The Journal of his Delights

You can find a slideshow of the trip to Battambang at Flickr. Wordpress seems to be having a problem uploading images so only one sample for the time being.

Battambang is Cambodia’s second largest city after Phnom Penh, and Battambang Province probably has Cambodia’s most fertile soil. It was there that the Khmer Rouge force marched the bulk of the urban population in order to remake Cambodia into a collectivized agricultural utopia. At the time, farmers averaged 1 ton of rice per hectare, the Khmer Rouge wanted to increase it to 7 tons per hectare and use the surplus to finance their plans. They never succeeded and in the process hundreds of thousands died.

Today, Battambang is a lovely little town. The feel of the place is so much more at ease compared to Phnom Penh. There’s still a lot of poverty of course - that’s hard to avoid - but I definitely got the sense that I was in the countryside. Which, in my opinion, is my favorite part of Cambodia.

While in Battambang, we visited the White Elephant Pagoda and chatted with an achar (lay elder) who was in his seventies. The pagoda itself is a little run down, but there was sense of quiet dignity about the place. Come to think, the same was true of the achar.

Later we visited the site of a NGO working with trafficked boys and girls and two informal (squatter settlements). I have pictures, and will upload them the next time I can arrange internet access for my laptop.

At one of the informal settlements, we chatted with a woman who was 83 years old. She had come to Battambang originally to look for her family after Pol Pot time, but wasn’t able to find any who survived. So she stayed, and today she rents a place to sleep in the settlement for 1000 riel a night (US$0.25) and was on her way to work in the rice fields.

We also met with one of the settlement community leaders. She was relatively cheery, as the community had been able to raise US$500 for their credit bank. Given the small sums the residents earn on a daily basis, this really is a significant achievement.

All in all, it was a good day, and I was very happy to see this part of Cambodia before departing the next day.

Sorry for disappearing, but I had the opportunity to visit Battambang in Battambang Province and took it. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to report on it, because I’m flying to Japan today! I’ll try and write up the visit and my final thoughts about Phnom Penh while traveling, but it probably won’t be posted for a day or two. Next stop, Fukuoka!

A full work day yesterday - I closed down the cafe, and I am right on the edge of being done with my notes. The process has taken so much longer than I expected! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though - by the time I’m done, I’ll have something like 25,000 words in notes! It’ll be an interesting challenge cutting it all down. There is some overlap in the material which will help, but I strongly suspect that I won’t really know what the paper is going to be till I’m actually done writing the first or second draft.

It may have been a full day yesterday, but I didn’t get much sleep last night. Something I ate at one of the local Indian places didn’t agree with me, and I had a mild case of food poisoning. I’m totally okay now, and in fact have just finished off a smoothie and veggie sandwich at Cafe Fresca. Hard to keep a good stomach down, eh? Still, I was disappointed. I thought I’d found my “Indian Greasy Spoon” in Phnom Penh. What a delicious yogurt pickle they had! Needless to say, once is enough and I won’t be going back there.

Speaking of stomachs, Lowie mentioned to me that I was looking “prosperous”. Haha! Apparently, I’ve been sitting on my ass too much working on my dissertation and not walking around enough. Gonna have to work on that. It’s a good feeling feeling fit.

One last thing, I’ve just adjusted my flight arrangements, and it looks like I’ll be back in the U.S. on 11 September. It’s hard to believe, but it’ll have been almost exactly a year since I left for London. What a wild, wild ride it’s been. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and family in Los Angeles, Portland, and Scranton. Yeehaw!

A friend, Kathy, has a love affair going with the city of Vancouver, B.C. It’s been her preferred holiday destination for years and years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she moves there one day. I bring it up, because another friend, Lowie, mentioned that it was ranked as the most livable city in the world.

What’s perhaps even more interesting to me is that the second most livable city in the world is Fukuoka in Japan, my next destination. After the raw edginess of Phnom Penh, I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to a little livableness!

Oh, and speaking of Lowie, she’s here in Phnom Penh for business. We had a chance to meet up yesterday, and had a lovely time. We walked along the river and visited Wat Phnom. The smell of burning paper was omnipresent as it was a holiday of some kind, and every household was making offerings. Wat Phnom was quite busy as well with lots of people burning incense and praying.

Later in the evening, we joined Joy and another friend of their’s, Teresa, for dinner at a place called Kwest. The menu was a mixture of Asian and Italian. In keeping with the spirit of the place, I had spring rolls and spaghetti bolognese. Nice!

Random obervation - part 2:

The moto last night had a picture of the driver and his girlfriend in place of the speedometer.

Another random observation:

In the evening, along one of the thoroughfares near my hotel, close to the Victory Monument, there is a row of 12-15 ladies with their carts, all of whom are selling corn. Cars and motos will pull over to the side of the rode to buy the corn to eat. I’m almost tempted, except I’d worry about the water in which the corn was boiled.

The photography upload is complete, and I’ve mostly finished adding tags and descriptions. If you’re interested, I have slideshows of:

Phnom Penh
Tuol Sleng
Angkor Wat

I hope they’re worth the wait.

It’s the rainy season in Cambodia, but so far it’s been relatively mild. Hardly any rain, except maybe once or twice a week. The bus ride up to Siem Reap was a rainy mess, but this morning… it only last an hour, but I’d never seen it rain so hard in my life. It was absolutely sheeting! And the funny thing was, there were still blue skies in the distance. I suspect only a narrow section of the city got poured on.

For a time, I took a break from typing my notes and just stood outside on my terrace (under cover) and watched it come down.

A random observation:

I have yet to ride on a moto that has a working speedometer. Not that they go very fast, but one day I was curious and noticed that it wasn’t working. Since then, I’ll always glance down to check, and not a one has gone past 0 mph.

I’m back at Cafe Fresca - this seems to be my new home in Phnom Penh, as it’s one of the places that offers wireless internet access. It’s a bit pricey at $2 per hour, but if I want to connect my own computer to the net, then this is one of the few options available. In any case, I’m continuing to upload my pictures, and if they’re not done today, I’ll come back tomorrow to finish them off.

It’s a good thing the food is good. And if I’m honest, it’s a welcome break from the restaurants in the area around my hotel. Now that I think about it, I’ve been eating nothing but restaurant food for the past month. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for access to a real kitchen and make something home cooked. Don’t get me wrong, as you might expect, I tend to eat well, but after a while, eating out gets tiresome. At least here at Cafe Fresca, I can a simple Western-style sandwich.

Since it’s taking a while to upload the photographs, here are some samples to tide you over:

It’s slow going, but I’m finally uploading my photographs from Cambodia. Actually, this is my second attempt, as my first attempt crashed for some reason (losing all the tags and descriptions I’d painstackingly entered). This means that this is a barebones upload for the time being as I don’t have the time to re-enter all of the information.

I still, after all, still have a disseration to write. Speaking of which, I’ve got to get back to it. If you’d like to see the rough Cambodia pictures as they upload, head on over to Flickr.

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P.S. It looks like the upload process is taking a long time, and I’m going to run out of time before it finishes. It looks like it’ll have to be done in stages. Once all the images have been uploaded, then I’ll fill in the descriptions/tags and arrange the slideshows. Stay tuned…