Penny and Fred

Here’s the post you’ve all been waiting for…

Hi All,

We are very sorry that we have not written for so long, but you know how life goes…  I wish we could say that we have been up to a heap of exciting things and seeing the country, but sadly, due to how busy I have been with work, we have not been lucky enough to get out of the city since our trip to Kep.

I have alot to update everyone one so here goes, I’ve gone for dot points as it may be easier for everyone to follow, in no specific order:

• Since Kep work has been full steam ahead.  From one day to the next we are never quite sure how long I am going to be in a job.  Damn, those greedy Yanks and their involvement in the stock market.  It’s meant that humanitarian dollars all over the world have dried up and we, like many other NGOs in Cambodia are feeling the financial pinch.
• Kylie (my flat mate from University) and her boyfriend Graham came to visit.  Although, only a short trip to the capital, we managed to cram in a heap of site seeing and most importantly eating…
• We ate frog for the first time and then the second and the third.  Needless to say, we thinks it’s YUMMY!!
• Took a trip out to the province for Pchum Ben (festival of the spirits - at least that is the best way I can explain it).  It’s a very low key affair where Buddhist’s go to temple to make offerings to the monks who will bless them and pray for the spirits of their family members.  Cambodian’s believe that everyone has 7 spirits and not all of them move from this earth when they die, with some remaining earth bound for a variety of reasons.  I think praying for them helps them to reconcile what ever keeps them here and helps them to move on.  No doubt it’s alot more complicated than that, but that’s all I could get in the translation of the event.
• Continued to drive the Land Crusier around town and country, with mixed results.  I have not had an accident yet, but yesterday I thought I was going to die when a truck was coming right at me on my side of the road and had no intention of getting out of my way for anything.  Needless to say that after a 4 hour round trip I was exhausted…
• Visited the family of one of my colleagues, south of Phnom Penh in Takeo province, a really beautiful part of the country, but marred with sadness.  We traveled along a 2km stretch of dirt road and both sides of the road were dotted with elderly people and young children begging for food and money.  In all the things I have seen in the past 5 months, this was the thing that broke my heart the most…  It felt like it was from a scene in a movie, when a war is over and people are starving, with their hands held out in absolute desperation for survival.
• Saw a mashed rat on our street and I swear it was as long as my forearm, hand included - it has been turned into flat Stanley - not a pretty site, but was obviously a nice meal for one of the local dogs, as its remains didn’t stay around for too long.  Unfortunately, Fred missed out on seeing it…  I’m sure this will turn into his greatest regret about Cambodia, having not seen the squashed rat.
• We celebrated Fred’s 31st Birthday…  Not to anyone’s surprise we went out for Japanese, tasty, but expensive and sadly not up to par with our favourite Mutsie’s in Northcote.  Looking forward to a visit when we come home for Xmas…
• We celebrated my 31st Birthday…  And again we went for Japanese… What can we say… We’re so predictable some times.
• We moved house… We now live 2 streets from the office, just far enough for me to get away from work, but close enough for me to be able to conveniently walk to work each day.  Our new place is great and the spare room has fresh sheets on the bed for anyone wanting a tropical south east Asian get away…  Anyone? Anyone?

I think that’s about it…  I’m sure we have done a million other little things over the past months, like talk with our local restaurant waiters, great for practicing our Khmer language skills and very entertaining from both sides.  They love us so much now, that every time we go there we get a free mug of beer.  No complaints from us…

Hmmm, maybe I’m forgetting something… What is it?  I remember…

WE’RE ENGAGED!!!

Looking forward to ready your replies from the post and keep the “about times” to a minimum please people.

There are photos to come, but because I am technologically challenged, you will all have to wait for Fred to get his act together to post them.

Over and out until next time (hopefully in less than 2 months time)

Love to you all. xxoo

Posted in Friends and Family, Special events | 2 Comments »

A nice stroll around Phnom Penh

Hey guys,

Not sure if there is anyone out still reading our blogs since we have been slackers, but today we went on a long walk to P’saa Orussey.  It was a hot day but we got up reasonable early for a Saturday (9 o’clock), not because it was hot cause both our bedroom fan and aircon were blaring through the night.  We saw it was very cold back at home at the moment (not that we care), no I actually am missing the cold Melbourne weather.  Maybe thats because alot of my last 5 years I have been away working and have missed these time.  Hot, cold, 15 seasons in one day I still miss Melbourne, we will return one day lol.

