Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 225

Take one green satin dress, add silver heels, a humid Cambodian evening, mix with 5-star hotel air conditioning, all you can drink champagne, a ticket confusion that leaves you sitting on the rugby team table, and what do yo have - a very merry Christmas Ball….. Yes, I know I have been a very lazy girl with the updates. But now I am setting the record straight. I have been enjoying myself far too much, taking part in every manner of soirée and social occasion, and even finding the time to work very hard over the past few months. The lead up to Christmas was very lovely. The weather cooled for the much anticipated ‘cool season’. Once the mercury dropped below 30’c we all went running to the Russian market to find blankets and sweaters. A ... read more

(One of my several VERY overdue posts!) On the 23rd of December, 2005, while much of the world was preparing for Christmas, those of us in Cambodia were preparing to attend the highly anticipated wedding of my counterpart Chanthea, and his fiancée from Melbourne, Ra. Ra and Chanthea were introduced by Chanthea's aunt living in Melbourne. In August, after a year of long-distance communication, Ra (whose parents left Cambodia in the 80's) flew to Phnom Penh for the first time in her life. Three weeks later, Chanthea and Ra announced their engagement. The wedding was the usual Khmer affair - lots of food, whiskey and 'out there' pop music. A very bizarre tradition towards the end of the night was that we all make a circle around the couple, and their 10-tier wedding cake, and proceed ... read more

Well, I have been in Cambodia for three months today, and as I seem to be spending a lot of my time writing them for everything else (Elton John AIDS Foundation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNFPA...), a quarterly report seems to be in order!! I have been promising stories to various people, and need to update the photo collection, so here goes: Visitors I have been really lucky to have had some familiar faces from Australia visiting me over the past few months. Susan, who I worked with on the AADCP Program from ACIL, was my first Australian guest. She was here for work, but managed to make time to have a lovely dinner with me at 'Khmer Kitchen'. It was great to talk about our experiences working on the same program over the past few ... read more

PHNOMH PENH (PP) 15 DEC 05- 16 DEC 05 As we only have one day to do the sights of PP, the three of us are going on a tuk-tuk tour to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (S-21) and the Killing Fields at Choueng Ek, followed by the Russian Market. During Pol Pots regime, the Khmer Rouge turned Toul Sleng Prey Secondary School into a primitive prison and interrogation centre. Classrooms were divided into individual cells, or housed rows of prisoners secured by shackles. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 20,000 victims were imprisoned here. Teachers, students, doctors, monks ad peasants suspected of anti-revolutionary behaviour were brought here, often with their spouses and children. They were subjected to horrific tortures, and then killed, or taken to extermination camps (such as Choueng Ek). S-21 has been left ... read more

An Australian abroad. Wishing to be proud of her country. Disgusted. Below is an article from The Age - a Melbourne newspaper. Racism does exist in Australia, despite what our Prime Minister says. This behavior is inexcusable. And this event does have an impact on how other nationalities view our country. I met an Australian backpacker on the weekend who was told about the riots by an English backpacker, this issue was on the front page of the Cambodia Daily (an English language newspaper, which is also translated into Khmer), the bi-line on CNN last week read 'Australia Beach Riots' and showed horrible footage of what happened on Sunday, and I have heard that Duncan's efforts to learn to read Dutch where soured when he had to read about this in a paper in the Netherlands. ... read more