Expresso Kamuchea

[tan]

hopefully the slow lori will get on this time and maybe stay...
am tRying, but it is strange, as the pics seem to vanish' selective, here we go, the layout began to look like something, whoops, pic gone, onE the others still there. bon. got it now, no more vanishers...



<small>[ 08-03-2005, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: tan ]</small>

[tan]

...most of the pics are back where they belong, well almost...

[BigJon@Work]

Can you give us the link to your photo album?

BigJon

[tan]

And it rains and rains and rains, whatever happened to the sunny tropics? things disintergate at a frightening rate; motorbikes break down (well they do that all the time, now only more so), clothes rip and just fall off your hide- rather embarrasing, and i already fell through the boards of the bridge to my house twice (painfull). As you can see, my house is on stilts over a comercial fishpond. -pic at a later point in post-.
I live in a compound with my khmer family. am in a rather unique position, as i am adopted by a khmer family.. normally it is the other way round. so here i am, after 30 or more years without a family i find myself with a rather extended one, a true klan. six little brothers and sisters, aunts uncles, in laws, not mine, bob' s and their extended clan in takeo province. again brothers, sisters,uncles and aunts,en masse... ( have a hard time keeping them apart sometimes at weddings).
one thing i forgot: beeing without a family for so long: how hard it is to keep out of family twists. (i profess poor khmer language skills at such times,that helps).

We live way out of town, or so it seems, if you look at a map of snookyville and draw a line between midtown and sokha beach resort our farm is right in the middle.( to find a map:Canby guides on the internet)
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/home3.jpg" alt=" - " />
that is the view i get when i laze in my hammok on the porch.
there are scores of fish under my house,(new york for fishes a friend of mine calls it) and do they make a racket! but then nature is noisy here, and not only am i used to it,i quite like it...
once a year the pond gets emptied and the fish goes to market. quite a job, i never knew how hard it is to get a fish into and then -even harder- to get it out!

we have cows, turkeys, ducks, even a pond with giant asian crawfish, which go by the snobbish name of 'lobster', fields of waterspinach, stringbeans, coconuts,and passionfruit. ever so often i try seeds from europe and raise a crop not native to cambo. Most of the time it does not work, but when it works, oh boy!!as it happened with my french radishes. see picture..later in post.
Rc, we are having spiderbite season here! Don got bitten on his neck, little max near his eye, and i, not as spectacular, on my hand. So, you're not alone!
big John, here the address , or so i hope:
http//ww.villagephotos.com/pubbrouwse.asp?folder id=1403307...

that is the house:

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/home.jpg" alt=" - " />
here the radishes, rather shocking, but they taste good. <img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/radishes.jpg" alt=" - " />
bye, tan

<small>[ 08-04-2005, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: tan ]</small>

[Shapley]

tan,

RE: i already fell through the boards of the bridge to my house twice (painfull).

According to Moitessier, you should wash it with salt water twice a day. The salt in the water will preserve the wood. The rain and the dew will wash away the salt, which is why it has to be done twice daily. The Chinese have used this method to preserve their junks for centuries, some of which are nearly that old.

It won't help with your clothing problems, though. I'm not sure how you preserve them. I know he says sails, even with the best of care, have to be replaced regularly, particularly after the monsoons. I guess you have to change more often, or get used to the emberrasment.

V/R
Shapley

[tan]

Thanks Shap, i'll try the salt water, but will have to be very carefull,as not to kill the fresh water fish colony in the pond. Luckily clothes are cheap here, see off shore producing ...( button down jeans 4$US),
due to rain and heat three changes- and showers a day are a nescessitiy.. that produces copious amounts of laundry...washing the clothing, no problem, water enough at the moment- but the drying part- we do not have wash dryers- is a lenghty procedure; as soon as the sun comes out, everybody makes a flying tackle to their cloth racks,and erverywhere in the street you see the motordops pick their way through an obstackle course of racks with the family wash. then the rain cometh again, again flying tackle everybody, clothes into house. repeat. several times a day..
this is my friend Mad, trying to go somewhere with her kid without getting drenched

[piqaboo]

tan,
thanks so much. This thread is a lot of fun.
The disappearing pix thing isnt b.com, as BigJon noted bfore.

