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I found it really hard to leave Kampong Thom. I went eventually when my visa was about to expire, I had to go back to Phnom Penh to get it renewed and this gave me the impetus I needed to escape. Everybody seemed to want me to stay, which was weird since I really wasn’t doing anything useful. It surprised me how quickly I got used to the routine and the pace of life. I really felt like I’d been there forever.
After a couple of weeks I adopted some English classes to teach. This was much more challenging than the teaching I did in China because the classes are so mixed, and they are studying from a book called “LEARNING THE ENGLISH FOR YOU!!”.
The kids are super enthusiastic though, turning up for extra classes on a Sunday. There are two different schools I’ve been going to, one is right out in the sticks and they have literally never seen a Western person before, meaning I inspire levels of adoration that surpass even those I achieved in China. I have actually had to sign all their textbooks, and when I enter the room I get a round of
applause.
I ended up teaching the classes because I know their actual English teacher. He has been hanging around the TPO office for weeks asking me if I need a translator. I don’t, and anyway his English is shit. I literally can not believe he is gainfully employed as an English teacher. I feel safe in saying this since I am confident he can’t use a computer, he asked me how much it costs to receive an Email. He is only 22 and not much older than his students. I felt bad for him and ended up hiring him as a kind of moto driver tour guide to show me the sights of Kampong Thom.
Turns out, there are no sights of Kampong Thom. Well, some very old temples which would have been impressive had I seen them before Angkor, a river, a lake, a big hill, some pagodas. I spent most of the weekend touring villages being introduced to literally everyone English Teacher knows or has ever met. This was much more fun, I met his family and his mum cooked me dinner.
I don’t mean to make Kampong Thom sound bad. I actually love this
place. But there is literally nothing here to see. The things that entertain me are walking through the market or watching people plough the rice paddies with a waterbuffalo attached to a stick. Marvelling at someone attempting to transport two live fully grown pigs on the back of a motorbike. Daily life, nothing you could put your finger on.
The countryside is absolutely gorgeous, stunning. Unfortunately I never get chance to take photos because I am always with Sunnari, and I don’t feel I can ask him to stop when he’s already spending three hours on a motorbike taking me somewhere. So most of these photos were taken from the back of a moving motorbike. Very slowly moving, much of the time. But still, not my best photography.
In the rainy season, basically the earth liquidifies. The stuff that looks like grass is rice, and it’s growing in a foot or two of water. It’s bizarre because aside from the roads, everything is submerged. That’s why all the houses are on stilts. Most of the countryside is underwater for six months a year.
I finally sent my letters and postcards. If you receive anything in an unbelievably
old UNTAC airmail envelope, that’s from me. Bizarre I know, but these were the only envelopes I could find sold in town. I also have my very own UNTAC notebook. They must have had a huge surplus of stationary when the soldiers left. Maybe that’s what the UN spent a billion dollars on…
(UNTAC was the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, the UN’s biggest peacekeeping mission ever, an attempt to get the country stable enough to hold the first democratic elections… back in 1993. The last of the soldiers left 10 years ago.)
I have also just been told that you should always watch the postal worker frank the stamps on your letters or people steam them off and re-sell them. Huh. So Kit, if you don’t get your birthday card you’ll know what happened.
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