This day we eventually head to stay in Prey Veng Province in the main town where Hengly's parents live and operate a coffee shop.
In the morning I drop Lyman and Steve off to film Hengly at home with his sisters having breakfast. Hengly has a very bright younger sister Dany who speaks great English and was on the Cambodian counterpart to the "Apprentice" in which our feature narrator Seng Theary played the role of Donald Trump.
I had to meet with an official to get permission to film in a Center that rehabilitates abused women, mostly former sex workers, as one of our main characters was trained at the center to be a beautician. She never was a prostitute but qualified because she was a " girl at risk" living in a remote village with the very little education. She now teaches English in her village and has a beauty shop.
We attended a lunch meeting which Hengly chaired with a meeting with the World Bank. The fellow was Chinese and based in Washington DC and Hengly's mastery of his program and confidence was pretty amazing to witness for a 26 year old who grew up in the village.
We left in the afternoon and crossed the Mekong on a ferry and had dinner at Hengly's parents coffee shop-home. Early to bed in the only hotel in town. $12 a night, basic and comfortable with AC. Had a TV and before going to bed caught a clip of the Pats beating the Chargers in 2007 and in the morning watched Aljazaar TV!!
Sunday, March 7, 2010
March 4-
March 4-5, 2010
Spent these days shooting Hengly. We were picked up at 6a.m. so that we could make a meeting that he had in the District for a training session to teach commune women and men how to market toilets, or has he puts it how to create demand. We stopped for breakfast at the side of the road modern fast food breakfast spot where all of the breakfast choices were illustrated by pictures on the wall. There no bacon and eggs and I had beef noodle soup.
After the Distict meeting we went into the village and met with the Chief who was the first to have bought a latrine. The flush toilet is really a squatter with a shelter around it i.e. a door sides and roof. One can upgrade from zinc sides to concrete for more money. The basis cost is $42. The way one flushes is to scoop water from a huge water storage jar. So this family sanitation is certainly a step up from defecating in the bush but there is no leach field as all of the effluent goes into a “ concrete ring” in the ground. There is no system yet to empty it other than digging it out and then where does it go. In other words and I apologize for the graphic images here but I am into the latrine business, there is no service that pumps out the tank. It is seen by the public health officials as step one and an improvement from the bush where when rainy season comes….
This family’s water supply and most of the village is from what is called the “pond” which is stagnant lotus growing area next to the rice paddies. He hooks a barrel on a little trailer behind his moto and goes the 400 meters to fill the barrel with “ clean water”. He used to use a filter but that is broken and so now he boils the water, most of the time. I am posting a picture of the water and notice the color.
We then attended a meeting at the Provincial level.Hengly has been able to convince this Province of his marking scheme to sell toilets to villagers and to use the capitalistic model to be self sustaining. He is a very personable and driven 26 year old.
Got back to the hotel around 7PM another long day and we were all to exhausted to do anything more than grab a shower and some Indian food around the corner.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
March 1-4 Shooting film
Lyman and Steve are here and the B crew without Lauren is working so really not much time to blog.Today we have a shoot with a meeting of the World Bank and then off to a village but in a hotel for an overnight stay what is called here as the " Homeland"
Monday, March 1, 2010
Modulkiri
Mondulkuri trek
San Nang met me at his restaurant called The Greenhouse and we went about an hour and a half to the Home stay, which is a community house sleeping 8 people run by the WWF. I saw the only elephant on the car trip which was a working elephant.
The Pmong house people made dinner for us of the usual rice and veggies but with some soy sauce and I was in bed by 8:30 pm and up at around 5:30 a.m. After a western style breakfast of an onion omelet and toasted bread, we packed our backpacks. The only thing I had to carry was my hammock and my water, although fortunately I took another shirt, change of underwear and socks, a flashlight bug repellent and many kerchiefs. The entire trek was 35 km of which we did 6 hours the first day and four the next. We traveled through forest rice paddies and jungle. We saw signs of animals but saw none. I saw elephant foot prints and turds!! This is in the World Wildlife Federation reserves of over one hundred thousand hectares. I was worried that it was to be a typical tourist deal but do to the fact that I was willing to pay the high price of $125 and because I was connected to a naturalist guide from Siem Reap , Nuong, I got an off beat trek in the WWF preserve. The trek was really hot and dry and a lot of it was through dense forest of which the forest floor had been recently burned and was a lot of smoldering leaves and logs. I have no idea why the entire forest does not turn into a raging inferno like we experience in California. The going quite rough at the end of the day when we reached the river and had to walk over jagged rocks along the mostly dry river bed. This was not a raging beautiful river as being the dry season it was just pools of water.
