Christmas junket to Ho Chi Minh City

My beloved friend Rose used the semester break in her third year of law school to come visit me in the Phenomenal Penguin. When we met in Kuala Lumpur ten years ago, Rose was an outstanding school teacher, and I have no doubt whatever she's going to be a remarkable lawyer. When she starts her court clerkship in August in Seattle, though, I doubt she'll be commuting by tuktuk. This, I feel, is unfortunate.

"Home, Seyha!"

Although she put in dozens of hours on a brief for an upcoming moot court competition, we did venture out to Beautiful Shoes to see about some spiffy new lawyer's footwear for someone with vexing bunions. The shoe-man outlined and measured both of Rose's feet, and she picked a stylish, plum-coloured leather and the heel of her choice from the overflowing "drawer of ladies' heels".  

Busy Saturday at Beautiful Shoes

I'll collect the shoes in a couple of weeks and send them to Seattle from Kuala Lumpur when I'm there in January. Alas, the only reliable method of shipping from Cambodia is DHL or FedEx. I've learned never to take working postal system for granted. (More on that shortly...)

Because Rose's flight home would leave Ho Chi Minh City on Christmas morning, we went there by bus on 21 December. We'd both spent time in other parts of Vietnam before but never in the former Saigon. With a population around 7.4 million, HCMC is vastly larger than Phnom Penh (2.2 million), and it has a very different feel. Just as the six-hour bus trip between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore is a journey between two worlds, so it is with these two Indochine capital cities.  

Rose felt like a bit of a splurge after discovering that she could make the whole trip on accumulated airline miles, so she booked us a room in the Majestic Hotel, which has been overlooking the Saigon River since 1925.

Truly majestic then.

Slightly less majestic now, but still pretty darned grand.

We couldn't help but compare and contrast the Majestic Saigon with Penang's grande dame, the E&O. Although the rooms in the Vietnamese hotel have been thoroughly modernised, the staff has the same delightful combination of formality and warmth.  The petite woman wearing the burgundy velveteen ao dai to Rose's left as she was checking in is Fleur -- she's in her 60s, I would guess. She showed us to our room and remembered both our names.  I saw her again when I checked out (Rose having left for the airport hours earlier). "You and Rose aren't travelling together today?" she asked. 180 rooms in that hotel -- that woman has a sharp mind and a kind heart.

A tad above my usual lodging standards...

The Majestic sits at the end of Dong Khoi Street, which has become the haute couteur avenue.  There are still souvenir and gift shops selling cheap lacquer and "silk", but they're sandwiched between the Hermes, Dior, and Armani boutiques.

None of the European designers can touch the elegance of the
ao dai, if you ask me, and I'm glad to see some Vietnamese women still agree.

Rose and I spent three days roaming about District 1, which is the Manhattan of HCMC and is where most of the tourists end up. I'm not silly enough to think it's representative of the city as a whole, but I did feel quite far away from Phnom Penh.

The streets tend to be much cleaner, moto drivers are all helmeted, and -- at least during the daytime hours -- the traffic is much more orderly and law-abiding.  There are traffic signals at many intersections, and both drivers and pedestrians tend to obey them.  Especially after Hanoi, where one confronts an unbroken and non-stop sea of motos at every street crossing, street scenes like this were a delightful surprise.

Could be Switzerland! Well, not quite, but it's close, no? 

Then, around 4.00pm, it all goes to hell in a handbasket -- the entire population of the city goes mobile at once. We saw multiple accidents, and at times the gridlocked traffic was so thick we couldn't even squeeze between the motos to cross. What had been a 15-minute walk during the daylight became a 40-minute cab ride home after dark. I don't know what time the traffic eases again, but it's certainly not before 9.00 or 10.00pm.  I think I prefer Phnom Penh's moderately steady chaos to HCMC's Jekyll-Hyde qualities.

