Despite sickness all around we continued with our planned visit back to K’s village. Although we’d had a day of rest after our island trip, K and the kids were still pretty sick (high temps, body aches, developing cough), so we indulged in the luxury of a private taxi for the ~1 hour trip from Sihanoukville to K’s village in Prey Nob. Here is the street view from Google maps.

K has four sisters and one brother – he is the second to youngest. We stayed with his next oldest sister, Toeun. We stayed for 4 days and the kids and K were really sick during this time. They basically slept on and off all day and lost lots of weight. Even now, 13 days or so after getting sick, K is still exhausted and coughing heaps and the kids are tired and coughing. It was a relief to see the sparkle come back into their eyes yesterday.

I took the opportunity of extended family looking after my family to take a quick (8 hour) trip up to Phnom Penh to try and get our moto/car licenses. We need these to be covered by our travel insurance, although Cambodian law no longer requires a driver’s license when driving a moto 125cc or less. We’d tried to get our licenses here but they quoted $75 each and it taking 10 days. All I would need to do it in PP (same day service), I was assured, was my passport, my old license, my NZ license, a couple of passport photos, and $10. So armed with these for both K and myself I headed into the licensing office… Alas, I also needed K’s ID card (which his brother has handily misplaced permanently), and for myself an extended visa and a letter from the local Sangkat (government office) verifying my address and that I’m living here. While the trip didn’t garner the necessary licenses, I did enjoy some much needed alone time.

Like I said, given how ill the family have been there is not a lot to report on from the village trip, so I took lots of photos in order to give you an idea of village life.

A typical road through the village; K’s oldest sister’s house; the view to the Pagoda entrance opposite K’s Dad’s house; K’s Dad’s house – you can see the extension that is being done. K’s sister, Toeun, and brother, Soeun, are planning on running a shop (or set of shops) from here. Soeun is a welder and incredible at all sorts of metal work, while Toeun is an accomplished seamstress.

The top left photo is of the approach to Toeun’s house. We slept on the platform outside that Soeun has recently build (see middle and top right photos). To the rear of the platform is a pond filled with fish from which they gather fish for dinner (bottom left photo). They have recently had a well dug and use the area around this as a laundry for hand washing clothes (see middle photo). They also use this water to fill the tub in the bathroom (bottom right photo). Showers are taken by filling the silver bowl with water and pouring it over yourself. They now have a “western” shaped toilet, however it is a manual flush – this just involves tipping water down it.

The kids spent a lot of time sleeping and K spent a lot of time resting. They lost a lot of weight!

Here is K’s oldest sister, Nee, preparing a freshly slaughtered chicken for our dinner. Teuon raises both chickens and ducks for food. In the bottom photos Nee is immersing the chicken in boiled water and then plucking it (you can see all the plucked feathers in that big silver bowl).

This is the kitchen. Cooking is done over a fire in these concrete vessels.

If you’ve got any questions feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂

Despite having been in Cambodia for less than a week, we had scheduled a trip to one of the beautiful islands off the coast of Sihanoukville, Koh Rong Sonloem. We were making this trip with Jonno and Ren Nutter (K and Jonno are working closely together on the build of the new BEC here), Karen (Jonno’s Mum), and Chris and Keren Nutter (currently doing Bible Mission work in Phnom Penh).

Our speed ferry left at 9am on Friday morning and we arrived at the island before the hour was out.

There are two main islands off the coast and we had chosen the smaller, less party-town option… and the even more isolated vibe of the far side of the island… A short jungle walk away. This far side of the island was a veritable electricity and wifi free zone, with any lighting coming from solar lamps. This also meant our tent (for we were glamping), had no fan and was rather warm, shall we say 🙂

The walk through the jungle was hot (we did it at midday – what fools!) and took longer than the advertised 35 minutes, no doubt because our youngest member of the party was only 2 and insisted on walking most of the way (go Noah!!). E was pretty stoked to discover quite a few termite mounds, but no monkeys – although he spotted some later in the day after we’d arrived.

We welcomed the welcome drinks (lime juice) with gusto and then quickly proceeded to drop our stuff and enjoy the water and our surroundings! So lush!!!

