What is this?????????

What is in the photo????
You tell us! Please send an email with your answer (or you could leave a comment on the blog but then everyone can read it- so only do that it you think you’re wrong). Winners might get a postcard from Cambodia. Answer/s will be revealed in the future. Feel free to share with you Bible study group etc.

Cow goes up the hill

Here is a picture of a meal we had at our house with KS’s small group. It’s similar to Chinese meals – Hot Pot/Steam Boat. All the food comes to the table raw (or in this case the floor) and you cook as you go in pot in the middle. Instead of a pot of boiling soup this is a small coal stove that is shaped like a hill. And most of the meat we cooked on it was beef- hence the name!

International Visit # 2 and traffic photo

An Aussie family we know who financially support the work of the college recently came to visit Cambodia. It was great to introduce them to the student they support, show them around and have some meals together. We were excited that as well as sending money to support work in Cambodia they could come and see and experience a bit.

It was also fun for me because we got to ride in tuk tuks (rather than moto taxi or bike) and we got to feed them fun/interesting Cambodian fruit.

Pancakes

Language and Culture sharing usually involves food. In China and here I have tried cooking and serving Western food.

Chinese kitchens don’t come with ovens, but I had a small one, looked a bit like a microwave (similar to the one we have now, see blog post from May). I used it to bake pumpkin and one of my Chinese friends really liked it. One day I went to visit her family for dinner. She had bought a pumpkin so I could show her how to make the baked pumpkin she liked. But she had no oven.

I’ve discovered pancakes are great to cook and serve to Khmer people if I want to feed them some Western food. I can cook them using the same things Khmer people use to cook dinner everyday- our gas stove and frying pan. All the ingredients I can get at the local market. Some Western dishes I would need to make a trip to a supermarket in town. Things like cheese, butter, cocoa we can buy in Phnom Penh but only at certain shops.

In the pancake batter I put water, eggs and flour. I serve them with sugar and lime juice. Limes are common here. They are sold along side chilli and ginger at the market, rather than with fruit, as they are used a lot to flavour meat dishes.

As my previous house mates can tell you I love pancakes, they are great for any meal!

Construction

I pass heaps of construction sites each day so I thought I’d share these photos. In a recent edition “Phnom Penh Post” there is an article about safety for workers. “Fuelled by increased investment, construction has been a boom industry in Cambodia’s urban centres for the past half decade, but rapid growth has outpaced regulatory controls.”

The author spoke to a worker who saw his friend and co- worker fall 14 floors and die a few months ago. He also said most construction workers are paid 8,000 riel per day (about $2 US), 7,000 for females.

As I may have mentioned once or twice before it’s quite hot here most of the time. Just riding home from uni (20min, around 10am) is often enough heat/sun to give me a headache (no matter how much water I drink). I can’t imagine what it would be like to spend the whole working day outside. They usually start early and have a long break in the middle of the day- but they still get a lot of sun.

Recently we...

KS has been spending his days preparing lesson on Jeremiah. The new year will start in about a month and for the first time the college will have semesters instead of terms.

Campus life is different with most of the students away. I was worried I wouldn’t have as much opportunity to (try) speak Khmer during these months. However there are a few girls still living in the dorms next door. And with less people around I think we tend to spend more time together, sharing food, talking etc, than during term time.

My classmate who was evacuated cos she has Dengue is getting better. It will be awhile before she is well enough to come back, but she is much better.
Another classmate was in a car crash recently and he has just started coming back to class. There are 63 stairs up to our 3rd floor classroom, according to him. He has plaster from toe to knee, so he has time to count the stairs and he slowly makes his way up and down each day.

I’m still riding my bike to class each day, although it enjoying less. About once a week I take a moto taxi if I’m tired or its raining or something. As I was riding home recently a moto accident happened right beside me. I don’t think it was fatal but hearing the moto crunch on the road and seeing people flying through the air increased my fear of the traffic here.

Multi cultural wedding

Recently we went to a wedding of a Khmer man and a girl from Hong Kong. The cultural mix was obvious in the days activities.

It began with a fruit procession from Khmer culture at 7am, which was followed by a Chinese tea ceremony. After a short sermon, breakfast of rice porridge was served.

Next we moved to a bigger hall and the bride- in fact the whole wedding party- had changed into white. The groom went out the front on stage while the bride walked down the aisle Western style.

After a church wedding service in Khmer and Chinese the new couple walked out together while we threw Jasmine flowers over them.

Next was lunch with an informal ceremony, sort of like speeches. And I’m not sure what happened after that.

I think the bridal party only changed clothes three times which I think is more Chinese than Khmer (Khmer brides change about 5- 7 times!)