That's one happy looking gecko!

piq

PS _ RC how's the spider bite healing?

[tan]

Thanks Pic,
the photos are back, got the hang of it but now i seem to have out stayed my free wellcome at village pics, though i found a new-german- site, so more pics to come. Spend yesterday some time in the market with my camera.
seems half of our village reads the site on the sly,so i sugested that they post their stoies too. let' s see if they get off heir lazy b...s.
here some of the last freebies:
this is a cham village. the chams are a minoity here, they are muslims, though no fanatics , it was more a protest action of some kind a few centuries ago. chams have ben pushed from china, into conchin and then into annam, that belonged then to the kingdom of angkor. they live in small villages,go to the mosque only when they have nothing better to do, when the beer runs out or somesuch, happily raise pigs and- as in this picture's village fish for shrimp.if the women wear their hair coverd they compensate with so much make up and bangles that they look like an illustration out of an asian version of 1001 nights...
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/chamv.jpg" alt=" - " />
this is the lady who only smiles when i do not try to photograph her...well this time i almost got her to, this will have to do...
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/lady.jpg" alt=" - " />t

[tan]

Yeeeha!!!
TRIED AND TRIED THE HUNS, BUT IT WOULDN'T WORK... IN A FEW DAYS THOUGH I'LL HAVE MY OWN DOMAIN...
found a few more crooks and trickies, so here some marketpics: some of them not so clear asthe lens- and my glasses kept fogging up, the air is yet again so humid you can drink it...

the smelly part, dried fish:

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/dried.jpg" alt=" - " />
this is a sjaman, from somewhere in the jungle selling ' magic', most of it illegal, there is even a law against'sorcey' in cambo. she did not mind me taking it the pictureat all: tell us, she does not know anything but 'the old ways'...
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/sjaman.jpg" alt=" - " />
that is elvis, my bone lazy bulldog, he loves to be driven, even on a moto, he just jumps on, weather he is supposed to or not... looks like he tries to figure out how to drive himself...
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/elvis.jpg" alt=" - " /> <img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/veggie.jpg" alt=" - " />
this is the veggie section in the market, hygenic? ain't it?

<small>[ 08-06-2005, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: tan ]</small>

[tan]

im memoriam: big bayily's died. cirosies off the liver we think, But yet again, as geckos go he was an old battle axe.
My new dutch friends, who have a gueasthouse rather near to my counrty home, were wondering about seemingly dead geckos on their bar, every night:
the next morning they were gone, just to arrive back when the bar opended...
geckos alhoholics anonymous?any ngo's taking????




<small>[ 08-07-2005, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: tan ]</small>

[tan]

ok, up to now, it ha beem kinda fun and games...
please feed back..want to take you to places, pics and all to a very differen cambo. a trip i took. ..but.. but...

i'll make you laugh anyway..but...
some just some pics and stories, well, realisitc, to the core not that what i have told you was not, but you'll see mines, tHe grave of pol pot,(and three different sTories what happened) and what else our trip past had to 'offer'. before i start this i do need feedback... it will n0t be funny but inna baad way...true, thanks tanja
excuse spelling,have been workingf for 16 hrs..so dumb spellling kicks in,,,

[piqaboo]

Tan,
I read this for a view of a different world, not purely for humor. You have a humorous way of expressing things which makes the thread all the more interesting, but its not the driving reason for reading it. More, I am interested in seeing an unfamiliar part of the world, from your pov.

That's my tuppence worth.

