Khmer cusine

Comparing to Thai food, Khmer cusine doesn't have that striking spicyness. Yes there's plenty of chili and pepper used in it, but they also use lots of Coconut, and ginger, these two together create a very mild yet soothing taste. And this land's trade mark products, if you like rice and fish you'll find something to make you happy in any restaurant you go to. Here's some recommendation from my daily eating routine in Siem Reap.
Soup Dragon has best breakfast menu. Actually it's Vietnamese, their Pho(o with their vowel sign above pronounces this word "Phar" meaning rice noodle soup) Bo(beef) and Saigon kickstart dripping coffee with condenced milk on the bottom, my way of kickstarting the day. Pho Bo is only 75 cent! and while sipping $1 coffee and planing out the new day they serve me free tea.

Singing Tree Cafe, across the river from Old Market/Touristy district near Wat Bo and Wat Demnak, has a great atmosphere of community and healthy, artistic events. Every day they have music jam session, language class, yoga class and so on. visit www.singingtreecafe.com
And they have a great menu. especially at lunch time they make Papaya salada mixed with glass noodles and shrimp. $2.50!

When you are in Cambodia you have to try theit national dish Amok once. it's like a fish curry but much milder than what you imagine curry from Thai/Indian standard. Picture shows Fish Amok from Red Piano, in the center of the town. Their menu have wide variety of western and south east asian food. and this Amok is only $4, and it is delicious!

i also try to cook as much as i could. especially when i'm with group of friends, cooking for them becomes such a pleasure. Greentwon guest house is kind enough to let me use their kitchen, above is when rachel and lindi stay there me making tofu green curry. sweet girls of guesthouse staff help me with slicing and chopping.

this is a time when i take Hoko and Khorn to Poum Steung school, i wanted to thank them and my team Sophat and Chey by cooking for them, then there are sewing girls at Chey's and Chey's neice Chandrene brings some of her friends. We together work on two stoves one frying pan, two pots to make Curry, Fresh shrimp spring rolls, Pan-fried fish. There end up being 14 people gathering for the big dinner and we have made enough food. I wouldn't say I cooked it, everybody else did. Nonetheless it was the first time i orchestrated this such big feast and it was fun!

Greentown Guest House

For the shoestring budget backpacker($4 for single room) to medium level traveler ($6- for Air Con, TV double room) i would highly recommend Greentown Guest House when you come visit Siem Reap. It's a place where always guests, staff, drivers and their friends hang out casually, share good time. It's across the river from Post office, good 10 minute walk from lousy hustle bustle of the central SR, quiet and peaceful garden surrounds reception area/restaurant.

My room on the day I check out. Bed, table, fan, bathroom with cold water. For long term stay they give me discount, i pay $3/night for this $4 room. not a bad deal.

Alex, the manager of the guest house is very helpful, resourceful guy, and he makes extra effort to accomodate your needs. He works from 6AM to midnight, 7 days a week. I worry for his life. "It's for the experience, and i get to support my family." he grins.

Chey and Sophat

although they are not related by blood, chey and sophat are practically brothers. they are best friends and neighbours, do everything together, always joking around.

Chey with his 4WD, picks me up and take me to many places in Cambodia which no tourist has oppotunity to discover. And Sophat's language skill and talkative personality makes the trip always more fun.

Chey is always dressed nice. Clean collar shirt even when he's working on greacy auto engine. He's single and always looking for a chance to meet ladies. Very social, very kind person. i wish i understood Khmer laungage better so i could know him more.

Battambang

Feb 16th, feeling the midway exhaustion on all my projects and social life in siem reap, i ask Sophat if he wants to go visit his family in Battambang, A city south of Tonle Sap lake. we drive our little 100cc motos and leave Puok around 6pm. this is a very bad idea!! most of the road to Battambang is in very poor condition. full of dirt, rocks and holes and we can't even see them in the nighttime. we arrive at Sophat's wife's village Kor Kosh at 3 in the morning with our bodies aching and sore from driving and covered in dirt.
6 am, wake up to the sound of village, roosters and children, there's a breakfast served in a front yard for villagers. Pamera and Arachana, Sopat's 2 daughters see me awake and immediately want to play. Everybody's smiling, kind and curious about me. such a nice way to wake up, a little more sleep would have been better, though.
then we drive into town and i get myself a room, in center of the town across from the market, up on 5th floor with a balcony so i can see the entire activity of this Cambodian town. (Siem Reap is not as big as Battambang, but overpopulated with tourists that you don't feel like it's in Cambodia) i take a nap for a couple of times, then bring my guitar to the park by the river and watch sunset.

