Off to the Beach

View from back of the bus

Hard to believe, four weeks of school and a five day vacation.  A couple of weeks ago I saw it coming and looked around for someplace to go.  Thank you Dan for the guide book,  in it was a resort on an island in the Gulf of Thailand for $15 a day.  So I got a bus ticket from a travel agent, $5, and off I went.  This holiday is were everyone returns to their homeland (translate: hometown), so when I got to the bus station it was jammed and every bus was late.  All the announcement are in Khmer and I wondering if I just should have stayed home.  Anyway I found my bus, had a great seat, #3 and waited for the bus to fill.  A older French women  got on and had a fit because she too had reserved primo seat #3.  Well to placate her they asked me to move to the back, I said OK but I had to talk with the driver because I had to get out at Ou Chamnar, about half and hour before the bus's final destination of Sihanouk Ville.  The ticket guy seemed perfectly alright with me talking to the bus driver although I felt he didn't understand a word I had said.  So to the back of the bus now with extra people coming and sitting on stools in the isles.  I decided to wait two hours before I talked with the driver, Sihanouk Ville was about four hours away. 
     When I made my move it wasn't pretty, but this time aside from stools, people had strung baby hammocks across the isle and more than one sleepy head tilted into my path.  Excuse me, sorry sorry, I have to talk to the bus drive  Good natured tolerance would be how I would characterize the Khmer view of the maneuvers of a not so nimble big bald guy.  Making it to the front I could see some of the maneuvers of the driver, illegal and frightening would be the American view of his driving, but I felt that distracting him would make little difference, so I asked for help in talking with him.  Two older women seemed to understand that I was stressed out and when I showed them the map and my destination they told the driver I had to get off at Ou Chamnar.  He was in the middle of what I would call an licence revoking attempt to pass two large trucks but his response was that Ou Chamnar was an hour away.  Did he intend to stop?  I hope so.

Vannary

Instead of running the gauntlet to the back of the bus I got a stool and sat in the middle of row 2, just a hair breath from the French women (did she say merci?), I don't think so.  Well my little stool put me very close to passengers on my left and right.  To the right were two French speaking teenagers who, I came to surmise, were the spawn, once removed, of the root of my problem.  I am sure now that she never said merci.  To the right was a young Cambodian girl who smiled and said hello.  She asked me where I was going and I said Ou Chamnar, she smiled and said where after that.  I took out the guide book that Dan gave me and showed her the island and then a written description of the resort.  I asked her where she was going, to Sihanouk Ville.  She was spending the holiday with the two older women who helped me talk with the bus driver.  We introduced ourselves, her name was Vannary.  When I said mine was Mike, I said to myself what a stupid sound, many people here have a problem with Mike, (at school I'm Mr C) I think it is close to a curse word.  But what a nice name Vannary is.  Well she was just a delightful young women, a university student studying languages.  If I were twenty or thirty or forty years younger, but I am not.  We had funny little conversations about snow and Buddha and Jesus and she helped my with my cell phone which is set on something called intended text.  It seems to want to figure what I intend to say (most of the time I'm not even sure), like happy birthday and puts it in even if you wanted to say harpy eagle.  Anyway she showed me how to change that and asked me if I learned any Khmer, I said no, so she put a couple of greetings on the messages section my cell phone and told me to practice.  Good Morning, how are you? and something else.  Before I knew it the bus stopped at Ou Chamnar and off I went.  Good bye Vannary.
      As I am getting off the bus a Cambodian guy grabs my bag and runs toward his moto with it.  This is the way you get a customer, so on the back of his bike I went and off to the town where I would meet the boat.  I hoped he knew where I was going.  Across rice patties on a road of red mud, through tiny primitive villages I went.  The towns people stopped and stared, like they had never seem a pasty big bald guy before.  All the kids say hello and waved.  I felt like the pope and waved back," God bless you my children, pray that this clown takes me to the right place".

