Bump to baby on the beaten expat track
Isn’t Fred the cutest tukei gecko ever?? Except he’s a SHE! LOL! Just saw her little ones yesterday, they’re feisty like mommy!
Fred is about 6inches around her tummy, 10inches long to the end of her tail. She’s been a regular at our place for years. Or should I say, WE’ve been regulars at HER place for years LOL!
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A dismal overcast day spawns in the Kingdom. The mighty Mekong bucks and swells with all the world’s rage. Celestial beings roar.
Across the land village radios quiver with the news: the Eye of God cometh. Today a dark day falls. None shall be spared.
Humans and fortune tellers and witches scurry about their paltry rituals and offerings to stave the impending doom. But the cauldron of the heavens boils and bubbles. In just moments the essence of wrath will descend upon earth to end this corrupt age of Kali. Lesser clouds sent by a kindly small (unknown) Hindu god for Cambodia’s meager comfort cower as the lunar transit arcs straight into the solar spectrum.
om shanti….. Om Shanti…. OM NAMAHO SHIVA!!
[looks to see if you, reader, are still watching….]
Well. Thunderclouds rage also in my thoughts. There goes my view of the solar eclipse. Would be nice to see the arc of the cosmos hurtling us towards our destruction, at least.
[sulks. chucks a used tissue over the balcony… and the used tissue chucked over the rail blows into my downstairs neighbor’s balcony.]
[a small smile escapes.] This day may yet improve. :-)
—- update at 12:05pm, after the eclipse:
Our six and a half minutes of solar eclipse was watched by many of my friends, thanks to my news flashes on Facebook. Here below is a picture taken by Dave Coolio, since for part of those six minutes I was called into someone’s office for a minor query. :-(
Also why Dave felt the need to point out the obvious in the photo is beyond me.
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Here’s my street, we live a block off the Royal Palace. It’s everyday scenes like this that you never bother to take photos of until a friend comes along and captures everything you don’t blink twice over anymore. To the left is a tuk-tuk, riding the line to his left and back is what they call here a cyclo, and practically most people travel by some form of motorbike here.
Every day monks walk around the neighborhood collecting alms (this is one of the stores downstairs). Since the Khmer Rouge decimated the elder ranks, the religion’s influence has not gained its previous legitimacy and credibility. Respect for monks and the solidarity they fostered before the conflict era have been largely eroded.
Time for some tours around the city! This is what I get when a journalist friend is visiting. LOTS of photos of me. And yes, I know these huge sunglasses are horrible fashion bombs, but they’re great for tuk-tuk riding cuz short of goggles they keep everything out of your eyes!
The Independence Monument Plaza, view from Sothearos Blvd. See the cranes in the background? Phnom Penh is under constant construction. sigh.
D was an inspiration to me long ago with her wanderlust. Everyone back then thought she was a nut (me too, secretly!). Of course now we both envy our friends the stability of life and family and community when our lives are anything but. But connecting in different parts of the globe once in a while brings us back to what matters and what brought us out on these paths in the first place.
In a city growing up so fast, these bicycle vendors selling kids’ toys brings memories of olden days. They’re still numerous on the city streets, particularly where people like to gather at night in the new plazas.
Those of you who saw City of Ghosts (2002) with Matt Dillon might recognize this guy. Ian ‘Snowy’ Woodford is an old fixture in the Phnom Penh ‘hoods from the UNTAC days. He’s now running a bar / gallery across the Tonle River from the city.
The Phnom Penh skyline! Naturally you must have a healthy imagination to see it ;-) D and I rented a boat ($16/2hrs) and cruised the Tonle River. Brought a bottle of wine and some desserts. I always forget to look up at the night sky whenever I’m in cities. PP is sufficiently small that you can get a glimpse of some stars. But out on the river- wow.
Since deciding to leave ‘civilisation’ I hardly much missed the comforts I was luckily blessed with. Lord knows my parents are confuzzled why I chose to go to a country worse off than the one they took me out of! I guess that choice is a luxury they passed on to us, but that’s where we see things differently… So instead there’s a daily onslaught of novel situations– sights, smells, tastes– not all good! But more often than not it’s a memory to put in that bottle.
