Life in Cambodia

Happy Khmer New Year!

Well, Khmer New Year is in full swing in Svay Rieng Town, the market is packed with flowers, bread (!), fruit (apples from China even) and people, plus I finally moved into my house! I'm out of the rat-running Wai Ko Hotel! That place had A/C and a generator all the time, but I'm not interested in going back unless the power is out and it gets above 120F. I don't mind bugs, ants, even spiders (if I know they're harmless) but rats kinda' get to me and the Wai Ko delivered with a nice big one sneaking under my door at night to rustle through my garbage. Ugh. Anyway, on to more interesting things...I'm off of work for 3 days to celebrate the new year (see office to the left, HIV/AIDS unit on the first floor) and I'm going to Vietnam today around 2pm to get my visa straightened out and to check out Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon...I hear Hanoi is a better get away, but I'm excited to check it out and do a little shopping of course, to stock up on supplies like milk and veggie cleaner (yeah, yeah, I know all of you PC people are scoffing at me, but hey, Bird Flu is here, gots to be careful ;)

Other things: Khmer New Year party at the office was rockin'! I learned how to dance to Cambodian pop music, some traditional music and some really bad electro-pop junk sampled from Australia or something, but hey, the meat was grillin' and the beer was flowing. Everyone thought it would be funny to see the two 'barang' (foreigners) play games with the kids (but man the adults were all over the games too!) so I batted around with a blindfold to hit a clay pot jammed with baby powder (not so cool), down from a string dangling it from the rafters. Their version of a pinata...not sure if the Mexicans or the Cambodians got that one first...Anyway, I wish it had been filled with candy. So, onto musical chairs, which ended up being a bit more of a contact sport since the kids pulled up their chairs to make a nice audience for the adults who pushed them out of the way to play! They love this game! Anyway, games were for the afternoon, meat grilling (pork, beef and some sort of wild deer?) and dancing for the night. See some pictures attached.

Otherwise, life has been busy, meeting with our partners who we are funding for the project to figure out how we will move forward, planning, budgeting, more budgeting and sweating it out in the office (we don't have A/C yet). I'll add pics and more talk about my house in a bit.

So, Happy year of the Dog to you all! And I wanted to include some Khmer script for you to read but my computer doesn't support it and it's quite large in terms of space...more soon!

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 10:24 AM