Shoving off from the fishing village

      Down a long hill we careened and at the bottom the fishing village; think not of a little town in Maine.  This place was a mess.  Roads just rutted and muddy, I would like to think that they tried to solidify the mud with plastic because plastic bags and more trash was everywhere.  As we came to the water the houses were on stilts, sitting above the most disgusting water I have ever seen.  I found my boat and welcomed saying goodbye.  The boat was big for just me and it motored through a channel in a mangrove swamp.   Fishing boats of similar design were moving all about.  Shortly the channel open up to the Gulf of Thailand.  Above  were Fishing Eagles, a new species, and terns that I could not identify.  Islands all around, some quite mountainous, I was later to learn that the ones to the south were in Vietnam.  Wow, I had never been so far away.  The boat paralleled the coast of Koh Thmay and all you could see is beach and forest.  The island is part of a national park.  After about an hour waves began to break on reefs and then the boat driver pulled into a cove.  The resort of Koh Thmei. Six cabins and a bar and restaurant.  Pretty cool.

The beach at Koh Thmay

     My days at the resort were really nice.  The water was beautiful and so warm and salty.  My bungalow was just one room with a bed and a mosquito net, a nice bathroom and a front porch.  The other five bungalows were occupied by an Australian family having a reunion.  They kind of stayed to themselves and me to myself.  I had a book that I would read at breakfast and dinner, both of which I lingered to finish up the last cup of coffee or glass of wine two hours later.  Sometimes the owners, Kivita or Michael, a German couple, would come over to keep me company.  During the day they would invite me on walks on trails they cut in the jungle.  She liked birds so we talked birds and showed me things she had seen like hornbills and something called a chough.  The jungle was so thick and even tough going on the trails because it was so wet underfoot.  The beach was beautiful and went for miles.  I used their kayak and went out into the channel looking for dolphins.  The sun was so hot and wetting myself with 85 degree water didn't help much.  No dolphins but we all saw them on the way back the fishing pier two days later.  I have to mention the price, door to door, everything included, tip and transportation: $120 for four days.  I would like to go back, but I am learning about other places in Cambodia that are just must sees, like the town of Kep, which the French made into a beautiful sea side village and of course, Seim Reap, where the temples of Anghor Wat are located. 
      Back to Phnom Penh by bus, much less eventful than my trip out.  The bus had a flat, which seemed to be the best of the possible things to go wrong.  Everyone got out of the bus to watch the driver and an assistant change the tire.  No one seemed annoyed or impatient, but maybe mildly entertained by the delay.  Back to school tomorrow, what are those kids names again?

Phnom Penh

I am going to write about my new home even though I have not really come to understand it yet.  Flying in from Singapore, the plane circled the city and I got a great view of its entirety.  Somehow ever since I've landed I can't seem to orient myself.  For instance, I am sitting here on my balcony and am looking south but I could swear I am facing north.  Every time I go out I try to get the main streets down but I am still not able to find my way around very well.   Because I don't have a car or a moto (I might buy one) I rely on the tuktuk drives to get me from here to there

      Phnom Penh has about 2 million people  and is located on the Tonle Sap River which is a branch of the Mekong, infamous in the Vietnam War.  Vietnam is close and can't help think of the war and all those unlucky soldiers fighting in the cities and rice patties.

One of the many pagodas called Wats

I had heard that the Cambodia people (Khmer, pronounced Khmi) had a nice nature and I have found that to be true.  Except for tuktuk drivers always asking to take you some place, everyone greets you with a nice smile.  Very few poor, begging people, most people are on the go and busy.  The street are crowded with motos and tuktuks and big expensive SUVs, the most common is the Lexus.  In the back of a tuktuk it is a riot to see all the bad driving, cutting each other off and doing things never done in the US.  But traffic moves, maybe at 20mph, and those large intersection without a light don't get blocked up.  I have not yet seen anyone get angry, yell or pull a gun in traffic.  One of the teachers said that Cambodian believe in good Karma, so it is not worth being nasty. 