Here we saw an old man who lives at the temple on Phnom Chisour (2hrs’ motorbike ride from Phnom Penh). He writes Buddhist teachings on dried banana leaves cut into uniform ‘pages’, which are then tied together into a ‘book’. The implement is a branch with a sharpened end, and he fills in the strokes by rubbing a crushed leaf across the page. One book takes him a week to complete, and this he sells to tourists for $2. The skeptic in me wonders in which part of the pagoda do they mass-produce copies of these little books, and then age them over a fire or something. But as K and my photographer friend traipsed off to shoot all manner of inanimate curiosities, I stayed behind and watched him at length (like for 2hrs) painstakingly scrawl his messages. I even helped him pick leaves for ink (only the young leaves will do).
Yes, I bought one book from him. I have no idea what to do with it, so it sits with other dust-collecting ethnic baubles I purchase for the sake of stimulating the local economy.
This trip was a 50minute motorbike ride to the outskirts of Phnom Penh on a very hot Sunday. This is a typical panoramic view of Cambodia in the North-South region Siem Reap – Sihanoukville: flat as a pancake dry and dotted with palm and coconut trees, etc. Elevations are revered spots and wats (pagodas) are usually constructed on top of them.
These images of Buddha in various interpretations are not for idolising, such as Christians worship the images of the God. These images aim to inspire the appropriate mode of behaviour towards the personal achievement of enlightenment. It is an admired philosophy, especially during these modern fast-paced times, but its lack of appreciation for personal gains contributes to the detriment of Asian society (values?) in an age of materialism and the pursuit of wealth.
I have no idea what kind of turtles these are, but a lot of them are classified ‘threatened’ in Cambodia. We were taken once to a restaurant in Kampot Province, where the walls were lined with WWF and conservancy posters. Obviously it’s illegal to hunt those animals on the posters, but enforcement capacity is low. They were the menu offerings, but only hush hush. If officials came through the door the establishment is upholding the law.
No shortage of cutesy shots in the third world. Sadly this is exploited and children are sometimes harmed in order to garner more sympathy and thus more money from foreigners.
At wats around the country there are soothsayers who will read palms, feet, sticks, and tea leaves. Philosophies about fate and destiny are major factors why the region has not lived to its full capacity in the past several centuries compared to the West.
This woman makes 3 baskets in one day. Then sells each basket for 1000 Riel (25 cents) for a small one, or 3000 Riel (75 cents) for a big one the size of a cantaloupe. I can never look at the handicrafts in a Pier1 store ever again, since coming out to Asia.
The prize part of a crab is the fat inside the shell. Here they are sold by a vendor at the market. These are river crabs, small enough to fit nicely in a child’s hand. The shell / fat is sold for 600 Riel (~24 cents) and the whole crab for 1000 Riel (25 cents).
There were probably five mosques on the way to Oudong from Phnom Penh, which surprised us. Muslims make up 10% of Cambodia’s population, the largest group after Buddhists, but they’re largely concentrated in Kampot and Kampong Cham (Cham is the Khmer word for Muslim). Saudi Arabia finances the building of mosques here. Their presence has been slowly increasing, since the finding of oil off Cambodia’s coasts.
All photos from Keith A Kelly‘s photostream.
My view from the treadmill at the gym. Running east towards the Mekong River (which is at the top of this photo) is Sihanouk Blvd. Independence Monument, commemorating the war dead and independence from colonial rule (France) in 1953, is at the intersection with Norodom Blvd. The parks on either side of the monument are hubs of activity.
The street grid under French rule composed of wide main boulevards lined with trees. Fortunately the not-so-often wise leadership decided that this is an asset. The municipality has recently begun a spate of beautification projects around the city, making medians more inviting and family-friendly like this one. It’s part of a wider effort at attracting tourism, as most visit the country for just three days– all three of which is spent in Siem Reap’s Angkor Wat archeological zone.