Depressingly, there are several giant Tesco stores in KL.  They look similar enough to UK stores, although their everyday products make ours look a tad dull.

But I haven’t come all this way to shop at Tesco, so I looked elsewhere.

There is a giant shoppping mall – fourth largest in the world, actually – within walking distance of my new condo and it has two supermarkets, so I decided to give them a try.

The first one, Aeon, has a baffling layout.  Some aisles have what I would consider to be sensible combinations of products.

Whilst others are frankly bizarre

 

or lead to unfortunate associations in the mind of the shopper

 

It certainly worked in my case, and I went scurrying off towards the relative safety of the bakery department  –

 

– Irish Patisserie??

 

Supermarket number two is the rather unattractively named Cold Storage.  I left it until last because it sounded like a Malaysian version of Iceland, but how wrong I was …

It’s not totally Waitrose, but then again, I haven’t come all this way to shop at Waitrose either.  So I skipped home happily with my tea and marmalade plus some coconut buns and Uncle Saba’s Lentil crisps, and felt that I had the best of both worlds.

Mr Toad has finally moved to his elegant new flat, and can be seen here relaxing on his king-size bed, charmingly furnished with imported French cotton bed linen.

And relaxing with an aperitif on the balcony before dinner –

 

The new Toad Hall is on the fifteenth floor, with a somewhat vertiginous view of one of the swimming pools

and a view from the balcony of the city skyline –

 

– which I prefer at night.

It’s a far cry from the bucolic charms of Holt, where the only things lighting up the sky at night are the illicit cigarettes of a hundred rebellious teenagers.

What I like best about the flat is the walk-in wardrobe.

Although it’s slightly galling that – for the first time ever – I have enough wardrobe space, with four double wardrobes all to myself … but only one suitcase-worth of clothes to put in them.

Likewise the living area

and the kitchen

are all full of empty shelves and drawers.

For the first time ever, I feel truly minimalist.

Have really taken to my new role as a drama teacher, and put in a stellar performance – though I say so myself – as Professor I C Stars in the Space Mission role plays last week.

Any resemblance to Worzel Gummidge is entirely coincidental.

 

Another role play involved a cocktail party – not sure they quite got the hang of the ‘cocktail frocks/lounge suits’ dress code –

And then there was the shocking discovery of the panda’s favourite pastime.

 

After a lesson researching pandas for a piece of writing, my class of 8 year-olds had to produce a report on ‘My Life as a Panda’ and one girl had obviously gone to a great deal of trouble to plumb the depths of panda depravity in the 21st Century.

So much for the panda’s reputation for extreme fastidiousness in the bedrooom department.  Am wondering whether to contact David Attenborough.

 

I have a vomiter in my class.

Her mother – armed with plastic bags and a worried expression – explained to me that when this child feels stressed, she vomits.  With one eye on said child and another on my possible escape route, I tried to look sympathetic and caring, instead of repulsed.

Normally she walks into class, takes one look at me, and chunders. I try not to take it personally … after all, I’ve taught hundreds of children in my time, and not a single one – up until now – has felt the need to deposit their partly digested breakfast at my feet.

I’ve taken to eyeing her very warily if she comes anywhere near me.  Thank God for my extra-wide female peripheral vision, which I make full use of, scanning the classroom as though I’m manning a watchtower in Colditz.  I’ve also mastered the art of pushing the bin surreptitiously in her direction with my foot whilst readying myself to leap backwards out of spattering distance at a millisecond’s notice if necessary.

Who needs exercise classes when you have your own personalised dodge-the-vomit routine to keep you nimbly skipping round the classroom on a daily basis?

Having been here for a week already, I was slightly embarrassed to have to admit that  I hadn’t seen the Petronas Towers yet.  It’s bit like spending a week in Paris and failing to spot the Eiffel Tower.  So a trip downtown on my day off was a must.

Feeling a bit Ubered-out, I decided to take the train to the city centre – they have a sort of overground underground here, called the LTR – and the single ticket cost approx 50p, with a train every four minutes or so … Transport for London, please take note.

And here they are, viewed from the base –

– where I felt rather overwhelmed and insignificant.

