Footloose in Sisaphon

I have spent this week in Sisaphon, the provincial town of the Banteay Meanchey province and the nearest internet connection to Phnom Srok. I have found it to be just as the guidebooks describe it; very dusty with not much going on. It is located along the main road from Poipet (border town with Thailand) and Siam Reap (closest city to Angkor Wat temples). Unfortunately for Sisaphon, the road between the Thai border and one of the main reasons tourists visit Cambodia, is really really bad. In fact, rumour has it that the airlines which serve Siam Reap actually pay the government not to improve the road in order to encourage tourists to fly. This results in Sisaphon just being another dusty town that tourists pass through or fly over.

The reason I am here for so long is to observe an 8 day training course called Effective Teaching and Learning. It is run by the Ministry of Education and funded by VSO, hence the invitation. I haven’t really benefitted from the training apart from seeing first hand, the Khmer way of running training courses. It is all in Khmer and is basically what I would take for granted as a teacher from the west. It has been of great benefit to my Khmer colleagues though and two from my district attended. My VA (volunteer assistant) has also benefitted hugely from participating so it hasn’t been a complete waste of time! I have also managed to write my Christmas cards home, a few emails and update the blog, oh and the view from behind the training centre was something else....

In an attempt to discover what makes Sisaphon tick, I took my bicycle out for a ride around the town tonight. It is amazing what you discover if you put yourself out there! I met one of the guys who works at the bank next door to where I live in Phnom Srok. We had a very short conversation in a mixture of Khmer and English about why we were both in Sisaphon for the week. I didn’t quite understand his reason and I’m sure he didn’t understand mine either but it was nice to be recognised and make a connection with someone. I also passed another Westerner which was such a shock I nearly fell off my bike! Backpackers usually use Sisaphon as a toilet stop if at all so it’s intriguing to wonder why another ‘barang’ might stop for longer!

In the middle of the dusty town there is an open space with a few pagodas dotted over its tired, sun-scorched grass. Every evening between 5 and 6pm, lots of people congregate in this space to exercise (‘hat pran’ in Khmer)! It’s great! The park is packed with people playing badminton, football, volleyball and in one corner there is an aerobics video being shown on a TV screen. It was an opportunity not to be missed so I hastened to join in the aerobics class. As I attempted to follow the class (which was quite a mission as the participants knew the exercises off by heart so didn’t follow the dude on the TV screen which wasn’t to the beat of the music anyway!) I was struck with how bizarre and slightly surreal the whole thing was! Here I was, exercising in the open air with a load of middle-aged Khmers, trucks roaring past churning up dust on their way to or from Thailand, cows being led back from somewhere, and children watching me jumping up and down to Khmer aerobics! The highlight for me was the last song on the video. It was 5 minutes to 6 o’clock, my body had realised that I had been exercising for nearly an hour and had gone into shock, my toes ached from trying to keep the flip-flops on my feet and my hair was stuck to my reddened face in rather an attractive way. I was ready to drop when my brain engaged with the fact that the song I was hopping around to was Footloose! I miraculously found a new burst of energy, was promptly reminded of my wonderful friends in the UK and gave it all I had! I even sang along, much to the amusement of my exercising neighbours! Who would believe it? Footloose in Sisaphon!