The boys made me a walking stick and we slid down embankments and climbed back up finding our way up the river to camp. I was tired and my hips hurt as did my neck but my days of running and pacing myself paid off and guess I am in Ok enough shape. The guide Sam is 27 and the ranger is 20 and the boy ranger made the entire trek in flip flops while my Keen shoes are just about ready to be thrown out with a huge gash in the sole of my left foot.
We found our camp at around 2:30 pm. We had stopped for lunch, rice and veggies pre cooked in tuperware and we had rest stops with water and Pringles. At camp I went in the river for a swim and it felt so wonderful. Then I tried to catch fish with a bamboo rod and a hook and monofilament with some pork as bait,. There were fish breaking the surface all over the place. When suddenly I heard a loud smashing of trees and bells and people talking. It turned out just around the bend down river from us a band on Pmong with an elephant and an ox cart had just arrived to go fishing. They had left their village at 4 a.m and they make two trips a dry season to the river to stock up on fish. It was just my luck that these local tribal people showed up so that we fished and hung with them for the rest of the day and the next morning.
We had dinner around 4 Pm , you guessed it rice and veggies plus now a fried fish that was very sweet and an apple. Took a dip in the moonlight before hitting the hammock at 6:30 pm for my first ever experience at sleeping in a hammock. Not sure when I went to sleep and did check my watch often but did not get out of my hammock until 5:30 a.m, an 11 hour sleep.
When I got up the local fishermen were back pulling their nets so I took a lot of pictures an thought I had the setting right in the early morning but most are overexposed. It was a noisy night sleeping as you can not believe all of the birds and frogs chirping all night. Breakfast was instant Ramiken pork noodles, rice, fish and an apple. Broke camp around 8 and made it back to the Village around 11:30 a.m for a cold beer. The trekking was quite rough for the first hour on the river and I had heavy legs from the day before and the temperature in the rice paddy with no shade was around 100 F.
But I made it and it was wonderful, an experience of a life time and I am proud of myself and loved being with these very simple tribal people who are all so happy. They live such a simple life and believe in animism; they laugh a lot, they smile a lot and they seem to be so confident. The older man was 58 and had been a hunter all of his life and his body was so lean and muscular and he scampered over the rocks in his barefeet where I cautiously with my walking stick felt my way forward.
I feel fortunate that I am able to be here to be healthy enough to do this, to have the time and the opportunity to do this. I am now in a guest house in Samonoromon for $8 a night with no air con. I was able to take a shower at WWF Home Stay which is taking a huge ladle from the concrete water trough and pouring it over my head. It was delightful. OH and yes after the beer we had lunch of rice and veggies. This diet is getting a bit tiresome so I am off to find a bottle of red wine and some meat . Oh I took another shower here in the guesthouse.
One problem is that I could not keep my camera hung around my neck because it hurt my neck and also my shirt was soaked in perspiration so I hiked with a camera in one hand and a walking stick in the other and my water in a small bottle in my pocket. However, I perspired so much this morning that I think I drenched the camera and it is now not working, so I bought 5 kg of rice and stuck in the rice in a plastic bag and said a prayer that my Christmas present from Lauren my Canon G10 that I love will revive itself. .
Just came back from town and dinner. I walked into town which is full of red dust as the main street to my mind resembles an 1849 gold rush. The main drag is unpaved and is in the process of being paved by the Government but until then it is raw and crude. I went to see Mr Bill who is an American ex pat who had been working with the “ returnees” for many years in Phonm Penh. He told me that Boomer was in the 6th wave and was young and that most of the young ones did not make it. His computer data showed that 10 % were utter failures and 80% were barely marginal and then there were the 10@ that made it but many of those holding down responsible positions failed. Some of the top 10% also disappointed. He knows Boomer and know he has had his ups and downs. KK he could not talk to me as it would have been breaching confidences at to why he has such a support network surrounding him.