Particularly after I learned that: The towers are ‘intelligent’ structures, built with a system that seamlessly coordinates telecommunications, environment control, power supply, lighting, fire and smoke control, and building security.  I have yearned for seamless coordination for years – how come a building can manage it when I can’t?

Nestled at the foot of the towers – think Alpine village but with much less snow – is a giant shopping mall.  This is a city that views a day without retail therapy as a day wasted.

 

There are five floors of retail therapy here, including Marks and Spencer –

– which has lots of clothes and a tiny food hall selling nothing but biscuits.  If you ever come across a Malaysian who’s convinced that the British diet consists entirely of shortbread, you’ll know why.

The security guards look endearingly like British policemen with their caps  with checked hat bands … not sure if that’s a truncheon or a gun he’s holding behind his back.

And I was rather taken with this fruit stall in a nostalgic-for 80s-synth-pop sort of way.

I popped outstide to see the fountains, which are a prime photo spot.

Two men offered to take a photo for me in front of the fountains, but I declined.  I’m not sure whether I was more worried about them running off with my phone, or the possibility that I might turn into a narcissistic selfie-taker, with my face bobbing up in front of every tourist spot I visit … Mr Toad would not approve.

 

 

 

Mr Toad and I were relaxing poolside on a sunny afternoon –

–  when suddenly I heard a thud … a tiny little squirrel had fallen out of a large palm tree and landed next to me.

He gathered his wits, turned his head and then saw me and started scrabbling wildly, trying to get his footing on the smooth tiles around the pool. He shot behind another tree and hid there, peering out at me from time to time, obviously wishing I’d go away so he could scamper back to his family somewhere in the trees behind me.

I got up and started nosing around the tree, so he climbed to the top and hung upside down, staring at me.  This went on for some time –

–  until I got fed up with staring back at him, waiting for him to do something, and went off for a swim instead.

These squirrel pictures were taken by someone who goes out squirrel watching armed with a camera, rather than someone like me who is randomly suprised by squirrels whilst doing something else entirely.

 

As my poor old phone has definitely seen better days

I decided to upgrade to a shiny, new, rose gold iPhone.

I rapidly installed email, added apps, put in a U.K. clock as well as a Malaysian one and felt very tech-savvy and pleased with myself.

Then I thought that I should add the number of this new Malaysian phone to my old phone and vice versa, just so that they could get to know each other, in a non-threatening way.

I was busy doing this in a blasé, technophile fashion when my old phone rang.   I didn’t recognise the number, so answered ‘hello’ in my best polite-to-strangers voice.  I was very surprised when I also heard my hello coming from the new phone on the table next to me.  ‘Is there an echo on the line?’ I wondered.

Then the realisation struck … I had just phoned myself; making an international phone call via England and back, in order to make contact with a phone that was approximately ten centimetres away.

Perhaps I’m not quite the digital native yet.

The Kuala Lupur Botanical Gardens, as one might expect, showcase a magnificent variety of lush tropical species.

The Oasis Garden

 

even has its own water nymph elegantly perched on a rock.

And I do love a pretentious sign, so I was delighted to read all about the Oasis Garden

I would have said it was more ‘ the symbiotic harmony of flora and aqua creating a synergy unrivalled in the natural world’ … but then, what do I know about oasis gardens?

 

There is a strict code of behaviour displayed at the entrance, and I really must learn some Malay, because a couple of the pictures made no sense at all

The top right looks like ‘no fire extinguishers’ – but you wouldn’t need one anyway, because bottom right is ‘no matches’.  Then the one next to the fire extinguisher – is it:

No couples? No cameo brooches? No speaking to a member of the opposite sex? No silhouette artists?

I decided to avoid all of these, just to be on the safe side.

There is a beautiul orchid garden

and a hibiscus garden, where I managed to listen in on a tour guide telling his party that the hibiscus is native to Malaysia and Hawaii, and the red one is Malaysian

while the other ones are Hawaiian

There was a particularly beautiful, dark pink frangipani

And an impressive corrugated roofing plant.

And so to the plant sprayer …

The restaurant is called The Horbill Restaurant, and it is picturesquely sited next to the bird park, with the deck outside overlooking the birds.

