Mothers Day

Today Mothers Day is celebrated in Sweden. So I´m sending a lots of warm hugs and kissen to my mother - I´m thinking about you today!


Congratulations on Mothers Day, Mum!

It's a boy!

Today, I was very happy to receive the wonderful news that my dear friends Jenny and Anders have become parents again! Their first born son Arvid, who turned two in April, now has a little brother!

The little fellow was born at 02:46 am, he's 51 cm's tall and weighs 3,7 kilos. Both he and the rest of the family is fine.

According to the Chinese Calendar that we use here in South East Asia, this little baby is born in the year of the Golden Pig. It is actually the luckiest year to be born, and happens only once in 600 years! So I'm happy to tell you that this little baby boy is a very lucky child, that 'll live a very fortunate life!

Until then; congratulations to you all - I'll definitely celebrate the happy news here in Phnom Penh!!! And I'm very much looking forward to meet this little guy in August!

Visits and visitors

Janne has booked his tickets for coming to Phnom Penh in December, and I'm of course very happy! He's arriving on the 22:nd, staying for three wonderful weeks. We'll spend Christmas here in Phnom Penh, and who knows where we'll be celebrating New Years Eve...? So many opportunities here; only an 1 hr flight to Bangkok, 5 hrs by bus to Saigon, 3 hrs flight to the Philippines...

It's been decided since long that Janne will come here in December, and I'm planning to go to Sweden for two weeks of holiday in Sweden in August. But appareantly we're not the only ones in the family planning for a journey?! Yesterday, I was surprised and of course very glad to hear that my parents have made reservations for coming to see me here in Cambodia in February, and at the same time we'll celebrate my fathers 60:th birthday together. My parents are planning to arrive on the 4:th of February, and Dad will turn 60 on the 6:th, so we'll have some celebration to do and some Angkor temples to see, before they go home to Sweden again on the 14:th of February.

Another visit that I am very much looking forward to, is that my friend Louise probably will combine an environmental cenference in Bali with a visit to Phnom Penh. She'll hopefully turn up here around the 13:th of December. Hurray!

So, as you all understand I'm very excited about the planned visits, and I'm also hoping for more friends to show up here! To give you a clue about a good time to come, I'm listing the dates I'll be off from work due to National Holidays during the rest of this year:
21/9: Constitution Day
10-12/10: Pchum Ben (don't ask me what that is)
29/10: Coronation Day of His Majesty the King of Cambodia
31/10: Birthday of His Majesty Norodom Sihanouk
9/11: Independence Day (no, not the movie)
23/11: the Water festival
10/12: International Human Rights Day (Take the chance to raise your voice and to make a change!)
But of course you're more than welcome to come at other times as well!

And yes, I'm still looking for a permanent place to stay. Hopefully that will be solved soon - keep your fingers crossed for a lovely wooden traditional cambodian house on street 398! - so that I can welcome you all to my very own place here in the wonderful city of Phnom Penh! :-)

Taking the dog for a walk?

I'll continue on the dog subject that I started in the previous posting. I was very happy to find that here are a lot of dogs in Phnom Penh, and the majority of them seem to live good lives. Some of the dogs are kept as kind of watch dogs, walking around freely as they like, sleeping on the pavement outside the family shop. Other dogs are kept as pets, family dogs. And, this is the interesting part, they stay in the house - the whole time! My first day at the office, I started to discuss my favourite subject - pets - with a Cambodian colleague of mine who also adores pets and has three dogs and God knows how many cats at home. I asked her curiosly where she takes her dogs for a walk, as Phnom Penh don't have very many green areas, fields or forests to talk about. She just looked at me in a funny way as she didn't understand the question. "Well, when you get home from work or in the weekends, where do you take the dogs for some play and excersise?" I asked. "Walks? That we don't have time for" she answered. "They stay in the house. They can play in the livingroom. Sometimes I give them a ball, then they play a little more, that they like". Ok, this was a kind of unexpected answer to a Swedish dog owner, used to a constant bad concious the days my bull terrier is not taken for at the least three hour long walks.

The other day I spoke to my khmer teacher about dogs. "Oh, I would love to have a dog" he said. "So why don't you get one", I asked? (In English, of course, my khmer is not nearly that advanced yet). "I have had dogs before" he replied, "Three of them, one at a time. But everytime when the dog is approaching adult hood we have taken it back to the breeder. We just can't keep it". I asked him why. "Because it smells very bad when they poop on the floor" he said. "But why don't you train it to go outside to do that?" I asked him. "Because we are not used to train dogs. And beside from that, our garden is not covered by grass, but by concrete, so even if it poops outside, it smells terrible when the poop lays on the ground in the sun". "But don't you take the dog for a walk so it can do whatever a dog needs to do, somewhere else"? I asked. " Walk away with the dog from the house? No, why should I do that"? my teacher asked in a tone that suggested that now I was asking quite stupid questions. I didn't take this subject any further, I just pictured to myself how the neighbours probably would look at me, if I would do such a strange thing as taking a dog for a walk in this Phnom Penh neighbourhood, and in a Swedish way bending down to pick up the dog poop in a plastic bag - saving it for later.... :-)

