Pig Party

* Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

On Tuesday, we headed back to work after our weekend away.  Ame has mainly worked on the inner window this week.  I did some railing of the inner wall roof bit with Pek.  He seems to just fly up onto the upper wall without even trying.  If I did that, the house would probably fall down.

In the evening, Ame stayed in with the girls and watched a film and I went out with the lads and went to the Aussie BBQ!  All very stereotypical!

On Wednesday, we got the door hung and got a few more wall panels on.  The house is really starting to look wicked.  Soon there will only be the outer walls left to do which is where we started on Project 7.

On Wednesday night we had our group meeting and this time a fun night in with food and music.  I was brow beaten into doing the music for the evening as I had slagged off the love songs that was being played at the last evening in.  We then played cards all evening.  It was really good and one of the best nights we've had here.  There are a lot of previous volunteers here at the moment which is really cool.  The group is very well formed at the moment.  I even got to play on a guitar that evening which was fun.

On Thursday, the focus of the week suddenly turned to pigs.  Friday would be Aaron's last day and he wanted to do something to mark the occasion in the village.  So he decided that he would buy a pig, have the villagers cook it and we all have a bit of a party.  How quickly this idea snowballed!

So in the morning, to add to the confusion of all the party organising, Suko had arranged for us to stop in the village to buy food and water to help some of the locals out.  So we went dashing pass the big market to the small market.  Change is as good as a holiday and all that.

It was good to put a little bit of money directly in people's pockets.  The place where we bought the water is actually Project 2's house.  She's set up a little shop.

Next it was on to the house.  When we arrived, it was pig buying time.  We all went to have a good nose at the pigs.  Soon there was a massive procession of kids going to the pigs also.

After a little haggling, pointing and a few giggles, Aaron had picked his pig.

It was hilarious watching Aaron handing over $110 for a 60kg pig to a slightly crazy woman breast feeding a kid of which she then jokingly tried to sell!  We returned to work.  I did some brick laying for the steps.  I mixed cement and everything.  I'm a bricky now.

Suddenly you could hear pig screams coming from the forest.  I'm thinking, oh they are probably killing it, but no, they were transporting it over to the house to kill it.  So a big fat pig was carried over, tied to a stick.  Ame went for a walk to the over houses and played with the woman and children whilst the deed was done.  Me, Aaron and Bill watched the killing.  It was a interesting and sobering experience.  I'm glad I watched it. 

So then it was dead and the preparation began.  They scrubbed it's skin to take all hair and rough skin off.

Then they totally gutted it.  By lunch it had turned into what looked like a pig rug!  It was so efficient.  We had pig heart, liver and intestines with lunch.  You can't get fresher than that.

They then put it on a raised grill and began to roast it over hot charcoal.  Presumably, they cooked it all night.

So we packed up, went home.  That evening we went to a great restaurant run by an orphanage.  We totally overwhelmed the restaurant but they did a good job.

Friday came, and it was time for the party.  Suko had told us that the villagers had hired a sound system and that about 60 people were coming including the local head of police and the village elders.  Suun and Pek even brought some guests.  Suun had brought his whole family, wife, brother, daughter (7) and son (3 months).

Talk about build up!  On the way into the village we stopped at the local "offie" and picked up 15 cases of beer and 4 cases of soft drinks.  Suko came out in his flashy sports car containing a massive cooler full of ice.

We arrived at the project site and got on with the mornings work.   We got quite a bit done.  We finished the inner wall and nearly got those god damn windows done!  Then the boys from Project 9 (Grant, Wally, Christiane and Steve) came over about 12:00 looking for a party!  I thought the scene of 6 boys drinking beer whilst Ame was packing away the tools was particularly sexist (but a little funny!).

By 12:30 the massive sound system had arrived.  Aaron plugged in his playlist starting with Aerosmith "Sweet Emotion".  It was an incredible start and very bizarre.  The kids love a good dance!

We were all invited to hang around the pig.  The locals started ripping bit of the pig.  So we joined in also.  It was all very barbaric but the meat was fantastic!

Next all the guests sat down for dinner.  The others arrived just in time for 13:00 lunch.  The elders were there and the police chief as promised and we all had a lot of fun laughing with each other, shouting "cha moi" (cheers) at each other.  It was all so good natured and happy.

After lunch, we all moved just over the fence to the volleyball court for dancing and a few games.  The locals put on their own music after having endured our music for 2 hours!