The disadvantage of this is that the hornbills perch on the ledge next to the deck giving you evil looks and waiting for a chance to swoop over and grab your food

So every meal arrives with a plant sprayer

As soon as you spot a bird inching closer to you, you squirt it with water and it retreats … genius.

I feel that there are many other untapped uses for the plant sprayer, to repel all sorts of unwanted intrusions, and I will be investing in one immediately.

No – apparently it’s the Year of the Rooster.

So I was rather puzzled to see an installation at Doha airport with approximately a thousand waving cats, wishing everyone a Happy New Year.

You may not be able to see clearly from the photo, but they are all waving their left paw stiffly up and down in an unsynchronised manner, like a mass physiotherapy session for feline frozen shoulder.

And I just wondered why.

… ready to head off to Malaysia.

He’s hoping that reports of a plague of toad-eating snakes in Kuala Lumpur have been greatly exaggerated.

It’s all very well going native – eating in local restaurants, calling yourself a barang, feeling very superior as every new batch of holiday-makers arrives for the obligatory 3-day Angkor Wat pilgrimage – but there are times when you just want to let rip and be a total tourist yourself.  So with that idea in mind, I have been releasing my inner tourist for the last week or so, since I finished my teaching.

When Sam and Alice arrived we visited some more temples – on vespas, of course –

only to find the place swarming with schoolchildren

on an art trip.

It makes a change from sketching courgettes and red peppers, I suppose.

I climbed a holy mountain with a waterfall and pools at the top, and found myself wondering why Cambodians always swim fully clothed – it just seems so bizarre.

An Austrian girl working over here told me that after work you can often see young people going for a swim in the large reservoir outside the town in full work dress – girls in blazers and skirts just plunging straight into the water – presumably the ride home on the motorbike dries them out again.

We went to Battambang, a French Colonial town, and were thrilled to see monkeys.  The local shopkeepers were less thrilled about them, and one furious woman threw a bunch of keys at a particularly anarchic group who had just raided her peanut stand.  Well, they’re not called monkey nuts for nothing, I thought. If it was my shop I would have kept the peanuts inside, possibly under lock and key, rather than outside piled up on a table on the verandah.

This monkey grabbed the palm leaf wrapping from Alice’s sticky rice cake when she put it in the bin.

and got a great deal of pleasure from licking every square inch absolutely clean.

This boy was looking rather forlornly into the undergrowth

trying to locate his bag of food that a monkey had snatched out of his hand.  The monkeys sat a short distance away scoffing his snacks with a defiant expression, but he did manage to retrieve his can of coke – ring pulls are obviously monkey-proof.

Our guide took us to a pagoda which had a series of statues outside serving as a visual reminder of the punishments awaiting us in Hell, should we be foolish enough to commit any of the crimes that Buddha warned against.

The men with chicken heads had been cock-fighting, and I think that the man and woman about to be beheaded are adulterers.

I’m not sure what the two naked people climbing up the cactus have done – but I’m going to find out, and make sure that I never do it myself.

And this punishment – having your tongue ripped out with pliers – is reserved for lawyers and other people ‘who use their tongue for profit’ … at least Sam now knows what lies in store for him.

Our guide took us to a local restaurant, where the cook produced the meal working in very basic conditions

There was fish, chicken, soup, vegetables

but the fish was rather bony, so I surreptitiously slipped a bit of mine to the cat I had seen under the table.  I suddenly felt a furry whoosh around my legs and when I looked –

there was a whole swarm, all waiting for the next bit of fish.

Then we rode on the bamboo train, which is huge fun.  Your ‘train’ is a platform built of bamboo with an engine, and it runs along a single track.

Everyone sits on cushions, and the driver stands at the back.

If you meet someone coming in the opposite direction, whichever platform has more people on it is allowed to proceed.  The people on the other platform have to get off

while the driver dismantles it, moves it off the track, waits for the fuller platform to go past

and then assembles it again.

It’s fun to do for an afternoon, but I can’t see commuters going for it in a big way, so I don’t think it’ll catch on over here.

The Cambodian Circus in Siem Reap is a hugely popular attraction for tourists.  It’s a performance that tells a story, and has acrobats and music, but no animals.

It’s very hot inside the tent, so everyone is given a fan

The performers all come from very poor families and have been given free training and education.  The troupe is so successful now that they have done several tours abroad.

