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... :-)