Grand Designs

We have now been working for three weeks as volunteers for MaD (Making a Difference). This means we are MaD volunteers! We are involved in a number of projects, including building an orphanage, renovating an old building and converting into a vocational training centre and helping MaD to set up a new web site. So as you can guess we are pretty busy, but enjoying it! There are lots of volunteers coming to Cambodia and others leaving so the team of volunteers is always changing. Apologies to those who we don't catch on camera.

Due to technical difficulties, the photos are out of order, but we think you are used to this by now.



This is Kutila (on the left) with her mum and sister. She kindly invited us to have dinner with them on her day off at a local Khymer restaurant. She works at one of our locals and we see her on Thursdays for the weekly pub quiz.

This is a Khymer bbq. It is hot coals in a pot with a metal frame that you balance meat and vegetables on. There is a ring round the edge where if you are a good cook, you can make your own soup at the same time.

This is the back page of the Phnom Penh Post. As you can see, the whole back page was dedicated to Hull City. The get loads of column inches and air time over here. Not sure how much longer this will last!

This is the Women's Vocational Training Centre that MaD is refurbishing. To give ourselves a break from desk work, we would come here in the mornings and rip up a few floor boards. In the interests of saving the environment, the floor boards are now being used as shuttering on the orphange project.

The WVTC before we pulled up the floor.

The floor needs a little TLC! Do any of you woodworkers fancy coming out and helping us?

Banana delivery at the local market. We think he could have taken at least another 10 bunches. It is a lot of weight to be towed behind a 125 moped!

This is the site that the orphange is being built on. We are filling in the ground right into the paddy field. We have a couple of technical problems at the moment, but we will keep you updated. When finished, the orphange will be 18m wide, 40 m long and 9 metres high, with a thatched roof. It will look gorgeous and will house 34 orphans. We have met most of the kids and despite our lack of enthuisiasm for children, they are absolutely lovely. We normally arrive on site around 8 am as it's one hour from Siem Reap. We work until 11.30 when we take the kids for lunch. They are really well fed and eat huge quantities - 3 plates of rice for some little ones. This may be the only meal they get each day.

Classy red wine, our latest find at only $5 per bottle. Need to take it up with the local supermarket and organise a bulk discount.

Garry digging a trench at the orphange site. We do have a health and safety policy in place. Spot Garry's safety sandals and safety baseball cap. In the background, you can just make out the wheelbarrow - a pile of mud on a cement sack with two sticks in the sack. It does need two people but works well and the wheels never fall off. We are thinking of investing in a proper wheelbarrow as it will be 8 times more efficient and a good capital payback at $10!

We have mentioned before that we have tried to get a picture of 5 on a bike. Count the legs here and you will see that there are 6 on this one. Maybe we shouldn't have encouraged them to wave at us!

This is the back garden of the MaD guesthouse. We are not sure if we will move in there - yes, they are live crocodiles, about 100 of them!! Anyone fancy some new shoes?

The 10 km dirt track from the main road to the orphange site is a little tricky to drive down, especially when it has been raining. This lorry was delivering to another site, not to us and didn't quite make the corner, but slipped into the ditch. No-one was hurt, but we all stopped to have a look.

Here are some of the team. from the left Mark, from Leeds, then Simon, Rachel, Toni and yours truly.

Starbucks - this is a roadside cafe, that we have started frequenting on the way to work each morning. Fantastic coffee! Look carefully and you will see the ducklings under the table, the dog on the left and there are a couple of chickens knocking around.

Simon and Mark are building a house for the guy on the left. First job was to install some decent drainage so the house wouldn't flood. The guys spent the day chest deep in mud, water, scorpions, spiders, snakes and other stuff!! At this point, they had just finished and the water had started to flow freely past the site.

We have bought a motorbike and this is it being washed and valeted! Some of the rules of the road that we have learnt are:-

a. drive on the right, but not too far on the right , as this is for people driving on the left

b. a red traffic light doesn't mean stop. It means proceed with caution

c. a gree traffic light doesn't mean go. It means proceed with caution

d. when asked to stop by a policeman, either drive round him or turn round and go the other way.