Missing Polly Jean

Until now, everything here has been so new to me; a new city, a new job, new people - a totally new life. I hardly haven´t had the time to think about what I´ve left behind at all. Until yesterday morning, when I enjoyed my saturday morning breakfast at a french café near my hotel. Suddenly entered a black laborador, taken for a walk by his master to the bakery to buy some fresh baguettes for breakfast. As I saw the dog and its master together, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of missing my precious princess enormously. And my eyes was filled with tears. The night after, I dreamt that I was at home in Stockholm, cuddling with Polly Jean. It was a nice and sunny afternoon in Stockholm, and we spent it together playing in the garden, and after that we took a nap together on the sofa. Just as any regular saturday. The dream was so real; I felt the warmth from her body and she licked my face - but thank God I didn´t smell her breath. :-) The dream was so real that I didn´t understand where I was when I woke up. It took me a minute or so to understand that I was at a hotel in Phnom Penh, and not at home with my dog. And of course, at that moment I missed her a lot.

Not many people understands how much the pets; boths the cats and the dog means to me and Janne. But I don´t care. I just feel sorry for them, not having experienced the friendship and love that the pets has brought into our lives. Knowing that they have a great life although I have moved 10.000 kilometres away, getting the best care possible by the best master in the whole world, Janne, makes this adventure possible for me. Without his love and care for them, I strongly doubt that I would´ve accepted the job here in Phnom Penh, and definitely not with a peaceful mind. So for this; helping my dream of moving to Asia come true, I´m more grateful to him than I can put in words.

Despite what I now have told you, being away from Janne and the pets is actually a lot easier than I had expected. The new techniques of communication is of course to thank for this. Today, me and Janne spoke with the help of the iChat programme in our laptops, which makes it possible for us to both speak and see eachother. We spoke for nearly an hour, until Polly Jean, who was sleeping with her head on Jannes lap and snored so I could hear it all the way to Cambodia, decided that it was time for a walk. It feels so good to be able to speak and to see eachother; what an enormous change since I did my first field study in Thailand 12 years ago, when we communicated by letters and telegrammes... Now I can listen to Polly Jean the bull terrier snoring and Smilla the cat meowing all the to Cambodia. That is definitely a lovely cure for a longing heart on the other side of the world!


Me and Polly Jean

Here comes the rain again...

Writing this, I´m sitting at the terrace of the lovely Java Café here in Phnom Penh, looking at the rain pouring down at Sihanouk Boulevard. The rainy season is here to stay for sure, with heavy showers every afternoon. We westerners welcome the showers which clears the hot air and cools down the temperature. The Cambodians also enjoys the lower temperatures that the rain brings, but are also a bit worried about the early start of the rainy season. Usually, it doesn´t start until the beginning of June, which means that it has started one month too early this year. The early rains will have a negative effect on the rice harvest, the Cambodians claims, and are therefore not as enthusiastic about the whole thing as the grateful westerner writing this.

Some days ago, I attended my first khmer lesson. My employer has signed me up for a 60 hrs intense khmer class; 2 hrs a day at five days a week. The teacher is brilliant, unfortunately his new student is not... But she is at least enthusiastic and plans to study on the side this weekend.

Talking about the weekend; I now have four days off from work, due to the celebration of the kings birthday on Monday and Tuesday. I also had last Monday off, due to the Harvest Festival. Do you see a pattern here? Cambodia is actually the country in the world with the most holidays. -Me likey! as Yoda would say...

The past week, I´ve looked at some more places to stay. So far, I haven´t succeeded in finding a place, but I´m quite optimistic of the chances. Some days ago, I actually fell in love with a traditional Khmer wooden house. It had an athmosephere to die for, two modern bathrooms and a gorgeous veranda. I told the landlord that if they could install a couple of more air conditioners, I´d take the house on the spot. But unfortunately this wasn´t possible due the soft constructions of the wooden walls. So the estate agency actually adviced me not to take the house, as they claimed it would be too hot. So it was with pain in my heart that I realised that this wasn´t the house for me. And the house contract was instead signed by a French family, which didn´t come as a surprise to the estate dealer who commented that "...-the French loves wooden houses and they don´t care about air conditioning." Oh, how I wish that I was a cool French instead of an overheated Swede... Weel, beside from that house, so far I´ve only seen one apartement which I´m really enthusiastic about. I´ve asked to see that one a second time next week. But my dream is actually to find a traditional wooden khmer house, with a veranda and ac. But I also realise that´ll be an almost impossible task, as there are very few wooden houses on the market due to the fact that older buldings are being replaced by modern ones here in Phnom Penh. They are actually building everywhere here, on just about every street there are building constructions going on. A sign of the economical boost, I guess. As is the increasing traffic situation.