Train station in Battambang. Pretty much a slum for the homeless family. A pack of children play with a cardboard box. when i walk up to them with camera, they call out "hello" "what's your name?" then i say "my name is Toshiro, what's your name?" they reply, "my name's tochiro, what's your name?" local people use train tracks to drive bamboo platform rigged on trainwheels.

This is a Chinese new year weekend. Sunday the 18th, i wake up 5 in the morning to the massive sound of fire cracker shaking my 5th floor window, and from then there's no going back to sleep. On my way to breakfast i run into a parade for the new year. This is a year of wild bore, Morgan!

Our quick day and a half off is up, Sophat and I start driving back the same road again. Sophat takes Chey's mother who happens to be in Battambang and needs ride back. 60km up to Sisophone, it is a smooth road and we stop for photos etc. Many signs like this one "give your weapons up" can be seen all over the country.
Then after Sisophone it's another 100 km on the notorious Highway 6 (see February 11th posting 'Highway 6 rebuilt') no bridges are accessable, full of dirt, pebbles and holes. once again all three of us are covered in dust with sore body when we get back to Puok.

Sophat's workshop

Feb 16th, I visit Sophat's field work for the red cross. As a field officer, everyday he would go to different village to educate people about health care. After piling up his moto with fruits and water for today's workshop, we take 30km of dirt road into Kabbar Kropoo village.

On the way Sophat stops at small shack and explain to me that, this is a school which villagers have built and whenever a volunteer teacher from village is available the children can come to learn how to read and write. For such remote area where nobody would willingly come to teach or even build school, this is the only way that children can get any education. The shack is empty and there's no sign of school activity.

At the run-down temple of Kabbar Kropoo village, people start gathering up. There are 6 Red Cross workers, 6 villagers, 6 village leaders, 12 volunteer workers from local organization called VHSG(Village Health Support Group), and 1 Health Center leader, all Cambodian and for many of them this is the first time to meet each other.

Today's gathering is called "Collaboration workshop". It is to what the collaboration is and how it can be achieved in the case of health care in remote village where there's no hospital or doctor. Different people from different background each get up and introduce themselves to the crowd. Sophat's friendly smile brings people together, make them feel important participating in something. After the snack and notebooks and pens are given to each of the participants, they further talk about the collaboration. Sophat brings out a small situation scripted in pieces of paper, assign the participants to act a small play in the roles of a doctor, a mother and a volunteer worker, etc.

this talent of Sophat which brings people together are amazing, and it is always helpful in my visits to Poum Steung school. he doesn't even know, but he can bring people together, make them listen, make them laugh and enjoy, make them think, and make them feel important participating in something. in Cambodia today, people don't recognize this kind of skill, but it has a strong impact on me. Sophat himself doesn't even know. but having been a teacher and red cross field officer, he surely likes to talk to crowd of people and get his message come across. i must find him a place where this skill of his will be properly evaluated.

Tram Sorsor and Srey Por

Feb. 10th, Sophat, Chey and I visit two other schools that was built with the funding from Cambodian School Project (www.khmerschool.com) they are much further away from Siem Reap, about 70 km into the jungle. Tram Sorsor school is in the village of Kouy tribal people. access road is a narrow dirt road full of bumps and gutters, so we switch Chey's car to a honda super cub in nearby town, triplet ride through this land full of burnt forest and, according to Chey, landmines (but there's no warning sign about the mines) Tram Sorsor village live off by cutting logs to sell(illegal, but the law enforcement wouldn't reach this remote area), then burn the remains of land hoping for vegitation, which won't happen because the burnt land can't produce much, then they move onto deeper into jungle, over the landmines, cutting more trees and burning more land. They can't even feed the cattles so farming pigs and cows aren't options either.

