snails getting ready to meet Soeun

Khmer New Year- frogs, a funeral and stormy weather

Fried frog!

Soeun spent a few days with friends in a village for the biggest holiday of the year. Normally we would visit relatives in the province, but its not practical for me to travel at the moment so this was the next best thing.

 Lots of dancing, games and yummy food, also a funeral. This time of year is extra dangerous on the road and a member of the community he was visiting had a fatal moto accident.

It was awkward as the dancing place in the village was right near the deceased's house. Normally the funeral would have involved everyone and gone on for a few days, but they just had some monks chant for half an hour and then the dancing continued as normal. That was on the 3rd day of the holiday, the 4th day there would have normally been dancing too, probably as by then everyone knew about what happened and didn't feel it was appropriate.

It was only meant to be 2 nights away for Soeun, but on the day he was supposed to ride the moto back to Phnom Penh it was too dangerous due to wind and lightening. So he tried again the next day, but there were still storms. He finally came back, 2 days late and got some friends to ride with him to make it safer. So they cut their stay in the village short to help him, but then found their student accommodation wasn't accessible so ended up having to stay 2 nights with us!

So the last 4 nights have been different to how we expected, but seems like its all settled down now. Even the weather seems to have gone back to mostly just hot.

new year, the year of the snake has finally begun in cambodia

The new year angel arrival time was 2am this year, so it was pretty noisy the other night. We're usually visiting relative in the province where its very noisy at the angel arrival time, it didn't seem such a big event in PP- maybe cos less peeople here, or maybe cos I'm in a big brick house so didn't notice it? Strangely the weather seems a bit cooler this week, sometimes even dropping below 30 deg C, I needed to use a top sheet the other night!!! Nice to have some cool restful days at home.

power cut update

Charging our lights- these ones can be charged either by the sun or mains power, our best friends in March, along with our ice sellers

Well, the last few days the power cuts have been back to "normal", ie how they were in Jan/Feb. Yesterday the power was off 3 times, but for less than an hour each time. Much easier to cope with than in March when it was mostly off during the day- and for us there was a week where it was totally off day and night for 4 days in a row!!

The hardest thing was being hot and having to throw out all the food in the freezer that we didn't have time to eat/cook/give away.

 I had been stocking up as with the heat, pregnancy and traffic the way it is I didn't want to have to go out too much in April. But my planning ahead was in vain! Although the ice boxes/ esky helped keep some stuff cool, they didn't really work for keeping raw meat and bread frozen. i don't think I'll be using my toaster again until after the baby is born, but we've got some meat in there now.

Market photos

Buying beef

Our local market is quite new, lots of construction going on. When we were here 2 years ago this was a lake!

Lemongrass, chili and ginger (ginger is often used more like a veg rather than just for flavour)

You can get shredded coconut to make milk for curries.

Fish sellers

Duck eggs. You can get chicken eggs, but harder to find. 

bananas and jasmine sticks sold for worship

Setting up house, settling in... yes, still doing that even tho been here a few months

Buying a water filter

Less mossies, more airflow, thanks to Soeun's invention

 So, although we've been here for a few months we're still doing things like getting curtains for some of the rooms. With the hot sun streaming through the windows, the rooms are pretty much un- useable. Its taken awhile to to as both of us find it hard going out in the traffic (no one like PP traffic, but finding it particularly hard with dizziness and pregnancy). The heat, bumpy roads and chaos mean we only go out when we have to.

Fly screen making, part 2

Soeun has a drill, and hooks and rods for curtains, as well as fabric. He's measured and marked the wall. He invited a friend over a couple of times to help with the drilling, but the power seems to be always off when his friend comes to help. Hopefully the friend will be free at the same time as the power is on, as we'll be needing to use more room soon!

He and a few students recently spent a few days giving our fly screens an upgrade. Earlier he had stuck some screen up on a few windows, but some of them had fallen down. Soeun came up with another way to keep the screen up, so he and others went to buy the materials and then spent a few days re-doing some windows, as well as doing some for the first time.

Some students had some extra free time with the holidays- as it took longer than expected so we ended up having people stay the night and have extra meals here.

cambodia 1965 part 1

Cambodian food