Aaron also bought some clothes and sunglasses for the kids.  This little one who we call "Wassyourname", as that is pretty much all he says to us, looked particularly cute in his.  He's a great little confident fellow.

By this time we were all rocking and rolling and I started playing a few "write your name in the dirt" games with the kids.  Before you knew it, I was surrounded by the little buggers!

Just before we went we took a group photo in front of the house.

Maybel even entertained the kids with her guitar.

So like that, we left on Pek's tuk tuk.  Suun and Pek were absolute legends and didn't drink a drop so we felt super safe.  When we got back  Ame was a little worse for wear mainly because of the heat, noise and the sun, so she decided to stay in in the evening.  I went out and had a good time at the opening party of the COF (Cambodian Orphan Fund) cafe.  Also had played some pool and carried on the party til I couldn't go any longer and went to bed at 23:00!  It was an absolute once in a lifetime day and we enjoyed every minute of it.

Horrific past, bright present

* Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday

On Friday, Ame got up and went to work and I sadly had a very dodgy tummy and had to skip it so I'd be good for the afternoon.  They were leaving early that day so it was no biggie really.  Ame spent the morning putting up the other frame for Project 9 with some of the new-this-week lads and playing badminton with the kids. She also took a lot of pictures of the kids. Here's one of them looking very thoughtful.

After a blocker pill (if you don't know, don't ask!) I was all set for our 14:00 taxi to PP.  We decided on a taxi because the bus was at 13:30 (too early) or 15:30 (too late) and with four of us, it was only $5 more per person than the bus.  And a little bit of luxury with AC!

It was a good ride down, some good chats and before you knew it we were rolling into PP just as the sun set around 18:30.  It was all a bit manic as we piled out of the taxi and up the stairs of our guest house.  Our guest house was a bit manic too.  But fortunately, it was clean and nice, $10 for our room per night with air con and a TV.  Not bad really. 

A quick change, and we were down having a little drinkie in Capitol Guesthouse bar with Claire.  she is one week into her new job here as a pre-school teacher, and was living just down the road form our guest house now.  Then we went off down the river front and had a good first night exploring the bars, restaurants and even went to a rock bar with a live band playing ACDC and Dire Straits. Me, Ame and Sarah sloped off at 01:30 so that we were ready and rested for our day of tourist depression at the tragic sights of Phnom Pehn the next day.

Saturday, began with a quick breakfast, a quick negotiation with a tuk-tuk driver about fees for the day and we were off in our leopard skin, pink curtained tuk-tuk (quite unexpected!) to our first stop of the day:  the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.  I had read a few things about the Khmer Rouge and understood a little of what went on.  I knew the detail was going to be horrific but some of it even exceeded that.

For those who don't know, the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh in 1975 via military force.  Their main manifesto (if you could call it that) was to return the country to Year Zero.  This meant remove all Western influences, abolish class and make the whole population go and work on the rice fields.  They began the evacuation of PP on the day after they took control.  Anyone who disobeyed was killed immediately.  Families were split up and sent to the other sides of country.  Any political enemies, intellectuals, lawyers, monks and many more were sent to S-21 (we'll get onto that horribleness later) for torture and "re-education" (along with their families) and then a few days later they were sent 30 mins outside to Choeung Ek for execution.  The executions were most brutal as the regime did not "waste bullets" on these people so they were bludgeoned to death with axes and hammers amongst other things.  Some were made to dig their own graves before they we beaten to death. 

The site itself now has a massive beautiful Buddhist stupa commemorating the thousands that we murdered here.  In the 1980's, some of the mass graves were exhumed and now 8000 skulls of the victims are in the stupa on different levels along with other bones and clothing that was found in the ground.  Many mass graves remain untouched, one with more than 450 bodies in.

It is a very solemn place and contains a lot of information.  Here is a plaque at the main site.  If you have time, read it.  It conveys what the people of the country have to say on the matter.

The most shocking things we learnt was that whole families were killed including babies.  Some were killed by being held by the feet and beaten against trees.  This was so they could not grow up and seek revenge in the future.  I have no idea how people are capable of this.  Guards at the Choeung Ek would have murdered many many people, went home from "work", slept and then gone back to commit the same the next day.  It is sick to the extreme and it is scary to think this sort of thing happened 35 years ago. 

