Going to the coast

Today, Michael and I are leaving for the coast. We´re going to Kep, a sleepy little town for some beachlife and relaxation Wednesday - Sunday. I´m really looking forward to it, neither one of us has been there before so it´s going to be both interesting and great with a change of environment for a while. No matter how much I enjoy living in Phnom Penh, it´s always nice to get a break from the city life now and then.

For some more information on where we´re going, check out http://www.travelfish.org/location/cambodia/southern_cambodia/kampot/kep, and http://veranda-resort.com to see where we´ll be staying.

A visit from London!

Ha, Michael is here and I´m really happy about it! I picked him up at the airport this morning, and now he´s sleeping after the long flight from London to Phnom Penh via Singapore. For those of you who hasn´t met Michael, I can tell you that we hooked up as friends at Crete 17 years ago and has been very good friends ever since. Some of you met him at my wedding 9 years ago. We´re trying to meet up as aften as we can, last time was in Amsterdam earlier this year, and a couple of years before that we went to Switzerland together. And now he´s here, yippie! I´ve taken some time off from work, so next week we´ll be travelling together, probably going to the coast for some relaxing beach athmosphere. We´ve both done all the Cambodian "must see" sights already, such as Angkor and Sihanoukville, which gives us a lot more freedom to go wherever we just feel like.
Now I´m going to try to wake him up and take him out to lunch, so he starts to adjust to the Cambodian time...

The Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok - a place to dream in a city that never sleeps

This week the Pchum Benh festival is celebrated in Cambodia, which means that I´ve got Wednesday-Sunday off from work. A perfect opportunity to go to my favourite city Bangkok I thought - so here I am! I arrived to a flooded Bangkok on Wednesday evening, checking in at my beloved "the Atlanta Hotel" (www.theatlantahotelbangkok.com) where I´ve stayed so many times before. Oh, my beloved Atlanta... Can´t descibe in words how much this place has meant to me over the years... This has been my base for my studies, research and writing, and for my travels - both on my own and together with Janne. I´ve met many good friends here, it´s become my Home away from home where I always feel welcome and being greeted as a family member. The family "the Atlantians" as we sometimes joke about ourselves, a group of more or less (usually more) excentric writers, researchers, independent travellers, expats, etc, of which many have visited the Atlanta for many, many years and still are coming and going on a regular or irregular basis. The Atlanta is a budget hotel, pretty much untouched since the 50:s, with a wonderful art deco lobby and sweeping staircases. Also with a lovely restaurant with tons of 50:s athmosphere, with the most delicious food and an extensive vegetarian menue. There´s actually where I´m sitting now writing this, and this is also where I ususally spend my evenings, reading, writing, catching up with old friends I haven´t seen for quite some time and sometimes also making new ones. In the daytime, it´s lovely to relax by the pool or in the garden, watching the turtles in the pond that´s constantly expanding as more and more baby turtles are hetched every year. And of course to cuddle with some of the more than 40 cats that has been adopted by the Atlanta. I´m always crying when I´m leaving this place, and I probably will tomorrow as well. But it´s good to know that I´m now living only an hour away by plane, which gives me the opportunity to come here a lot more often now. This might be the first, but maybe not the last stay at the Atlanta for me this year...?!

Congratulations, Darling!

Today, my beloved husband turns 4..-ehh, hrhum... I mean 32. 32 it is. For sure. 32. Congratulations, Darling! To celebrate this, I´d like to share a couple of photos with you of the most wonderful man in the whole world...;


Janne on a terrace in Nafplio, Greece...


...and on a beach in Athens.

Aaahh! Isn´t he handsome!?! *proud*

On top of that, I´m also happy and proud to tell you that the two of us are celebrating our 12:th engagement anniversary today! We got engaged on Jannes 32... -eehhrmh.. 22:nd birthday back in 1995. Which means that I was only 22... ehh, hrhrum.. I mean 12.. or... eehhh... anyway, never mind.

Congratulations Honey, and congratulations to Us, too! I love you!

Finally connected

Hurray, today I´ve finally managed to get an internet connection installed in my flat here in Phnom Penh! Yippiiee!! I celebrated by immediately calling Janne via the iChat programme on my Mac lap top. Wonderful thing, that iChat I must say! Making it possible to see and talk to eachother via a tiny intergrated camera in the lap top screen. Talking and looking at eachother over a cup of coffee... Makes the world feel so much smaller, bringing us closer together although we´re so far away... Talked to my parents via Skype and web cam as well, and the sound is so much clearer now when I don´t have to bring my laptop to internet cafés. And Marco called me from Holland too, showing off their adorable Schi-tzu/Jack Russel Terrier "Lola" via Skype and webcam. So it´s been a great day in that way; feels like I´ve been visited by dear friends and family and even a dog from all parts of the world! :-) It´s been so nice to see them all here in my livingroom in Phnom Penh! :-)

I can´t believe how much the modern means of communication have developed since I did my first field study in Thailand back in 1995... At that time there was no internet, mobile phones, web cams or sms... The only means of correspondence was via letters, which took two weeks in either direction. I remember that I at one point missed Janne a lot and wanted to let him know, so I went to a post office and sent him a telegramme which I guess took less than a day to be delivered from Hua Hin in Thailand to Linköping in Sweden... It was a simple little telegramme, with only three words; "I love you"... But I was very happy to be able to get that message across from one part of the world to the other, so quickly... What Janne thought? I think he was mostly surprised when the messanger from the post office knocked at the door... But anyway, what a change that has taken place! We´re now able to communicate with friends and loved ones on a daily basis, quickly and for free... I feel so fortunate for this, as it makes it possible for me to live and work as I do right now, and still be able to stay in touch with you all.