In Phnom Penh everyone goes to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, which has become an institution since the days of the civil war, when foreign correspondents from all over the world flocked here to consume their daily units of alcohol.

It has a very colonial feel, and does a cracking Singapore Sling.  The terrace overlooks the Mekong, and you can sit and watch the boats go by.

It markets itself shamelessly as a quirky, Evelyn Waugh and the British Empire-style club

but even so, I really enjoyed it.

My big worry now is, having released my inner tourist and given it free rein for ten days, I won’t be able to overpower it and beat it back into submission, and I will never again be able to feel superior to the package-holiday masses.

So this is the end – my trip’s over and I have to think about returning to the day job.  Thank you for reading it and following my journey – any feedback will be very welcome – and I’ll let you know when the next big idea strikes and I start blogging again.

 

 

… on a motorbike.

Hurrah for the white van-less society!

When everyone’s in an open vehicle, you can see what’s going on – and I must admit that I’ve become a bit obsessed with watching the traffic, just to see what’s coming up the road next.

Not sure what these are called, but I saw quite a few in Phnom Penh.

Much harder work for the driver than a tuk tuk, and rather unnerving for the passenger, I should imagine.

And this is a Cambodian tractor.  This one’s pulling a load of wooden furniture, but they can also be used for ploughing the fields, as a water pump and as a generator … a bit of an all-rounder.

And this chap is making a furniture delivery trip into a family outing.

This is the cigarette delivery lady

dropping off an order at a local village shop.

And God knows how he manages to keep this bike upright while he’s sharing it with five huge sacks of rice.

 

I don’t know what this man’s got in these sacks, but he has cleverly used his wife and small child as ballast.

This is the dustcart

and here is the Cambodian version of the camper van.

I can only assume that this tuk tuk is acting as a getawar car

for the three masked individuals inside.

You never see one person on a bicycle, even at our school where they give bicycles to the children, they don’t give them one each.  The oldest child has the bike and takes the younger one on the back.

And this one is obviously the family vehicle.

Child seats range from a scarf tied across the handlebars

to a folded cloth on the cross bar – and hold on tightly.

And it’s not just the young and the midlife crisis sufferers who have motorbikes.

I’ve never seen a monk actually driving a bike, but I’ve seen plenty of them riding pillion.

This chap is obviously doing the school run

a sort of James Dean ten years further down the line.

 

Grace House has the only Special Needs Unit in Siem Reap Province – not just the town but the whole province – which has an area of over 10,000 square km with a population getting on for a million.  The Grace House Unit can take 20 children, with five living in the residential house on site, and it is funded by Tesco – good old Tesco, I thought, when I found out.

It’s not a luxury facility, by any means, it’s very simply furnished and equipped.  There’s a soft play room

and a sensory room with a few home made decorations on the ceiling, for the children who can’t move independently

plus a variety of toys and activities.

 

I think the most costly thing must be the high ratio of staff to children.

There are some truly heartbreaking stories amongst the pupils here – the girl who was kept chained up by her grandmother, the child found abandoned by the roadside, the boy whose Australian father disowned him and whose grandmother dumped him on the pavement outside his father’s home in Siem Reap after his mother died.

The School is hoping to open a second unit so that they can double their intake, and they are currently looking for funding. Presumably this will come from outside Cambodia as everything here for the needy is provided by foreign NGOs.  Even the wheelchairs for the physically disabled children are not provided by the State – this one has been supplied by another NGO.

Following a conversation with the social worker in charge of the unit, I have committed to paying for some chickens and a henhouse, so that the children in the residential unit can learn to look after them.  So if anyone has any good ideas for fundraising, please let me know.

Equally, if anyone knows of a company or individual who might be willing to pay for a second special needs unit – approx £12,000, I think – please let Grace House know.

 

Frustratingly, the hotel policy makes no further mention of the dangerous items, leading to all kinds of speculation – hand grenades? TNT? Durian?

Wandering past the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, I was surprised to see a member of the Queen’s Guard.  No – not an international exchange of royal guards – he’s just advertising Costa Coffee.

Just as well, as I think her majesty might have something to say about his relaxed attitude and the state of his shoes.

