Back in PP, Cambodia, 1st April 2011
Steamy hot early morning with the fan cutting the humidity... It’s 6.15 am. Laura’s gone out for a run (this is for ‘relaxation’, she’s not training seriously for anything at the minute, having done an Iron Man event in New Zealand a few weeks ago but states, only partly in jest, that she won’t get out of bed for anything under a 70 km bike ride...) and Tom similarly has left for a swim before work. M and the boys are already playing Monopoly, but WD is trying desperately to cling to the edge of sleep after a poor night (too hot, then too cold with aircon on, then too restless, WM having Larium dreams and L complaining about W taking up all of her mattress) W says he ‘was kept awake all night’, but my memory is that he was the one doing the keeping awake (“Mum, mum – are you awake?”)... Anyway, we’re off to Kampot (far South of Cambodia) in 3 hours, so I need to pack and sort and get ready for more fun, by a river this time...
I visited Laura at work in her clinic yesterday. She has a busy but interesting work load, practicing a mixture of primary care and ER-type medicine (they have a resus room and receive trauma cases) and has to work much more autonomously, with far less secondary care back-up than at home. The smell of the place (international standard healthcare cleaning fluids) sent me into a minor tail-spin of panic about my return to work after so many months away. She jokingly tries to recruit me to work here – there’s a need for more female, foreign-trained doctors to cover the expat women and children – but whilst it’s briefly tempting, there are too many good reasons not – but for anybody out there with the relevant qualifications obviously, without children or with pre-schoolers (the figures don’t add up if you’re paying for education here on a locally-recruited, rather than expat-recruited, package), who loves heat, is sick of the NHS reforms and wants an adventure, I can give you Laura’s contact details...
L conversationally told Tom (whilst we were out with them at one of his protected conservation sites, looking for – and seeing – extremely rare Sarus Cranes and Elds Deer) that she’d been in “this type of situation so many times – sitting or squatting - besides a stinky lake” which cracked him up. So now we know what she thinks we’ve been up to for the last 5 months!
We have a plan to get the children for April Fools’ Day, hatched between us scheming adults: we’re going to tell the children that there has been an escape from a crocodile farm (there was a craze for farming crocs a few years ago which failed to deliver the anticipated riches – as no one appreciated that feeding the beasts on household waste, keeping them in cramped and over-crowded conditions would not deliver the finest handbag-quality crocodile leather, and locally it’s considered inauspicious to eat the meat, so the only option is to flog it to tourists on the barbeque...) into the river at Kampot, so there are some safety concerns, particularly children swimming. However, there the crocs don’t much like the taste of sun cream so if you slaver yourself in the stuff, you’ll probably be OK.
Les Manguiers, Kampot, 2nd April
I am pleased to report complete success, at least with the gullible Wolfgang progeny (Jack looked suspicious), as regards the above plan. They completely bought it, and we only confessed when L started to get a bit anxious. Fortunately, it was already well on the way to noon, so there was no opportunity for their revenge – until next year?
I’m lying under a mosquito net staring across a greasy-green limpid river (it’s about a quarter mile to the other bank) through palms, banana fronds and mango trees. Definitely an Indochine fantasy... (Helen, remember the film with the lovely Catherine Deneuve?) Our cottage on stilts is about 5 metres from a bathing platform and we spent yesterday afternoon bombing and diving into the brackish water, canoeing and swimming idly. There are shoals of tiny jumping fish that skim the surface of the water ahead of you. L and W were splendidly brave, jumping in from great heights (wearing life jackets for extra buoyancy). WD and M swam right across and waved from the other side, so I salute them too! This morning we woke post-dawn to the sound of an armada of squid boats chugging up-river, after a night out fishing at sea. WD awoke confused – ‘Oh the horror!’ – gunboats on the search for Kurtz? Choppers? [We ate the fore-mentioned squid with Kampot pepper for supper last night.]
This is Laura and Tom’s preferred spot for R&R – they come for a weekend every few months - and we can quite understand the attraction. 3 hours from PP - a cluster of small bamboo cottages on stilts in a large garden, a great spot for wild swimming and canoeing with tropical hills rolling down to the river on the opposite bank, fed regularly from a kitchen without a menu or choice for the children to complain about...It’s a few miles out of Kampot, the state capital, and a few miles further from the river mouth and sea and beaches. We’ve brought Kim San and Poe (some of Laura’s staff) who let Laura know (via us) they’d never been to Kampot, had friends here and would love to come too. So there’s a definite holiday vibe to the trip, as we all sit down to supper and wine together.
It’s rest time and W’s announced he wants to stay here forever (I think we all feel like this a bit, 2 nights will just not be long enough...), and please can he have his rest time in canoe?
W: I learned to canoe in Cambodia. How I canoe is I have flippers on two sides of a paddle and I went up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down – and I just keeped going till I went where I wanted to.
I’ve got bad scratches on my legs. And I got them from jumping off one of the steps and I scratched them on the barnacles on the ladder. They’re really ouchy and they might have healed by the time we come home from India so I might not be able to show you. But they probably won’t...[WM: W was very upset by his wounds and required second and third opinions as to prognosis, but they don’t seem to deter him from more river swimming; only L has escaped barnacle injuries, M has even achieved salt water blisters.]