Although neither of us had any sites on our 'don't miss' lists, we did wander through the Notre Dame Cathedral (1895) and -- even better, I thought -- the classically grand central Post Office, which is just across the square from it. While Phnom Penh has a similarly grand French colonial relic, it is pretty much just that -- a relic. You can rent postal boxes there, which reportedly increases your chances of receiving any mail, but sending letters or parcels via Cambodian post is both expensive and unreliable. Rose and I posted some cards from the HCMC post office; the stamps are lovely, and I actually have rather high hopes that they'll reach their intended recipients, and before, say, July.  

The smallish beings in the photo below are not Santa's elves, appearances notwithstanding. They were schoolchildren on a field trip to the Post Office, and their lessons included letter-writing, envelope-addressing, stamp-purchasing and -affixing, and finally, an orderly procession to the post box.  

I hope their children and grandchildren will be doing the same
thing, in the same place.

An Australian couple recommended the National Art Gallery to us, so we spent a morning there. It's housed in a glorious pair of colonial-era buildings and, while not a huge collection, a gratifyingly diverse one.  I snapped a photo (yes, it's permitted, provided there's no flash) of these two praying figures only because they reminded me of the central Asian Hittites.

Not your typical SE Asian headgear...

When we moved into the 20th century pieces, however, regardless of the medium, there was an overpoweringly common theme. Vietnam's tourism board long spouted the motto, "We're a country, not a war!" Walk through HCMC's National Art Gallery, and you begin to doubt that. It begins to feel much more like a war than a country. It inspired Rose and me to do a quick history review.  Of course we both knew of the war with the French, which morphed into the American war. Vietnam had been battling the Japanese since 1945, however, and after the Americans went home came the wars on two fronts with Cambodia and China. The last century was notably short on peacetime, and the art reflects it.

I thought I'd found a reprieve from the overtly military
paintings and sculptures.

Then I read the plaque.

Very near the National Art Gallery is the Ben Thanh covered market, which is not all that dissimilar to Phnom Penh's markets -- filled with all manner of things for tourists and locals alike. The clock in the tower works! I don't think we have any working clock towers in PP.

Cyclo driver snoozing in the shade

Not far from here is one of the city's many parks. This one is long and narrow, running between two boulevards. In the early mornings, locals come to this park, and some do tai chi, while others, especially older ladies, use the fixed pieces of exercise equipment -- stationary bicycles and hinged, swinging Nordic ski machines. In PP, people gather at a few open spaces for morning and evening group exercise, but we don't have these lovely, leafy parks, and the Saigonese of all ages appear to relish theirs.

Running and cycling tracks, equipment along the edge of the grass behind

Even the medians and borders on the main streets are botanical artworks.  

The city must employ hordes of public gardeners!

We noticed many signs -- obviously bilingual -- encouraging people to call the authorities at a given number if they noted any signs of drug use in the district.  My impression from earlier visits to Vietnam is that the government is taking an active approach to battling social ills.  How effectively they're doing it is anyone's guess, but at least they're acknowledging that HIV/AIDS is a serious public health concern that can be addressed through better public awareness and prevention.

They're not about to put an image of a condom on a public sign-board,
but at least you get the idea of protection.

Contrast that with the health crisis du jour in Cambodia, in which 160 (at last count) residents of Battambang province have mysteriously contracted HIV, and the best guess at the moment is that an unlicensed doctor infected them all with re-used and unsanitised needles. And what did the Prime Minister say?  Impossible! Some of them are infants and others octogenarians -- any fool can see that they can't get AIDS! That a nation's leader in 2014 should believe HIV limited to sexual transmission is... well, tragic. 

We also visited the Reunification Palace, which had been the South Vietnam Presidential Palace before 1975. It's an intriguing building -- the exterior cladding following a bamboo design, the interior being very open and airy, and all very 1960s.  A Huey helicopter -- perhaps not the same one that evacuated President Thieu when the Americans pulled out of Saigon, but identical to it -- is still moored on the rooftop. 