So after getting up and relaxing for a bit (Pen writing emails and me watching TV) we had left over spagetti on toast for breakie (still don’t know how to spell it).  Mmmm it was the second time I made spagbol since we left oz.  Garrett would agree there’s nothing like a good spagbol, if there was a spagbol contest, I would make the finals I reckon.  We were ready by 12 o’clock and got lathered up with sunscreen and headed off.  On our walk to the market we found a nice shop along the way, a deli/wine shop type deal, which had some nice things from back at home like crackers, pickled mini onions which Pen looooves, Australia Gold brie and Camembert… will go back one day as it is just around the corner.  Although the sun was hot, we enjoyed the walk and getting amongest our fellow PP’ians.

We found the Market without too must trouble, we have been to the Russian (P’saa Tool Tom Pong) and Central (P’saa Tomei) Markets a few times now and this was another one to add to the list.  It’s a 3 storey very big market which had dry food, fruit, veggies, meat (saw some nice glazed pigs and piglettes, Penny insists that we only need a visitor to make an excuse to come back and buy a whole beast - any takers?), chickens (alive and dead) etc etc, the other other 2 storeys had heaps of cloths, shoes, bags, jewellery and heaps of other stuff.  I don’t think it’s a common market for barrangs (foreigner) to visits, as we could have played a lengthy game of “spot the barrang”.  It was great just exploring, but we did have an alteria motive as we are invited to our first “Khmer” house warming party tomorrow, one of Penny’s staff members so we were looking for a gift.

We stopped for an ice tea at a local cafe across the road from the market, but it was quite bland so we ordered a sprite and mixed it in.  How’s that for engineering, heh, heh.  After a short break we went back to the market for another look then walked down Monivong Blvd to look for a supermarket Sam told us about during our trip to Koh Kong, not before a couple of pitstops (1) to a starbucks type coffee shop, I had the best fresh watermelon slurrpie there….. THE BEST, and Penny had a nice ice coffee with whipped cream, the fake stuff on top and (2) To one of PP’s major bus stops to get tickets for our Kep 3 night getaway (starting next Thursday whooo hooo, yes Pool, relaxing, us time can’t wait).

We found both supermarket and the Lucky’s drink shop which I had been told has the cheapest drinks in town.  We bought a litre of Beam for US$10.80 and did a nice shop for other supplies.  Pretty knackered by this stage we got a tuk tuk home for a well deserve cold shower and chill time.  Tonight for dinner I went down to the local pork n duck lady for 300 grams of each, one of our favourite dinners, just add rice and some cucumber and tomato (see no “e” Estelle and Garrett) Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Now waiting on some skype chat with two of our favourite Melbournites!!!

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Three weeks and counting…

Can you believe we have been gone for 3 weeks?

I wish I had sometime meaningful or inspiring to write at this time, but I have just finished a long day staring at the computer and my eyes are near falling out of my head.  I wonder what Fred’s cooking for dinner tonight?

Fred and I still don’t seem to have found our feet.  With the Khmer New Year having just finished, we have had a very limited list of things that we could do over the past week and a half.  In between, arriving, doing a little bit of sight seeing, moving into a new home, shopping for “stuff” to put in the new home, and starting a new job, I can’t say we have been able to enjoy much of the Cambodian experience.  I’m hoping the cultural experience will happen soon, otherwise we have moved a long way away from home for some better weather.

On the topic of weather…  It is still ranging between hot, hotter and stinkn’ hot.  For those that know me, would also know that I’m loving it, but my body is taking its time to acclimatise.   The “mango rains” have started early this year (or so I’m told) and at about 3pm every afternoon we get a downpour of rain and a bit of a lightening and thunderstorm to go with it.  I keep thinking that just one afternoon of these rains over Victoria’s catchments would do the state a world of good.  I tried to take a picture of it the other day, but it just wasn’t working.

Heh, did I tell you about the rat?  Tammy, you can stop reading from here if you want to avoid hives.

Last week I worked on a big funding submission, so after I had finally emailed it off at about 6:30pm, Fred decided he would take me out for dinner to the Micro Brewery up the road (I’ll let Fred tell you about that place).  We left to find a tuk tuk, no tuk tuk’s because of New Year, so we took ourselves across the street to a local restaurant.  A restaurant that we may or may not have been told to avoid.  What can I say, it was getting late, I was hungry and getting cranky and they had $2 Jugs, that’s right $2 Jugs.  I’m starting to sound like Fred, scary….

