Expresso Kamuchea

[piqaboo]

As far as i can tell, you have to peel, rub, or scratch off the remnants. Prewarming it using a hot face cloth might help.
Good luck.

[tan]

Thanks Pic,
it worked! just made it to an expat dinner party without looking like a badly snuffed candle: the instructions read; use cold(?) water. buddha only knows which language it was translated from into which... (i would have never lived down that one...)
naw, david, i am a straight woman, who hates - most female attitudes, exspecially in my enviroment. naw ain't no lesbian. just off the shelf-any-. but when you get to an age when you are off abovemenioned ,facial hair will devellop.toes and nipples too- got tired off straight razors....
so 'mui tiep'(once more)my portrait, will make it dissapear when i run outta space or get a better one: orietation is no issue here, though i do have to act macho at times....living in a 'male suited' see 'so called' dangerous enviroment'....bull. a women is safer here than a male; i qualify as auntie. - and those old bats are hard to shoot in any culture...except maybe western,if i do need a body guard, the reason is a a barang getting high, failing in business,,, and target, the' weaker sex' oh boy, youase gonna be so sorry toomorrow...


<img src="http://img.villageohotos.com/p/2005-7/105-925/tan.jpg" alt=" - " />

[DavidS]

You know, Tan, the matter of gender never came up before, and I feel kind of silly having made a wrong assumption (I mean even your name gives no indication in languages I know).
I quite agree that the "weaker sex" attitude is unjustified, and that there is no reason to suppose that a woman can handle things any less effectively than a man in a "hairy" environment like Cambodia, or anywhere else.
You have my fullest respect for what you do and the way you tell us about it.

[tan]

Aww, Don't worry! my name is actually tanja, but it was already 'taken' on the board....in the expatgroup, there are vey few women, and when we meet, our talks are rarely the kind of 'girl talk' of clothes and cosmetics and such!( though my wax adventure got a good laugh-from male and female alike
at dinner!).so what do we talk about: how to best de-worm kids and pets, which bike is best to handle with the shopping on the back, which machos to just avoid and which to hit. how to live and respect local customs, train staff-as we are all in the guesthouse business,-
security issues, how to hanlde certain kinds of guests, mace versus hairspray- no!this is not about hair-, the going rates of bribes,where to have guesthouse t-shirts printed,
(Mine came out -almost- fine- but would be highly offensive to certain readers, so will mail the texts privately to those who ask. they sell extremely well bye the way, must have hit a nerve there).
we trade already read books,
dvd's and emergency telephone numnbers.
Basically, there are several groups of westerners living here: ngo's ( as far as we are concerdned, bottom of the barrel), they come, write reports, ride around in big cars,earn a fortune mess up some issue or other and leave, to another place leaving our country to deal with the remains of their- most likely failed project. the missionaries, whow,they really do dammage! (insensitive to the local culture, they are hellbend to destroy it by any means they can devise- i do not serve them in my guesthouse. can't do that to my staff)
Un- staff- see ngo's
ambassy staff: to be gotten along with and more often than not we have a very good working relationship, based on mutual need.
sexpats, no explanation needed.
expats: we ara raunchy bunch, but our intention is to stay here and build a life for ourselves. for better or worse, we had it with the west.the joke here goes, we live here eighter out of sadness, madness or badness..
We are: bar and guesthouse owners, designers, fotographers, teachers (now that's a really wild bunch!),scientists,writers, deminers, doctors (as in Gloria, though she is unique),butchers, bakers and chefs, divers, pilots,etc.
we are very close as a group, exept for the french, they are only close to the french..
We come from australia, new zealand, germany, the netherlands,the us,russia, slovenia, switzerland, austria, england ,ireland,denmark, norway, and i surely forgot a few other countries..
you can immagine the babylonian accent mess when we converse! plus the expatois, words that we invented and integrated in our local slang.
loplop, means crazy in khmer, so we say somebody is loppers.we order a condom with our beercan, meaning a styrofoam holder to keep it cold, when we take the p..s we 'food' each other, meaning, summing up all kinds of food we can't get here. (that really gets to people)...etc. let me look for some kind of pic of a group of us, may take me a while though.
As for discimination,i have been discriminated against for just about anything, so my tactic is i discriminate too:against those who discriminate... works well.
this pic was taken after a week of heavy biking in jungles and on bad roads, i am not allways THAT dirty...
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/tan.jpg" alt=" - " />

