Weekend in Kampot

After feeling down and impatient in post-amoebic Phnom Penh, I decided to take a weekend holiday in go the south of Cambodia, in the riverside of Kampot.

Kampot is a place the French established as a favorite holiday spot when they controlled Cambodia for a little while. It’s also where a lot of the famous pepper called “Kampot Pepper” is grown.

I got off the 4-hour bus and found myself in a smaller city that was quiet, clean, and peaceful – a much different atmosphere than the dusty, bustling, and loud feeling of Phnom Penh. The town is lined with a Riverwalk that made me feel like I was strolling down a familiar town near home, with a broad boulevard that was spotted with trees and pink-flowered bushes. The river also provided a cooler wind and temperature buffer, making it a few degrees cooler than the capital. I really enjoyed it there.

Kampot is a bit quirky, too. For one, there were a wide range of tourists around me, including backpacking-hippie types and older pot-bellied bald guys (or frayed, greying wavy locks) walking alone with local women. Not completely foreign to tourist spots, though it was surprising for me at the time. Another quirk specific to Kampot was one specific roundabout/rotary in the town – the center of the roundabout held a large statue of a durian standing amongst smaller pineapples and coconuts. Durian is grown in the area, I understand that; but if you’ve encountered durian in the way I have and feel the same way I do about the stench/taste, you may be as equally surprised/concerned as I was upon seeing it revered in the middle of a main thoroughfare.

As soon as I checked into my simple hotel room, I took a tuktuk an hour out to the nearby beach town of Kep. Kep is known for glorious beaches and wonderful seafood. I have previously explained my dislike for sand and being on hot sunny beaches for too long, so I did not tarry in Kep for very long. I was in Kep, specifically, to eat seafood – not just any seafood, either! Kampot pepper crab, which is a fantastically delicious thing. I cannot fully describe the amazing tastes I experienced when eating the peppered crab (with a drizzle of curry on it) in Kep, but it was worth the moments of silence I gave it. It was amusing, though, because the crab shack I went to on the beach did not have crackers for opening the crabs, and I had to use my teeth and hands to tear apart for the meaty goodness. Behind me were a bunch of American girls who looked disgustedly at their whole crabs, pushing them around on the plate seemingly confused about how to eat them or refusing to get dirty. I was an absolute mess when eating the crabs, but they were worth it. Waste not!

If you need a tuktuk driver in Kampot...

Back in Kampot, I went to a spa and read while getting apedicure for which my feet thanked me. I took my dazzling nails and me afterwards to a Portuguese restaurant a bit further out and ate some of the finest gourmet food I have had in months.

The next day my trusty tuktuk driver took me around the countryside of Kampot to a number of interesting places.

• Salt fields: During the dry season (now), they drain sea water into flat fields and coax the salt out of the water so they can sell it as sea salt in Cambodia and abroad. It was a really interesting set-up to look at; there are rows and rows of shallow water with glittery white chunks floating to the edges of the fields that are raked out, dried, and stored in long buildings that have salt coming out of the corners and doors.
• Pepper fields: We essentially walked through someone’s property to these tall vines of pepper being grown in a small chunk of land. The peppers grow as green, and are then dried or pounded a certain way to become black or white.
• Caves & Lakes: My tuktuk driver led me through a scorched field next to a hill, over a bridge, and through someone’s backyard again. At first I got nervous about why we were walking through backyards and in the middle of some of the quietest scenery I’ve been in for a while. He then led me to a clearing where there was a grand staircase guarded by monkeys. After shooing away the monkeys politely, we hiked up the stairs and I found myself in a beautiful cave in the hillside. The cave had smooth yet dramatic curves. Walking into the cave, I saw a small, ancient temple propped on one of the walls. The tuktuk driver mentioned it was older than Angkor Wat, and was originally a Hindu temple. He also took me to a very quiet area with a lake for a cold drink before getting back to the town. It was nice. It was a quiet, small lake.

In the evening, I took a boat ride that slowly rode up and down the river during sunset. Aside from the occasional obnoxiously-shouting tourists on the boat, the ride was a lovely exploration of the river. As we floated through the lush riverbanks, the sun set right behind the Bokor Mountain, giving the sky spectacular warm golds and yellows. We also went into one of the more swampy areas of the river at the end of the ride so that we could watch some fireflies for a few minutes.

On the last day in Kampot, it became extremely hot. I decided to preserve my energy in the heat by reading more while sitting in some of the town’s cafes, and I took a leisurely stroll up and down the Riverwalk, admiring the flowers and panorama views.