after 10 km or so into this village road we see the school. the school building, to be exact. there's no active school, for there's no money to buy tables and chairs, and to hire teachers. the building, which was built only several months ago, looks very much abandoned, yet we meet about a dozon of children playing in the field and in the building. they are just waiting for the school to be active, dying to learn. there are maybe 150 children in Tram Sorsor village (inaccuarte. children don't know how to count, so every one of them give me a different answer) a pack of them come everyday play mables on the empty floor, until someday there are teachers and desks and tables. every year number of villagers, including children, die of malaria, and they can only eat twice a day, meals of rice mixed with salt and chili. no hospital or proper doctor in village. asking what they want to be, answers i get are;
one child wants to be a doctor, another one farmer, one says he wants to sleep, and the rest of the children dont'seem to have no clue what the future might be like for them. horrifyingly, beyond my comprehension, as in many remote villages like this one, there is a television in one of their houses.

devastated by the visit to Tram Sorsor, we are back on the road again headed for Srey Por school, the name of this small town Srey Por means Rice field (Srey) with the Tree under which Buddha sat and meditated for enlightenment (Por). The school has a nice gate, and the building is still under construction(above center), for about 8 months. they say the weather change delays the construction works, but the building will be done in another few weeks (in Cambodia where there's little sense of punctiality, this can mean anywhere from a month to couple of months) but the school is active, temporarily making three class 'room's in a old brick wearhouse nextdoor(above right)

190 children (half in the morning, half in afternoon) in age of kindergarden to 7th grade, come and study Khmer, Math and etc. Only four teachers, two in the morning and two in the aftrenoon. today one of the afternoon teacher went to wedding so only one is there for all the children. Children look much healthier than ones from Tram Sorsor, physically and mentally. Each time they answer my question they put their palms together (it's called 'wai') then i ask why wai? children answer it's a value that they learned in family, in temples and in school to treat others with respect. what are their dreams? many want to be teacher, one doctor, few farmers, one boy wants to be a monk.
visit to these two school was quick, and just one time thing. i don't have energy to start any project with them this time. it was heartbreaking, devastating, and leaving me hopeless, thinking that, by the next time i get to visit them again, or by the time they have tables and chairs, some of the kids i met in Tram Sorsor might be the next victim of malaria, or landmines. without continuing education available and with rapidly imported tourism, any kid from Srey Por can drop out and become a moto driver, a drug dealer, or a sex worker, and it can only take a couple of years until some of the older kids have to face that.

Tourists

"Honey, how was the trip to Cambodia?"
"It was fantastic, the day I arrived I found the perfect table clothes for our kitchen, and I got it down from 2 dollars to a dollar fifty, (proudly) it took me twenty minutes of negotiation!"
"What did you do? Where did you go?"
"Oh, you know, Angkor Wat and all those temples."
"What did you see there?"
"Well, most of time I was staring at the back of my digital camera... here I got some great pictures, do you wanna see?"
"Did you meet any interesting Cambodian people?"
"Not really, they all seem smily and very nice... very poor though."

Taking pictures of the sunset instead of watching it...
Dear Fellow Travelers,
As one of many threatening, obtrusive, photo-snapping tourists, i would like to ask you, don't go to places and immediately take out all your cameras collectively in your group of three, ten, twenty, and shoot the picture of local lives and go. Imagine some other people from other country, ethnicity, culture came visit your daily life and did the same thing, how would that make you feel?
Get to know people, or the scenery before taking pictures, make friends with them with eye contacts and smiles, gesture and hey, they (Cambodian kids in tourist spots) are pretty good at English too. And then, ASK FIRST if you can take a picture or not, and if you have a digital camera, show it to them, they'll love it. they don't have any oppotunity to have their own picture taken and see it. as for me with film camera, I got myself obligated to come back to visit them again when the film is processed and prints are done. giving actrual prints to them, i found, is far better gift than showing the LCD back of little camera.
and mostly, don't we all know that no picture, even the most beautiful ones is never perfect recreation of the reality? and the time you are holding the camera up and watching the back of it, is time away from your precious experience of beautiful reality.

Caffein, Beer, Cell and Moto

Advertisement is everywhere.
Television is everywhere.
This one is particularly disgusting. I can't read Khmer but let me guess what it says;
"Come and buy this drink full of caffein and sugar to poison your body, and we'll give you this transportation device that polute the air, or this tele-communication device to damage your brain! Offer ends quickly!"
in our modernized capitalism societies, we often ask people we newly met "what do you do?" but it most of the time means "what do you do to earn your money?"(=what's your job? what's your profession?) but we really must think it's more important what we do to SPEND our money. Don't let the corporations decide how and on what you spend your money.