So; here´s to new means of communication, and here´s to my newly installed internet connection in my flat on street 115 in Phnom Penh! Cheers!

PS. For those of you who haven´t installed Skype yet, I strongly recommend you to do so. It´s very easy, just go to www.skype.com and register for a Skype account. And then you´re able to call other Skype users (frends like me!) all over the world, for free via your computer.

Bullie Bags!

Look what I found at my local market "Psar O´Russei" the other day;
BULL TERRIER BAGS! :-)



Ha ha, now my collection of bull terrier bags can grow even bigger! :-) I´ve bought a lot of nice bull terrier bags of different brands everytime I´ve been to Bangkok, but I didn´t expect to find any in Phnom Penh. But obvoiously, there are some really nice ones, just 200 meters from my house! Lucky me! :-)

Polly Jean and Janne - media stars!

Today, I´m extremely proud to see my loved ones; Polly Jean and Janne, being interviewed in Expressen, one of the biggest evening newspapers in Sweden! :-)
We´re told the interview will be broadcasted on some local tv channels as well, but frankly it´s just very small channels so you´d be very lucky to catch them there.

For those of you who don´t understand Swedish, the theme for the whole thing is that Polly Jean has her own page on Facebook. (And yes, of course it was me who set it up and now poor Janne has to cover for it while I´m abroad....) The interview is a part of the coverage on that Facebook has become such a huge phenomenon, and that now even pets has their own pages on Facebook. The interview explains that we first set up the page to introduce Polly Jean to friends far away who are curious about Polly Jean but never have had the chance to meet her. But quite quickly, Polly Jean started to get friend requests from dogs - and a pig! - from all over the world; Bolivia, England, USA, South Africa etc, so her page kind of started to get a life of it´s own... Well, I guess you´ve to take a look for yourself to see...
To see the interview on webb-tv, go to: http://www.expressen.se/webb-tv/index.html?serialid=5938
To see the article, go to: http://www.expressen.se/husdjur/1.844549/nu-har-hunden-polly-blivit-basta-van-med-en-gris

And last but not the least; thank you Martina for coming up with this totally wicked idea and for talking us into putting Polly Jean on broadcast. I guess that´s one of the reasons that you really deserve my nomination of you as "my most creative friend" on Facebook.

Back in Phnom Penh, and going north east.

It was of course difficult to leave Stockholm and my loved ones behind after three wonderful weeks together. But luckily, I also felt immediately at home when I landed at the airport in Phnom Penh. It´s amazing how quickly you adapt, isn´t it? Seeing my friends here also helped, of course; thank you Johan, Mimmi & Albin and Marco for being such lovely friends. Now I´m looking forward to Janne´s visit over Christmas and the New Year. Hopefully, I´ll also get visits from some friends as well; Louise in mid-December, and hopefully will Michael be able to make it here from London in October/November.

This week, the work has really kicked off for sure. Tomorrow, I´m leaving for a weeks field trip to north eastern Cambodia . Me and a couple of colleagues are going to Stung Treng and Ratanakiri in north eastern Cambodia, to visit two of our Cambodian partner organisations who works with Democracy and Human Rights there. North eastern Cambodia is supposed to be very different and beautiful, it´s fairly remote and populated by indigenous people, so it´s going to be very interesting to see. The situation for organisation working for human rights is getting more and more difficult, and Cambodian activist are being abducted and/or killed for claiming their rights. Land grabbing is a common problem; rich and powerful people stealing land from poor and indigenous people, taking away their possibilities to make a living. This issue is one of the things we´ll look deeper into during the field trip, so I´m looking forward to a very interesting week.

For some information on where I´m heading this week, check;
http://www.travelfish.org/region/cambodia/northeastern_cambodia
http://www.travelfish.org/province/cambodia/northeastern_cambodia/ratanakiri

Going home and away at the same time, part 2

In an hour, I´m leaving for the airport to go back to Phnom Penh after three wonderful weeks in Sweden. As you might recall from the last posting, I was a bit emotionally puzzled about leaving Phnom Penh - which of course turned out to be a totally waste of energy. Being here in Stockholm, spending time with my loved ones has been fantastic. Thanks to all my beloved friends and family who have made my vacation so warm and lovely. I´ll carry this summer with me in my heart, all the way to the other side of the world.

So, soon to be leaving, of course I can´t help wondering how it will feel to return to Phnom Penh again..? My home away from home... I feel just as puzzled as I did when I was leaving for Sweden... But as that turned out just fine, I guess that this´ll do, too..?

As much as I dread leaving Janne, Polly Jean and all good friends in Sweden, I´m also looking forward to see my friends in Phnom Penh again; Mimmi & Albin, Johan and hopefully Marco who´ll be on one of his regular visits from Holland. It´s really, really nice to know that I have some good friends to get together with when I get back. And it makes this process of saying good bye, just a little bit easier.

So, to all my dear friends in different parts of the world; lots of love to you all, and thank you for being you!