Sunday 24 June 2012

Our Street and good news / bad news

Our Street

To give you a glimpse of urban Cambodia, we thought we would show you what our street looks like.  It's an eclectic mix of Khmer and western houses, some quite well off but most incredibly poor.

Here are two photo's of a large pond across the road from our apartment,

Father & Son gathering plants from the pond


Wife (mother) in amongst it !

where locals gather edible and medicinal plants for use.  Those of you in Grafton might like to try the same thing in the pond at the front of the Tourist Information Centre near Macdonalds in South Grafton. I bet you would get a few stares !   You can see some of the shacks in the background and on the roofline, the top of the Kampong Som casino, a glitzy neon affair that caters to foreigners as Khmer aren't allowed on the gaming floors of the Casinos in Cambodia, except to work.

Here's two photos out the back window showing our rear neighbours houses

Out the back window of our apartment

Out the back window of our apartment

and this is the neighbour to the south, looking from the street

southern neighbour


and we have vendors go up and down selling things, food included, as well as buying things like tin cans for recycling (we give them ours but most khmer collect and sell them)

This, I think,  is one of the most iconic though, a guy with a bicycle BBQ, selling BBQ pork on a stick. Awesome ingenuity !

BBQ Vendor on a bicycle !
Notice the "tin" to stop the heat melting the rear wheel


Local kids playing in the rain

If you are receiving this by email rather then reading it on the blog, you will have to click this link to watch the video

I'll post some more photo's next time

Kitchen Upgrade

and now for some good news and bad news, which do you want first ?

The good news

The kitchen you guys in Nymboida helped fund (you can read more of that here) has come along nicely !  Some great work has been done and it was close to being completed when....

Kitchen construction well under way

the bad news

the father fell off the roof after a long day, fell across rocks and hit his head, knocking him unconscious.  They took him to the local medical clinic on the back of a scooter (yes, a scooter ) while still unconscious, where he was partly patched up. He initially could not move his arms or urinate but can now do both. The worrying thing is he can't walk.  So the family decided to bundle him into the back of a taxi (yes a taxi !) and head to Phnom Penh, we'll keep you updated.  We decided to pay $65 from the Donations Account to help with the $165 cost of  treatment at the local clinic.

We'll keep  you guys updated.  Poor education and poor access to  health care really are the two basic things a society needs.  They can't move forward with either of those two as lacking as they are.
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2 comments:

  1. How is the father and where is the village

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  2. He is doing okay, we were Skype'ing with his son who we sponsor through University last week (he uses the computer at the Uni to Skype) and he said he was up and around and doing a little work, it was touch and go there initially. My sister paid for his medical bills, so that was something huge.

    PS Sorry to take so long to respond, it slipped through the cracks !

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