Getting into the Halloween spirit

For Halloween I’ve got plans to travel up to Siem Reap for a coffee, beer, and cheese fest with some of the other volunteers. Basically the plan is to visit as many non-rice serving restaurants as possible in four days. Maybe I’ll even make it over to Angkor Wat to see what the fuss is all about.

Cambodia, refusing to disappoint, has helped to kick off this week with a bang. Sunday overall was a fabulous day. I made banana pancakes for breakfast (impulse Bisquick buys in Phnom Penh sometimes turn out alright), ironed my teaching clothes the old-fashioned way with a heavy metal iron and hot coals, went for a long bike ride and got caught out in a massive rainstorm.

I would have made Bear Grylis proud with the shelter I made by propping palm branches up against my bike. I sat in the rice field under my shelter for a good hour while the cows and water buffalo wandered past me unfazed by the monsoon.

The storms here are something to be admired. At first the air becomes heavy and still; a few drops fall here and there. Within a minute it turns into a non-stop downpour. The wind will pick up causing the rain to come in sideways and the palm trees to sway and dance out in the rice fields. A single storm can fill a rice field to its brim and wash out the roads. One storm in Teuk Phos lasted non-stop for 7 hours. There was a bout a foot of water surrounding most of my house and the road out front turned into a lake three foot deep in places. The water buffalo were out in the marsh and all you could see were their cute faces sticking above the surface. My training host family didn’t seem overly concerned about the flooding. Plus, I was safe and sound in my second floor bedroom, so as they say in Cambodia: aut ei dtee (no problem).

Back to the story at hand: Sunday’s events. I debated whether or not to post the following part of the story. In the end though I decided to tell it because the sum of all my experiences (good and bad) in Cambodia will make my service what it is.

Sunday night was like any other; my little host brother was wearing my bike helmet and sunglasses, listening to my ipod, and dancing around my room. Suddenly a bat flew into the house and made quite the ruckus. It decided to hang out (ha-ha, literally) on one of the beams of the ceiling. My host dad, BunPa, grabbed a broom and hopped onto the crey (table/bed thing) and began swinging at the bat like it was a piñata. After three swings he sent the bat flying across the room and it landed in the spokes of my bike tire with a wham. The poor little guy was all tangled up in the spokes. BunPa flicked it outside and watched as the dogs pounced and tormented it. The bat was making such horrific noises and finally BunPa killed it with a sandal.


Some things in Cambodia will never sit well with me, I think that’s okay. I don’t have to agree with everything I see over here to be good at my job. Likewise, I cannot change everything that upsets me, nor should I try. However, it is hard to bite your tongue when your neighbors bet on chicken fights every afternoon, when people hit dogs just for the sake of doing so, or when the pigs squeal as they’re laying upside down tied to the back of the motos on their way to be slaughtered. The pigs really get to me because they sound like children screaming.

A lot of things over here don’t make sense to me, and I doubt they ever will. Regardless, I’ll keep trying to make a place for myself and learn as much as I can. Thanks for reading everyone and a special hello to Kristine’s mom (Mrs. Hart). Kristine told me that you have been following the blog, so I promised to say hello for her. I’ll try to post another story next week about the upcoming happenings in Siem Reap. Happy Halloween everyone! Please eat an extra Snickers bar for me.


Pictures: (first, my bedroom at site; second, a very nice Khmar style kitchen)