A day in Cambodia

Wow. What a day. Yesterday I got up at 5:45am and walked past the usual mix of fat pigs eating rubbish, cows walking across the road, dogs chasing chickens, ducks drinking green water from family fish ponds and kids in white shirts and long black trousers/skirts laughing and talking as they ride their old bikes. I was heading into the local village of Cho to use the only available photocopy machine to make copies of my class test.

Giving a test in Cambodia can be a tricky exercise. Local teachers don’t bother to prevent cheating. After all – cheating encourages working together and helping others. So it can be difficult to get your students (70 of them packed into a small classroom) to keep to the rules and keep quiet. Even more so when there are only 10 calculators to share around. So every test day I am a bastard.

As usual, I included a joke question in the test “how do you spell monetary policy”, but it confused lots of the students. Over a dozen students got the answer wrong. On another multi-choice question, one student answered that the definition of “broad money” is 22 October 1978 (my birthday). Umm… no.

At 9:30am the test was over, I was packed and ready to go. But that’s not how things work in Cambodia. By 10:15 Keasar and I were just about to leave. Finally, at 10:45am, three people (our driver, Keasar and I) jumped on the back of a little moto (postie bike) with my big backpack resting under the handlebars, and we set off on a piece of dirt misleadingly labeled a “road”.

I passed some of the time doing TM, but luckily I had my eyes open when our moto driver stacked it so I suffered nothing more than a mouthful of dirt. After that two hour ordeal, we arrived at Prey Veng where we switched into a dodgy car-like creature which was to carry eight passengers to the river crossing an hour up the road. From there, I had lunch (4 boiled eggs for 30c) & we switched to a luxury car (air-con and only seven people) for the final two hours to PP.

My reason for coming to PP was to pick up a package my parents had sent me, with a postcard, old magazine and broken laptop. We arrived at the post office just in time. Unfortunately, the package was being held by customs officials until the requested US$250 tax was paid! Bastards. Keasar spun a beautiful sob-story about the poor children I was teaching and about how I’m a volunteer and the lady in charge let me have my things for only US$50. Not good – but less bad.

After that, we shared a dukalock, unpacked, I marked the tests, had Cambodian BBQ and a few beers… and then the worst massage I have ever had. A successful day.