Update on Being Sick

There’s not too much report right now. After a week in bed with a really bad cold, I was in bed for about two more weeks with amoebas battling it out with my GI tract. I will simply say, being sick in a foreign country without anyone around me sucks. Lots.

I got out only a few times while I was sick.

One time was for an evening where I gave a talk about the history of toilets to a large group of nerdy expats in a fancy bar (I stuck to ginger ale). I shared with them my desperate plea for everyone to wash their hands and use the toilet always because of my amoebic afflictions and joked about Thomas Crapper and other fun trivial facts about toilets. People loved the talk and came up to tell me this before I uncomfortably made my way to the bathroom. Despite my abdominal discomfort, the praise was nice while I continue tackling complications with my health and research project (far too many complications to mention in a blog post...also, too discouraging for me to want to explain cogently).

Another time I left my bed, right before I made a second trip to the doctor for more stomach medication, I went for a little walk around one of the parks near the Riverside area of Phnom Penh. It was just after sunset when as I walked slowly down the boulevard, and the air was cooler. I heard a thudding of modern electronic pop music in the park and looked around to see a few lines of people dancing in relative unison with a semi-choreographed jig. I kept walking and came across another group of line dancers, this time mostly young adult men (with some young adult women), bouncing and bounding to the music coming out of the big speakers. I didn’t know it then, but apparently this is a normal ritual for physical activity in the city. It was a lot of fun to see them, but I winced at the idea of joining them in any active movements other than my slow stroll.

I also went out for a few hours to go to a Reiki circle with a great group of local practitioners. I loved getting to know some people through my preferred method of meditation, even if only an hour or so. The group helped me feel more supported than I have felt since I got to Phnom Penh. I don’t mean that my friends and family elsewhere are not supportive (they have been very much so there for me), but it is a different feeling to have people physically with me and being supportive. I really needed that.

I have figured out that there are four types of foreigners here in Cambodia:

• Tourists – People who are in hotels and passing through within a few days or weeks
• Short-term expats – Like me, who stay only for a few months for research or a consulting gig
• Long-term expats – People who have a year or two of a contract here, then leave
• Lifers – People who move here for an undetermined amount of time and stay for over 2 or 3 years

Being a short-term expat, it is hard for me to figure out my place. I’m here too long to feel inclined to partake in most tourist activities, yet I’m not here long enough for building meaningful friendships, which I want/need. I have a few friends here, of course, and those people are wonderful and fun to talk with, when we have time to see each other (and are well enough). And I rent desk space at the incubator Impact Hub so I can be around other people more often; I enjoy getting to socialize with the group of researchers and entrepreneurs when I work there every few days. But, I had been sick for about 3 weeks and did not really see many people during that time. Those few weeks have definitely taken its toll on my overall pleasant outlook.

I really do like Phnom Penh, and I am not feeling dread staying here like I did in another place I lived in the past. That said, I look forward to being home with supportive loved ones for a while, and being able to eat a gluten free fudgy brownie.

Field Work and Amoebas

Last week, while fighting a really nasty viral infection (in my nose), I got invited to join some development agencies and government officials on a field trip a few hours east of Phnom Penh to the rural areas in Tboung Khmum and Kampong Cham. The field trip was a way for national government guys to come and see how water and sanitation is working on the ground in rural villages (because guys working in Phnom Penh have little context of what’s going on), and talk about ways to improve the sector’s work with local governments. It is really important for national government figures (and researchers like me) to go out and see the action happening because sometimes it’s impossible to fully understand the picture when there are no faces to picture for policies and work being done.

What is your research, Kim? Well, I’ll tell you. The national government here has been giving more responsibility to local governments (read as: decentralizing) around water and sanitation. My focus is sanitation. The problem is that local governments here lack a lot of skills and knowledge needed to do what the national government is (vaguely) telling them. So, I’m trying to figure out what kind of roles the local government needs focus on for improving sanitation in rural areas, and what capacity is needed to do that work. Did you follow that?

Back to the trip, I should point out two complications I had during those two days: (1) I felt like I was dying from the viral infection, as my nose screamed fire and throat scratched with all of the gross internal residues coming out of me; and, (2) I was the only non-Khmer (aka Cambodian native) person in this field trip, so the conversation was mostly in Khmer – some generous development workers took turns translating for me what was happening. So between my spacing out with delirium and translation, I’m almost certain I missed key pieces from the conversations that happened. That said, I did get a pretty good idea of some of what’s going on for my research.

We drove for hours down roads that were dusty and very dry. It is dry season here, but it was very clear that the drought the country currently has is taking a toll on agriculture; fields were charred and crackly with dryness, and gusts of winds blew through the open spaces, pushing dust into swirls in the air. The houses we saw were simple wooden structures, balanced mainly on tall stilts – presumably to avoid floodwaters that are currently unfathomable with how dry it was.