Anyway, we order our $2 Jug and a meal.  The beer, although served with big ‘hand-picked’ ice cubes to keep it cold (emphasis on ‘hand-picked’), was refreshing!  While waiting for our meals to arrive and trying to wind down from a crazy week, I felt something run into my foot.  Thinking that something round had escaped from the kitchen behind me, I half expected to look down and see an orange or sometime, but there was nothing there…  I took a looked around on the floor and off in the to near distance was a ‘rat’, running under the table of another group of diners and disappearing.  I got a little paranoid at this stage and couldn’t concentrate on the conversation that Fred was trying to have with me, I was pre-occupied with seeing the rat again.  Why?  I don’t know?

It was only the arrival of our meal that jolted me out of my unhealthy fixation and back to reality…

Our meal is a whole other story.  The spicy mango salad was great, but a little heavy with the dried fish, the rice with chinese sausage was pretty alright, but was devalued by Fred’s continual debate on the authenticity of the chinese sausage and finally, the spicy fried duck, which doesn’t deserve a rating or description.  I’ve got money on it not being duck at all, but more likely a relative of the rat that ran into my foot and mysteriously disappeared.

Surprisingly, neither of us got sick from this experience, not even a little bit.  If we had I’m not sure what we would have blamed it on, the ice - the fact that the ice was ‘hand-picked’, the chinese sausage - that may or may not have been authentic, the duck - that didn’t in the least bit taste anything like duck or the left overs of the rats wet nose on the bottom of my bare foot.

Frankly, I’m surprised that either of us are still alive…

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Bring it on….

There’s nothing quite like sharing your breakfast with a cockroach…  Fortunately for Fred, he had already finished with his tub of yoghurt when the cockroach decided to move in.  Now, these are no ordinary cockroaches.  Cambodian cockroaches are big enough to knock over a small child and boy, can they move.

To get you up to speed…  This has not been our first encounter with the ‘cockies’, this has been going on for days…  It started with one in the hall of the office, then 3 or so in the office bathroom, then yesterday while I was diligently working on a funding submission, one went running from one side of the office to the other.  All of these precious ‘cockies’ have come to their demise at the hands of the trusty office “Forms” folder.  Fred and I have been taking turns at throwing the folder on them, but the one in the staff room yesterday afternoon gave me a run for my money and when I missed him the first few times, he turned to charge and I almost soiled myself…

It’s not that I have anything against these creatures and I know that they are completely harmless,  I don’t fear them, I just fear them running over my feet or up my leg.  I apologise to anyone and everyone experiencing a ‘visual’ of that right now…  The other things that makes me a little unsettled is that awful smell they produce after being squashed - maybe Fred and I should think about bottling “eau de cockie”, it could be the new ‘mace’, scaring perps off all around the world.  We could make millions, no!  What women wouldn’t want a bottle of ‘eau de cockie’ in their purse for protection?

So, the battle between man and cockroach continues…  Every time I think we have them pipped, another one appears.  I wasn’t too concerned about them, because we have only found them on the bottom floor, but Fred tells me he killed a baby ‘cockie’ in our bedroom just this morning, yes, our bedroom, yes, this morning.  Now that’s a declaration of war in my books.  So today, I am going to google ways to deter these little darlings away from ‘my space’, because I just don’t have the heart (or nerves) to keep throwing oversized office folders at them.

I’ll be keeping you posted on the methods I’ll be testing and my success/failure rate.  I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any grand ideas.

Posted in Friends and Family | 2 Comments »

I’m still here!

Some of you may think that I have dropped off the face of the earth, because Fred has been responsible for all the blog postings.  But I’m still here….

It has been a whirlwind start to my new job, which I am loving, by the way.  I spent a week with my Managing Director learning the ropes of the job and creating list upon list of things that need doing.  As you can imagine I was feeling a little overwhelmed by Friday night, but I managed to have  a relaxing weekend, sleeping late and doing a whole lot of nothing, including not thinking about my list of things to do….

This week I have been working ’solo’, as it is Khmer New Year.  Everyone goes to the provinces to spend the week with their families and the city turns into a bit of a ghost town.  A little strange not to hear loud music and drunken peoples walking around the street - nice but strange.  The most unusual thing for me is that there have not been any fireworks.  New Years Cambodian style really is a family affair, more similar to our Christmas celebrations back home.

