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.

Friday, January 22, 2010

IT problems- solved

Today had planned to continue to work on making bio sand filters but my wifi was so bad I called the IT tech at 7:30 in the morning and convinced him to come over. His right away was an hour and a half later. Needless to say I spend 5 hours with him and finally figured out that it was not my computer but that we needed to replace the modem. So I am now in great shape and can skype and be in touch.
So it was a down day. The first yet. I later worked out and got yet another massage which seems to be working as my neck is feeling better. Last night I went to a vegetarian cafe around the corner that Lauren and I had been to which we thought might be fun. Yoga and meditation classes are available there. So had veggie sushi and it was not fun as I was the only one there.
When I left I noticed a sign just made up of lights hanging all of the way across this dark side street which said "ABOY" and I said this is a sign for me as I was thinking of my daughter Greta who is to have a baby in a couple of weeks and we do not know what she is having. But alas it was a sign for a Khmer restaurant in which only Cambodians where frequenting and my Khmer is not yet good enough to negotiate that scene, but working on it.
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