Bayon

take my guitar on my moto to Bayon, a temple in the middle of Angkor Thom, a huge area that used to be ancient monk's residential complex, now covered in jungle. once again, lots of tourists and vendors swarming around them. does not a bit feel like a ancient temple.

in the very top room of center tower, there is an old woman -a nun, offering incents and gesturing you to pray in from of buddha stature, then asking for donation.(reasonably) the only two things she keep saying is "sok sabai dtei" (how are you?) and "ackun chiran" (Thank you very much) very nice woman, it makes me feel bad to see so many tourist ignore her as if she's just another begger or something. i give incents, give donation, and sit and meditate for 10 minutes or so, while the woman's daughter(?) are arguing loudly about something with her. i open my eyes and stare at her with my trained loving kindness until she notices. it's actually the old woman who notices and whispers something to the young one. she stops and says "I'm sorry." i reply "Muyn ei dtei"(that's okay).
as i get up about to leave, she points at my guitar and gesture me to play. i hesitate, for this is such a secret place. yet her big smile finally convince me to pull the guitar out of the sack, i finger-pick something i come up with on the spot with the softest delicate. i could be very likely be the first person ever to have played guitar in top center room of Bayon. no tourist come into the room while i play, just watch from down the corridor curiously. there are only the nun and her daughter and me, in the holy ancient temple. no camera to flash the moment off, (yet i took this picture above with her permission --i'm an incureable photographer...)

find a relatively quieter spot in the temple and sit and start working on a new song, calling it "Bayon" the chorus part goes;
>>Ghost of Bayon's in children's faces as they scrub the floor
>>So I played a tune for them, they gave me a cigarette and asked for more
you never see any tourist stop and be quiet, or writing or watching or drawing or talking to local people or stranger or whatever... they all come in in group, and they all immediately pull out their digital camera, snap, snap, snap, then go. do you really feel like you've been there? it really bothers me and and it always has... i don't know why.

outside the temple where i left my moto, in front of a souvenir and refleshment stand, i had bought a coconut from them before i went in to the temple, so the kids remember me and ask me to play music. the father of them offer me a cigarette, i was gonna buy a few bananas but they give me for free. what can i do? i thank them and play songs, let the kid play, a tuk tuk driver waiting for his client's return from the temple, join in with a drum from the souvenir stand. people here are so kind and fun to be around.

little trivia i remember -not sure if true, is that the first western guy who ever discovered Angkor Thom was a French butterfly researcher (don't remember the name. anybody?) traveling in jungle a few centries ago, wander into the whole site of ruins of buildings with strong Khmer faces curved onto them. apparently he was haunted by his discovery later, caught some mysterious fever and went insane, which eventually took his life. wow!

Khorn, Hoko, Chandrine and Puok High

another couple of cool friends i made, Khorn and Hoko, ask me if they can visit Poum Steung. so we bring all the cleaning supplies (trash bins, brooms and dust pans, and bathroom cleaning supplies) and posters saying "Khom Boh Somram" (Don't litter) neice and nephew of Khorn, who were orphans, also come along.

Khorn is a Cambodian from village, good English, works as a tourist driver like many in Siem Reap. Hoko is a Japanese who worked in a hotel before, then they got married a year ago, now they go back and forth between Siem Reap and Shizuoka, a province at the foot of Mt. Fuji.
At Poum Steung school we ask some more question to the head teacher Mr. Thai, and learn that the school is only five years here because there's not enough class rooms. More fund for the new room for sixth grade is currently being raised by Cambodian School Project (www.khmerschool.com).
What about after that? asks Hoko.
Thai says that children can be enrolled into Puok High School, in the nearby town of Puok, where Chey and Sophat live. It's good 8km away from Poum Steung. And not all the children in this village can afford bicycles.
Hoko brought up her worries for the near future of these children at Poum Steung. So many of them here may not even be able to continue getting proper education after fifth grade.

Chandrine (Left picture above, far right) is neice to Chey and Thai, which makes her a granddaughter to Mr. Sarith Ou, the president of Cambodian School Project, whom i never met but together with Mr. Roger Garms they support everything i do here. Chandrine goes to Puok high, and insisted that i make a visit. a typical high school girl. perky and giggly, all her friends come out to talk with me. chance to practice English conversation with a foreigner is precious for them.