Talking about the traffick situation; I´ll tell you one thing that´ll make it even worse - I´ve got myself a motorbike, or "moto" as it´s called here. As I´ve never driven one before, a colleague of mine - a driver named Vibol - has got the not-so-easy mission to teach me how to drive. How it´s proceeding? Oh well, at least we´ve started. And stopped. What happened in between? Oh well, we laughed a lot - and I´ll think that we´ll leave the other details to some other time... :-)

Back on my feet again

Back on my feet again after that horrible food poisoning. Had a lovely brunch (oh well, at least a smoothie, which was all I dared to have considering the circumstances) with a colleague at a nice cafe yesterday. When we sat there, it struck me how much the cafe- bar- and restaurant scene has changed since I was here four years ago. Just about everywhere, there are lovely little cafes with wonderful menus offering delicious desserts, salads, tapas, fresh fruit juices, smoothies, and just about any kind of coffee or tea you could wish for. (A bit like Luang Prabang in Laos, for you who have been there lately). And when it comes to restaurants; except for the delicious khmer- vietnamese- chinese and thai food you find everywhere here, now there's also a huge number of other international restaurants on the scene here; for example japanese, russian, italian, mexican... Last night I was invited to a colleagues house. We ordered indian food for home delivery, which turned out to be excellent. This wonderful selection of great food in Phnom Penh has come as a pleasant surprise to me, I must say. Except for the fact that I had hoped for loosing some wight during my time here... :-\ Oh well, I guess we'll have to wait and see about that... ;-)

After that smoothie I mentioned, I went to look at a couple of apartements. The first one turned out to be far to dark and gave me claustrophobia. And we don't want that to happen, do we, so I quickly went to have a look at the second one. It turned out to be really, really nice; large, cool, light, including two terraces and also a large balcony - which I by the way have promised Janne. We're both very found of the idea of a balcony where we can have coffee in the morning and sip drinks in the evening. All year round, which is one of the advantages of living in Phnom Penh compared to Sweden. :-p Janne has also wished for a cockroach free apartement, which on the other hand I think will be far more difficult to live up to. :-\ Anyway, this lovely apartement of course turned out to be far too expensive in the end, so I'll continue the search later this week. Hopefully, it won't be too long before I have a home here, where I can welcome you all! :-)

Start - and then stop...

Hi again,

sorry for not posting anything for the past days. The thing is that I caught food poisoning my second day here... A bit embarrasing, really... I should know better than to eat just about anything that comes my way without giving it a second thought. What happened was, that at my first day at the office my colleagues took me out to a nice lunch to welcome me to Cambodia. Very nice of them, indeed. I was so charmed by the whole thing that I didn't give it a second thought that it was a buffee... And everyone who's done the slightest little bit of travelling in Asia - including me - knows that we should follow the golden rule of eating out in Asia: 1) stay away from buffees 2) if you can't stay away: at least be careful about what you eat. But did I do any of this? No. So what happened? I've been in bed for almost four days, with high fever and unable to leave "the safety zone" which is the two meters distance between my bed and the bathroom. Cleaning the bathroom floor once and a while, if you know what I mean... I've now taken the risk to leave my room for a short while, to check my e-mails and update my blog. But this won't be a very long posting, if you get my message...

Anyway, before this food posoning struck me, I did my first day at the office. I got an introduction schedule for the coming month, which looks very interesting and well put together. It also includes a lot of time for my khmer lessons which will start next week and also time for looking at apartements. I'm looking forward to a "new start" at the office next week, after this quite unfortunate and rocky start. But here we go again...! :-)

Arrival Day

So, I've finally arrived to Phnom Penh. After a quite pleasant flight, I was met at the airport by a colleague of mine who helped me through the visa and customs procedures, and then drove me to the hotel. The hotel is situated in a nice neighbourhood with a lot of nice restaurants, cafes, shops etc, and is also the location for many NGO:s (it's actually called 'NGO land'), embassies and international organisations. My office is quite near the hotel, which is very convenient. Tomorrow, I'll start looking for a flat.

In the afternoon, another colleague of mine came to the hotel to give me a tour around Phnom Penh. The city has really chenged during the past four years since I was hear the last time. Beside the fact that there's more traffic now, (which is still absolutely NOTHING compared to Bangkok and other Asian cities that I'm used to)I must say that I find Phnom Penh even nicer now than I did back then. Which was a pleasant surprise!

I've spent the evening taking a short walk around the neighbourhood, and had a delicious meal at a café nearby. Of course I wish that Janne was here to share this with me; I know how much he loves Cambodia and Phnom Penh, and how much he would enjoy being here. But besides from that, I find nothing but a great joy walking the streets of Phnom Penh again. There's something so special about this country: the relaxed athmosphere, the low voices, the smell, the people... How can you feel so at home in a country that you hardly know at all..?

Tomorrow, I'll start my new job. The colleagues I've met today has been very nice, welcoming, helpful and warm, which has given me a promising feeling about what it will, or can, be like to work here. But I am also a bit nervous, of course. Please, keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow! :-)