Another surprise inside Costa (my only visit to an international chain … promise!) was a monk, sitting enjoying an iced coffee and an almond croissant.

I’ve seen so many monks standing outside houses in the mornings, waiting for an offering in exchange for a blessing, and I assumed they took the money back to the Pagoda to be used for rice and vegetables and other nourishing, unworldly food, rather than going to Costa … but Cambodian monks seem to be more Friar Tuck than Francis of Assissi.

The Palace is very splendid and stuffed full of gold, silver, emeralds and diamonds.

The King even has his own pavilion for standing and gazing at the moon at night – I don’t think even Marie Antoinette had one of those.

The royal pagoda has a whopping great emerald Buddha, and the floor is made up of 1,259 solid silver tiles, each weighing one kilo – seriously impressive, but no photos allowed, unfortunately.

I was allowed to photograph this room full of solid gold elephants though

which appear to have been made by someone who had only the vaguest idea of what an elephant looks like.

My guide told me all sorts of interesting facts, for example, in tradional Khmer culture you’re supposed to dress in a different colour every day of the week … as if life wasn’t complicated enough.

This photo could be used as a useful aide-memoire, counting across from Sunday on the left.

There was also a model of the coronation procession for the current king.

In front of him were rows of officials all carrying particular objects, presumably of symbolic importance, like a roll of cloth, or something that looks like a butternut squash

and one poor chap had to carry a very fluffy cat.

I hope it was well sedated to stop it jumping down and running off halfway along the route.

There is an enormous picture of the king outside the Palace, which is lit up at night.

I’m thinking of writing to Buckingham Palace to suggest that we do the same.

And just around the corner from the Palace, I came across this family.

They live on this mat on the pavement.  They have three children and the woman is pregnant.  I broke the rule instilled into all volunteers not to give money to beggars, and gave them $5.  I hope they spent it on food, and I also hope that there’s a project like Grace House nearby that will give those children an education.

There were several families living on the pavement near the Palace.

This family lives under a tarpaulin tied to the railings of an expensive house.

Perhaps the King could offer them his moon gazing pavilion as a temporary home during the rainy season, as you certainly need a substantial roof over your head.  The weather can change in twenty minutes from this –

to this –

where you can’t even see the sky any more and the streets are flooded within seconds.

There is so much rubbish everywhere in Cambodia, that I took this to be another pile of junk

and wondered vaguely why there were full bags of rice as well as the old televisions and videos.  Then I saw a sign and realised that it is actually a modern art installation called ‘The Hawker’s Song’.  It is exposing ‘the street hawker’s experience’ and highlighting the need to ‘maintain vibrant community cultures’.  Needless to say, it was conceived and installed by two Western artists and not Cambodians.

 

 

 

To the person who told me that I ‘must have a foot massage in Cambodia’: what sort of masochist are you?

Despite previous experience of Khmer massage techniques, as this had been highly recommended, I was expecting a soothing afternoon – a sort of human version of a Dr Scholl footbath.

I lay down and noticed her long fingernails, and began to feel a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach … this was going to be Stress Release Massage,  The Sequel.

I gritted my teeth as she dug her long nails, bony fingers and even bonier knuckles into my instep – but even then I wasn’t prepared for the stick.  She had removed it surreptitiously from a basket on the floor, and with a lightening move jabbed me in the foot with it.  She smiled as I shot upwards and headed for the ceiling with an agonised yelp, but she kept an iron grip on my foot so that the pressure didn’t release even for an instant.  She held the stick in place for so long that it started to feel as if it was red-hot as well as sharp.  Of course, once she realised how painful I found it, she wasn’t going to stop at one jab, and eventually my entire sole had been perforated and tenderised.

After the stick she clambered up onto the bed, but I was face up this time, so I could see her coming and prepare myself.  There was a lot of chopping and pressing, and then she pulled every finger and toe until it cracked, and bent each one in every conceivable direction – both the possible and the impossible.  Since when have fingers been considered part of the foot?  I understand now how Apsara dancers are able to bend their wrists and fingers backwards; they’ve obviously had regular massage sessions since childhood – poor sods.