[tan]

...ever so often when i do the books in the morning,
usually at the same time when the busses with the cheapos arrive: what's cheapest roomy roomy, have'...( they really talk what they consider pinjin). -i will say, hmmm this might actually work. that is when bob says, get outta here, make hollyday (sanuk, from the thai), because he knows exactly what i' m thinkin: let's build a trapdoor, push butten stile, next one of those.pop goes the hamster- gone..( not that i ever whould do such a thing, the mere fact that i am thinking it tells bob i've had it.
sometimes i go to pp, do the shopping and enjoy myself by beeing thorrowly and gleefully rude to the unwashed and dreadlocked.
That helps sometimes,other times i truely take off and on the wild side.
Vanna my skipper is game, he wants to visit family up near the thai border. It is not wise to dirtbike alone.
we look at my maps: i collect old maps from cambo, some french colonial,some american:'classified,destroy when no longer needed..' sorry, guys, but i DO need them!
some vietnamese, from 1972, see, see, they were planning to colonialize us for all along.
we decide to meet in pp, and go to battambang, and to pailin on the border. later past cochma temple, ahnlog veng, end in seam reap.
so we will be basically skirting the border area, a wartorn, forgotten (well not so forgotten anymore i hear) area. The road to battambang is unremarkably bad, pursat is full of missionaries,barttambang looks like a sleepy frnch countrytown with temples and monks. (i have a hard time not to whine for a mint soda, as i did when i was a kid on hollidays in france...) after Battambang the road gets remarkably bad.Red and white minesticks- they indicate a found mine, to be destroyed,well in a goons age maybe. signs sall along ' danger mines', that does not deter anybody from tilling their soil, the family has to eat after all...
NGO'S have put up signs of -badly- painted cows beeing blown to smitherenes by anti tankmines.( an anti tankmine needs 400kg, an anti personal mine only 4) 'don't do that', the text reads, but as nobody can read it is widely interpreted as; that's the way to go about slaughtering your bovines...
unfortunately,i did not get a usable pic of those,but will treat you to some equally absurd signs at a later date...Along the way the detrius of war, still there. forgotten,unlike the mines..
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/paild.jpg" alt=" - " />

a burned out tank by the road, some hills in the distance. my friend Marcus, a documettary maker from germany, will in a few month discover that they contain the death caves of pol pot: people ,especcially children got thrown in alive, and died. their bones are still there.not that i would have gone there had i kown. it is -sikkeningly so- becoming a tourist attraction.memorial? gawking at poor dead peoles bones??? don't think so.

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pail5.jpg" alt=" - " />

My interest lay with the living, how do they cope? Not without a sense of humor as you see: in the background: tailfinns of b52 bombs, they are getting them ready to plant flowers in them...

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pailin.jpg" alt=" - " />
more later, tanja

[tan]

..do need a break from designing fliers etc, so back to the road to pailin, plenty of more burned out tanks,a little hamlet, and, somebody has struck it rich, a true house, almost a villa. probably ex kr, i heard they all made big bucks, and with the gems in pailin (saphires and rubies) the gambling at the border for thais,and the illegal logging...i can believe it.
interesting is the driveway: flanked by two- unexploded bombs, ment as a kind of garden gnome???
.well that is one good reason not to drive home drunk!

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/bomb.jpg" alt=" - " />

[BigJon@Work]

Originally posted by tan:
im memoriam: big bayily's died. cirosies off the liver we think, But yet again, as geckos go he was an old battle axe.

Yes, but he quite possibly died the happiest Gecko in the world.



That link does not work as a photo album, in fact it does not work at all, even after I add a third w in front. I suspect it is your personal link for uploading your pics. There should be a public link that they provide for you to share.

I love the dog!

<small>[ 08-08-2005, 05:00 PM: Message edited by: BigJon@Work ]</small>

[tan]

..after the house with the bombs the road got better.. there was even tarmac! after a few hills we drove into pailin. a big temple, more good houses,the market square, lost and lonesome baking in the last heat of the day. surrounded by cafe and barlike structures, strangely called cantinas. we found a modern hotel full of thais yapping away on cellphones. yes there is a definite beat to this place, an underliyng pulse..
the owner poses proud with his new posessions for a pic: <img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pail7.jpg" alt=" - " />


scary fellow, his past, well it might not good for our health to inquire...
pol pot's second wife is still living in town at this point,she died only last year or so..of natural causes, a wealthy lady.
but i will deal with the remnants of the past later, for now i want to find out more about the gem business. how does it work here? early the next morning the hotel is really buzzing. the gem market starts early and ends fast. When in the streets. no market, or not one vissible. it is there all right, long wooden tables, each one with a single brass plate on it.the moment one aproaches,
the gem miners or their middle men arrive:

<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pail8.jpg" alt=" - " />
a chair appears, a pair of mannifying kind of glasses,and tweezers. then everybody prducesa little ziplog bags and emties them on the braas plate
looks like i'm in bussiness here. note: i haven't the faintest... but will gve it a try, hey i don't even like gems,but want to see how they are won, so if i want to go to a mine i'll have to play the game with these shadies...


