Last week in sih

Dear everybody,

It has been over a weeks time since any of you has heard from me. At present time I am trying to catch up on some sleep in Kampong Cham. Simon was so kind as to take me home with him for two days. As I mentioned in my last update there were a lot of things on the agenda for last week. So where to start? Well I guess at the beginning, my trip to Koh Kong. Well after getting up very early, I realized I was feeling a little bit better and was not too worried about the bumby ride. Luckily I found out that the road was excellent (for cambodian standards). It was however a dirt road, meaning a lot of dust, but we were making excellent time. I was sitting in the front of the minivan, so I was treated with breath taking views across the road. However, those pictures will have to stay in my mind and cannot be shared with you on here, but let me tell you that I am smiling just thinking about it. The good thing also was that we had to cross a river 4 times, and that was done with a little ferry (see picture), it was nice being able to get out of the boat, get a drink for local price and talk to the other travellers. At one point the van stopped, and they told me to get out, because I had arrived in Koh Kong, it was a little scary as only one building could be seen, and I had no clue where I really was. Luckily it was indeed the right town, or I should say village, as I walked around it in 30 mins. A moto brought me to a guesthouse that had good credentials in the lonely planet. All looked well at the surface. The people seemed friendly, and when I checked the room it look good, so I decided to take it. I was tired of the journey so I decided to lay down for an hour or so, before exploring the town. In the evening I had a nice dinner at a little restaurant, where I ran into one of the western guests of saturdays wedding, and we talked for a while, but I decided to return to the guesthouse and have an early night. However in the middle of the night I woke up by something crawling in my neck, so I grabbed it and threw it across the room, jumped up and switched on the light. In my horror i saw this huge cockroach crawling over the floor "ewwwwwww", even though they are harmless they sure look very dirty. So at 2 am I decided I would go and catch it, even though my entire body was ticklish, feeling as if there were all sorts of bugs on my body. However it moved very fast, and I saw it crawling under the matrass. So i pulled it up, and oh my there were 5 giant cocroaches under it. Not a chance of me being able to catch them. However, i did not feel like waking up the people of the guesthouse trying to get them out, so I curled up in the middle of the bed and tried to sleep, which didn't work. After a 4 hours I needed to get up, one of the other guests was so kind as to bring me to the border, where I started the entire process of leaving cambodia, entering thailand, staying in thailand for 10 minutes, leaving thailand (I do not understand why people need to grunt and bark commands and wave their hands around aggressively when they do not speak english). After reentering Cambodia I prepared myself for bribing the officials, putting my prettiest smile on my lips and using my best khmer, telling them how much I loved Cambodia, how kind and helpful everyone was etc etc etc (the people after me said that the officals were still smiling when it was their turn, and were very kind, that was not the case with the people before me though). In the end it costed me $30 to get back in, but I did get the right expire date on my visa, meaning I am not overstaying and paying a fine at the airport. The same guest also brough me back to the guesthouse. It was funny though, he was thai, and speaks a few words of khmer but no english. It was interesting communicating though. When I came at the guesthouse, I asked the man what time the buss would come. THen he said he hadn't booked, so when he called the buss was full, so we rushed to the boat, to take the ferry back to Sihanoukville. A hot ordeal, but in the end I did managed to get back 'home' To celebrate my reentry into cambodia, i went to Utopia with some other backpackers and got completely wasted. It was a wonderful group, Eddy (scotland), Ian (Ireland), Jimmy (Ireland), Ben (Australia), Ries (england), Colin (Canada) Mariet (Nederland, Groningen) and I. Utopia is a great place to drink and dance as I have told in a previous update. We watched a beautiful thunderstorm comming to use across the water, and then danced in the rain, going completely crazy, until the raindrops were so big that they hurted our sunburned bodies. In the end I decided to be a party pooper and return home at 3am. Wednesday I decided to work on the little presentation for Dr Sophal, of the preliminary results, and while I was working I saw jimmy come home from the party at 9 am. In the afternoon I went with Ben and Mariet (a Dutch girl who just finished her studies in Groningen) into town to see the market. On the way back, we decided to go to the beach and go for a swim and go rockclimbing to see the sunset. In the evening after dinner I went with the same group of tuesday to the frog shack and played pool and drank coctails. On thursday I finished the presentation, so I thought I deserved a day off so I went to Ream national park on friday, after a night of no sleep with one of the other bagpackers, Ben