Next I had to sit up and she climbed up behind me and started jabbing and prodding at my back, like someone who’s desperate to get to the bar in a crowded Glasgow pub on a Saturday night.  Then she dangled from my shoulders for a bit, as if we were limbering up for a particularly daring circus routine, and finished up with a flourish of karate chops to my back.

And the absolutely worst thing about a foot massage is that as you suffer every agonising jab and prod, you know that you’re going to have to relive the whole thing again when she moves to the other foot.
Continue reading The triumph of hope over experience

To add to my already impressive panoply of skills, I have now learnt how to weave a mat from dried water hyacinth.  I hope you’re impressed.  If you’d ever seen the needlecase I made for my mother at school, you’d be astonished.

We went to Tonle Sap, which is the largest lake in south-east Asia.  Just to give you an idea of the size, at the end of the dry season, in late April, it is 2,500 square km, increasing to 16,000 square km by the end of the rainy season in October.

We visited one of the floating villages, which has a population of 8,000 all bobbing about on the lake, to see what life is like for these lake dwellers.

For a start, they have to move house between 5 and 10 times a year as the water levels change, and when the water’s very high, they have to tie the house to a strong tree because it’s also very windy.  Moving house doesn’t involve emptying the loft and hiring Pickfords though, because you simply move the whole house by towing it around the lake until you find a location that you fancy.

I don’t know if you can see the ropes attached to this house, but it is being pulled along by a couple of boats.

Just like in any village, there are shops

sale boats

and the occasional floating garden

but these are apparently very costly to install, so not many people can afford the luxury of home-grown vegetables.

Hanging out the washing could be a problem

– you’d have to be careful that you didn’t drop it.

Our driver for the trip to the floating village looked so young that I asked how old he was.

He’s sixteen, and earns $40 a month as a boat driver.  He decided not to go on to high school because he didn’t want to leave home and have to go to Siem Reap to study, so he took a job that puts him well below the poverty line of $2 per day.

We transferred onto paddle boats to visit the village – you can spot the tourists because they’re the only ones wearing life jackets.

We met a chap who breeds fish and sells them to a wholesaler when they’re big enough for $1.75 a kilo.  He’s feeding them on a mixture of rice and tiny fish that he catches himself in the lake.

Not everyone in the village is poor, however.  We met a woman who breeds crocodiles and clambered around on top of the cages to have a good look at them.

Here’s my foot, just to prove that I was only inches away from a hundred large crocodiles in a cage that only had a few holes in the wire, where sharp teeth had obviously snapped at it a little too vigorously.

Not all the crocs were huge though –

I thought these were rather cute.

The owner has 300 crocs and can sell each fully grown one for $1,000, so she’s a very wealthy woman by Cambodian standards.

Then on to the water hyacinth weaving studio.  Water hyacinth is one of the fastest growing plants in the world and can grow 1cm a day.  It’s extremely invasive and is clogging up the lake.

The boat is ploughing a channel through the plants as we make our way across the lake.

Luckily, someone discovered that when it’s dried it’s extremely strong yet pliable, and excellent for weaving.  So a group of women run a weaving studio, making baskets to sell and teaching hopeless tourists like me how to weave.

Here is the water hyacinth drying out before it can be used.

My tutor showed me how to weave under and over the framework, and how to tie in new strands without a visible join.

She was very patient and undid my mistakes without rolling her eyes or giving me pitying looks.

I could only do it right if I chanted ‘over, under, over, under’ constantly, which must have been very irritating for everyone else – but finally it was finished –

and I had my very own hand-made souvenir to take home.

We passed a lot of families out for a spin as we travelled back

and some fishermen

and I learnt a few of the rules for driving on the lake, such as

if something bigger than you wants to get past in a narrow channel, pull into the side and cling on to a plant while it passes you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a jaunt to the beach – Otres near Sihanoukville –

I suffered another violent assault – this time it was called threading.

I was approached by two smiley ladies as I sat reading on the beach, and they offered their services, assuring me that afterwards I would be ‘smooth like baby bum’.  How could I resist?  So they got to work on me – one leg each – making scissoring movements with the twisted cotton, deftly ripping all my body hair out by the roots, and only drawing blood once or twice.