The President's map room still has the bank of rotary phones,
colour-coded in pastels.

Rose "evacuated" Saigon on a 4.00 flight on Christmas morning, and I boarded the Phoung Heng bus four hours later for my trip back to Phnom Penh. She's returned to a suburb of Seattle, her bee-keeping and chicken-raising, and her final semester of law school. I've returned to the life of an expat in Cambodia.  In many regards -- certainly in terms of honey, eggs and law degrees -- her life is the more productive. My miniscule victories, such as reading a children's book in Khmer and cobbling together a dinner's worth of ingredients from the wet market, or restocking my freezer with a new batch of home-made raw food for the cats, seem absurdly inconsequential in comparison. 

As my bus travelled through the southern Vietnam countryside, I noticed what seemed to me an odd bit of signage at the crosswalks: A man in a western suit and fedora carries a walking stick and appears to have a knapsack on his shoulders; his female companion carries a shoulder bag and wears a short dress. Why are these figures not wearing loose trousers and conical hats, or even an ao dai? There is no text on the sign, which suggests to me that it may be warning Vietnamese drivers to beware of clueless foreigners who may be in the roadways.  There are similar signs in Maine warning of moose crossing.  

And there it is. Sometimes living in the Phenomenal Penguin is a bit like being a moose on the Maine Turnpike. You're just not in your comfort zone. You can't always make out why all those humans in their cars do what they do, or why they do it. They make strange noises. You are -- and always will be -- very much a foreigner (much more so than you might be in, say, Kuala Lumpur or London) crossing the road.  

A wee bit of Christmas shopping

I won't put up a Christmas tree this year, or any year, because it will simply turn into a feline demolition project, but I've been admiring some of the Khmer silk ornaments that I've seen around town and decided I could hang some of those on my window grilles.  We'll see how well that goes. The cats both like to nap on the window ledge behind the grilles, and I suspect they'll find the dangling, sparkling penguins and giraffes irresistible.  I know I do.

My favourite? At the moment, it's the seafoam-green bat.

These came from an NGO-run shop near the riverside, Watthan Artisans; the items are made and profits dispersed to Cambodians with disabilities.  The sales clerk moved about the shop on very twisted legs -- the result, I believe, of polio. I have some acquaintances in Malaysia who are violently opposed to vaccinating their children, and as best I can tell from their rants, they refuse to consider any vaccination whatever, not only the one that is (spuriously, it seems) linked to autism. I mentioned to one of these women that polio is not to be trifled with, and she rolled her eyes. Polio is not totally eradicated -- I just found this report on "Cambodia's Polio Crisis", dated 2013. Confronted with a parent who rejects a polio vaccination for her child, I can only roll my eyes.

Despite her torturous movement, the young lady in the shop wanted to be very sure I found a) enough ornaments, b) in all my preferred colours, and c) of adequate bio-diversity. On that note, I went a bit overboard on the penguins, but you must admit -- they're all pretty phenomenal.

"Take your time, ma'am. Which one did you see at the crime scene?"
"Well, I can't be sure, Officer, but the goose looks a bit dodgy."

My next stop was a funky design shop called Trunkh. Trunkh, you see, is the only place in Phnom Penh to buy the Lucky Iron Fish, and I've been wanting one for some time. I love this thing on so many different levels -- it's an ingenious and simple solution to a huge problem. Its manufacture gives work to Cambodians. Cambodians can buy a fish for $5. Foreigners must pay $25 per fish, but the company then gives three fish to Cambodian villagers who can't afford to buy them.

A young Canadian PhD student noted that nearly half of all Cambodians are anemic. He started by trying to encourage the women to put a block of iron into their cooking water as they prepared meals, but he didn't get far with that -- the women couldn't understand why they would put a chunk of metal into their soup-pots. Gavin, therefore, went to a local metalsmith and asked him to design an iron fish. The Khmer women embraced the lucky iron fish (the word for 'good' is embossed on its side). Here's what the Lucky Iron Fish web site says about the results:  "After just 9 months of using the Lucky Iron Fish every day, we saw a 50% decrease in the incidence of clinical iron deficiency anemia, and an increase in users’ iron levels."