He says that the gangs in the US continue here and that there are gangs of the Khmer Riche who have the government support and are very powerful and that killing rape drugs ect. are common place. Bought a seed necklace from him and borrowed a flashlight.
Then I had a beer with Sam Nang and we exchanged emails and talked about future investments together. He met the love of his life 2 months ago but she is of a much higher social class and he is scared. Her parents have invited him to meet and he is afraid to do so because he comes from such a lower social strata. I tried to boost his ego but he remains afraid, He showed me the very ostentatious house in town that his 20 year old girl friend lives in and it is quite gaudy but impressive.
Sam gave me a moto ride to Bananas restaurant run by a Dutch alcoholic woman that I met while killing time on Friday waiting for Sam. At dinner was an Australian tourist couple and two American girls from Seattle who had been here since December working for WFF trying to document and make a film on the presence of tigers in the WFF preserve. They had brought over two Lab mixes that were trained in finding Tiger scat and had been here close to three months and had yet to see a tiger.They brought with them two dogs trained to that scent from the Us both lab mixes. They told me that when they go into the jungle the dogs sleep in hammocks too..
There biggest problems recently was trusting the locals and the heat. Due to the latter they had to quit everyday at 11. a. m. Amazing that they go into the jungle. I got a moto ride to my guest house and set my wrist watch to wake me up at 6:30 a.m to meet Mr Leang for my ride back to PP and to return to work.
This is really the frontier as I had to laugh as here I am having dinner and I am told that I am getting the last balsamic vinegar that the owner has and when we wanted another bottle of red wine, we found out that we had drank the last bottle of that too. The main street is dust, red dust and more red dust, Cambodian snow. You can feel that the entire town and area is about to change once the road is completed and the area becomes accessible. Mister Bill, an expat American told me that they only got electricity 14 months ago!!He
San Nang met me at his restaurant called The Greenhouse and we went about an hour and a half to the Home stay, which is a community house sleeping 8 people run by the WWF. I saw the only elephant on the car trip which was a working elephant.
The Pmong house people made dinner for us of the usual rice and veggies but with some soy sauce and I was in bed by 8:30 pm and up at around 5:30 a.m. After a western style breakfast of an onion omelet and toasted bread, we packed our backpacks. The only thing I had to carry was my hammock and my water, although fortunately I took another shirt, change of underwear and socks, a flashlight bug repellent and many kerchiefs. The entire trek was 35 km of which we did 6 hours the first day and four the next. We traveled through forest rice paddies and jungle. We saw signs of animals but saw none. I saw elephant foot prints and turds!! This is in the World Wildlife Federation reserves of over one hundred thousand hectares. I was worried that it was to be a typical tourist deal but do to the fact that I was willing to pay the high price of $125 and because I was connected to a naturalist guide from Siem Reap , Nuong, I got an off beat trek in the WWF preserve. The trek was really hot and dry and a lot of it was through dense forest of which the forest floor had been recently burned and was a lot of smoldering leaves and logs. I have no idea why the entire forest does not turn into a raging inferno like we experience in California. The going quite rough at the end of the day when we reached the river and had to walk over jagged rocks along the mostly dry river bed. This was not a raging beautiful river as being the dry season it was just pools of water.
The boys made me a walking stick and we slid down embankments and climbed back up finding our way up the river to camp. I was tired and my hips hurt as did my neck but my days of running and pacing myself paid off and guess I am in Ok enough shape. The guide Sam is 27 and the ranger is 20 and the boy ranger made the entire trek in flip flops while my Keen shoes are just about ready to be thrown out with a huge gash in the sole of my left foot.
We found our camp at around 2:30 pm. We had stopped for lunch, rice and veggies pre cooked in tuperware and we had rest stops with water and Pringles. At camp I went in the river for a swim and it felt so wonderful. Then I tried to catch fish with a bamboo rod and a hook and monofilament with some pork as bait,. There were fish breaking the surface all over the place. When suddenly I heard a loud smashing of trees and bells and people talking. It turned out just around the bend down river from us a band on Pmong with an elephant and an ox cart had just arrived to go fishing. They had left their village at 4 a.m and they make two trips a dry season to the river to stock up on fish. It was just my luck that these local tribal people showed up so that we fished and hung with them for the rest of the day and the next morning.
