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.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

February 2 Phnom Penh




It is hard to keep up this blog as it is Saturday February 6 and now I need to remember what I did? Guess it is good that I am so busy and having such a great experience, as before I left I felt like I was about to jump off a cliff and was concerned that I would be lonely and also looking forward to having some introspective time. Needless to say I have not found a cliff; and not lonely and scarcely even just by myself and am able to do some thinking. Right now it is hard to imagine returning to my Walgreen developer life!
So now to return to Phnom Penh, My friend Brandon and I just made it on time to what is called the Wat-San meeting of the MRD. ( Water-Sanitation Meeting of the Ministry of Rural Development) A Combination of cell calls to Brandon's guide in PP and to Mark Hall of RDI got us there just before the doors closed. Picture a long Ushaped table with a microphone in front of each chair and about 70 people with the Mininster of Rural Water Development chairing the meeting at the bottom of the U. Because Lauren and I had met him three weeks ago and because we learned that his only daughter is pregnant and living in Lowell Ma. and so Lauren had a long dinner with them and sent me pictures, was I invited to sit down next to him sort of on the podium. What an experience with all of the high powered NGO's there like UNICEF, The World Bank, World Health and many more and me " the observer". The byplay between the NGO's stroking the Government and the Government's no holds barred response was fascinating. Got involved in an imbroglio over arsenic poisoning, as I was to visit a village effected the next day. But the Minister, my new friend, the night before got a call from Voice of America asking him to respond to a film that debuted in the U.S about arsenic poisoning. The Minister was very upset that Cambodia was being put in a bad light and told the reporter that there was an active government program to respond to this issue; but my trip needed to be canceled.
In the afternoon I interviewed other potential characters for our film, two American Cambodians one a lawyer and social critic and one a gay poet-artist, as well as visiting the arbitration council to see if I can find a professional Cambodian to interview. Had dinner with Brandon at a upscale Indian restaurant and early to bed.

Am posting some pictures of the city of PP, fancy cars and new buildings, it is cosmopolitan.
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