Week 3 - In sickness and in health

Well, this week has been over shadowed by me being sick for nearly five days. I have been  feeling rather miserable suffering bad stomach cramps, high temperature, other issues that don’t need describing in detail… and generally feeling very unwell. Seems I got a bacterial infection. I blame one of two things, either contaminated water from small shellfish eaten at  a local restaurant or eating toasted nuts sold to us by little poor children who hovered around us at that same restaurant. My local friends bought a few little bags of the nuts from the kids (12 cents a bag) and they were nice until I ate one that had a very unpleasant flavour, in hindsight I should have spat  it out, I recall it tasting bad/off or something, but at the time I just swallowed it down. It could have had something accidently mixed in with it, ie, animal or human faecal matter!!! So gross I know, but it’s a possibility and a definite cause of many stomach infections for tourists in these parts of the world. Anyway, I hope you weren’t eating your dinner reading this. You will be pleased to know by Sunday lunchtime I was almost back to 100%.

Before I got sick I had a couple of interesting encounters. Firstly on Monday at lunch time I got on the back of a staff members motorbike and she took me a few km’s out of town to another staff members house for lunch. There were 6 of us all up and we sat on grass mats rolled out onto the tiled floor and they brought out various bowls of food the home owner had prepared with her mother earlier in the day. There was a whole cooked chicken, ie head and feet included that someone chopped into small pieces, there was a large, thick, fatty piece of pork that someone else sliced up finely, there was a soup dish with vegies and meat in it, a noodle dish with little thin mushrooms in it and rice.  It was all really good and we sat around eating, chatting and giggling, half in English and half not. 

My legs went to sleep after 15 minutes and I had to stretch them out. No one else suffered this fate, they are used to sitting cross legged on hard floors every meal time! I asked them if they ever sat at tables to eat meals and they said some people have tables and chairs but the problem with that is that it means they can only have a certain amount of people at the meal, and this is unrealistic for most families as they have their own extended family and will often ask other families or neighbours to drop in and eat with them. In fact they said that in the villages, they eat in close proximity to the passing traffic and pedestrians and if they see people walk past they will invite them in to eat with them, everyone shares their food. So it kind of makes sense to sit around on the floor, it allows many people to share.

Secondly, on Tuesday night after work I got picked up by that same staff member and her and two other younger staff members and myself, (we are the only four single females in the whole office of 30) went for a ‘bike cruise’. This involves groups of people doubling their friends on bikes riding slowly through town and out to the Angkor temple complex. It was getting dark as we rode out there, (7km from town) but there were loads of buses and cars, bikes and tuk tuks (examples below),  coming back from the temples after taking tourists there during the day. The Angkor temples complex (which covers an area of 25 sq km), has around 6,000 plus visitors per day on average. That’s a lot of hotel rooms to fill, a lot of restaurant meals to cook and a lot of tuk tuk trips.   

Anyway, so we cruised out there, through the rainforest and then to the open area where the large moat surrounds the largest temple Angkor Wat. There were loads of little food stalls all the way along the road selling to locals who were sitting in the dark and cool air (10 degrees cooler than the centre of town). We rode around and past one of the temples and then rode back into town a different way.  Seems like it’s a thing to do, get out of the hot, stuffy town, see the lovely rainforest and temples, eat and chat with friends and then go home. They said the grassy areas lining the moat/canal around Angkor Wat are packed with families at holiday times, new year etc. After we got back into town we went to a local restaurant and ordered a bbq set, which means they bring out a gas burner with a little metal plate sitting on top and a load of raw meat, seafood and veggies and you all sit around and cook it yourself. There are similar places in Australia. The price in the menu was $9 for this so I thought that mean per person, but no, it meant all those veggies and meat, including thinly sliced beef, large prawns and squid for $9, so including  some extra plates of food we ordered on top of that plus soft drink and bottled water it came to $5 per person. Kind of crazy huh. But then again that’s probably where I got sick so I don’t have good memories of the place now….

I asked my workmates whether they always gave money to the poor, dirty looking kids that wander around and stand quietly by your table with a basket of things to sell in their arms, dirty clothes and skin with sad looking faces. They said that if the kids are begging they don’t give them money but if they are selling something they will always buy. I can’t help but feel that us rich westerners could learn a lesson or two from that. These local people are  poor themselves but give money to those less well off than them all the time. There is a strong sense of social justice here, people try and help others wherever they can. I think they realise that they have just been the lucky ones who had a few more opportunities given to them than others and they now find themselves living a relatively comfortable life by Cambodian standards. They don’t ever forget where they have come from just one or perhaps two generations ago when their parents were subsistence farmers living in a village eking out an existence by growing a few veggies and having a few scrawny chickens running around. Eating green leafy weeds that grow on the banks of the creeks and canals, catching and eating crickets, frogs and even mice and rats when necessary to survive from what I’ve been told. No running water, no place to go to the toilet, a large family sharing a small, one roomed space with no furniture as such, just mats for beds that are rolled up and put to the side every morning. No kitchen to speak of, just a fire lit outside under a lean-to roof made of bamboo and palm leaves, pretty tough and unbearable really. 

These are the people that Plan are spending the most time on and have the most commitment to, those extremely poor families in the small, rural villages that are dealing with the highest poverty levels, with children who suffer from stunting and malnourishment and chronic diseases, trying the break the cycle and help the next generation  get a better education, increasing their knowledge and understanding of health and nutrition issues. The ultimate goal being to lift them out of the poverty circle and get young adults into jobs that pay more and give them opportunities their parents didn’t have.

