Where the Streets Have No Name:: Around the 'Bode

Holidays

Has it really been another month?! I guess the time flies when you are having fun, right? During that time a few of the innumerable Khmer holidays have passed, including Visak Bochea Day on May 24^th which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and passing to nirvana (remember Meak Bochea Day Feb 25^th which commemorates Buddha’s preaching to the gathering monks). There was loud music playing from the wat all day but mostly everyone seemed to go about their daily lives as usual. Then there was Pithi Chrat Preah Neangkol, or the Royal Plowing Ceremony, on May 28^th which corresponds to the start of planting season (rice that is). However this holiday is not strictly observed by farmers, who adhere more to the weather and rain to come. In my community, one of the midwives threw a huge house party for the occasion. Yesterday marked the last public holiday for a long time. It was the Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk’s 77^th birthday.

I was 30 feet from the Queen Mother. Why? Read on!

Still G.L.O.W.ing

My GLOW gals surpassed their goal of educating 100 community members! Within 3 weeks of finishing the camp in Siem Reap, they had conducted one session on goal setting (see last month’s post) and three sessions on puberty and healthy relationships (two of which were co-ed). Can you imagine four 9^th-grade girls teaching their peers about puberty (and co-ed groups at that!)?? It made my heart soar. These young women were incredibly mature, prepared, posed, confident and supportive of one another. They educated 102 people and contributed to the 641 indirect beneficiaries of the Camp G.L.O.W. project (I submitted the completion report last weekend to the Small Project Assistance aka SPA community).

another GLOW Superstar, Kimsan leading a co-ed session on puberty

Visitors and twer dom nar-ing ("traveling")

I have been truly fortunate to have had visitors well before the first year mark which is more than most PCVs can say. There was Marcy and Jerry, Buffy and Bob, Madli and Leigh (fellow Kenyon classmates), and Rachel aka Ratna (my friend from studying abroad in Nepal with the School for International Training). Lucky for me my site is near the famous Angkor Wat temple complex housed just north of Siem Reap town and so very conveniently located for friends and family who are visiting Cambodia to meet up with me for lunch, dinner, or a stroll through the markets. In other cases I have had a couple of visitors spend the time and money to fly around the world with the sole purpose of seeing me (and the added bonus of seeing one of the 7 human-made Wonders of the Worlds, but that is a sidenote…) Cori came for a week around New Years. And most recently the lovely Laura!

On May 26^th I met Laura (one of my college room-mates) at the Thai-Cambodia border town of Poipet and we hopped in taxi headed to Battambang. (Sidenote PC: if you are reading this, know that AL was approved for the entirety of this trip.) We lost no time exploring; we hiked up to 3 different wats on hills (Wat Ek Phnom, Phnom Sampeau, and Wat Banan) totaling something like 1048 stone steps! All in a day! Then we headed south to Phnom Penh and met up with Jen (my middle and high school friend on a Luce Fellowship in PP) and hit up the national museum, the Royal Palace, the Central market, the Russian market, and Wat Phnom (another wat on a hill) before making the trek northeast to a part of the country I have never been to before. We stopped for a night in Stung Treng which is a provincial town tucked along the east side of the Sekong river which flows direct south from Laos. Beautiful sunset from the tourism training center where we stayed. Made our way directly east 2 hours amongst rolling hills and rubber and cashew plantations to Ban Lung where we spent one day visiting and swimming in waterfalls (Kay Tieng and Kinchaan) and a volcanic crater lake called Boeung Yeak Laom. The next day we went on a full day jungle trek (15K or so) for which we received red ant bites, bramble scratches and beautiful bamboo shot glasses carved by our guides. We were exhausted and enjoyed watching a thunderstorm roll in from the confines of our lodge - too tired to worry about the mice scurrying around our mosquito nets. We backtracked to Kratie a provincial town south of Stung Treng along the Mekong River (that's right, not the Sekong a different one) and took a ferry across to an island called Koh Trong where we biked the 14K around the island which thrives on its distinction as an ecotourism destination. The perimeter is lined by a half dirt half paved path with houses running along the interior and a huge expanse of farm land that boast plots of rice, green beans, watermelon, and corn and orchards of pomelos and bananas. Many houses had stunning garden and we got to check out a thriving oyster mushroom crop under one of the home. On the west side of the island was a floating village community and because of the unseasonably low amounts of precipitation the beach on east was massive - desert-like. Headed southeast to Sen Monorom where we took a break from our furious pace and rested and read in the comfort of our bungalow looking out on a land as green and lush as the Emerald Isle with hills and cool (I thought it was cold, but Laura thought I was exaggerating…) weather. The last leg of our trip was in Siem Reap where we spent 2 days tuk-tuking around the massive temple complex and meeting up with some friends. Some highlights included: Angkor Wat at sunrise, the relative emptiness of the temple on the outer circuit, our tuk tuk driver Mr. Nee, and seeing the King and the Queen Mother in Angkor Thom (massive ancient city complex) outside of the Bayon (boast 216 stone faces) at a ceremony of sorts - we were 30 feet away. As one fellow PCV remarked, I hit the height of my PC career right then and there. Laura was able to meet my community, host family (we played too many games of UNO to count) and health center staff and see some of my work before I put her on a bus to Bangkok. She seemed to leave on the wind as quickly as she had come. Despite the total time spent busing around the country (something like 45 hours of bus time!) we were able to see and experience so many wonderful things and I am so grateful that Laura took the time to see me and Cambodia.