Then they turned their attention to my face – not just eyebrows, but forehead, cheeks, jawline … I’d never realised before that I was quite so hairy.  They would stop, look closely at me, run their fingers across my skin, tut loudly and then go in for the kill once again.  When I was bright red and stinging all over, they produced a tiny mirror so that I could admire my new hairless face, one centimetre at a time.

Then Sam decided to go for some male grooming in the eyebrow area.

For obvious reasons, I don’t have any photos of my own threading experience, but I imagine my facial expression was similar to his.

But whatever those ladies did, it certainly worked, because I met my new best friend soon afterwards.  I was still in my chair on the beach and she came up to try to sell me a bracelet.  She was very chatty and asked my how old I was.

‘Fifty-seven,’ I said.

‘Oh!  But you so young!’ she said.  ‘My mum, she fifty-three and she old, old.  But you no!  I think you thirty before you say me.’

So she is now officially my best friend, with the threading ladies in second and third place.

However, a serious deterrent to my new beach body readiness is the seafood down here.

This jolly lady sells delicious giant prawns

and you don’t even have to move out of your chair to buy some.

The restaurant just down the track does wonderful seafood platters with barbecued squid, prawns and barracuda.

We’ve devoured several of these since we arrived.

Oh well – I shall just have to resort to the age-old trick of muted lighting whenever I want to show off my beach body.

 

 

 

By no means everyone in Cambodia has access to clean water, and this has a massive impact on families and the community.  Water-borne illnesses are a huge threat and children often get ill and can’t attend school and parents can’t work because they’re looking after them, or the parents themselves get ill and can’t work, which has an economic impact on the family.

At school we have two bio-sand filters which provide the drinking water for the children.  They were installed by an organisation called Trailblazers, and two other volunteers I’ve met are working there at the moment, turning up every day for work in tough leather boots and spending the day humping concrete around and using pneumatic drills, so I asked them about what they do.

The filters are made of a moulded concrete casing which is made first at Trailblazers HQ and transported to the site where the filter will be installed.  Then the filter is put together on site.  They fill it with big stones, then small stones, then sand, and put a perforated cover on top to stop the sand from rising up when the water is added.

The gravel and sand act as a physical filter, but the bacteria in the sand also act as a bio-filter and remove bacteria and viruses and make the water safe to drink … and all for only $60.

I thought this building of filters was the only thing that the volunteers do, but apparently if there is no well in place for the filter, they have to make the well too – and the one they made on Wednesday took seven hours to drill.  The thought of two 21 year-old graduates spending seven hours with a pneumatic drill is quite alarming, but they didn’t seem to be maimed or disfigured in any way.  They have to sink 16 copper tubes on top of each other in the ground – each tube is 1.5 metres high, so that’s a pretty deep hole.  Then they remove the tubes and put a plastic pipe in and build a pump to access the clean well water.

This is our school pump, which runs to a tap on the wall, which is used to fill large plastic cans to pour into the filter.

The well water is poured into the filter and drips out slowly – apparently there is a copper pipe which forces the water out from the bottom of the casing. The only thing to remember is not to let the sand dry out, because then you kill all the good bacteria.

The pump at school is also used to fill this large barrel with water.

This water is used to flush the loo and for the all-important bum gun.

Each well provides enough water for 3-5 families, and one filter per family gives plenty of water.

Trailblazers gives the family information on the importance of clean water and hygiene.  This is also much-needed, as we learnt when we visited the floating villages on lake Tonle Sap, where the loos all empty directly into the lake, and the villagers drink the water.  They boil it first, but even so they often get ill.  A charity provided them with small water purifiers, but they were suspicious of them and prefer the traditional method of boiling the lake water.

We all know about the importance of clean water for health, and worry about getting a dose of Montezuma’s revenge on holiday, but I’d never before considered the long term financial and educational problems for people who are permanently beleagured by water-borne diseases.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, I went back to the Khmer Relief Spa for another massage. The lure of the 50% discount proved irresistible – the triumph of parsimony over pleasure.  Happily, I can report that this time my experience was much less violent and I came out bruise-free.  I was even able to open my eyes and look at the lotus flowers under the table

as my eyes weren’t screwed tightly shut in agony.