The head of the S-21known as "Duch" is now in custody and has confessed many more horrors to the world about what went on at Killing Fields.  Other members of the Khmer Rouge are also finally on trial after decades of the country trying to set up the trials.  The Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979 after Vietnam invaded.  It is estimated they killed a quarter of the population in those 4 years.  But just to be clear, the party's influence did not end then.  There was many thousands more killed right up to the end of 1990's.  Some people in our village had relatives murdered by viking-like rampages from the Khmer Rouge in the late 90's.  The Khmer Rouge has now officially fallen apart brought on by Pol Pot's death (or murder) in 1998.  So realistically speaking, Cambodia has only had just over 10 years to really start rebuilding.

So next it was onto S-21.  This area was a normal secondary school before 1975 and looks similar to schools in UK.  Without knowing, you'd have never of guessed what things happened here.  The Khmer Rouge turned it into a detention and torture facility for their time in power.  People would be tortured to near death within the class rooms and temporary cells in the complex of buildings.

Victims would be hung to near death, electrocuted and beaten within an inch of their life until they "confessed" to what ever the hell they we meant to be confessing about.  Like utter sick b*stards, the regime kept meticulous records of each prisoner and took many photos before and after torture.  And this was happening all over the country but this was the worse and scaled up area.

Believe me, there are some VERY VERY explicit photos of torture here.  I would strongly recommend not taking kids under 16 to this place.  But again, it was worth going to because as it says in the information at the buildings, the more people who know about the horrors that happened in Pol Pot's regime, could prevent this happening somewhere else in world in the future.  It will be interesting asking our parents about all this when we get back to understand what the UK (and the world) knew at the time.  It seems so recent and affected every Cambodian family.  Only in the past 10 years has the country started to recover from that tragic period.

So, safe to say, we had had our fill of heaviness for the day when our driver met us again at 14:00.  For a change of tempo we headed for lunch at a very positive place: Friends Cafe. This is by an organisation called Friends that trains street kids and orphans how to run a cafes, restaurants and other businesses. The food was fantastic and all the profits go to the charity.  

After this, I headed back for a sleep whilst Ame and Sarah went off to Russian Market; she bought a nice little pure silver anklet for $4. 

We met the others at the Foreign Correspondence Club (FCC) for happy hour.  This is a lovely French Colonial building on the river front and is a very popular ex-pat haunt along with tourists.  It's nice a chilled out, a little pricey but worth it for the atmosphere.  Then we had a few more jars around the river and a few chuckles.  Off to bed at 00:00.

Sunday, we kept it super easy and unemotional.  We got up fairly early and went to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, after a really good breakfast on the riverside.  It was very serene in there and the architecture was absolutely brilliant.  We had a bloody good walk about and it was very enjoyable.  The King of Cambodia lives in this complex but you can't go anywhere near his dwellings.  The public stuff is good enough though.  This is the throne hall that is still used for special occasions.

Part of the Palace ground (about 500m squared) contains the Silver Pagoda.  This is tiled with Silver tiles, a lot of which were plundered by the Khmer Rouge and so part of it is covered and some have crude restoration applied (looked like cellotape on the edges).  Inside, it also contains an Emerald Buddha (again not blooming Emerald just like in Bangkok) and also a live size gold Buddha containing 2000 diamonds, some 25 carat.  It was nice enough.

The surrounding area outside the pagoda had lots of gardens and trimmed bushes:  some in interesting animal shapes.

After leaving the Palace we went to the Friends clothes shop and had a look at all the clothing the street kids had produced. It was all very trendy and well made. Sarah bought a t-shirt which was good. Next it was off to Tamarind, a Morrocan Khmer fusion restaurant where we had some great tapas.

We next moved on back to the river side and said goodbye to Sarah and Bill who were getting the bus that afternoon. Me and Ame hung around all afternoon around there. Having a little explore and drinking coffee whilst playing cards in a few cafes.

We got into FCC for happy hour again, but this time managed to get a really good balcony table which then spent the next 30 hanging off taking pictures of the streets below. It was great for people spotting. We saw Monks...

... an elephant (poor little thing - I hope he's treated nicely)...

... and even some familiar friends!

Me, Ame, Aaron and Clare went off for a few more happy hour drinks else where including a posh 5 star hotel and had dinner with Robin, our volunteering co-ordinator in PP.

On Monday, we caught our bus back to Siem Reap at 09:00. It was a bit of a boring 5 hour ride other than our brief stop at at a road side for a loo stop where one second we were being offered corn, the next deep fried spiders! And there were live ones too. I got back in the bus. I'm not dealing with 6 inch spiders.

