I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas (or, Christmas in Cambodia)

I’m not sure I am a fan of 85°F Christmases. Actually, I am pretty much 100% sure that I prefer freezing cold, snowy Christmases. Even though my Christmas this year was of the 85 degrees and sunny variety, it was still an exciting day.

The day began with a medical scare: My friend Bonnie came downstairs and asked me for my thermometer for our other friend, because she was feeling a little warm. When Bonnie came to give back the thermometer, she said that the fever was 106 degrees, or, at least, that’s what I thought she said. At that point, you are in big trouble, so I freaked out and started rushing around to get to the clinic. We finally got to the clinic after fighting with our tuk-tuk driver about how to get there, and then were told we couldn’t stay, because our friend had to sleep. When we got back to the apartment, Bonnie and I were talking and she told me that the fever was just 101.6 degrees, so I calmed down a bit, and was able to help make food for lunch.

After picking up our friend at around noontime, most of the volunteers gathered on the rooftop for a big potluck dinner. We had spring rolls; guacamole and chips and salsa; mashed potatoes; BBQ; fried rice; salad; and (my favorite part) falafel. For dessert there was mango and chocolate mousse.

I received a pair of pants from my Secret Santa, and even though the pants are awesome, the best present was talking to my family on their Christmas morning and watching them all open presents over Skype.

Cultural Weekend 2010: The Sobering Sunday

Today, I visited the Toul Sleng S-21 Museum and the Killing Fields. S-21 was a prison in Phnom Penh where prisoners of the Khmer Rouge were kept. Some were killed in the prison, and others were transport to the Killing Fields before they died. Both sites are full of horror and memory, but both are integral in understanding the Cambodian people of today.

The fist three photos are at S-21, and the last two are at the Killing Fields.

Cultural Weekend 2010: Food and Music

Today, I went to a cooking class at Frizz Restaurant on Street 240 (the “Champs Élysées” of Cambodia). Before the class began, we took a trip to the market to learn about how to select the best specimens of our ingredients. Once we arrived back to our rooftop classroom, I learned how to make spring rolls, banana leaf salad, fish amok (Cambodia’s national dish), and sweet sticky rice with mango and banana. All of the food was amazing, if I do say so myself, and I can’t wait to come home and cook for people.

In the evening, I went with my friend Jo to FCC (the Foreign Correspondents Club), which is one of the swankiest places in town, and has one of the best views of the Tonlé Sap on Riverside.

After dinner, we attended a show at Sovanna Phum Arts Association. We weren’t sure what we were going to end up seeing, whether it would be shadow puppets or music or dancing. We were kind of hoping for shadow puppets, but instead we got a performance of a battle between monkeys and giants by Hanuman and Giant DRUM with some local dancers. It was so good, we weren’t even the slightest bit sad that we hadn’t seen shadow puppets. To read an article about the show from the Phnom Penh Post, click here.

Cultural Weekend 2010: A Museum, a Palace, and a Pagoda

This marks the commencement of Cultural Weekend 2010.

Today I went to the National Museum with my friends Georgie, Ally, and Chloe (left to right in the photo above), and I am including pictures from the trip I took to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda with SCC.

You are only allowed to take photos outside the museum in the courtyard, but the museum is full of statues from the time the Khmer began carving them. A fun fact I learned about Khmer sculpture: When they first starting making statues, the artists couldn’t figure out how to keep the statues upright unless the legs were really thick and unrealistic looking. Later on, the legs start looking normal from the front. If you look at it from the side view though, you see that the artists have realized that if they just put a little support from the lower back of the statue to the floor, that keeps it upright just as well as the really thick legs.

At the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda you are again not allowed to take photos inside the buildings (but I took two anyway, very secretively).

A Deserted Beach, a Jungle Trek, and a Fishing Village

We started the second day in Sihanoukville with a two hour boat ride on the Prek Toeuk Sap Estuary (“tonlé” means “river”) through the mangrove forest that makes up most of Ream National Park. The boats we tok are nothing like anything you have ever seen before: they are low, low to the water, and the motor/rudder/tiller contraption on the back looks as though it will fall apart any second. We saw lots of birds (all kites and eagles), fishermen, and shrimp along the river.

We landed on a deserted beach, and spent about an hour there, just soaking up the peace that the place exudes. It could not have been more calm.

During our walk through the jungle, we passed through a small fishing village, and came across some women sifting through their shrimp catch. When we asked them if we could take photos, they agreed, and showed us the shrimp size they were looking for. The shrimp were tiny, much smaller than what we would expect at home, and it was amazing to me that they went through so much work for so little meat at the end.

(Cool fact about these shrimp: When they get scared of the boats on the river, they flick their tails and skip across the water. On the way to the beach, I was noticing all these things hitting the water and our tour guide told me, “The shrimp, they get scared, and they skip!”, showing me with his hands how they skip and his face how scared they get.)

After the most delicious chicken and vegetable sandwich I’ve ever had (though it may have tasted so good because I’m not sure if I’ve ever been as hungry before in my life), we headed back up the river. On the way, we saw all the fishermen who, on the way out, had been casting out their nets, now pulling all their nets in. When the nets are coming out of the water, the boats resemble butterflies: the net becomes the wings (light and fragile) and the boat is the body (dark and strong). It is beautiful, and a little melancholy, to watch. I think I use melancholy because there seems to be very little of the simplicity of that life left in this world. It is a good thing that we in the Western world no longer worry about where our next meal is coming from, but at the same time, our lives have become much more complicated than those of the fishermen I saw today.

Boating and Beaches

I spent this past weekend I went to Sihanoukville on the South Coast of Cambodia. It was beautiful: blue sky, clear water, white sand, fluffy clouds and bright sunlight made for a basically perfect weekend.

The first day I was there, I went with five other volunteers (Erin Michigan, Evan from Australia, Stuart from Scotland, and Sarah and Arielle, both from New Jersey) on a boat tour of some of the closer islands.

At the first island we were able to do a little bit of snorkeling, and it was nice. We saw some small fish with stripes, some bigger fish with stripes, and a but of coral. The water wasn’t exceptionally clear, and there wasn’t a huge variety of fish to see, so we moved on to Bamboo Island and lunch after just a short time.

On Bamboo Island, I went off by myself for a bit, and explored a little bit of the way around the island. I saw colorful butterflies, huge dragonflies, little scuttling crabs while I was picking my way over piles of driftwood and under trees that were growing over the water.

After Bamboo Island, we went to a third island where we could snorkel again, but it was all the same fish and coral as the first place, so Erin and Evan just had a really good time jumping of the boat while the rest of us tried to stay out of the sun and in shade to save our sunburns. (I had such a bad sunburn, the next day one of the child vendors on the beach was calling me “Lobster Girl”).

Even though my sunburn hurt, the sunset that ended this day more than made up for it.