Even the box is well-designed.

The truth is, my desire for a Lucky Iron Fish is not entirely altruistic -- I got turned away from the blood bank again last month for iron deficiency, and the Cambodian phlebotomists aren't the world's choosiest. It's time my own soup-pot had an iron fish in it, I'd say.

With luck, I'll be back on the blood donors' list in a month or two.

It's quite a long walk from my place to the riverside area, but now that we're in the cooler season, I don't mind.  The bamboo bike is much faster, of course, but I can't easily pause to snap photos when I ride it. Today's photos just happened to feature cars. This particularly pious Camry was in one of the prayer halls within Wat Lanka. Is it meditating? Awaiting a blessing? Or had the driver merely given up on finding a spot on the street?

Maybe it's a monk-mobile.

Only one thought flashed through my mind when I saw this car at the Monivong and Mao Tse-Tung Blvd junction.

When Hello Kitty has a mid-life crisis...

Literacy campaign

When I first started studying Khmer, I decided that learning to speak the language was enough, that tackling it in written form was above and beyond the call of duty. At some point a few months ago, I changed my mind.  It's been far from easy. When I began, I picked up a children's story book in a shop, and I vowed to finish reading The Ninja Cat, Dto-Dto by the end of 2014.

In his ever-so-tactful way, Meng, my long-suffering Khmer teacher, suggested that this book was quite a bit above my current reading level.  Perhaps you can understand why I was dismayed about this. It's not exactly high-brow literature.

Dto-Dto bests Mr. Wolf.  And me.

I acquiesced and purchased Little by Little, a charming picture book about a baby otter who cannot swim. My oh-so-entertaining friend, Ee Lynn, pointed out, "Well those skills will come in very handy...

Tuktuk Driver: 'I'm afraid we've lost our way, Ma'am. '

You: 'Tarka's friends splashed about and waved at him to join them, but he merely watched them shyly from the river bank.'"

In fact, I do have enough vocabulary to get the tuktuk driver back on course (and not into the river to splash and play with the otters), and it's looking like I will at least make it to the end of this epic (25-page) novel by the end of the year. I hope it ends happily, with Do-Do the otter succeeding in his quest, because a tragic drowning would be a horrible anti-climax.  

Do-Do tells his mother that Bear and Beaver are teasing him.
Mother is miffed and reminds him of his other winning traits.

Meng is quite pleased with my progress through the aptly titled Little by Little, and he suggested buying a couple more books at this level from the publisher, Sipar Books. It's an NGO, he pointed out, that supports literacy in Cambodia and publishes good books -- better than the ones typically published in the Kingdom.  One of Meng's biggest frustrations is that Cambodian stories tend to lack a plot -- they just ramble aimlessly for a certain number of pages and then end abruptly.  "They don't make any sense!" he grouses. For someone who is trying to make sense of the very foreign language in a very foreign script, a rambling, incoherent plot-line is just one more challenge I don't need.

So after a cup of coffee this afternoon, my friend Malcolm and I wandered down to Sipar, and a young man just inside the courtyard stopped us, clearly bewildered by two foreigners  walking purposefully toward the office.  I told him in Khmer that I wanted to buy children's books, and he looked relieved that we weren't in fact lost. There was a display rack in the office inside, and I found the series of books at the level of Little by Little. The label said they are for age 3 and above.  No doubt assuming I was shopping for my grandchild (great-grandchild, even?), the young clerk smilingly approved and rang up my two new purchases, and I forked over $2.75.

The red book to the left is titled The People in the Radio (I love listening to radio!), and the green one on the right is titled...  Well, to be honest, I haven't quite sorted the title out yet, because they've gone all cutesy with the font and made some of the letters look like ducks, damn them.  Is the duckling's name Gab-Gab, maybe? 

