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.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Feb. 9





Wow I am catching up.
In the morning I again toured the remainder of the tourist sites around Battambang. Saw how they make rice paper for spring rolls, how they make fish paste, visited a memorial to those slain by the KR, saw a gambling past time of men betting on fish fighting each other and bid my guide adieu. I had a 2 pm appointment with the artistic director of the circus Khuon Det and so I had some time to kill so back to the green gecko for internet connection and lunch.
At phareps had a 3 hour interview with him that Jean Christof translated and I took notes and used my tape recorder. See pictures of the two of them and of Jean Christof with his adopted grandson.

Arrived back in Siem Reap in the dark around 7 pm and went out to dinner with Se at what he calls the "train " restaurant. You sit and next to you is sort of a conveyor belt with plates of all sorts of ingredients that you put in a pot of boiling broth in the middle of the table. We had crocodile but no rat. I will post a picture of rats that they are drying. It was a one time experience and definitely low calorie.
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