Travels in Takeo

Hot on the heels of the holiday with my parents and sister, I headed off on a weekend break to Takeo province with three VSO friends.

The Cambodian festival of Pchum Ben is on at the moment, and our visits to Takeo’s temples gave us an insight into this celebration of ancestors. Local people take it in turns each day to prepare food for the monks which they then lay out in the pagoda.

One of the temples we went to see is only accessible by boat during the wet season. We got stranded on the temple island in a huge thunderstorm with darkness quickly falling, but eventually bit the bullet and sped back to the distant town in pouring rain, nearly black sky and into the remains of a gorgeous sunset. Exhilarating but damp.

Party

In honour of my family visit and my impending departure from Kompong Thom, CoDeC held a party for us. All the staff went to great trouble to dress in Western clothes, while Sally and I turned up in Khmer style.

There were lots of speeches celebrating my time at CoDeC. The staff gave me a special gift - a silver handbag - and my parents/sister a ceremonial bowl set. We all took part in the Khmer dancing, and there was also some karaoke singing - but not by any Ridouts. A very happy evening.

The luxurious lifestyle continues...

The holiday with my parents and sister just kept getting better and better. We flew to the south of Laos and took a 2 night boat tour on the Mekong River, where we were lucky enough to have the whole boat to ourselves, complete with our own tour guide and a staff of more than 10 people. We had sole use of the whole upper deck, and we visited local sights at our own pace.

One trip to a pre-Angkorian temple site took us through leech territory, necessitating socks tucked into trousers and a lot of hopping to avoid the creepy crawlies. We travelled on to Cambodia, and made the inevitable visit to Angkor Wat before

spending time in my home town of Kompong Thom, where, amongst other things, we visited the families of a couple of colleagues. We finished up by seeing the sights of Phnom Penh. Our holiday together was unforgettable with an amazing range of wonderful experiences.

Lovely Laos

I'm writing this from Laos, where I'm on holiday with my parents and sister. The limestone karst scenery around VangVieng is spectacular.

Sally and I went tubing 4kms down the fast flowing Nam Song. It was very exhilerating once I'd worked out how to stay on.

Crossing the river in a dug out was a white knuckle experience! Sightseeing in Vientiane included visiting the national icon Pha That Luang. We're flying off to Pakse in the south of the country tomorrow and getting up at 3 a.m. Ugh.

Motorbike adventure

This weekend marked the beginning of my holiday season! I biked 140 kms to meet my friend Jo in Oudong on the other side of Tonle Sap lake. We had a great weekend visiting the many temples of this important Cambodian site. This was possibly my last major motorbike trip before I leave, so I made the most of it.

With my return to the UK looming ever closer, I am planning to pack in as many trips and holidays as I can while I'm in the region.

As well as seeing more of Cambodia, I am planning to go to Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Tibet, China and Myanmar in the next few weeks. The life of a volunteer is very hard!!

More flooding

The floods around Kompong Thom at the moment are very picturesque, turning fields into glassy lakes. Many houses have been cut off, though, and people are having to wade through water to get to their homes.

The poorest people live in the houses with the shortest stilts, so they are living very close to the water surface. These people build their own houses out of local natural resources - wood, bamboo, grass and leaves - and have to regularly replace roofs, walls and floors.

HIV and AIDS training

This week, because the road to the CoDeC office was still flooded, I volunteered my house as the venue for a 3 day HIV and AIDS training course for 14 CoDeC staff plus a further 5 participants. Organising the chairs, flipchart paper, snacks, drinking water, house cleaning, etc, and having people in my house from 7.00 a.m. until 5.30 p.m. was EXHAUSTING, and I was very glad to get my house back to myself at the end of the course.

A VSO volunteer facilitated the training for us, and highlights included a visit to the centre for Voluntary Confidential Counselling and Testing at the local hospital, where a number of the course participants took HIV tests. Thank goodness all were negative, but I was shocked at how anxious the women were before they got their results; they know and accept the fact that their husbands are unfaithful and irresponsible. We also met the local group of People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLHAs) at a pagoda, and many of their stories were very upsetting.