They say you revert to childishness when senility sets in.
It seems to have set in.

Outside the office, in the courtyard, though, were parked three brightly painted vans, and these really lightened my heart.  The CIA World Fact Book lists Cambodia's literacy rate at 73.9% using a very vague definition of 'literacy'. Most Khmers that I've spoken to about this say that the number of people who can read at even a barely functional level is more likely around 25%.  Therefore, Sipar's work is invaluable.

A mobile library!  Brilliant.

Sipar is a French-Khmer initiative with 20 years of history in Cambodia, and here's what they've accomplished:

• 300 school libraries
•  18  public Reading Centers
•  10 mobile libraries
•  2500 school librarians trained
• 11 reading corners in hospital
•  10 projects of communal educational services development
•  21 prison libraries
•  100 titles for young people in khmer
•  1 350 000 books were published

This mobile library promotes both literacy and
road safety, both desperately needed.

I stopped on my way home at Green-O Farms, an ostensibly organic green-grocer. (I say ostensibly because there are no standards here for organic farming, and without standards, there can be no enforcement. At least these folks are claiming to grow their produce without chemicals; their prices are not outrageous, and the quality is good.)  I set my new books down on the counter as the cashier weighed and rang up my purchases, and I noticed that the store manager was reading aloud the synopsis on the back of one of the books. He was reading slightly faster than I can, but not all that much. Remember, these books are aimed at 3 year-olds.

Thanksgiving is this Thursday, and one of the things for which I will offer up heartfelt thanks is the education I've received throughout my life, starting with my parents, who encouraged me to love reading and books as an infant, and ending with the people I meet every day here in Cambodia, who invite me to take a world-view very different from my own and remind me that kindness does not require high levels of literacy.  

As we were leaving Sipar, Malcolm and I said good-bye to the young man who had greeted us. "We are studying Khmer," Malcolm told him.  I pointed to the children's books in my hand and said, "These books are for me -- Shhhhhhhhh!"  He burst out laughing, and that really made my day.  

Playing tour guide

My dear friend, Poh Lin, came to visit the Phenomenal Penguin for five days. It was a wonderful diversion and a chance to play tourist again.  (Some of these photos are in fact Poh Lin's -- the better ones, most likely.)

We went once or twice to the Russian Market.  It's like a rabbit warren in which you can buy everything from fresh persimmons to brass knuckles.

Tailors' row

This lady is famous (in some circles) for her daikon pancakes.

Alas, neither of us was hungry, so we didn't try her radish pancakes, which she cooks over charcoal. I'll give them a try one of these days.

The Central (or New) Market is neither.

I took Poh Lin to the art-deco covered market that in English is called Central Market (though it's at the far northern end of the city) and Phsaa Thmey (New Market) in Khmer, despite the fact that it is one of the city's older markets, having been built in 1937.  Never mind. It's cool. Which is to say nifty or groovy -- like everywhere else in Phnom Penh that's not air-conditioned, it's sweltering.

The dome

At least the tall central dome gives it an airier feeling than most of the other covered markets -- it's a bit less claustrophobic. That, however, is not due to any paucity of goods for sale. If you want it and have the patience of a saint or the nose of a bloodhound, you'll find it at these markets. If it's illegal, ask, and it will probably materialise from beneath a stack of towels or children's exercise books.  

Tidy bundles of dried fish

Banana blossoms, dyed, folded and arranged for temple offerings

All the excitement left Poh Lin feeling peckish, so she cosied up to this lady who was deep-frying prawn fritters -- whole, unshelled, very small prawns in batter. Sanitation wasn't in question, because she lifted them out of the wok still sizzling.  You need to watch out for the sharp bits of the prawn, but very tasty.

"Two piece one dollah!" 