Fred has been keeping me company in the office this week.  While I’ve been writing funding submissions and trying to make sense of the office (Tam, I know your empathising with me right now) and having intense feelings that I have bitten off more than I can chew, Fred has quietly sat beside me, offer words of encouragement - in between hands of poker, of course.

Next week the staff are back and it’s back to business.   Fred and I will start Khmer lessons, I’ll book myself in for a Khmer cooking lesson, find a yoga studio and a Khmer kick boxing teacher.

I’ll try not to leave it so long next time between postings.

Posted in Friends and Family | 4 Comments »

Cable rocks

Ahh cable is great, we couldn’t really justify having it in oz but its 5 bucks/month here… yeah!  We have Discovery, ESPN, CNN, a couple of movie channels, National Geographic (but the sound is stuffed - boo), another sports channel and an australian channel.  There’s another 40 channels but they’re not in english.  Today I watched a bit of Melbourne v  Port on the aust channel… I think they telecast most AFL games, spewing I missed the Essendon v Carlton…u bewty!!! I know, I know the prelims in ‘99 right?  I caught a bit of the NBA the other day so I can still get my basketball fix, but we mostly watch the news or discovery here.

This little bit of luxury might just keep us sane

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More shopping

We have a huge living room, it needs a few plants and pictures on the wall but these things we can buy in the up and coming weeks.  BUT if we wanted to chillax in front of the tv we needed new cushions for our cane lounge setting and sofa cause the ones provided were in an awful state.  Cane furniture is the way to go over here, its cheap and comfortable.

So, Hua came over in the morning and picked me up and we left for a group of cane furniture shops about 10 mins away.  Over there I found what we needed and my great purchases can be found in the Apartment photo gallery.  I bought 2 cane bedside tables, cushions for the lounge setting and a huge cushion/mattress for the spare couch.

Time to put the feet up

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Next step… setting up our kitchen

Although the food here is great and we have already found some nice restaurants both cheap and expensive we can’t eat out all the time… that would kill us.  Well, I hope we can eat at Chinese noodle once a week - that duck noodle soup is just awesome there.  So while picking up some breakfast for my hard working girlfriend, I organised a tuk-tuk for the day, someone that was recommended by the guys at the guesthouse and that could speak english as Penny and I still haven’t had a lesson in Khmer.

After a spot of breakie together I was back at the Russian market to buy cooking utensils, here was my list:

• 4x plates
• 4x bowls
• 4x rice bowls
• 4x chopsticks
• 4x spoons
• 4x knives
• 4x forks
• 1x egg flip
• 1x serving spoon
• 1x tongs
• 1x big fry pan
• 1x small fry pan
• 1x medium pot
• 1x meat cleaver
• 1x large knife
• 1x chopping board
• 2x mugs
• some plastic containers

Feel free to use the list if you ever need to start up a kitchen again.  Although it was all quite cheap the quality isn’t the best, the plates and bowls are plastic but look nice enough.  My favourite purchase was the meat cleaver, hopefully I can get pretty handy with it and buy one when I get home.

Next stop was modern gas to look at rice cookers, toasters and kettle.  They seemed quite busy so I checked out the prices but thought it would be better to purchase them with Pen.  So last thing I planned for our day was a trip to the supermarket so that we could stock the fridge and pantry and yes that did include beer.   Asahi $13 a slab of 330ml cans! whoo hoo!   Hua my tuk-tuk driver did a great job so I rewarded him a bonus with a couple of beers, too bad they weren’t cold… I’ll be calling him again tomorrow for cushion and furniture shopping.

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We’re movin in!

How exciting…. we have really done it.  Knowing today was the big day and things were getting busier at Penny’s work, we got up early and were well prepared.  After breakfast we loaded all our gear into a tuk-tuk for the short trip from the guest house to the apartment.

The front of the place is protected by these great big iron gates and once unlocked there is space to fit 2 cars (undercover) then comes the front door of the office (the complete ground floor).  After quickly introducing myself  to all of the staff, Penny had to start work, which meant it was time to get dirty.