We had dinner around 4 Pm , you guessed it rice and veggies plus now a fried fish that was very sweet and an apple. Took a dip in the moonlight before hitting the hammock at 6:30 pm for my first ever experience at sleeping in a hammock. Not sure when I went to sleep and did check my watch often but did not get out of my hammock until 5:30 a.m, an 11 hour sleep.
When I got up the local fishermen were back pulling their nets so I took a lot of pictures an thought I had the setting right in the early morning but most are overexposed. It was a noisy night sleeping as you can not believe all of the birds and frogs chirping all night. Breakfast was instant Ramiken pork noodles, rice, fish and an apple. Broke camp around 8 and made it back to the Village around 11:30 a.m for a cold beer. The trekking was quite rough for the first hour on the river and I had heavy legs from the day before and the temperature in the rice paddy with no shade was around 100 F.
But I made it and it was wonderful, an experience of a life time and I am proud of myself and loved being with these very simple tribal people who are all so happy. They live such a simple life and believe in animism; they laugh a lot, they smile a lot and they seem to be so confident. The older man was 58 and had been a hunter all of his life and his body was so lean and muscular and he scampered over the rocks in his barefeet where I cautiously with my walking stick felt my way forward.
I feel fortunate that I am able to be here to be healthy enough to do this, to have the time and the opportunity to do this. I am now in a guest house in Samonoromon for $8 a night with no air con. I was able to take a shower at WWF Home Stay which is taking a huge ladle from the concrete water trough and pouring it over my head. It was delightful. OH and yes after the beer we had lunch of rice and veggies. This diet is getting a bit tiresome so I am off to find a bottle of red wine and some meat . Oh I took another shower here in the guesthouse.
One problem is that I could not keep my camera hung around my neck because it hurt my neck and also my shirt was soaked in perspiration so I hiked with a camera in one hand and a walking stick in the other and my water in a small bottle in my pocket. However, I perspired so much this morning that I think I drenched the camera and it is now not working, so I bought 5 kg of rice and stuck in the rice in a plastic bag and said a prayer that my Christmas present from Lauren my Canon G10 that I love will revive itself. .
Just came back from town and dinner. I walked into town which is full of red dust as the main street to my mind resembles an 1849 gold rush. The main drag is unpaved and is in the process of being paved by the Government but until then it is raw and crude. I went to see Mr Bill who is an American ex pat who had been working with the “ returnees” for many years in Phonm Penh. He told me that Boomer was in the 6th wave and was young and that most of the young ones did not make it. His computer data showed that 10 % were utter failures and 80% were barely marginal and then there were the 10@ that made it but many of those holding down responsible positions failed. Some of the top 10% also disappointed. He knows Boomer and know he has had his ups and downs. KK he could not talk to me as it would have been breaching confidences at to why he has such a support network surrounding him.
He says that the gangs in the US continue here and that there are gangs of the Khmer Riche who have the government support and are very powerful and that killing rape drugs ect. are common place. Bought a seed necklace from him and borrowed a flashlight.
Then I had a beer with Sam Nang and we exchanged emails and talked about future investments together. He met the love of his life 2 months ago but she is of a much higher social class and he is scared. Her parents have invited him to meet and he is afraid to do so because he comes from such a lower social strata. I tried to boost his ego but he remains afraid, He showed me the very ostentatious house in town that his 20 year old girl friend lives in and it is quite gaudy but impressive.
Sam gave me a moto ride to Bananas restaurant run by a Dutch alcoholic woman that I met while killing time on Friday waiting for Sam. At dinner was an Australian tourist couple and two American girls from Seattle who had been here since December working for WFF trying to document and make a film on the presence of tigers in the WFF preserve. They had brought over two Lab mixes that were trained in finding Tiger scat and had been here close to three months and had yet to see a tiger.They brought with them two dogs trained to that scent from the Us both lab mixes. They told me that when they go into the jungle the dogs sleep in hammocks too..
