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.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Valentine's weekend Feb, 13th and 14th


This is another one of the scouts whom I had the privilege to present her with her kerchief and beret. I gave the three fingered salute and learned the left handed three finger handshake and salute. Pretty cool for me who never made it past Cub Scouts.
Getting a little better at catching a moment.
I had a busy day on Saturday and a quiet Sunday. On Saturday I had breakfast with Chai one of our key people to be in our new film. I thought about having a Cambodian breakfast which is a noodle soup. You have a choice of chicken pork or beef. Then you put some greens in, lime, chilis and not sure what else. It costs 5000 real ($1.25) and my lousy scrambled eggs, hardly edible was $2.00. So next time I will try soup for breakfast.
Chai came back to my apartment so I could make a copy of an animated german film that he has on the water systems of Angkor Wat and ended up in a 4 hour history lesson of Cambodia from the French colonization through the current day. He had videos of Sihanouk, Pol Pot, Lon Nol, and the Khmer Rouge as well as the Vietnamese invasion in 1979 throwing out the Khmer Rouge.
On Saturday night I went to a birthday party for a 6 year old who is the child of a family who owns Koro restaurant; which is frequented often by the Trail Blazer crew. Too much beer and they had a birthday cake and sang our Happy Birthday song and we were the guests of honor. I ended up talking with the Dad, who spoke perfect English as he had lived in Providence RI for 14 years. He unually opened up and talked of being a worker slave with the Khmer Rouge at the reservoir where I swan in Battambang, called the Killer resevoir, where over 10,000 died building it.
This morning I saw baby Zach on skype video. How fortunate and blessed am I. Matt looked more exhausted than Greta!! Biked around Siem Reap and decided to take advantage of having some free time and I went to the National Museum and learned all about the history prior to French Colonization, all the back to the 3rd century. I appreciate more and more the Temples and getting to better understand the Hindu and Buddhist gods.
Today was the first time I really missed home and know that when it comes time to go home I will be ready.
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