However, you have no need to worry about us, as the average speed is 4 miles per hour. Just a bit quicker than walking. Everyone slows down for ducks, chickens, cows, children and dogs etc to cross the road

This is Toni building a restaurant and dining area for the MaD volunteers.

TTFN

Garry and Alison

Templed out

We did a spot of sight seeing, after all that's what everyone does who comes to Cambodia. We have 5 million photos, but you'll be pleased to know, we have selected only a few of these. We are in Siem Reap, which is close to the Ankor Temples, a UNESCO World Heritage sight and rightly so. The Temples were built from sandstone 1200 - 800 years ago. We first visited them by accident on our tandem whilst on the way to the Landmine Museum. The Temples are only 8km from Siem Reap but the Landmine Museum is 37k, which we only discovered after cycling 15 km towards it! There are so many temples that it is difficult to go round them all on a tandem. We made what we thought was a good decision and hired a tuk tuk and a guide for 2 days. On the third day, we got back on the tandem and revisited our favourite places. The tandem was a lovely idea as not many Cambodians have seen one of these, so they were all laughing and pointing at us. The whole thing has been a great experience and highly recommended. Get yourselves over here and have a look.

Lots of the temples are now ruins, but this one still had the corridor intact with the roof still on. Pilgrims would meditate in the corridors before visiting the temple. Many of the corridors had stone carvings telling the stories of mythical or historic events. Each king, when he came to power would try and build a temple bigger and better than his predecessor in order to gain more approval from the gods (either Buddhist or Hindu, depending on which was in favour). The population of Ankor 1000 years ago was one million. Looking at how many temples there are, we don't think there was much unemployment.
This is Ta Prom which you all know, but don't realise it!
This is inside Ta Prom - ring any bells? This actual doorway was used in the film "Tomb Raider". Angelina Jolie played the part of Lara Croft and had all kinds of adventures in these temples. There is an Angelina cafe here and one of the bars has named a cocktail after her as it was allegedly her favourite hangout when they were filming here. (Cointreau, lime juice and soda - yummy). This temple is around 800 years old and the trees growing out of it are mere saplings at three hundred years old.

The Bayon Temple, one of the most famous here. It has 54 towers, each with 4 faces on pointing north, south, east and west.
Believe it or not, 1000 years ago this was the hospital. One of the kings built 102 hospitals and provided free health care to all citizens. Fore runner of the NHS. This hospital may be in better nick than some of ours (any comments?!!).

To get the best views, you had to climb up the stairs to the top to see the higher layers. Yes, these really were as steep as they look. Ok if you have size three shoes, but coming down you have to go sidewards. Going up you have too go on all fours. Some of the temples have several layers representing the different layers of heaven. Not sure if we got to heaven or paradise but it was pretty cool up there. View from the top. Could be Nirvana or paradise?
Ankor Wat, probably the most famous temple, surrounded by a moat. It is currently under restoration so our other pics of this have scaffolding all over.

Look closely and you'll see this is a little boy fast asleep, with a wild monkey cuddled up fast asleep next to him. We crept past them in order not to wake them up.
We met a couple of lovely Irish girls both called Laura, which was quite handy. We had a great evening drinking jugs of beer and cocktails. Laura is a big football fan. Guess which one? This photo was taken in "Ankor What?" bar .

We christened these kittens Laura and Laura. They had been adopted by the Buddhist monks in Ankor Wat.
We have started to get into this hammock thing. It's pretty cool really, especially when it's raining and you are on your tandem.
All hammocked out! Look at the Buddha belly - who says Garry is losing weight?

Siem Reap is famous for its sculputes, normally buddhas. This fly is made from old guns!!
We've tried to get photos of massively overloaded vehicles. By Cambodian standards, this one is half full. This is the local bus!
Again, a local bus still only half loaded. We have seen them loaded with motorbikes and trailers on top.
A fearsome crocodile
Raffles number 3. This time in Siem Reap drinking a femme fatale - a Jackie Kennedy favourite. It was happy hour and we managed to finance this visit without alerting the IMF!

