Happy Birthday Corine

Sunday 14th October

Today was Corine’s birthday and because she is Dutch and from Holland, she wanted us all to join her on a bicycle ride around the countryside of Kampong Cham. In Holland there are no cars so Dutch people are more than used to getting around on two wheels. We had a very exciting day...

First we cycled from the VSO house around a nearby lake. The scenery was stunning! My good friend Jean is not yet comfortable on a bike so was driven around on the back of John’s moto. Unfortunately, John was carrying his rather large camera in his front basket which served as an open invite to some passing youths on another moto. They snatched the camera from the basket and made off with it. John quickly followed in hot pursuit but Jean’s pleas to stop soon put him off. He stopped, let Jean off the back and carried on following his camera at high speed. At the time he reckoned that he could catch them as he only had one on his moto compared to the three of them on their moto. He was right and before long they wisely decided to drop the camera.

When John returned to us cyclists, with his camera, we all clapped and cheered and so did the villagers – John’s wife gave him a slap round the head!

We carried on our birthday outing to Phnom Bpros Phnom Srei (Man and Woman Hills – see photo above: Man Hill has stupors on top and Woman Hill is covered in trees) where we climbed the hills, saw stupors built to honour thousands killed in the nearby fields by the Khmer Rouge, met some over-protective wild monkeys and enjoyed the cycle down again as we didn’t need to peddle! Legend has it that the hills were made by a group of men and women in a competition to see who could build the tallest hill before the first star appeared in the night’s sky. The women’s team cleverly lit a bonfire which the men thought was the first star appearing in the night’s sky so they stopped making their hill. The women, however, continued building their hill and won the competition. I think we can all learn something from that story.

We meandered our bikes through rice fields and small wooden housed villages and took loads of beautiful photos!! The rice fields are so amazingly green and lush and we saw two young boys riding through them on the back of water buffalo! Everyone, particularly the children, greet us with calls of ‘hello’ and laugh so hard when we attempt the Khmer greetings! We also found a small community who have been encouraged by a French NGO to create handicrafts from the natural resources. They had some silk looms and really pretty lamps and household knickknacks made from coconut shells, bamboo and the like. Gorgeous – and has got me starting to think about how I will decorate my new home. Hardly Shoreham Close, the photos remind me that it feels as if you are in a huge blue bathroom – not too cosy!

P.S. As I get to know my camera and all the crazy functions better, so the photos get bigger, better and more arty-farty. To view even larger, just click on the picture.