The very expensive mystery fruit

We saw a basket of these, and neither of us had any idea what they are. With my limited Khmer, I learnt from the vendor that they are a fruit, they are sweet, and they are $5/kg.  I later bought one at the Russian market, and we tried it the next morning:  The outer skin is crisp, but the inside is soft and white with a pinkish hue. Near the skin, it gives off a milky liquid. The flavour is slightly sweet, mostly bland. One of Poh Lin's friends identified it as follows:  "It's called ‘Buah Susu' in Chinese, in English: cainito, caimito, star apple, golden leaf tree, abiaba, pomme du lait, estrella, milk fruit or aguay."  I just call it over-priced.

We of course walked by the riverside, but we made a point to do so on the day before the Water Festival kicked off.  This was Cambodia's first Water Festival since 350+ were killed in a stampede in 2010; the following festival was cancelled because of King Norodom Sihanouk's death. Neither PL nor I is fond of dense crowds, but we did enjoy seeing the preparations.

Massive light displays stretched all along the river bank.

Many vendors came from around the country to sell their wares. This woman had a pushcart with every sort of snack that had ever crawled, slithered or flown. The cop on the right was just sampling her wares as it suited him. All part of his job, no doubt.

Bugs, grubs, snakes, baby birds...

Crickets roasted with chili, snakes on skewers

Poh Lin and I met my friend Malcolm at Romdeng for dinner that same evening. Romdeng is a restaurant run by graduates of Friends -- an NGO that teaches street kids the ins and outs of the restaurant business.  At Romdeng, the graduates are serving 'gourmet Khmer' food in a French colonial villa -- it's just one of Cambodia's many businesses that allow you to eat well and do good at the same time.  Romdeng is famous for its fried tarantulas, and Poh Lin ordered them straight away. But woe! They were plumb out of tarantulas that night.  She settled for a traditional beef dish with red ant sauce. ("Mmmm, peppery!")  She later read somewhere that the fried tarantula legs are crunchy and salty, as you'd expect, but the body is "greenish and mushy".  Hearing that, I turned somewhat greenish, and suddenly the lack of tarantulas at Romdeng was no longer a tragedy.  We agreed -- green and mushy is fine when you're dealing with spinach but not with spiders.

Pensive after Toul Sleng

Poh Lin toured Toul Sleng -- the genocide museum, formerly the Khmer Rouge interrogation centre, and a high school before that -- on her own, because I've been through it three times and simply couldn't bear one more.  We did a fair amount of going around the city in tuktuks, partly because PL can't bear the heat, and my broken toe is still slowing me down.  She agrees with me that the traffic may not be as thick here as it is in KL, but it's more chaotic. "They just go anywhere and everywhere! It's madness!"  I'm in awe of the tuktuk drivers. They are, almost without exception, patient, calm and competent. Unfortunately, given the very high prices of petrol here in Cambodia, the costs of getting around by tuktuk add up fast. They'll remain my last resort, following my feet, my bicycle and the Monivong Avenue bus.  

And this little piggy went... went...

It's even more fun in the dark. 

Rush hour traffic is never pleasurable, anywhere in the world.  In Phnom Penh, it's just mayhem.  I'm told that there are laws, though no one seems to know what they are, and the police seem to enforce them (read: take random and arbitrary action) only when they're bored or in need of some extra cash. These are the Cambodian traffic laws as I've been able to discern them:

1. The driver of the more costly vehicle always has right-of-way and is never at fault in a collision.
2. Traffic generally stays to the right, but that's optional. (See #3)
3. When moving against traffic, drivers expect to proceed on the inside, nearest the curb. Note:  This includes bicycles, motos, tuktuks and cars. 
4. It's best to proceed confidently through an unmarked, uncontrolled intersection. If you encounter unreasonable drivers who won't give way, behave erratically. Driving your vehicle, regardless of its size, up onto the sidewalk is a standard practice when there's inadequate space on the street. 
5. Driving licenses also appear to be optional; children of 10 or so zoom around the city on motos despite being barely able to reach the controls.
6. Nature and Phnom Penh drivers abhor vacuums.  If there are vacant centimetres, a moto driver will fill them.
7. If you need to transport 5-metre lengths of steel rod through the city on a moto, which is very commonly done, it's ideal to do it outside of rush hour, but this too is a mere suggestion. 