If you've read the blog "answers", you may recall that the IMF heavies are looking for us as we still owe them $53.75 cents. This is the last known photograph of their leader. She is thought to be travelling under the pseudonym of Caroline Hayes, last known location she was being held hostage by a pig in Australia. Has anyone seen her recently?

We have decided to stay here for a while and have volunteered for some work for a charity called Mad For Good, helping local communities with medical and educational projects.

We will let you know how we get on.

Bye for now

Alison and Garry

Inspired by the Girls from Beverley

A few days ago we received an e-mail from "the girls in Beverley". For those who don't know "the girls from Beverley" this is a select/exclusive/elite/sometimes debauched team that meet regularly (usually Wednesday nights) for drinks, debate and merriment. They've been known to drink long into the night in order to figure out the meaning of life and whether Austrlian wine is better than French or Italian. We received the aforementioned e-mail from them whilst they were obviously tackling the later of the above two problems. Perhaps they had sorted the meaning of life the previous week!!! Anyway, from the tone and content of their e-mail they were obviously having a great time. Much wine had been consumed and some spilt.
Reading their e-mail inspired us to run our own wine tasting. Off we went to purchase the best quality wines available in Cambodia. There was one particular cheeky little number we had seen in Phon Phen that could (according to the label) cure Lumbago and wouldn't give you a headache. Unfortunately we couldn't track it down in Siem Reap. So we're going to come back to that one. Watch out for updates.
Being seasoned hands at food, wine and whisky tasting, we knew it was important to record the results in a professional manor, so we set out a spreadsheet with the name of each wine and the particular characteristics we were looking for. We both filled out the questionnaire blind so we were not able to see each others results. Amazingly, there were some similar comments.
Below are the results of our wine tasting evening inspired by "The Girls from Beverley".

This is Wrestler wine, obviously if you drink plenty of this you will develop enormous muscles.
Bouquet - Alison - unintrusive. Garry - not half bad.
Taste - Alison - gentle, not full bodied, hint of sherry. Garry - not too strong a taste, just as well as it's not too good. Harmless but 20% proof.
Comments Alison - beats Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun, better than beer all night. Garry - cap was difficult to remove, probably for a good reason - it's best left on.
Score Alison - 4. Garry - 3

We called this Mr Universe wine as there are posters around with a guy in a Hawaiin shirt and the label advertised all around Cambodia. Don't know what its name is though. Maybe it was subconcious marketing that made us buy this wine?

Bouquet Alison - smells of something, not sure what. Garry - same same.

Taste Alison - slight liquorice taste, warmer, stronger but not really moreish, unless there is only beer. Garry - same same.

Comments Alison - would drink after two beers, hope it cures lumbago and I hope I wake up. Garry - same same.

Score Alison - 4.5. Garry - 3.

Zato - this is posh Japanese rice wine.

Bouquet Alison - lemon dettol, doesn't bode well. Garry - likely to put blisters on your lung.

Taste Alison - lemon washing up liquid. Garry - better than I thought it would be, maybe a little hint of lemon or paint thinners.

Comments Alison - pretty bad, inoffensive, would prefer beer, sexy bottle. Garry - bottle looks good, but I would only drink it if I was desperate and I'm not sure anybody would be that desperate.

Score - Alison - -1. Garry - 1.

A recognisable wine - Australian and very expensive, see price of $9 dollars compared to $1.50 for some of the above!

Bouquet Alison - very similar to known and trusted red wine. Garry - gentle, but good.

Taste Alison - tastes metallic, maybe tuna after taste. Garry - good with slight after taste of Wrestler.

Comments Alison - shame it's more expensive than our room bill. Can't have more than one bottle of this one. Garry - would buy again, bargain.

Score Alison - 6. Garry - 5.

This was the setting for our wine tasting. About 25 Korean and Japanese tourists checked into the guesthouse whilst we were wine tasing and walked past us. We invited every one of them to join us. Apart from one couple who told us they didn't drink, we don't know why no-one else joined us!!

Bye for now.

Alison and Garry