Going through the rural community we visited, I noticed that trash was strewn around the land everywhere; I saw debris in the open well, in the straw-like weeds near the village hall, in front of houses, and in the dried up waterways near some houses. This village also had about half of the population (of about 100 or so households) defecating out in the open, so wasn’t a surprise that trash management was not going too hot. Some people had bought the building blocks for a toilet, but many had the structure pieces lying in piles near their home, unconstructed and abandoned. Buying the toilet itself is pretty cheap – most of these people can buy a toilet for about $25…the problem is the structure in which to build around the toilet, which can be about $200. For a lot of rural families, that is half of a year’s income.

The people were brought together into the village hall so the local government could tell them about the benefits of buying a toilet and play games to highlight the consequences of going out in the open. I told Mr. CT Lawyer about this meeting in more detail earlier; based on his reaction to my story, I will spare you the rest of what was discussed.

I found it interesting that the demographics of the village at the meeting were mostly elderly people and little children. I saw this in rural Thailand as well; the younger people, including parents of babies, set off to cities like Phnom Penh and Bangkok to work in the factories in hopes to send money back to their destitute families in rural areas from their better-paying livelihoods. Grandparents raise grandchildren, and parents try to support families so they don’t starve. The livelihoods of simple rice and other kinds of agrarian farmers just do not provide enough for survival anymore in much of the world, especially as climate change intensifies.

We stayed overnight in the city of Kampong Cham, right on the Mekong. A few of the people helping me with my research and I went out for BBQ at a local restaurant. After BBQ, though I had thought we were done eating, the group moved on to another restaurant for rice porridge (they put salted eggs and fish in the porridge). Cambodians are thin people, but I (with my generous hips) could not keep up with the group’s appetite – I struggled with the porridge while some of them took seconds and thirds of porridge. I asked them how they could pound back the porridge so easily, and they explained that it was more for the socializing around the porridge they enjoyed. Apparently there are lots of restaurants in cities that are open until early the next morning just so groups of friends hanging out late can enjoy some porridge together. They had wanted to go out for Karaoke after porridge, but my ashen face was very clear to them and they (thankfully) put me in a car to go back to the hotel and crumble into my bed.

Many of our meals were held at some tables under a roof held up by a few poles that sat on the side of the road, and were given meals from pots on a table near the road, or from a kitchen hut in the back of the roofed area. For the days we were on this trip, I did not really understand what I was eating most of the time. A lot of it looked like stews or stir fries of some sort, but the contents were beyond my comprehension. My helpful supervisor, WASHy Virak (my trusty translator and key advisor while I’m here), would explain to me what was going into my mouth if he was next to me. When he wasn’t near me, I would squint my eyes and point at things with a look of confusion to nearby eaters. One thing I ate looked like mushroom stems but was much chewier than I had anticipated. I got adamant responses from other people like, “No mushroom!”, but not much explanation of what it actually was. A while later, Virak explained to me it was pig’s intestines. Another thing I thought were mung beans turned out to be squid. I clearly am not good at the guessing game.

It’s been a few days since the educative trip out in the field. Somewhere between there and the rest of my current visit in Cambodia I have eaten something that was unclean, most likely from having some kind of fecal matter on it and not washed off before I ate it. Last night I got a tuktuk to drive me to the International SOS Clinic to figure out if my fever and the amazing amount of pain was from dengue fever or something else. As they hooked me up to an IV drip and took blood and other samples from me, we discovered I am currently suffering from amoebic dysentery (read as: parasites, likely not from the rural trip). I’m glad that I don’t have dengue, but I cannot say that this amoebic infection is any better (nor do I want to find out ever). The doctors pumped me with medicines and handed me over a very fancy bag full to the brim with several different types of medication to help me manage and eradicate the amoebas from my body. I am currently in very close relations with my bathroom.

I told my Australian supervisor (Bronwyn) about this, and she replied with, “Ah yeah, I’ve been there.” I also got a few notes from other development workers recently with similar stories of sickness as a result of being in the field doing work. Dengue fever, malaria, tapeworm, food disease (been there), amoebic dysentery (on it), etc. It seems almost like a rite of passage for people working in development work to get super sick (often)…an occupational hazard. I keep thinking to myself, And we all signed onto this?! I love working and feeling like it makes a difference, I love learning about contexts I normally would never dream of, and I love how interesting it all can be. However, I have been so sick so often in my travels the last few months, I have my doubts about continuing this work for the long haul; I don’t know if my body can handle it forever. It is clearly an easy target for germs.