I had been in Cambodia about a week when one of the MSF expats announced excitedly that on a bicycle ride that day, she’d cycled through an Islamic village with a mosque and many people dressed in Islamic attire. Islamic people in Cambodia seemed a curious thing to our uninformed minds. Since then I’ve learned … More A Cross Cultural Islamic Experience
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream ~ Anatole France These words could have been written specifically for Paula. After developing severe, chronic abdominal pain during pregnancy in 2011, her interim years have been a living hell. We met on one of her most wretched days, approximately 16 months ago. She had … More Cambodia In America
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
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