The Cambodia Water Project: settling in

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 19, 2010

settling in

This morning I selected my wifi plan and it will now take two days to get hooked up. I chose the fastest plan they have ( 512 ) and learned that it is twice as fast in the evening after 7 pm which will coincide with most of my use back to the States, as I am 12 hours ahead of EST.
Then I took a Tuk tuk to Trailblazers and sat in on a staff meeting. I met one of their Board Members and some of their volunteers. I spent quite a bit of time with a guy who is here for the second time for 9 months or so and is a photographer and has a Canon 7D. He will help with some of the shooting that needs to be done before the Varsity team arrives of L and L ( Lauren and Lyman).
I have been lent a red ladies one speed bicycle so I now have transportation and I already have gotten lost after checking out a work out option at a hotel spa. Last night I had dinner with Se, a Cambodian student that Lauren and I are sponsoring. I am really getting to know him and the cultural ways of Cambodia and how they think.
I have TV here and so am mesmerized by the coverage and dire situation. Being in such a poor country as Cambodia one can easily envision such a disaster occurring here after such an event. The tsunami was not that far away from here and we are all reminded of how vulnerable such poor people are. The lack of water in Haiti further emphasizes the need for a well engineered water system that does not exist here. Clean water only exists in 40% of the country.

And I am having such fun. I do not know where my day goes. Time is flying by despite my attempts at a routine, it has not yet happened. Paul