I happened to snap these two fellows when I was riding in a tuktuk.
Mind you, the steel extended many metres in front of and behind them.
As you can see, the moto driver is steering with one hand.
Turning corners is a special thrill for all involved.

I've heard that some countries have passed legislation banning the use of mobile phones whilst driving.  Rest assured, Cambodia is not one of them.  I confess, I marvel at the casual, relaxed posture of the Khmers who zip through traffic, holding their phones with one hand and steering (sort of) their motos with the other.

One of these fellows passed me on a street near my house on Thursday at 6.00pm.  It's a narrow street; two SUVs can't pass each other on it.  It was late dusk, and I felt a light bump on my left as I was cycling. I caught a glimpse of the moto driver, still chattering away on his mobile as he continued on his way. The bump sent my bike just a bit to the right -- just enough for the handlebar to catch on the mirror of a parked car.  I don't really know what happened, and I was lucky to have been moving slowly. The bike jerked; I somehow landed on my feet with the bike still upright.  I hobbled over to the front of the car, out of the traffic, to catch my breath and assess the damage.  Not bad! No blood, bike seemed fine. The only thing that hurt was my right foot.  I must have caught my small toes on the pedal somehow, because my foot looked remarkably like the classic Vulcan greeting -- the three big toes went in one direction, the two small ones in the other.

Live long and prosper... but try to find a universe with more logical drivers.

I continued on to my meeting, and I was blessed that one of the other women there, Jenny, is a nurse practitioner.  She advised me to contact a certain doctor who would likely send me to a clinic with an x-ray machine.  The next morning, I phoned Dr. Marissa, who said she'd like to see the foot before ordering the x-rays.  I cycled -- timidly and painfully -- to her office.  She opined that the fourth toe was fractured, dislocated or both.  I asked if I should proceed to Clinic Aurore for an x-ray.  She was unsure. I asked if she wanted to tape the toes together, and she said something about that making bathing more difficult. (!?!) In the end, she advised me to take 15 ibuprofen and call her on Wednesday, and she charged me $30 for the consultation. I pedalled home with my Mr. Spock foot, stopping at a pharmacy for ibuprofen.

By Saturday morning, the pain and the swelling were reduced, but the bruising was psychodelic, and the displacement was worse -- the fourth toe had come up and over the little toe, seemingly intent on forming a right angle with my foot.  I was dismayed about this, but I was also out of cat food, so I went out to buy the ingredients for a batch of raw food.  I bumped into a friend who looked at my foot and demanded, "Why is that not taped?!"  She sent me to the Clinic Sokhapheap Thmey ("New Health Clinic"), which is one street over from my house.  With saddlebags full of chicken parts, I pedalled up to the clinic and walked in.  That's when I encountered Gloria.

I was standing at the counter filling out a form when a stout woman of about my age or a bit more stomped through the lobby. If Monty Python had ever made a war movie, Gloria would be the one doing triage near the front lines:  "That one's too far gone -- toss him back into the trench! Slice that one open! Off with that leg!"  In my case, she stomped through the lobby and, slowing but not stopping, she stared at my foot. "That is dislocated.  Fix it!" A couple of young Khmer men jumped to their feet as if General Patton had just barked at them.  They led me into a treatment room and examined the foot. They claimed that if there is a fracture, it's in the metatarsals, not in the digit itself. They got a rigid-ish sheet of blue stuff, and they cut and molded it into a splint of sorts, then wrapped half the foot with gauze and tape.  I would like to say that I'm confident that this is just what a doctor [with any sort of skill or qualifications] ordered, but I confess I have some qualms.

