Blogs from Tonlé Sap, North, Cambodia, Asia - page 2

When last you heard from me, I was fired up with Resolutionary zeal!! Two months later, I have yet to implement a single one of those Resolutions. Although there's a long, dreadful story about why this is so, I will forgo narrating my egregious last two months for the time being, and instead start implementing my Resolutions. I think I can start with Number Five--the most important one--updating my readers about the Khmer Wedding I attended in December. I tell you what. Even if I hadn't been indisposed for the last two months, I would still have sat in silence on this issue for a long time, just trying to find words for it. I went primarily out of loyalty to a friend who had no one else in his family attending the wedding and didn't ... read more

Joy of joys, this trip was to be taken in air-conditioned comfort. What a treat indeed. I may have mentioned how hard am finding it adjusting to the heat out here. Have I? Am sure I must have, it has pretty much been my all consuming thought this last week. Am sure I didn’t have this much difficulty adjusting the last time and I’ve been pretty darned miffed over it I can tell you for it is impacting on my enjoyment to an uncomfortable degree. However, I subsequently discovered that 2 paracetamol (taken after a particularly rough run in with a particularly unyielding rock whilst clambering through a particularly tight space at Bang Malea) makes the heat that much more bearable. It is likely then that I am running a small fever of sorts; this cheers ... read more

Hi All, After a somewhat difficult week we decided to go away for the weekend. We are in Kampong Chnang this election eve. The town is located on the Tonle Sap river, just south of the Tonle Sap Lake. The town itself is not flash but the countryside around it is lush and green with occasional hills! Makes a nice change from the flat floodplain where we live. The week's difficulties centred around my fieldwork which began with surveying on Monday, well installation and borehole drilling on Wednesday through friday and sample submission Friday pm. The surveying went well despite one mishap, I forgot the bloody tape measure so John had to measure distance with the staff. It was hot. Damn hot. John, being pole boy copped the brunt of the heat; Sua (our translator and ... read more

First thing we got shuttled from our hotel down to the boat on the River (Stung Sangker) where we, a load of other tourists and some Cambodians piled on - the boat was a pretty simple open sided motor boat with rows of benches, a small back decked area and a roof that you could also sit out on. Once we set off, I stayed below at the back to hide from the sun, and to guard my prime corner seat, while Rach went upstairs to escape the noise of the motor. We were off on the nine hour journey along the river and through the northern end of the lake Tonle Sap. And the journey was absolutely stunning! We started off passing through a sunken length of the river, with pretty high banks, but with ... read more

Tonle Sap lake is the biggest fresh water lake in Asia, currently only 1/2 meter deep in some places and 2500sq km long. As the wet season is about 8 days away where the lake will rise to 12 meters deep in some place and 13000sq km or wide. The floating village of Chong Kneas, is now extremely famous with visitors to see the real Cambodia, this is the experience I was looking for. We decided to take a moto (tuk tuk) for the day out to the lake quoted in a guide as $15US pp. We should never complain about a simple pot hole in our roads after you have driven on one in Cambodia....The road to the lake parts of it anyway had rocks the size of soccer ball sticking up out of the ... read more