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.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Feb 21 Jon's Birthday party



Lauren and I have met Jon Morgan who is from Rhode Island and been here in Cambodia for 13 years or more. He was the director of the Angkor Hospital for Children and now is the founder of The Lake Clinic which provides health care to 7 of the floating villages on Tonle Sap lake. Anyway he lives in the Village with his Japanese wife Mieko and their amazing 8 year od daughter Rikki who speaks English like a Rhode Islander, Khmer like a Villager and some Japanese.
I went to his Birthday party after my moto taxi driver got lost and we ended up in a Japanese agricultural farm cooperative. I finally arrived and it was not long that an American named Marvin from Arizona introduced himself. Well we did our Jewish geography and yes. He had gone to Umass Amherst and graduated 10 years before me and was a fraternity brother of mine and there we were in Cambodia singing " down at 136 that is where the Pi boys bring their chicks". I am posting a picture of us. I met Allie who we hope to have in our next movie and posting a picture of the doctor from ANgkor Hospital for Children who was in our first movie. Drank a lot of beer and stayed away from the recreational drugs.

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