Banteay Meanchey (mum visit part 4)

The road from Siem reap to Sway sisophon (Banteay Meanchey province) is done! Last year it was so bumpy with lots of detours and we felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere.

Battembang (mum visit part 3)

In Battembang we saw a train station- can you spot the train tracks?

We also saw this guy with 8 arms...

...and some crocodiles. We also saw a graduate of the Bible school who is now working at a church there.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat (mum visit part 2)

While we were in Siem Reap we saw the sunrise over Angkor Wat, the famous ancient temples that are on the Cambodian flag.

Last few weeks... (mum visit part 1)

We drove around the big lake again. Almost the same trip as last year, but this time we went in the opposite direction and we took both our mums! I'll tell you more over the next few blog posts.

Crossword clues part 2

Some of you may have just got our crossword in the mail, please ask us if you need more clues than you can find on here. And if you want to see our news and photos, I keep a journal on Kronicle Extra.
* The Mekong river runs through Kompong Cham
* Our church meets at a place where students live
* Floors can be made of bamboo
* Kimsoeun's first contact with Christianity was by watching a movie

Pol Pot's old high school (crossword clue)

Here is the gate of the high school that Pol Pot went to, although his family wasn't from Kampong Cham. This school is named after Norodom Sihanouk, father of the current king.

This should help if you are doing Kronicle Crossword! Ask us if you need any more hints.

the end of the year

Today is the last day of the school year at the Bible school- so bye bye students! Over the last week we have also said goodbye to a few expat friends, and to the tree outside our house. It fell down in a big storm as you can see here.
So we spent last Saturday cleaning up bits of branch and tiles, then got a student to help a few days later.

How many bananas can fit on one motorbike?

Freshwater dophins

Mekong dolphins "almost extinct"

Dig Deeper

Kimsoeun has finished translating the book. It will be published soon. Have a look on the Fount of Wisdom web site.

Snail eating

This is how my husband likes to eat snails: pulling them out of their shells one by one and dipping them in sauce.

What am I doing?

More about what we are doing on Kronicle Extra and Kronicle Twitter.

I'm a grandma

“Da” is what a 17-year-old girl calls my husband. It’s the Khmer word for “grandfather” – so that means if she addressed me I would be “yiyay” (grandma).
So how can we be grandparents when we don’t even have children? I guess in this case the relationship is actually some sort of great uncle, as the girl is a descendant of Kimsoeun’s mum’s brother or something, rather than directly from our (non existent) children. But I find it amazing there is already that many generations younger than us in our family. Kimsoeun is only in his early 30s and people from his generation have already had kids… and their kids have already had kids…

(Soeun’s mum is the youngest of many siblings, and they all got married young, so by the time Soeun was born I think he already had cousins that were more than 13 years old. So if those cousins got married at age 16 too and started having kids, that would mean there would have already been a generation below him before he finished school.)

Killing Fields Museum- Choeung Ek

We thought it was ironic that our tuk tuk driver's name was Duch. We were going to visit a mass grave museum and the guy taking us there had the same name as one of the people who are on trial for their part in the genocide. I'll let these pictures speak for themselves, or you can find out more from the links.



The start of Pol Pot time : April 17th 1975
The end of it: Jan 7 1979
A prison from that time that has been turned into a museum: Toul Sleng
I also put some more of my photos on my other blog.