It was great to get back to good old sleepy, calm Siem Reap. Me and Ame took some time to sort out of visa extension for Cambodia and also our Vietnam visa. So all round it had been a very eventful weekend. We learnt a lot and also had a lot of fun! But most of all we are so glad that we are not just traveling around, but also putting a bit back into the community, which has suffered so much more than we can imagine in the past 35 years.

Floored

* Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

We're into our 3rd week on the project this week.   The house is coming along really nicely now and we've made some good progress this week.

We love our journey into work each day too.  Basically, we are picked up by our tuk tuks and drive about 18km to a market, the last stop on the main road before turning off to the village where we work.  At the market, one of our project 8 group goes in and buys food for lunch that the ladies of the house will cook for us when we get there.  It's a very local market and good fun.  

On Tuesday, we put yet more floor boards in.  This involves levering in ends and making the gap between them as small as possible because when the wood drys out, gaps will appear.  So we don't want to lose any small children down those in the future!  The inner wall frame and door frame have been built (as modeled by my lovely assistant Miss Coad).

Tuesday night, me and Ame ate at the guesthouse and disappeared to our room from about 18:00 to watch a film.  It was really nice after a busy but lovely weekend with the Canadians.  I don't mind admitting I was asleep by 21:30 and felt blooming good for it the next day at 06:00.

By Wednesday, we had finished all the floor boards and part of the railing was done.  At lunch we came down from the house for lunch and found that the kids had built a house out of all of our cut offs!  They are very resourceful and seem to have a lot of fun together.

On the way home we took a couple of pictures of all the waving children we pass daily.  Your hand nearly falls off after all that waving, but again they seem to enjoy it.  Sometimes they come charging from far and wide and you're not even sure where you should be waving.  They normally shout "Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye!" at you whilst you toodle past.

In the evening we kept it easy again and went off to this Japanese restaurant just at the top of our road with a few others.  It was charmingly shambolic but in the end the food was really nice.

This morning I took some biscuits for the kids.  Randomly in the local Lucky Mart, I found Danish butter cookies that were in a box with Big Ben and English soldiers marching on the front of it.  I thought I could try and explain this was England to them.  They were interested for less than 1 second as they devoured the box between them!  Good for them.

Today we had a few boo boos as the end of the banisters had not been measured properly and were uneven.  But we sorted that.  Then we have made a little mistake with the hinges on the interior door.  Oh well.  Nothing too serious and we're all learning.  We have finished two of the railings and put on the banister.  The interior wall has been started also.

At the end of the day, I now take the job of sweeping out the house so we don't return to a mess the next day.  I'm like a little Mary Poppins!

Tonight is Ray's last night.  It's been a joy working with him.  He's a retired teacher from Ireland, he always has a joke or a comment to make and we've very much enjoyed his company.  We've going to the Mexican again for some drinks and food.  Tomorrow, we'll go to work and then head off for the weekend (and Monday - we've taken a day off!) to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

Oot and aboot with the Canadians

* Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday

The Friday night dinner at the guest house was a good opportunity for Bruce and Sadie to meet people and for us to say our goodbyes to Gill and Andy (building volunteers who left on Saturday).  However we didn't stay too long after eating, as we'd arranged to meet up with Charlotte on Pub street after she had also finished her leaving dinner.  Charlotte is Matt Gale's younger sister who is also volunteering in Siem Reap at the moment.  So we headed off into town, nice and tipsy, about 9pm and went straight to Funky Monkey to play some pool.  Charlotte met us in here later and we had a good catch up, compared volunteering notes and both got some advice about Vietnam from Sadie as that's where she is also heading next.  In fact it looks like we might get to meet up with her, Matt and their mum there as our timings cooincide, which would be very fun.

After a fun and quite drunken night we jumped ship and headed home about midnight as we wanted to be spritely enough to enjoy our trip the next day. 

Saturday morning we met for breakfast about 9am and spoke to Thom (Moy's brother) about doing a trip out to the flooded forest.  Luckily he was free and happy to take us out in his Tuk Tuk.  So by about 10am we were on the road and heading that way.  It took a suprisingly long time to get there, especially as it involved nearly an hour on a very rickity dirt road.  But eventually we arrived at the start of the river and got ourselves a boat to take us the rest of the way to Kompong Phluk village.