..some ofthe snooky' 'pats at beercall in front of my guesthouse: <img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/expats.jpg" alt=" - " />

<small>[ 08-14-2005, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: tan ]</small>

[tan]

Hi, Big john, a list of places and characters is already on an earlier post.
slowely i'm backing them up with pics: not easy to describe a country, and all these characters: here is hurley and 'pat friends. hurley is the big guy. notice how everybody sits with their back to the wall and their face to the street, a habbit from the old days. (hurley's bar is in pp on sisowath quay.) photo 1
photo2

at the corner bar,who big mark is, is clear.. it is the hour of backgammon and the comunal solving of the bkkpost puzzle, don -in the back is doing the writing down. (as the bkk post does not arrive until late afternoon, it is great fun to read our horoscopes to each other: hey, don, can you read to me what happened to me today', it's great fun,try it sometime).
the girl in the background is thida mark's cashiere


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


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

[Shapley]

tan,

I've started reading Moitessier's last book Tamata and the Alliance, which describes in great detail his growing up in French Indochina. His family had a vacation home at a village on the Gulf of Siam, near the Cambodian border (he never gives the name of the village, just calls it "the village". He mentions travels to Phnom Penh, but he grew up primarily in Saigon.

An interesting book, so far. I'm only a couple of chapters into it. His descriptions of street life are quite interesting.

V/R
Shapley

[tan]

hi shap,
that would have been Kep, aresort like villaplace near kampot town and bokor. that is, if his family had money, otherwise it would have been ha tien, on the vietnam side...
but if he talks about pp. it must have been kep. as soon as i can i will find you some pics,well i have them but have to get them on for you to watch; a reason more to rent that.... film city of ghosts, the last part was filmed in what is left of kep,i remember, sitting at the place of the last- sad- scene, often, watching the sun setting, with a white wine and - if in season a plate of the strangest but most delighttable oysters. i ever have eaten.. and i am a fan of oysters....
the salt treatment seems to be working, we try it all now, and lately nobody fell through their portches,god where can i find his books... oh where... :confused:

[Shapley]

tan,

I would send you copy if I thought they'd get there. I'm sure Barnes & Noble delivers worldwide. I've sent books & CD's to my brother in Iraq through them (although it was an APO address). Does UPS or Fedex serve Cambo?

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

Here's a link to a source:

http://www.sheridanhouse.com/catalog/moitessier/tamataand.html

I notice on the shipping that Cambodia pops up in the available countries, although that doesn't mean it'll actually get there.

I've bought books from them before (quite a bit cheaper than most other places). This particular one isn't available in paperback, though, so it's a bit pricey.

I did see a copy of it in French at another source. Not sure if that's any use to you. I believe you said you're multi-lingual, but I don't know what languages you're fluent in.

V/R
Shapley

[tan]

Thanks, shap,
if i know the full title, and isbn no i do have a way to get it from the netherlands via a friend who ownes a bookstore.Am still digging through my files for kep pics.... a place that is bittersweet for me personally. had a gueshouse there for a year, but. impossible to run, too far appart, and the enviroment still pretty kr.... (that is where i also found the cobra in my toilet and had a tiger in the garden at night once- he got all our chickens, mercyfully none of our guests.....
finally i sold guesthouse, but that' s yet one more story to tell later. all said, that place and what went before almost drove me over the edge...
(my partner- western committed a murder- baaad scene...) and i was in no shape to handle that enviroment...
ok. let me find or at least try to find the cd rom with the pics.
are you familiar with the work of magueritte duras?the lover from north china?. well it turned out, her family's land was in prea nop,about 20 km from snooky, not in long xien,that is where they lived later.. the frenchl litterataes are still in an inellectual huff over that one, quite amusing...
so onto the search forcd.spics of kep, or kaep as they promouce ot there, the cape of kaep...

[Shapley]

tan,

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with Margueritte Duras. I Googled the name, and read a blurb about her. The book sounds interesting. I may have to look it up.

I mostly read books about sailing and the sea, which is how I found Moitessier. He is the patron saint of solo sailors (and a favorite of armchair sailors like myself). His writing style is fun, and his travels are legendary. If your friend can't find a copy, let me know. I recommed the hardcover, as the paperbacks usually cheat a little on the photo reproduction, so the quality is quite poor.