WM: M and Jack look exhausted with the non-stop outdoor physical activity. Yesterday when we arrived, she wanted to do everything, right now, and all at once – swim, play ping-pong, climb trees, dive, canoe, explore, play beach volley ball, cycle, supplemented only by bouts of competitive games (Deal Monopoly and Bananagram). We are struck still by their similarities – M absolutely and determinedly keeping up, until collapsing in a heap. I had to bring her back earlier from the canoe expedition upstream as she was over-heating and tearful and worried about burning her legs in the hot sun - but it takes a great deal to make her submit to downtime or acknowledging any limits. We’ve planned a boat ride down to a sandbar to look for clams later on this afternoon, but it depends slightly if the gathering storm clouds keep off, as there have been some half-hearted efforts at rain and grumbling distant thunder over lunch.
A short while later and we’re just back from our crazy boat adventure out to a sandbar where the river opens into the sea and you can seemingly walk on water at least from a distance. Unfortunately, the wind blew harder and the skies grew darker and all the fishing boats seemed to be going in the opposite direction, into port. By the time we reached the sandbank, there was driving rain and everyone was freezing cold – so utterly reminiscent of family boating in England.
L: So I’ve been having lots of fun with Charlie. Our first project was making a football ground. Then our second project was a dog kennel for Charlie’s strange dog. Our third project was writing a story about Charlie and his strange dog. Kampot was very nice and I liked canoeing.
We went on this rainy boat ride and we all had to cuddle together to keep warm and we snacked on salted pistachio nuts. And we all wore really silly life jackets but they helped to keep us warm. We saw lots of bridges that had been blown up by the Khmer Rouge and now rebuilt and we also saw a squashed jelly fish and a sea urchin on the sand spit and lots of mangroves. We waved at lots of fishing boats. When we got back, we needed to wear really warm clothes and drink a hearty hot chocolate.
I’m going to miss Cambodia. I absolutely forgot we were leaving – I thought we were going to have more fun! I don’t want to write any more cos I’m too sad....
Mummy, I think I sleep-walked up to your bed last night. (Explaining the hot little body I had to turf back on to her own mattress in the middle of the night – hmmm)
5th April 2011, stopping over in Thong Ta Resort and Spa in Bangkok (with a 20% discount on massage and free airport pickup). We’re so impressed by the functional efficiency of a night’s stop-over in Bangkok, being picked up by a pimped-up minibus with tinted windows, and our ‘resort’ did a marvellous American breakfast - ham and eggs and flayed little boys’ willies (actually artfully chopped frankfurters, but none of us could face them). The children were fascinated by the kitsch clay figurines in the garden – dogs’ bottoms, gnome-like children and naked ladies straddling ashtrays. We ate pad thai on the street and showered, stared a lot at the old, ugly European or American guys with much younger Thai wives or carers (there seem a great many), slept for a few hours and are now about to jump back on the connecting flight back to Kolkata in half an hour....
WM: It’s been great spending time with Laura, Tom, Jack and Charlie over the last fortnight and hearing a bit more about their lives in Cambodia and their insights into the country. Thank you for being such gracious hosts: sharing your house, your special places and time so freely, despite obviously having way too much on the boil work-wise at the moment. Thank you boys for tolerating the Wolflings’ invasion of your space and toys. My children have loved having familiar peers to hang out with after a relatively arid period for child company – and alternative adults to chat at (poor Laura was talked at by W incessantly for 3 hours on one particular journey). And thanks too to Kim San and Poe for all the clothes washing, meals and child entertaining...WD says please can he have Kim San's amok recipe?
Leaving feels like the cosy security blanket of the Evans’ home being ripped away – and we’re all pining already. India feels like it’s started again already – Bengalis trying to check in multiple flat screen TVs in the Kolkata queue (oh sorry, chaotic throng) and carry through vast artificial flower bouquets as hand luggage (that just aren't going to fit in the overhead locker anyway you look at it). Laura and Tom, we’re in awe and can’t wait to hear the next instalment when you drop by in the summer and we’re already scheming a Big Adventure to top the boat trip...
W: We met Charlie and Jack’s rabbit and he’s called Daisy [WM: he really is] and there was a guinea pig (I don’t know what its name was). I kept finding seeds and I kept telling Tom ‘What are they?’ (WM: and they were nearly always mangoes) There were some yellow seeds that came from a flower. And we found really big helicopter seeds, not little like the ones in Beckley – they were much bigger. What you needed to do was be up somewhere high and throw them really high and they spinned round and round higher... Tom read us one Dr Seuss we don’t know and it was called ‘5 apples on top of a head’ (or maybe it wasn’t?)
WM: Our minds are definitely turning to return at this stage. There’s a great deal of distance from here to cover before April 16th to make it home, not all of it merely geographical. I’m a bit apprehensive about how it will be to go back to India, after such a wonderful holiday. L’s 7 in 1 day and that’s an important milestone for us all – and we really hope she’ll have an especially memorable one this year. I think we’ll be travelling by train and taxi up to the mountains in Darjeeling (assuming the pesky independence movement for West Bengal hill population haven’t closed things down, which they do from time to time) on the day. I arranged a personalised chocolate gateau to be delivered (made by rehabilitated deaf Cambodians locally, of course) whilst we were in Kampot for candles with other kids, because I don’t think I can guarantee that on the day!
L: My first birthday was quite good, the cake was yummy but it was a bit strange having people I didn’t know so well there but seeing the third highest mountain in the world in the Himalayas on my birthday will be memorable.
WM: But there’s also thoughts of how to make changes (small and larger ones) to the way we live on return – reforms and resolutions suggested by absence and alternative experiences here. Routines can change, we can live with far less (all of us), and heck, let’s get a canoe!
No comments:
Post a Comment