Quite Random

It ain’t half hot, Mum

It is hot here. Hot, hot, hot. The sun is strong and burns you quickly, but you still get burnt even when it’s cloudy and you can’t even tell where the sun is. The rain comes nearly every day in the evening, preceded by strong winds that rattle the palms and kick up the dust in the road. Then the dust gets pinned down and turns into mud that keeps getting in your sandals as the moto drivers huddle under trees and huge puddles appear in potholes in the wink of an eye. Then the rain stops, the air is crisp and clear, and everyone starts fishing. You see people by the sides of the road with simple fishing rods. I haven’t seen them catch anything yet.

The heat is doing me in. I have rashes, bumps and bites all over me, and so far a combination of antihystamine, talc, and harsh words is having no effect. It could be the heat, the mozzies, whatever the laundry washes my clothes in, but the result is that I would very much like to shed my skin like a snake and start afresh.

We took a trip on Saturday to Kompong Phluk, a fishing community ninety minutes by boat from Chong Kneas, on the edge of Tonle Sap. This was the trip we were meant to do before the whole incident with Bella, the floating puppies and Naked Saturday. The houses are all built in stilts – big, big stilts. The stilts are a mish-mash of wood that crosses and juts out at all angles, making it all look like the biggest game of Jack Straws ever, where if you pull out just one piece of wood, it all comes crashing down. It looked like a film set, part Vietnam war movie and part spaghetti Western, with a wide, open, dusty main street that looked perfect for a gunfight. The place was eerily quiet – I assume everyone was out fishing on the lake.

We hardly got to see the place – within minutes of getting off the boat, we were monopolised by two ladies who were very anxious that we get on their small wooden dugout boats to see the nearby flooded forest, a gang of children who wanted to sell us sweets and Coke, and a monk, the English teacher in the village school, who wanted to practice his English on us. This is the thing with visiting a community, not a museum – people want to talk, to stare at your funny white legs, or sell you Coke for a dollar, so it’s difficult to actually look around – plus you feel intrusive for turning up and staring into the places where people live.

Hannah and I both got into small boats and were taken to see the flooded forest, a quiet, cool area of trees that have been flooded by the rising waters of Tonle Sap. The light from the canopy above from diffuse, the atmosphere incredible. Another cinematic comparison might be with a Zhang Yimou film – I half expected to see sword-wielding maidens in long robes hopping through the branches above, but instead I met a mother and son in a small boat pulling what looked like catfish from the water.

Work-wise, things are moving slowly, slowly, but like someone said yesterday with their shoulders raised and a look of resignation on their face, “this is Cambodia”. I’m pulling together some more information on the rural development project, looking forward to the return of more friends to Siem Reap, and swimming every day to try and get rid of my gut. Cambodians are lovely people, and surprisingly frank – more than one now has poked my belly and said “when you have baby?”.