I went for the aromatherapy massage this time, on recommendation, and it was nowhere near as violent as the stress release massage – although there was still much more pressing and pummelling than I would have expected.  There were a few other strange movements too – like moving my cheeks upwards and outwards, as though she was a horse trader checking my teeth.

The problem with a massage abroad is that you never know what’s coming next, and you’re constantly waiting for the next karate chop or handstand … even if it doesn’t happen.

The whole spa is lotus central

because they are such a zen flower, I suppose.  They open them up artificially, folding each petal back to show the yellow centre,

or just folding a few back to retain the classic lotus shape, as in the bowl in the top photo – all very labour intensive, compared to bunging a bunch of daffs in a jug, which is my floral centrepiece of choice.

Other than indulging in a spot of masochistic massage, there are plenty of other things to do if you have too much time on your hands in Cambodia.

For example

buying geckos to match your scarves and then creating an installation.

or –

going to a bar with lounging-style seats

and then sitting and photographing your feet

or

taking photos of branded face masks – this lovely one is by 3M

or

taking a particular interest in the equal opportunities policy of building sites and photographing all the female navvies mixing cement, digging trenches and climbing up particularly rickety scaffolding.

Oh well, it could have been worse – I might have developed a taste for ‘happy pizza’, or got a tattoo, multiple piercings, a gigolo – my little peccadilloes seem harmless in comparison with what some other people get up to.

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised by things that happen here, if you see what I mean.  It’s all very well to expect the unexpected, but if you don’t know exactly what you’re expecting, it’s hard to anticipate.

In the weekly computer lesson this week, the children were learning to compile a table using Word.  The task was to complete a list of pupils in the class, with name, gender, date of birth and occupation  – pretty straightforward I thought, until I saw this one

When I asked why she’d put 00/00 for Ream’s date of birth, she explained that he doesn’t know when his birthday is.

So I went around and looked closely at the other tables and saw this one.

Three of these children don’t even know the year they were born, let alone the date.  I tried to imagine an English child of twelve-ish not knowing when their birthday is, but I couldn’t.

My next surprise came on Friday, after I had been teaching this class for six whole weeks.  One of the boys in the class turned up for school wearing a pair of jeans with stars embroidered on them.

I’d put a picture of this boy into a blog post several weeks ago, showing him playing with his home-made table football set.

Anyway, I wondered about this very different look that he was sporting on Friday

and so I asked the Khmer teacher, very tactfully, if the child in the third row back was a boy or a girl.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘It’s a girl – but I’ve noticed that you say “him” when you talk about her.’

As I was thinking to myself, why on earth didn’t you tell me, I heard one of the girls in the back row say ‘lesbian’  very clearly … these kids can’t string an accurate sentence together, but they can follow an adult conversation and come up with the word ‘lesbian’ … which isn’t a cognate in Khmer, because I checked.

There have been several animal-related incidents this week.

Firstly the children brought me this baby gecko

who seemed to feel very much at home on my ipad.

Then I acquired a large green admirer, who sat on my pencil watching me while I supervised the art lesson.

The solar system art lessons were a great success, incidentally, and we ended up with some lovely pictures; some more accurately drawn to scale than others, but everyone was proud of what they had produced.

This is the morning class displaying their finished creations

and this is the afternoon class.

Nowhere near so many finishers, but just a few had made a real effort, and seem to be much improved in general after six weeks of TLC from the Bardenator.

The shock came on Friday when I was on my own in the classroom while the children were in the playground.  One of the girls came rushing in and shouted, ‘Snake – teacher!’  Then, just in case she hadn’t made herself clear, she shouted, ‘Teacher – snake!’

Oh my God, I thought.  There’s a snake in the playground … and I’m going to have to deal with it.

I got to my feet, which suddenly felt very heavy, and followed her out of the classroom and into the playground.

‘Snake, snake!’ she said, and pointed to the resources room.

My first cowardly instinct was to shut the door of the resources room, and pretend I knew nothing about a snake in there.  But then if someone went in there and got bitten, I’d be morally responsible, I thought.  So I walked gingerly over to the resources room and said to Phanna, ‘Tell me what the snake looks like.’

‘She means Snakes and Ladders,’ came a disembodied voice from the office next door.  ‘That’s what they call it over here.’

I was so relieved I positively skipped into the resources room to find the game.