Last Friday I was invited to participate at the opening ceremony of a newly built school in Sras Village. Here are some pictures. Text will be edited soon :-) [View Full Entry]

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Short info about today's program [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia is a kingdom with some corrupt but "democratic" elected politicians. Where there are a lot of kings, queens, princes, etc. there are a lot of national holidays: For example, we don't work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because on Wednesday, 14th of May, King Sihamoni celebrates his birthday. I don't know what people do, but probably they go to the temple or they play some games in the street. Anyway, May is a great month for the working folk. Apart from the Labour day there will be Buddha's birthday and then the Royal Ploughing Day (same event as in Thailand). [View Full Entry]

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Hi there, I'm currently constructing a solar box cooker. At first I wanted to build a parabolic panel cooker but I postponed this project to a later time, depending on the tests and acceptance of the box cooker. It costs me a lot of time and endurance to find all the necessary materials, specially a non-toxic paint for the pots but I hope I get soon everything I wish. If you have any suggestions or past experiences, please let me know. As a reference I use solely www.colarcooking.org. which is a great source of information about all solar cooking topics. Imagine, [View Full Entry]

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Here I post my itinerary from Berne to Siem Reap. By the way, for all those people who want to do the Rheinroute by bike: The route from Basel to Rotterdam can be easily made in about 3 weeks. 31.07.2007 Start Bern, 19.00 h 31.07./01.08.2007 Solothurn 01.08./02.08.2007 Dornach 02.08./03.08.2007 Weil am Rhein 03.08./04.08.2007 Loerrach 04.08./05.08.2007 Bad Krotzingen 05.08./07.08.2007 Freiburg im Breisgau 07.08./08.08.2007 Strasbourg/Kehl 08.08./09.08.2007 Neudorf (Karlsruhe) 09.08./11.08.2007 Mannheim 11.08./12.08.2007 Bingen 12.08./13.08.2007 Bad Breisig 13.08./15.08.2007 Koeln 15.08./18.08.2007 Duesseldorf 18.08./19.08.2007 Kleve 19.08./20.08.2007 Beende Leeuven 20.08./23.08.2007 Utrecht 23.08./24.08.2007 Apeldorn 24.08./25.08.2007 Bad Bentheim (Oldenzaal) 25.08./27.08.2007 Osnabrueck 27.08./28.08.2007 Minden (Porta Westfalica) 28.08./29.08.2007 Hannover 29.08./30.08.2007 Schellerten (Hildesheim) [View Full Entry]

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I wish you a very Happy New Year! Here in Cambodia we are at the edge of the New Year. Tomorrow Sunday, April 13th, at exactly 18.24 h starts the new year of the rat. I think that I'm very lucky because I could already celebrate the Western New Year and the Chinese New Year and now I will party for the third time. Khmer New Year is usually a family affair and so people celebrate it by having a big feast and by going to pray at the temples. I don't expect such a rush like in China but I [View Full Entry]

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I'm now a proud owner of secondhand bicycle and I'm very happy to move faster through Siem Reap and the surrounding villages. Well, it's just a bicycle with one gear but with these bumpy roads driving fast doesn't make much sense and the maintaining is also much easier. Having again a bike makes me really feel a bit independent, in the same time I still miss my bike I used to have for the trip to Berlin. It's so practical to have an own bicycle I've been already thinking about going to Thailand by bike. One important part of the Cambodia [View Full Entry]

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Tonight I'm moving on to Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately I only had 3 sunny days here on the beach at Nha Trang (people are telling me that the weather was never so bad in the past). But even with cloudy skies I had a great time and the time passed as usual very fast. Most of the time I spent visiting museums, tasting new food, hanging out at bia hoi locations, reading at the beach, checking out information about English courses, etc. Now, I say goodbye to Nha Trang and hello to Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon). So long folks [View Full Entry]

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After 4 months traveling in China I finally made it back to "real Southeast Asia": Vietnam! I arrived yesterday evening coming from Kunming and I soon got delighted by the small bustling streets full of motorcycles and open food stalls. In the very first hour here in Hanoi I bumped into a fellow traveler who I met before in China. As this didn't happen the first time I must say that the world is small. Now I go out for a nice Vietnamese dish because I'm very hungry. An hour ago we visited a park in the South of Hanoi where [View Full Entry]

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Hey people, I had a great the last few weeks and months. This is one of the reasons I haven't updated this page. Meantime I have also opened a facebook account. So if you wanna add me as a friend look for manfred messerli. It's much easier to upload the pictures in facebook. So, please, follow the links given below to access the lates photos and share my experiences in this ancient walled city... Pingyao 1 of 2 Pingyao 2 of 2 [View Full Entry]

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