This short stretch of beach hosts a number of different places to stay and eat and we took advantage of these different eating options. It’s more expensive than on the mainland (which is to be expected), with main meals costing between $5-8 USD. We enjoyed Saturday, swimming, snorkelling, and lazing in hammocks, although unfortunately Keren had been sick in the morning.  We thought this was something she’d eaten…

We walked down the beach to Sun Boo for dinner on Saturday night – highly recommend if anyone gets the chance to go there… Amazing pizza, absolutely huge for only $8 – I shared with E and Mo. Loved it… although I didn’t love the smell of it so much as we hadn’t been long back in our tent for the night when E started vomiting… and then K… and then TL… and then Mo! High temps, lots of moaning… fair to say I didn’t get a lot of sleep as everyone rotated on and off the one Queen size mattress we had (what little sleep i had was on the floor). Early next morning it appears that other Nutters are feeling under the weather and we made the heartbreaking (for me) decision to return to the mainland. No point sticking it out if we all drop like flies. E declared “Glamping is way worse than camping. I think glamping is the worst thing ever”!

There was no way we could face a jungle walk with so many sick and getting sick people, so we ordered up a boat that took an hour to take us around to Saracen Bay (and the main jetty). From there we caught the speed taxi boat back to Sihanoukville and home to our respective beds. Thus far everyone bar Ren and I seem to have succumbed to this weird bug in one form or the other and I’ve spent the last couple of days nursing my very sick children – no more vomiting, just super high temps, coughs, and terrible body aches and head aches.

 In the interests of keeping your interest, let’s just say that all that slow, long-haul travel went reasonably well. Just a couple of small hitches. While we managed to pack 150kg into our 6 checked in bags (including 90kg of tools), K’s concrete drill went into carry on. It’s a power drill, totally battery-less, however it was taken from us at the first airport security check – although as the security guy said, “What’s he going to do with it, it’s not like he can plug it in!?!”. Thankfully Mum and Dad had waited and were able to rescue it for us.  It’s the only thing we lost until we got to Phnom Penh, some 18.5 hours later to discover that two of K’s bags tools had been left in Singapore.

Excited..!!!

Mo wouldn’t wake up after the first plane trip

Ready for our long-haul

Sunrise in Singapore

This meant that instead of getting straight on the road to Sihanoukville, a further 6-8 hour trip, depending on traffic, we detoured to the Bible Education Centre (BEC) for a quick shower and then out to lunch. We retrieved K’s bags some 3 or so hours later and headed south, to our new home.

These photos show our new house, the view up, down, and across the street, the entrance into the “living room” (currently strewn with our stuff), the kitchen, and our bedroom. There is another bedroom in the house the same size as ours and I think there is a couple moving into it in a couple of weeks.

K was straight into work the following day. Here’s the job site – I can’t say I envy him! The gravel truck got itself nicely stuck but a bit of Khmer ingenuity and they were quickly back into business.

While K was working I took the time to load the kids into a tuk tuk and we made our way to Otres Beach, an old haunting ground of mine when we lived here 7 years ago. Alas, much has changed in that time. The beach shacks we used to haunt are now rubble or gone altogether, with just a few remaining. There is construction everywhere – giant buildings that look like they’ll be hotels and shopping centres/restaurant hubs. It’s in a huge state of transition and, like the rest of Sihanoukville, is pretty filthy.

K and I have had trouble reconnecting with this city, despite having lived here for 6 months previously. The traffic is too heavy for the roads (so many trucks due to all the construction) and the roads are broken, pot holed beyond belief (30cm drop offs are the norm), extremely dusty, with rubbish strewn everywhere. Due to this the traffic moves slowly and weaves from one side of the road to the other more than usual, in order to find a way through. I know we will get used to it in time and again, I know that this city is in a huge state of transition, but it is hard not to feel sad for the beautiful, peaceful place it used to be.

So I always thought David Bowie sang “Time to face the change, ch-ch-changes”, but it turns out the lyrics are “Turn and face the strange”. Equally applicable in this case, because that is what we have been doing!

There have been ch-ch-changes aplenty!

We’ve packed up our house and family, left one city (goodbye Wellington), sojourned in another to farewell friends and family for 3 weeks (goodbye Christchurch), and finally took 3 planes and a truck to land us here, in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, our home for the next 3 months or so. After that we’ll be heading north to Siem Reap and then finally back to Sihanoukville. Estimated time of residency in Cambodia – 9 months, subject to change 🙂

For why, you might ask? Many reasons, the simplest being that K was asked to come over and help build two multi-purpose church buildings, one in Sihanoukville, one in Siem Reap. But also, hello old home, hello cultural immersion, hello family and cousins we barely know.

The purpose of this blog is simply to keep those who are interested abreast of our movements and building developments. It might be interesting, it might not be, but you’re welcome to have a mosey around. There’s probably some sort of place you can subscribe to receive notification when I post, so if that’s of interest to you then fire away. Feel free to leave any comments or questions… I love me a bit of friendly interaction 🙂