Meat on line

Well, I was so happy that we were able to buy a fridge. I've grown up with a fridge in the house, keeping food cold is good! However, my husband didn't grow up having a fridge so we have some different ideas about storing food! For example one Sunday he chopped up the meat and mixed it with garlic and stuff- and then put it on the washing line to dry!

You can see in these photos the beef in a red plastic basket thing sitting on the piece of string that used to be our washing line. Until recently thats where we hung clothes to dry, but the string kept breaking just after I'd put all the clean clothes on it- so they weren't clean anymore.

Heaps of people in Cambodia have a metal rod on legs they use. After putting the clothes on coat hangers they put them on this rod. Well, we finally bought one and worked out how to get it home. So far we've just been leaving it inside with wet clothes on it. After the workmen are finished I plan to take it out side some where.

Happy Birthday Edwin!

Evacuation

My class mate I wrote about in a previous post (Dengue Fever, click on side bar to read or scroll down) does have DF. After waiting a few days and doing a second blood test she wasn't getting any better, so now she's had to leave Cambodia.

A definition of a definition

As most of my classmates are Korean, but the teacher doesn't speak Korean he sometimes uses a dictionary to explain words. He has one that has Khmer, English and Korean. Yesterday he looked up a Khmer word and took the book around the class so everyone could see it. Everyone can either read Korean or English. The English word was "raise". We had been talking about farming, so it was "raise" as in "raise cattle on a farm".

However the Korean word meant "cause to go up", a different meaning of the English word "raise".
Instead of defining the Khmer word they had just mis translated the English definition!

Cambodian "Scarf"

What do these three pictures have in common? They all show Khmer people with a “groma” on their head. This piece of cloth is kind of like a scarf, it looks like a big tea towel to me. Its very multi purpose, here you see people using it to protect their head from the sun, dust and petrol fumes. It also gets tied around the waist, used for carrying babies and other things, can be used in the kitchen and the bathroom.

Roast Chicken take away meal

Just out on the street some sellers roast chicken. Often on the weekend we buy a chicken meal from these people. As well as the chicken we get 2 cucumbers, some “sweet fish sauce” (like sweet chilli sauce) and some “pepper sauce”. For the pepper sauce they give us a small plastic bag of pepper, salt, sugar and MSG (actually we don’t know what’s in there but that’s our guess). We mix this with the lime that comes in the bag too. The meal also comes with those green leaves you see. It don’t know if there is an English name, its kind of a herb/veggie thing, its yummy!

We usually eat all this with rice, although once we tried with baked potatoes and that was nice too. (I’ve also eaten this meal with bread, and once with cold rice noodles.) It cost around 12000 reil to 15000 depending on size of chicken, how many they have to sell, and our bargaining skills.)

P.S Hey Lisa- note the doona cover!

Dengue Fever

At the moment Cambodia is having an outbreak of Dengue Fever. At first I just heard about it on Radio Australia and read about it in the Phnom Penh Post, but now I’m starting to hear about fellow ex-pats having to be evacuated to Thailand because they are sick. And at time of writing my classmate has had a fever for 3 days (plus head and body aches and vomiting) and is waiting for test results.

Actually even when there is not an outbreak it’s always a threat. Before I came here my travel doctor told me about it. The other diseases she told me about she gave me shots for, but there is no vaccination for Dengue. I was told to wear insect repellant everyday. (Dengue is spread by mossies that bite during the day.) I was told to make sure my insurance included medical evacuation, so if need be I could be taken to hospital in Bangkok.

There are four different types. Mostly it’s like the flu- fever, aches etc. At its worse it can cause internal bleeding and then death. I was told that Khmer people think of it as a kids disease. I think they usually get it a lot when they are young, so if they survive to adulthood they are immune.

Workers and Food on Beach

This post is from the same beach trip that I posted about earlier (in June I think, along with the snake house). Only this post is about the people who work on the beach and the food we ate.

On this trip we ate all our meals at the beach. We sat in one of the picnic areas you can see in the photo. We ordered food from the same people we rented the picnic shelter from I think. Its nice to be sitting at table and chairs in the shade, right on the beach and having the food brought to you. One of the meals we had fish, fish soup and a beef dish, with rice of course and fruit for dessert.

Like other tourist places in Cambodia there are lots of people selling things or collecting rubbish to earn money. As we finished off our meal a primary school age boy (although I don’t think he goes to school) came around asking for our empty soft drink cans. He seems so desperate to get them. As soon as he got them he put them in his bag quickly as if to protect them from anyone who might take them off him.

As well as that there were young girls selling jewellery and knickknacks, a man with one leg (probably from a landmine) selling books about Cambodia (in English and French) and many others selling other food and clothes. You might be able to see a girl selling flower wreaths.

We bought some BBQed squid from a lady who was carrying around a Cambodian BBQ on her shoulders. Ten BBQed squid on a stick with some sweet chilli sauce cost 5000 reil (4000 is 1 US dollar).