A view of the river from the Foreign Correspondent Club

The Genoside Museum

With this said, on Sundays I have been going to a service and walk past  Toul Steng Museum, the genocide museum.  In the 1970s, after the US pulled out of SE Asia, Pol Pot, Blood Brother #1, came to power with the Khmer Rouge.  They were communists who felt that Cambodia should become an agrarian society with no money or class or status.  In the Year Zero, the Khmer Rouge emptied out Phnom Penh and the other cities and moved everyone to the country side.  Over 3 million of its 12 million people were killed or starved to death.  Anyone with any education was put to death.  Wearing glasses was enough for a death sentence.  Outside of Phnom Penh were the killing fields where thousands were killed.  Just like in Germany, the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records of who they killed.   A terrible time and so different from what I see in the Khmer personality.  There is a movie The Killing Field that shows this period.  I have not been to Toul Steng yet or seen the movie   Sometime in the late 70s the Vietnamese invaded and drove the Khmer Rouge to the country side.  Pol Pot is dead and some of his generals are now on trial.  For the last 30 years the country has been on the rebound with all the construction I see from my balcony as proof.  

My street, I don't think it has a name

     Homes here are back from the street a little but instead of a front yard, there is a gate almost to the street.  They are metal with big locks, gated houses.  Everyone keep their cars and motos inside the gate, if you have many cars, part of the first floor is for car parking.  In my building sometimes there are two cars, a Toyota sedan and a big SUV and they take up half of the first floor.  When they are not there he family puts a couple of tables out and eats there.  No grease or oil on the floor, it is shinny tile, immaculately clean.  In fact although the streets are pretty dirty, the homes are very clean.   
      So that's my new town, about as different from New Lebanon as can be.  I am trying not to miss all those things about home that I love and look forward to getting to know Phnom Penh and
                                                                                   Cambodia better. 

My New School

EWIS as seen from my apartment



My 6th grade science class



The lower school student where a uniform

I've now been working at the East-West International School for two weeks, a week of meetings and a week with the kids.  It is a K-9 school and next year it will have a 10th grade and then 11th and 12th, it is only 6 years old.  There are about 20 kids per grade so 200 in the entire school.  I am teaching science to 6th through 9th grades.  There are five of us who work with these grades.  We are on the 5th floor of a seven story building  The school has a basketball court on one of the roofs and a pool, so its not exactly third world, but with that said it is missing a lot of things that we take for granted in the states, like complete sets of books for all the students, microscopes, a defined curriculum and accreditation.  The kids are middle class kids that live in Phnom Penh, there are actually many independent/private schools in city.   I've been told that EWIS is unique in its approach and mission.  Strange, one man, forgot his name, owns EWIS and over a hundred other schools.  We are one of the few schools that he continues to support while it operates in the red.  The other school are for profit.  I went out Saturday with Gayla, a fellow teacher and she invited a friend and teacher from another school to come with us.  Tamile was not very complimentary about her school but all the teachers at EWIS say the nicest things.  This all seems to revolve around Sandra Chipps who is the principle and founder of the school.  She seems to have her way and defines the mission of the school.  The faculty are an odd assortment of teachers.  They all have unique stories and some have taught at international schools all their lives.  Many are young, in their twenties and seem to be reformed SE Asian backpackers.  A number of teachers have gotten married to Cambodian women.  I was asking Gayla about that and she said that if we went into a bar down by the river I, not she, would get hit on.  I didn't exactly know what she meant, but apparently it has to do with seeking a western husband, bald or not.  She also said that in talking with the husbands, they say their Khmer wives are wonderful, attentive, faithful, don't push back.  All very interesting but seems out of step with the way the world is going.   I'll have to find out more, so far no one is hitting on me and if they did I would probably start talking birds and that would be that. 

 A couple of my new students doing a lab

      The students are the last but probably most important ingredient in this mix that makes up a school.  Well they are not third world orphans, but middle class kids from families that can afford to pay what I think amounts to about one year average salary.  There are a few western kids whose parents work in Phnom Penh, but most are Cambodian and then some Korean.  The lower school kids are really cute in there uniforms.  They march around like ducks behind their teachers.  The upper school is made up of kids that seem happy to be there.  No real resistance to education and very friendly.  Teachers are placed in some importance here.  With that said these kids are also teenagers and not so much different from teenagers around the world.  Mixed in with the very bright hard working students are the knuckleheads who need to be reminded to stay focused.  My days with them demand effort and energy, but less so than in the US because there is not the resistance to learning.  I am having to use the existing curriculum and I really don't like it and don't understand how it jumps around.  I wish I had a set of PHS text books, believe it or not.  Well that's all for now.  I must write next time about he city, where just the other day I discovered my first loaf of sliced bread.