<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pail9.jpg" alt=" - " />

so i try to look like i know what i'm doing. the stones are small, uncut, unpollished, blue and red.
i carefully begin to choose some chippies, then get bolder, a saphire about 3 carat, two rubies, same, some more chippies. now they are in a heap in the midle of the plate. ' mui man?? (how much?) they name a price, about $20. instead of baragining i just add a few stones, until the begin to look truly unhappy.( must just have hit the right price..) ok? ok. now i'm the proud owner of some gems,real ones and very valuable it turns out later ( i wear to this day a ruby stud in one ear, uncut, unpolished, as a souvenier) and yes, we get some rather vague directions to a mine took us some real off trail biking to finally get there: <img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/pail13.jpg" alt=" - " />

strip mining, the family is very poor. most of the ground is exhausted, they mainly find chippies,if they get a big one once a month they are lucky. the kids work too, their daughter washes the grid...
yes, they are aware that the prieces of the stones go up tremendously once they hit thailand, but what cant hey do...smuggling isno option, the ground is too heavily mined, and the thai maffia would get them if the mines won't.

..to be contiued...
big john, please be patient, in two days Alex will arrive and my piture woes will be over for good!!!
have to go to pp for a few days, one of my best friends is ill, the publicity materials have to go to the printers and several ' play it again sam's' as in misspellings...
also do i want to pick up alex at pochentong airport.
in between i will have time enough to continue writing,hotspot in the fcc (ooh what luxury!) and also time enough to take pic of pp...

[tan]

.. have some time left before the taxi to pp goes on the terrifing ride on route four:we have no speed limits.. best thing is: pop a valium and ignore the oncoming traffic .so one more pic, showing the general road conditions when biking in cambo, you can see,a car won't do the job...

[dai bread]

This thread is the first I go to after I've finished with "Musical Notes". Now that you've got photos on it, it's even better. Keep it up!

Would a Jeep or Landrover be any good in your territory? How long before they're souvenired by the local riff-raff; stolen for parts? What's the price of fuel?

[tan]

thanks Dai,
it is so good to get feed back! your country's life and ours are so far apart, that sometimes it is not easy to see what might be interesting to you guys out there. for you we are out thete, for us it is the other way around. as you know, we have daisy our jeep. we use her whenever we can. but when we go trawel exploring, no tourists- we take bikes: once, a story for later- we dug our bikes litereally from under fallen trees...while being chased by an enraged swarm of some kind of wasps. boy, did we move fast! a landrover we could never afford.
diesel, well that is another story: see, we got oil and a lot, right in front of our country, around the islands. rights owned by texaco. and they are coming, rumor has it, that the base from osaka will be here soon: and yes, our local rag says that that bush of yours signed a contract for military help to cambo.. well.... -we do not want it and do not need it. so why? because of our beer swilling cham 'muslims?'
result; prices for fuel are up, way up many poor people can not run their bikes anymore. diesel is even more expensive than gas!.. so we buy the smuggled stuff from thailand or vietnam...
well, i'm trying to dig my way trough pp shopping, and it is late, hurly just came into internet shop to tell me my cocktail is ready,, if i let it warm up he'll disintherrit me or worse, probably the latter.
thanks again, for letting us know that this thread is read,11
feedback and questions are much appreciated.
tanja

[dai bread]

Originally posted by tan:
thanks Dai,
it is so good to get feed back! your country's life and ours are so far apart, that sometimes it is not easy to see what might be interesting to you guys out there. for you we are out thete, for us it is the other way around.
tanja

I know the feeling. I've seen a lot of comments, and met some people, who regard us as the end of the earth. We don't feel that way at all, of course.