The place is primarily double storey with super high ceilings (in the office, living room and kitchen) but also has rooms in between so you could say it has 4 “half” stories.  It also has a nice balcony, roof top terrace, the living room is spacious but the kitchen is very basic.  (Gee I sound like a real estate agent, Mick am I qualified?) Our old kitchen will be sorely missed, over here we have 1x small fridge, 2x burner gas cook-top using bottle gas, small sink, small glass pantry and no oven.  Not to worry…….. cause we have Cable!

Anyway enough about that cause the whole day was about cleaning and getting the place livable.  I had some help in our house keeper who we will be employing 3 mornings a week to help with cleaning (apartment and office), shopping, laundry etc.  But before we could get started we needed cleaning products so I raced to the supermarket on the back of a motodop.  A  motodop is a man who can afford a small motorbike and who’s primary income is picking up passengers for a small fee.  I found my guy in front of the office but he was waiting for someone to come out of a meeting with Penny, he agreed but he wanted to keep the other fare as well so we hooned there and back, great first time experience on the back of one through the busy streets of Phnom Penh (PP) holding a broom and a mop while the driver carried my other purchases.  He was quick but not quick enough, he missed his other fare as the meeting had already closed by the time we got back, feeling responsible I gave him a few extra riel for his troubles.  I think he was ok with that.

The rest of the morning the house keeper and I were scrubbing tiles, sweeping and washing curtains.  My personal aim was to have our bedroom spotless so we sleep easy that night.  That meant lots of tile scrubbing, dusting, mopping, cleaning the bed frame and airing the mattresses.  Whilst doing this I think I sweat out more than as if I played 10 basketball games …… have I mentioned it gets quite humid here?

Over Penny’s lunch break, her boss offered to take us to the Phsar Toul Tom Poung AKA The Russian market to buy bed linen, towels, pillows, bath mats and other essentials for our first night.  We also found a DVD stall which came recommended, so we know where to go for our movie fix.  Also across from the  market we ate at a very nice cafe which helps Khmers to learn how to work in hospitality.  Your paying a bit extra but the cafe promotes fair trade and responsible employment.

There was more cleaning in the arvo but by the end of the day our bedroom was clean and set up, we were both super exausted and ready for a good nights sleep.

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We are not bad bloggers

Loving Phnom Penh so far and done quite a bit of exploring but we haven’t published much… we are not bad bloggers, we can improve.  Although its still the “honeymoon period” and we’ve only been here days, I can already seen why friends who have been here loved it.  We are still currently in the 8 room guest house, its like a giant tree house with a great open common area upstairs with lots of wicker chairs, little tables and cushions + free wireless internet.  A great introduction to Cambodia for anyone I think.  We connected to their network connection on day 2 however we could not access the web… lucky we got in contact with our favourite IT guru Bronny on Skype  and she talked us through it.

So to get everyone up to speed, over the last week we have:

• Met up with Penny’s new boss and friends who had just completed a 750km bike ride across Cambodia for charity
• We visited Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21).  Once a high school made into a prison and used by the Khmer Rouge to torture and killed around 17,000 Kmers between 1975-79.   I heard much about it but  had to see it with my own eyes…. shocking to think this happened only 30 years ago, truely horrific what these people must have gone through
• Found a couple of cheap local restaurants which be both love… including Chinese Noodle which Andrew and Eider will remember on their last trip here, was the one that had the staff making the awesome noodles out the front.  We both had a terrific duck noodle soup and shared 12 steamed dumplings….mmm.. yes we will be coming back.  The cost of duck noodle soup is $1.20 + 12x dumplings is $1.20, however its in US dollars and the current conversion rate is killing us!!! 
• Yesterday we attended a Childrens Festival which was held for children from a displaced village outside the city.  This was arranged with the help of the organisation Penny’s now working for and another well known Non Government Organisation (NGO).  We were welcomed with a beautiful lunch of BBQ meats, fish, spicy mango salads, rice, vegetables and watermelon, one thing this trip is not lacking is awesome asian food.  The festival included traditional Khmer dancing, a play, music and lots of fun games.  Later in the arvo we took a walk through this village and discovered how bad the living conditions were… very 3rd world and indeed of development         
• Made a new friend, a British woman who works in healthcare and lives in Cambodia.  She showed us a nice local restaurant which offers tradition Khmer food at a cheap price and came out to the childrens festival with us.  We have exchanged contact details and will definitely be intouch
• Penny has started her new role and has been flat out since, shes lovin it and will tell you all about it soon

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