from Australia, a nice guy. The trip followed the following structure a bus ride to the park, a boat trip through the mangrove forrests (shrubs) and then an hour swim around on one of the beaches, than a 30 minute hike over the Hill, to the fishermans village where we would have lunch, and then head back by boat through the mangroves and take the buss back to Sihanouk. The busstrip went fine, and the start of the boat trip, until we were halfway and the motor broke down. So we were afloat for a 2 hours while we waited for a new motor to be brought. This however was a great moment to get to know the other tourists. Susan and Lena from Sweden, Alan from America and Fran and Sarah from England. We had a blast just talking, however no matter how they tried to fix the motor and the second one, the boat wasn't going anywhere, so we were moved into an even small boat, and headed for the beach. Here we had a wonderful swim. I know it does not look so beautiful as it was a cloudy day, but it felt like paradise to me. Being there with just 8 people. After an hour we continued the programme, and went for the little hike. We heard a lot of sounds but did not see that much wild life, we were talking too much about literature I guess. Or at least Alan and I were. Somewhere halfway the trip we lost the guide and the two english girls, they were too far away from us, luckily we took the right path when there was a split, and in the end we did find them back again. After a wonderful lunch we had an uneventful boat trip back to the entrance of the park. The great thing was that they did not cut the programme because we were afloat for 2 hours, we just came back home at 6 pm instead of 4 pm. When I came back to the guesthouse a message from Jaco was waiting, so I called him back. Jaco is my brothers friend who helped me make contacts in Cambodia within the health sector. I met him on the other side of Sihanouk and after a first drink we all (his wife and two children) went for dinner. After dinner, we went for a few more drinks, and I was just laughing so much, even if we had some serious talks about studying and reproductive health in Cambodia. He is a funny guy, with lots of great stories to tell. Luckily we did not make it too late,
On saturday morning Dr Sophal came to my guesthouse and I had a little presentation prepared for him, even though I thought it would be 15 minutes, it lasted almost 45 mins. By the time I finished it, and answered all the questions, Simon and Sopean arrived for the weekend. So I said my goodbyes to Dr Sophal, and went with the two brothers to the beach, and went swimming, and sunburning. It was a very relaxing day, at lunch time, Jaco and his son JJ joined us, and after we had lunch we went to a different beach, a far more quiet one, as Jaco was so kind enough to drive us around. We picked up his wife and daughter as well, and it was a wonderful pleasant day on the beach. It gave me a really warm family feeling. I do miss the cosiness of being home, and I felt very relaxed and safe. In the evening we all went out for dinner. As the children were up all day, they were dead tired. In the evening the guys and I went for some drinks and telling stories, laughing our heads off. I took them to Utopia, where I drank one of the buckets. The alcohol hit me really hard, so I was babbling too much. Anyone who has seen me very tipsy knows I talk too much, and say things I really should keep too myself, because it is too embarrassing to think about it later. Luckily the alochol had similar effects on the rest. However we had to get up early in the morning, because I was taking the 'brothers' snorkling. It was a pleasant day, going swimming, and snorkling, unfortunately it did result in a sunburn. The sun is about as powerful as it can get. So eventhough I had already build up quite a tan, it was still not enough protection, with the result that my got my buttocks burned, because while snorkling they were sticking out above the water surface with a sign saying, burn me, burn me, please!! I still cannot sit comfortable while writing this. When we came back we got our stuff together and went to phnom penh. Even though I was suppose to stay in Phnom penh, I was soo tired that I decided to go back to Kampong Cham, to get two days of rest before heading off to Ankor Wat. So that is what I am doing now. Sitting and relaxing, and sleeping. We needed to get up at 4 am, to get a taxi to Kampong Cham, because Simon had to be there for breakfast and work at 6:45.

Now that I have written this all, there are a few other things I would like to share. I have not felt this relaxed and content in years. All the tension is leaving my body, and is replaced with a peaceful feeling. Where I felt confined and restricted by myself and the dutch society, I feel free here. And it is not the kind of freedom where you can do anything you please, it is the kind of freedom where you can be your true self, without the expectations of yourself or of others. It might be very likely that I well spending a lot of my time abroad in the comming years. Either continuing my studies or working. But whatever it might be, I know I will fit into asia. The culture even though it is very different from hours is one that 'suites' me.

Well I hope to contact you again in about a week, with a wonderful story about Ankor Wat.

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