We met a couple of years ago when Deb was touring Morocco home kitchens in search of the perfect couscous. She's now asked me to share some of my food-related experiences in Cambodia with readers of her blog, The Fridge Whisperer.

Chef Deb's world travels inspire her ethnic-themed cooking classes in Durham, Ontario, and she has written about the Canadian food scene for the past 15 years. Winner of the Heart & Stroke Foundation's Durham Region Chef Challenge, Chef Deb has appeared on City TV's "Breakfast Television" and contributes monthly cooking segments to Rogers TV's "Daytime" series.

My first post appeared earlier this week.

Rush photo job

My first opportunity to live in Europe was in 2002 and I took the opportunity to photograph as much as I could. One sunny day while in the center of Brussels, I spotted a group of young men skateboarding and took some photo of them attempting the skateboarding tricks. The best performer of the group was Max. I got his e-mail and sent him a set of photos.

Over the next few years I photographed Max several times as he started a music career. The last two times I was in Brussels, I photographed him and his group Flyboyzkrew.


On Thursday evening I received E-mail from max, asking if I could send some of the photos I had taken of him to a magazine. I will if I could find the photos. When I moved to Cambodia I had to cut down on disk space and left a lot of photos behind. Hunting going through the disks I have here I found the last two photo sessions.

I now had 200 photos to trim down to five for the magazine. Not sure what Max wanted I separated the photos into four categories and finally cut them down to nine.

Photos for print publications must be 300 dots per inch which makes a physically large file. I use You Send It which allows combining all of the photos into one file and upload that to the internet. I have never had any problems with You Send It. I was in a hurry; you guessed it this time there was a problem.

The address I was sending to was hot mail which does not have a space limit so I sent eight photos two per e-mail. When I clicked send to the last e-mail it was late considering I had a 07:00 bus the next morning leaving the computer to finish the upload, I turned in for the night.