But it seems that the remaining project now, is to cram my belongings into a case and meet my travel companions ~ Famous Last Words By Me A Couple of Hours Ago Proof reading the final version of my last blog post less than two hours ago, this happened. Finding the words for a blog … More Not Out Of The Woods Yet
Mornings in Kampong Cham town and across Cambodia come alive the moment the first ray of sunlight blazes it’s long sharp streak through the fading night skies. The first market sellers start to appear on their motos piled high with what would, in my world, be truckloads of produce. When I appear a few hours … More Trying To Be A Noisy Neighbour
A good friend of mine here in Cambodia regularly says “If I had a gun, I would kill many people”. It’s ironic and funny because he’s a comedian who would never hurt a flea. The more serious underlying message is his reference to the terrible things he knows go on in our general vicinity. A … More Chickens For A Toilet
That’s my thong buried deep in Mekong Delta mud. My foot was down there too, a moment before I took this photograph, at which time I was doubled over laughing. It was a strange combination of hilarity and panic. The idea of parasites burrowing through my skin into my capillaries and worming their way to … More Parasite Paranoia
Walking through Boeung Keng Kang Market in Phnom Penh this evening, the broken concrete floors were wet with vegetable juice mixed with animal blood from hanging meat, and sticky water splashed out of bowls housing flapping fish. Stalls were closing up and some had hosed down, adding to the puddles filling the cracks and potholes. … More The Eyes Have It
My right eyeball became acutely aware that it was aligned with, and traveling at a speed of knots towards, a steel rod hanging perilously from the back of a truck on Cambodia’s National Highway 7. As my face came within arm’s length of the pole pointing menacingly at it, our taxi veered left into a … More Perceptions of Peril
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper ~ WB Yeats The day I met Paula and her family 16 months ago, they were resigned to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Tears were common at that time and I remember not believing our initial reassurances to her, that … More Magnifying the Magic
There is nothing serendipitous about the pair of old fools who turned up here yesterday on their big macho motorbikes, drank beer, became progressively louder, harrassed the waitress who is probably a third their age, and asked for directions to the nearest chicken farm. An old American guy who almost immediately stripped his shirt off, … More So Much Serendipity
A regular Cambodian sensation is that of being a ball of molten lava on legs. Thankfully this is the time of year when on most days, at somewhere between 4pm and 6pm, the rolling cumulo-nimbus clouds burst open and a cataclysm of water plummets from the sky, cooling everything down almost immediately. Construction workers have … More Project Update
This morning’s blazing sun is glistening on the muddy waters of the Mekong, evoking impressions of being in a tropical paradise. It’s tropical but it could never be accurately described as a paradise. I remind myself daily that the rewards of being here for me, really exist at least in part because I have a … More Economies of Scale
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