February 15

Feb. 15. Went to TB and gave them pix of boy scout and Sras trip, that I had downloaded on my thumb drive. I need to have Steve do a picture of Nak and me and bring it to her.. Initiated Rattana to set up visit to Sras on March 9-10, as March 8 is Women’s Independence Holiday. It seems that the number of three day weekends rivals that of the USA. Nuong, my unsuccessful house broker who also touts herself as a fixer and nature tour guide, broke her lunch meeting with me and rescheduled for later in the day at 5:30 pm. So I did some errands. I needed to extend my visa as I was not able to get a business visa at the airport and ended up with a 20 day visa which expired on February 17th. Guess that means I have been in Cambodia for a month without Lauren, as I re-entered the day Lauren left for home on the 17th of January. I will be fined $5 a day upon leaving the Country if I do not extend. The strange part of it is to get an extension, other than paying the fee of $45, I needed to surrender my passport so it could be sent to Phnom Penh for processing which takes a week when the 3 day holiday for the Chinese New Year is accounted for. I am trusting this process !!! I have a copy of it so that when I travel to Battambang I can use the copy when checking into the hotel, which always wants to copy it. You go to a travel agent to do the extension, so while I was there I bought all of the tickets that Lyman and I need to return to Siem Reap from Phnom Penh after a week of filming there and the tickets for all three of us to leave on March 19th, with Lyman catching his flight home from Phnom Penh and us from Bangkok. I met Nuong for a beer and to hire her as a fixer to arrange for us to be able to film a traditional dance ( Aspara dance)., a shadow puppet performance and a trip to Phnom Kulan ( Mount Kulan) where there is a waterfall and a pagoda to arrange for a blessing by Monks to be filmed at the waterfall. We shall go the waterfall on Saturday and I need to figure out if we should try and film it now with Steve and save a day from our shooting schedule with L and L. I had dinner at home and ate a home made dish of pasta and Bolognese sauce that I had cooked earlier in the day. This is the first real dinner I had made for myself and I froze most of it for another night.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Khmer birthday



In the morning I resumed volunteer work at Trailblazers. I somehow find sifting sand, as monotonous as it is to be very soothing. It does make one appreciate the taken for granted things in life or that which we in the USA have done for us by machine. I am sure that at home there would be a machine or some mechanized way for me to do this menial task repetitive task. I laugh at myself at age 65 doing this work for nothing and getting satisfaction doing it. It is a long way from being a lawyer and charging an hourly fee that people here are lucky to make for a months wages.
Getting better riding my bicycle. I even was able to put a person on the back of it and peddle . I got a bit tired but it is fun and a crazy. I will get a picture to post.
Last night I had dinner with Warren ( from the UK but lives in Costa de Sol Spain) Antoinette ( from the UK and lives in East Village NYC) and Claudia, ( from East Germany and lives in Bejing) all volunteers, to send Claudia on her way to Lao. Fascinating conversation on how they liked living in America has all of them had done so. In general they all liked America. the diversity, the enthusiasm and the vastness.
Then at around 9:30 I decided to honor an invitation from Sam my guide friend to attend his son's 18th birthday party, which I really did not want to do. But I took a tut tut and my usual gift for Sam a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and showed up. What a good move. As I came in he came into the garden with at least 200 people with a live band on the stage and lights and decorations he exclaimed to me " OH my God" and hugged me. This is not usual for Sam. The custom was that all of the men were at the center tables and the woman were at the side. I asked why and was told that when the men are drinking the women step aside. Needless to say these guys were well oiled; and they convinced me to dance with them and we drank danced and talked into the early hours.

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