V/R
Shapley

[tan]

thanks, shap,
nothing wrong with beeing an armchair sailor: i had boats all my life, never a sail though: these days i have a trawler (called the gypsy moth) to float tourists around the islands...
boy! i am on first name base with all the fish on the reefs!!! (it sure was morE fun racing through the channels of amsterdam at midnight playing the flipper theme on th stereo AND GET FINED...)
anyway, the movie of the'lover is ok, madame duras is very french, the film internationally digestable, actually the story is quite touching and tragic...and true.
kep, it was the place: before snooky for thousands of years the ONLY PORT of trade and the only 'harbour' where djunks from china, and boats- whatever they were from india came with the trade winds: goods, hinduism, and later buddhism... plenty of rocks in the bay, aND PLENTY OF STUFF GETS FOUND IN NETS BY FISHERS... GOOD BUYS...,legal aS LONGAS I KEEP THEM IN THE COUNTRY....
WELL.
LET ME MUCK AROUND WITH THE PICS...

[OperaTenor]

Hi Tanja,

I've been following your thread, took a little catching up. Thank you so much for telling us about your life and how life is in Cambo.

Please continue whenever you can!

[juan j]

Hello Tanja,

Your tales are fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

Please keep telling about your "adventures"


Juan

[tan]

hi Shap,
her a pic of the kind of house where montessier would have stayed,' in the village' well what is left of it: heavy fighting during the wars have left kep a ghosttown with forgotten georgeous beaches. Kep beach itsself is not much, but if you have guts and considerable biking skills ther are beaches for gotten by wars and centuries. caves also: forgotten prae angkorian shrines deep in the karstlike ' designer' hills. found one once, took a pic,stepped back- and fell into a hole.only about 14 feet deep perhaps,but scary! dark and painful....moral: do never, ever go caving by yourself!
Restauration goes on in some places, but after my sojourn there, i can tell you it gets very, very dark there at night, when the sun sinks, you don't admire, you growl: will the generator start?-probably not-, and begin to fill oil lamps, and put them in strategic locations...after having electric light for all my life, i finally understood the fear of dark, especially when that tiger growled in our garden. we are sure it was one, we saw him shortly before dusk.( and ..., we were to busy running away to take a pic!)
the pic does not want to come on, well, 'i wvill gife up ja!'

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

[tan]

wellcome Juan, and thank you and everybody else for posting!
tomuorrow the big day,the second guesthouse on the same street as no1 will be ours and we move...will leave my beloved 'khmer traditional' my home well become a week end house...
am looking for ward to make that great but dismal looking guesthouse into something lovable, pretty and inviting!( will photograph the messy move for you, should give you a laugh!!!).. so if you do not hear much of me it is due to having ' central statio'moving...(there is that little matter of getting the tuktuk on the roof.. for exapmple..)
will try for two more pics of kep: first the sunset that sends us running for light sources
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/keisun.jpg" alt=" - " />

one of the beaches forgotten in the distance you see the cape of kep....to get there you have to bike through ndless saltfields,-wear anything and everything available to protctskin and eyes from the glare, over rickety bridges, push your bike,do not attemt to drive over, and pay for the 'privilege' of crossing!!!
<img src="http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-7/1050924/beach.jpg" alt=" - " />

[OperaTenor]

Hi Tanja,

Are you switching guesthouses, or will you now be running two? If you're switching, will you take the Vespa with you to mount on the roof of the new guesthouse?

[tan]

Will be having two guesthouses, the new one gets the tuk tuk ont he roof!we were busting out of our seams, had to send loads and loads of people away, so
' mui thiep '(one more), 16 rooms more,pretty scary, even for me...

[OperaTenor]

So you'll be moving the tuk tuk? That's funny!

There is a motorcycle bar in San Francisco called Zeitgeist(I'm sure you know what that means), and they have a complete BMW R90/6 motorcycle sitting on top of their restroom.

[Shapley]

tan,

There is a picture of Moitessiers house in the village in the book. Similar in style to the one shown in your photo, elevated on concrete supports, they parked the car underneath it.

In the book he describes the drive from Saigon the village. His father made business calls at the towns along the way, and he describes them.

He mentions an interesting thing about Phnom Penh. The river there, I believe it is called the Tonle Sap, flows one direction for six months, filling the great lake (which he describes as being 20 miles wide and 90 miles long in low water, which swells to 3 times its surface area when full). The other six months the flow reverses, and the great lake acts as a reservoir to water the area during the dry season. There is (or was) a water festival held there at the changing of the flow, which marks the beginning of the dry harvest season, I believe.

I'm writing this from what I recall from reading late last night. If I have a few facts wrong, please correct me.

V/R
Shapley