There biggest problems recently was trusting the locals and the heat. Due to the latter they had to quit everyday at 11. a. m. Amazing that they go into the jungle. I got a moto ride to my guest house and set my wrist watch to wake me up at 6:30 a.m to meet Mr Leang for my ride back to PP and to return to work.
This is really the frontier as I had to laugh as here I am having dinner and I am told that I am getting the last balsamic vinegar that the owner has and when we wanted another bottle of red wine, we found out that we had drank the last bottle of that too. The main street is dust, red dust and more red dust, Cambodian snow. You can feel that the entire town and area is about to change once the road is completed and the area becomes accessible. Mister Bill, an expat American told me that they only got electricity 14 months ago!!He
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Mondulkiri Feb 26
I am now on my vacation from my vacation which turned out to be a lot of work. I left the hotel in Phnom Penh and was driven here in a 6.5 hour ride in a shared taxi. I bought the front seat for $25 and four Cambodians were in the back. I listened to loud Cambodian music and dozed off and on until we reached this amazing new road built by the Chinese which when finished is supposed to turn this area into a mecca for eco-tourism. So instead of heading to a beachside resort which Lauren and I already enjoyed in Thailand I am here for a home stay and a trek into the jungle and a night in a hammock. A khmer friend lent me his hammock as he says the net has a zipper and works great and it appears to be US Army issue.
Interesting was that the taxi ran on petrol and on liquid propane as the latter is cheaper.
Now waiting for my guide and my adventure to begin.
Interesting was that the taxi ran on petrol and on liquid propane as the latter is cheaper.
Now waiting for my guide and my adventure to begin.
February 24 and 25th
I have been here in Phnom Penh meeting with our two personalities that we are featuring Boomer and Hengly in our film before taking a 4 day hiatus to Mondulkiri. I will post some of my photos. It has been a scavenger hunt for almost two months to come up with characters and a story line and I am sure what I have lined up will change by the happenings of filming and of course by the creative talent of L and L. ( Lyman and Lauren). Tonight I have finished my task and will now turn it over to the real artists who shall need to make art out of my palate. I am confident they will do so.
As I meet our characters I can not help but think what separates me from them. It is only the accident of birth. And they are separated also from a life of poverty and depravity by the accident of what?? A chance meeting of an American in the case of Hengly, a tut tut ride in the case of Chai, a shot at becoming a beautician in the case of Nak, getting deported in the case of Boomer.Life is chance. It is crazy why am I not a villager here. Or more realistically why am I not in my homeland some village in Russia where most of my ancestor's came from. No, I am through chance an American living with a wonderful woman Lauren with four children and four grandchildren and living the experience of a lifetime.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
February 23
I am now in Phnom Penh starting yet another adventure. I flew here this afternoon and find this to be a real city with a vibrancy that is lacking everywhere else I have been. It is like arriving in NYC. Everything is more, more busy, more people, more traffic, more fancy cars, more crowded. I could not get into any of the sought after recommended hotels so I had to settle for the best deal which is a hotel with a casino. I figured it would be a good deal because as in Vegas the Hotel makes it on the gambling and not the rooms. I was right for $80 a night I have a fantastic modern room with all of the conveniences and my neck is still a problem so I ventured into the spa which was the best of any I have experienced in Cambodia.
So try and picture this for $25 they take you to a room which has in it a bed, a massage table, a jacuzzi, a steam and a sauna and after the massage you have 30 minutes of free time to enjoy. The masseuse was a lovely cute innocent 23 year old, all legitimate and I came out feeling like I had gone to heaven. I then went to the Italian restaurant in the hotel and had some insalata and pasta. They did not sell wines by the glass and I could not stand the thought of another beer so I bought a bottle of Valpolicello. They will keep what you do not drink for three days and yes I did leave close to a half bottle.
I sat by myself reminiscing to myself about spending almost two months helping create a film. What a gift to be so engaged with this project. I know the idea is to make a full length film but we could just do a number of short documentaries. I met one of our characters Boomer in his teen drop in center where they are doing rap, break dancing and they have a sound studio.Plan to spend most of tomorrow hanging with him. Also negotiating for a helicopter and met one company and will meet another tomorrow. The cost of an hour is over $2,000 but I think we must do it.
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