Puok high has 5000+ students and 130 teachers. it's one of the growing town nearby Siem Reap. many of the people in this town commute on bumpy Highway 6 to work for the tourism in Siem Reap. the school needs more class rooms. they can't offer full time classes all day due to the lack of rooms, so students have many reces between classes. slowly, money is coming for more buildings but they are all single story building with limited functions. The high school offers Khmer, Math, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, History (Cambodian, American, Thai, etc...) Biology, English, French, Ideology and House Work
what's Ideology?
---we learn about society, economy and corruption.
what's House Work?
---sawing, cooking and other domestic skills, but you only learn off the books and there's no practice course.
No art, no music, no drama class.
Linny (left on the picture) wants to be a diplomat "but I think my family is too poor to send me to good collage in Phnom Penh, so someday my dream of becoming a diplomat may disappear." and Chandrine wants to become a teacher just like her Uncle Thai, and Granpa Sarith.

Breakfast at Poum Steung

It's five in the morning, well before the dawn. A family who live across from the Poum Steung school come and start making a fire on this newly built cray-made stoves. It's for the breakfast for the children. At Poum Steung, morning students and afternoon students alternate every now and then so everyone can get to have breakfast.

at 7AM children start showing up, once they put their bags and notebooks in their desks they would run to their 'cafeteria' and line up with plates in their hands and spoons in their mouths.

Cambodian Rice is bought and donated by Australia, and there is a couple of cans of sardine, little veggy from the garden.

as the morning sun start shining on them, the children enjoy their meals. usually i get all the attention from the kids but this time with food in front of their eyes, they leave me alone. the way they eat just tells me that they don't get to eat nearly as often, or as much as we eat.

there aren't even enough tables and chairs, so some of them just sit on the ground to eat. it doesn't matter, it's food and it's delicious. having been fed the first energy of the day, some kids run back for the second plates, others start playing before the class starts, and some assigned students sweep and clean the class rooms and the field. another difficult and beautiful day at Poum Steung is about to begin.

Float

Feb 2nd, it's the last day in town for Rachel and Lindy. they became my best pals by now, they're off to their next destination of vietnam, then laos, then to malaysia... beautiful couple, and i got their warm invitation to their house in melbourne!

so we decide to go to Tonle Sap lake, another tourist spot nearby Siem Reap. the lake expands four times as large in wet season from may to november, and there is famous floating village where people live on the houses floating on the lake. we charter our little boat with a nice tour guide named "Donut" and cruise down the river headed for the lake.

'Floating Village' is nonsence. it's a big tourist spot with floating restaurants and floating gift shops. Donut tries to bring us to those places to spend money, but we instead ask him and the boat driver to go yonder to less populated part of the village, turn off the engine and float. as soon as we trun the engine off, we see a couple of little canoes rowing staright up at us... are they racing? yes, to sell thing to us! we can't get away from all these vendors, can we? our disappointment, however, is brief once we see the children on the canoes holding up couple of cold beers. that's the best delivery service you can get when you are floating.

we don't want to go to that large floating restaurant to eat with tourists. so we ask Donut in our horrible khmer to take us to where Cambodian people eat. he take us to his house, we sit floating and watch the life in village. a small restaurant with pool table being tugged by a boat. they have to relocate houses constantly by season and by tide. how do they play billiard when they float anyways?

finally the food is ready, typical khmer amok (fish and egg) over rice. so good. rachel and lindy give more than what would probably be the price at the restaurant, to the old lady who cooked for us, as men in the house watch it in surprise. go girls!

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

February 2nd, it's the full moon night. Rachel, Lindy and I triplet-piggy-back on my motorbike, decide to visit Angkor Wat before everybody gets there. (well, we weren't the only ones thinking that.)

It is a fascinating site. a huge complex of corridors and rooms, steep steps and five towers from which you can observe a beautiful sunrise. we just sit there watching the sky getting brighter and brighter, as more and more tourist come and snap photos and go.

Headless Buddhas are the reminder of Khmer rouge era.

Do people come here and touch statue's tits? Look how polish their boobs are.

Amazing detail works cover the walls of gigantic temple.