After chugging along for a little while we started to enter the village.  All the houses in the village are raised incredibly high in preparation for the water to raise six meters in the rainy season.  You could tell that village life was totally centered around the river as everyone was either fishing in, floating on or working nearby it.

In the village Thom chatted to a local guy and negotiated two little boat/canoes to take us further along the village and into the flooded forest at the entrance to the Tonle Sap Lake.  This was quite a wobbly experience and I loved being in the same boat as everyone else was using.  It also meant we were able to enter into the flooded forest and weave amoungst the trees with the sunlight streaming through, past all of the fishing nets

Back out of the forest we headed back to the village and jumped ashore to get some lunch.  At this time of year there is dry land and a village street across which huge quantities of shrimp were being dried. 

We had a yummy lunch of very fresh fish, a short explore of the village and then hopped back on our boat.  On the bigger boat we went right along the river out onto the lake before turning round and heading back to where we'd left the Tuk Tuk to speed home.

Back at the guest house we treated ourselves to a little lie down before meeting everyone downstairs to head out for dinner and drinks.  This weekend was Chinese New Year and so we went first to a Chinese run cocktail bar and indulged in some reduced price drinks while getting our fortunes told.  The fortune of the group was very divided; some of us can look forward to a very happy year however Sadie, Claire and Sarah's don't look as good.  Saide confirmed this by instantly knocking over her drink and breaking the glass, although perhaps her foruntes are changing as they gave her another drink for free.  Tonight we headed to X Bar for after dinner drinks and pool and even some bar football.  We bumped into Charlotte again, quite by chance, which was fun.  At midnight though we headed home before turning into pumpkins.

The plan for Sunday was more relaxed as we wanted to take Sadie and Bruce into town in the day time.  We visited the post office, bought guidebooks, had shakes at the Red Piano and explored the market - all before lunch.  For lunch we ventured over the river for the first time and sought out the butterfly restaurant where a proportion of the profits are donated to charity.  The restaurant is open-air and covered with a huge net.  Then in the net are a huge amount of butterflies that fly around you whilst you eat.  We had a leisurely lunch here and Rob and I tried some interesting dishes that we hadn't seen before so it was definitely worth the walk.  Nevertheless we'd had enough walking so got a tuk tuk back and once again went off for some late afternoon quiet time.

As it was Valentines day we decided to treat ourselves to cocktails at Cafe De La Paix this evening and we even got to sit on the hanging table in their restaurant to have them.  It was very exciting and certainly shows how the other half live.  Needless to say after being billled for the drinks we didn't stay for dinner but went to a previously tried and tested place on the way intop town which do good pizzas.  As is happened Claire and Aaron were already there drink 50 cent beers (as they had been all afternoon) and so we joined them for some food and raucous conversation.  However we didn't stay late as everyone had work the next morning and I wanted to get ice cream on the way home.

On Monday we put the Canadian's to work.  They were interested to come out to the village to see the project as so we got them an extra tuk tuk and they came and helped with floor boards and railings and even stayed to sample village cookery.

They headed back a  bit before us to do some jobs but we were'nt far behind and then at 3pm Mr Wuthy came to give us a lift to the temples as Sadie and Bruce hadn't made it to Angkor Wat the other day.  It was great to see it again, especially in the afternoon light. Then as the sun started to go down we went to a new previously unexplored temple to watch the sun set.  The most exciting theing about this temple, however, turned out to be the elephants based here that you can ride up to the top on.  The elephants that are used are treated extremely well so there's no worries about that kind of issue.  We deliberated too long and then once we'd decided we'd do it we'd missed our chance and they were plodding up the hill with another lucky person aboard.  Nevertheless we had wonderful time watching them and staring in awe.  We even touched them!  They were quite hairy and rough.  They are so much smaller than African elephants.  So cute!

As we'd missed the elephants we had to climb the hill ourselves which turned out to be a surpisingly longish climb.  But the view from the top was worth it, you could even see Angkor Wat from here.

And the sun set was beautiful...

In the hazy light of dusk we followed the elephants back down the hill and hunted amoungst the hundreds of tuk tuks for Mr Wuthy.  He delivered us home for our final dinner together for which we went to the Silk Lounge next door as we were all a little too tired to fight our way into town.  We had another gorgeous chatty evening catching up and sharing travel advice for the next stages of our journeys.  We left the goodbyes until the morning though as Sadie and Bruce bravely got up at 6am to have breakfast with us we parted ways for another year or so.