Kampuchea Crossings

Bump to baby on the beaten expat track

Veterinarian options in Phnom Penh

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Got a dog. A co-worker gave me one of his puppies like it was an extra tomato from his garden. Since he started getting increasingly agitated as I protested, I just told him to bring it to my house – it was the middle of a workday, what was I going to do with it? Big mistake. He got a name, Iko. Hubby and our little loved him. So I looked for a vet.

Thankfully there’s a gold-standard in vet care in town (Agrovet), but for routine visits I’m not real interested in paying the high fees, especially after the poor service during puppy’s first visit there. Likely in the case of trauma or severe illness we’d take him back to this clinic (from comments on the Cambodia Parent Network it seems I should specifically ask for the main vet there, Arnaud).

Other friends seem happy with their local Khmer vets, and their pets (some are quite mature now) look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed healthy to me. So here they are, a list of Khmer vets recommended by other expats who’ve lived in Phnom Penh for many years:

(1) One person has been taking her dog to Navetco Vet Clinic for years 097 266 1191

(2) Three people recommended Sophorn, and I found this below on a thread on vets in PP when I googled: http://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4231

Give this bloke a try: Sophorn 012824991
He’s a ‘proper’ Cambodian vet and as a bonus seems genuinely to like animals. It’s been ~2 years since we last had an animal problem that couldn’t be solved with benevolent neglect – so the number may be out of date. His house/surgery used to be in Tuol Kork…
above the railway line…
left hand side of the map…
at a pointy intersection…
… nah fuck it, can’t remember the address. Lucky the number was still in the phone. Sophorn was good value professionally and financially. He cleared up a nasty skin infection on the family mog and then gave him a neat testicular snipping to end his wicked ways to boot. Can’t remember how much we paid – but $10-$15 all for house calls sounds familiar.
Hell, for $200 bucks I would have done the cat myself with two half bricks.
Sophorn also has a dry sense of humour – after finshing a very nice job of making our male cat into a soprano, with all the family watching in fascination – he looked directly at my six year old son and said, “Right, who’s next?”
The poor kid didn’t uncross his legs for about a week.

(3) Sila was recommended by two people, including this below from the Cambodia Parent Network:

We are not in PP, but i still have a number for a very reliable vet we found. He also helped us with all papers we needed to travel with our dog.
His name is Sila and he comes to your house for extra $5, or you can go to his clinic if you like. I never needed to go there, but it’s around central market what i know.
His number is 012 477 686 and 097 198999.
Sokhamalpheap Animal Clinic
#64 St174

(4) Below, Wayne Weightman had his assistant collect info on various vet options in town. I know it’s a pet shop, but when I went in there to get the puppy groomed ($5 – it’s a small breed) many expats came and went over the span of 20 minutes shopping for various things, and when asked they seemed ok with the vet care they were getting there.

a new color scheme

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I’ve been separated a week already from my son and I am still shedding the tension from a year and a half of interrupted sleep/sleeplessness. So here’s one way to de-stress – painting! I had to paint the place anyway (the previous tenants had a toddler who marked up the parts of the wall he could reach) and I had help so I figured, why not have fun with the colors! Seeing the vivid colors go up – stark against the white of the previous walls – made me momentarily think I’ve made a mistake. But now they’re up I love it! More pictures later!

Tuk-tuk rides: Look, ma, no seatbelt!

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This little monkey is a a terror in the tuk-tuk. Thankfully the tuk tuk driver, Rithy, drives fairly slowly and cautiously, occasionally watching the boy from the rearview mirrors to make sure he hadn’t fallen out (which is sadly his only use of these implements that we can determine). But luckily he fell asleep after we let him use the vehicle as a jungle gym for 20 minutes. A sleeping boy makes for a happy Papa!

the problem with the way we handled attachment parenting

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The above image is from the 21 May 2012 issue of TIME magazine. “Are you mom enough?” – That headline just grabs you, doesn’t it, questioning your values and your parenting.

One thing we didn’t anticipate, in all the planning and discussions about attachment parenting, is the difficulties in teaching our son to put himself to sleep, and to soothe himself back to sleep when he twitches awake in the night – without me.

For the past 16 months I was perfectly happy to oblige his every request. I’m quite fortunate to work for an employer who’s flexible to the needs of new mothers. There’s a nursery at the office so you can nurse or pump during the workday, and until the child is a year old s/he and the nanny can be taken on work trips to the provinces.

Plus, the boy is not a cuddler, so the time together -even when he wants to use me as a pacifier for extended periods of time- is precious to me.

Hubby and I just assumed he would eventually begin nursing less at night. But he hasn’t, and now it’s starting to feel like a chain. We’ve tried all the “gentle” ways to teach our son to sleep (we bought all the Pantley books). And after trying for six months, none of the recommendations worked. We’d like to once in a while have a quiet night in, watching a movie after he falls asleep. Instead, every night starting around seven (I get home from work around 530-6pm), we begin his bedtime routine and he falls asleep anywhere between 2-3 hours later!, nursing!

So today is Day One of detachment parenting, where I’ll sleep at our neighbor’s every night until our son can (hopefully!) put himself to sleep with just Papa in the house. There’ll be a lot of crying and temper tantrums from this high-need little baby, but hopefully there’s sanity at the end of the tunnel. This isn’t to say we don’t recommend attachment parenting, just that we’d probably attack the sleep issue early on and not let it become a problem.