Meanwhile I get frustrated when I can’t find a plastic or metal shower hanger to use for storing soap/shampoo in my hotel shower, which shows just how far away westerners, (myself included), truly are from really comprehending the plight of those in poverty. My current hotel has no-where to put those things so I thought I would start looking around to see what I could find. Seeing as there is no such thing as K-Mart or Target I started with the three grocery stores/marts. Nothing there. Then on another ride somewhere else one day I saw shops that seemed to have lots of plastic household type things for sale so I thought I would give one of those a try. The slightly annoying issue I have when shopping for anything, including inside grocery shops, is that there are always so many staff hanging around looking bored and they kind of follow you around, every time you go into a different aisle you become aware that they have quietly followed you and are just waiting at the end, watching quietly. Do i look like a shop lifter? Are they waiting to assist me? Is it that they have absolutely nothing else to do? Sometimes I will come to the end of an aisle after wandering aimlessly and picking up a couple of things and all of a sudden there will be a young lady standing right there in front of me holding out an empty basket and a smile on her face. Very disconcerting, or helpful, whichever way you choose to look at it I guess.

So anyway, I parked my bike outside and went into this strange store  that seemed to sell practically everything. I guess you would call it a K-Mart equivalent, except that there were 10 other shops similar in the same strip of road. Those who have been to Asian cities will know what I mean. ‘Same, same, but different’. Stacks of plastic containers, utensils, furniture, mattresses, storage, brooms, everything stacked so high and so close together that I had to walk sideways through the aisles. 

And this young guy who had been leaning against a pile of something, think it was ropes or blankets or something with his eyes shut, (afterall I was there during my lunch hour when every bloke in the city seems to sleep, and no I’m not being sexist…), anyway the guy started following me, every aisle I squeezed down looking for a mesh type of container with a  hook for hanging off the shower head, he would be there, just kind of politely hovering. Problem was he didn’t speak English so I couldn’t tell him what I was after. Eventually I found something that would do the trick, plus a pack of five plastic coat hangers. Grand total of $2.50 for the lot.

I haven’t washed my hair once since I arrived! Someone else has been doing it for me. I go in to this lovely place twice a week, get a Khmer style shampoo which involves sitting in chair in front of the mirror, getting the shampoo put in and then water squeezed out of a bottle in small amounts whilst the hairdresser starts working the hair into a big, white puffball of soapy froth. She then massages, (I use that term advisedly) my hair in a somewhat vigorous  fashion for about 15 minutes without a drip hitting either my shirt or the floor. Once that is done I go next door and lie down with my head over a basin, where she rinses that lot out and puts another lot in, and then massages and washes for another 15 minutes. Then I get a blow dry and style and leave with nice hair after 40 minutes of pampering. I have been having the same younger women do it each time, and we always chat and try and teach each other Khmer and English. I have an app that I write questions or answers in English, hit a button and it translates to Khmer so we kind of have back and forth conversations that way. She also enjoys trying to come up with new hair styles to send me away with each time, even though I keep telling her I’m hopeless with styling. I found out last week that she comes from the same large village that I went to the week before to do the construction tender workshop, which was a nice surprise. She knew of Plan International as the school she went to was built by them 10 years ago and they have a presence in that area with health and well being training.

Lastly a food photo. Last Monday I had lunch at my favourite restaurant, owned and managed by an Australian retired guy. His wife loved Cambodia and they visited several times before she passed away from cancer. She was a school teacher in Melbourne and always made a point of giving the least fortunate kids in her class special attention. When she died he decided to come over and open a restaurant in her name, ‘Genevieve’s’, and employ locals to cook, manage and run the place, pay them above average wage with good working conditions, give them opportunities to learn all the different aspects of hospitality and provide a high quality food experience to visitors. Every time I go there I am served by the same lovely young woman and if it’s not busy she stands around and chats with me about things, her life, my life, what she did on the weekend etc. And the food is so good!

The little green rolls in the bottom of the photo are very thinly sliced rare sirloin steak wrapped in betel nut leaves and the dipping sauce is pepper based (look up Kampot Pepper). Its so good! I try and have different dishes each time but seem to keep coming back to this. Each of those starters were $3.50 each. And they filled me up. I also had a delicious mango fruit shake which is  fresh mango and shaved ice blended. Thick, cold and very refreshing.

One last observation. Have I told you about the traffic! Oh yes, I have. But as I have to take it on every day it’s a constant in my life and let me just say, it’s so crazy here, it’s worse than Vietnam, not in sheer volume but in terms of lack of road rules. And for those of you who have been to Vietnam you will know what a big call that is!

First rule of bike club: whatever you do don’t hit another vehicle or person. That’s it, there is only one rule for bike club.

And what do you do when you are riding up to a four way intersection? You slow down and approach carefully if you are a car or a sensible person and whoever kind of gets there first crosses through and the others go around. Young guys on bikes however feel that its their prerogative to tear up to said intersection and just charge straight through and any other traffic has to suddenly slow down or veer around them as they shoot through. It’s completely mad and the fact that the government removed the requirement for a bike licence last year is even more crazy. The prime ministers reasoning? It’s too difficult to police and it was losing him favour with the younger crowds….