At least all of the toes are pointing more or less
in the same direction now. 

I learned today that Gloria is not a doctor, in fact; she's also a nurse-practitioner. I have no idea what qualifications the two Khmer men might have.  They told me to keep the foot splinted for 4-6 weeks.

I keep telling myself, this is not a medical emergency.  Yes, it's painful and inconvenient, but no one ever died from a broken or dislocated toe.  My real worry is the possibility of doing or having done long-term damage to my foot.  I need to keep my feet healthy, as I rely on them for rather a lot.  The problem is, I don't know who to trust or believe here, and I can't keep making $30 visits to one clinic after another. 

My pal Malcolm and I started a conversational group for expats trying to learn Khmer, and one of the regulars is Zoe, a delightful woman from New Zealand who happens to be a physiotherapist. She said she's heard of a couple of foreign osteopaths in Phnom Penh, and she'll try to get their contact details for me. Failing that, I'll probably just carry on with the splint and hope it works out for the best. As it stands now, in retrospect, my best bet would have been to go directly to the pharmacy, spend about $3 for the gauze, tape, and splint-stuff and take the DIY approach.  The general advice to expats in Cambodia regarding health care is this:  If it can't be fixed with a plaster and a Panadol, evacuate to Bangkok. This incident certainly doesn't warrant a medivac to Thailand, but it does suggest that the advice on the street is solid.  

Speaking of Malcolm, he and his friend Lin and I went out one evening for dinner a couple of weeks ago. Malcolm and I ordered some green juice-smoothie things, and Lin snapped our photo. 

Hmm.  Just like Key West.  

My fleeting Fleet Street moment

A couple of days after I explored Phnom Penh's abandoned Olympic Stadium, I happened to spot a notice in the margin of the on-line Guardian.  They were soliciting reader photos for a GuardianWitness feature on abandoned sports stadiums.  How serendipitous!

Never mind that I'm an utterly incompetent photographer using the least expensive Canon point-and-pray camera on the market.  It was too deliciously coincidental to pass up.

When I submitted my photo, I'd forgotten that I was logged into the Guardian web site with my cat's Facebook account, so the byline on my contribution has at least, I hope, given the editors some good laughs.

Here it is:  My moment as a Phenomenal Penguin paparazzi.

I regret that no one posted a photo of the abandoned stadium in Tallinn, Estonia.  That's another haunting spot.

For the record: New property development, and I'm excited about it!

Mark this date, folks:  On 11 October 2014, I, a confessed property development Luddite and curmudgeon who is generally in favour of fewer people and fewer buildings, actually felt a frisson of enthusiasm about the plans for new construction right here in my own neighbourhood.

The story hit the global press today, and it came as  a shock to me.  First, because Phnom Penh so rarely makes international news, but second, I had no idea this project was in the works. The biggest shock of all is the calibre of the architect -- Zaha Hadid!

[The information and photos below appeared in today's Guardian article. All images are by Ms. Hadid herself.]

This is the plan for the Sleuk Rith Institute --a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library devoted to the Khmer Rouge genocide.

The complex is planned to serve as a centre for genocide studies across Asia, with a strong educational and outreach component, and shares its site with a local high school – formerly home to a Khmer Rouge re-education camp. The land has been donated by the Cambodian government and a $35m fundraising campaign launched, with some funding already committed by USAID...

The high school mentioned above is the Boeung Trabek High School, and it's only a couple of blocks from my house.

This Institute is the goal of Youk Chhang, 53, who is the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia and who himself survived the hellish four-year reign of Pol Pot, in which two million Khmers perished.

“It’s like a silent heart attack,” says Chhang. “You think you’re all right, but then it comes back. I want the institute to break the silence, but it must be optimistic and look to the future. So many of these memorial museums are depressing, and you leave with a sense of anger, not forgiveness. They are usually designed by men, so I thought maybe a woman could do it better.”

Zaha Hadid has brought her trademark language of sinuous lines, but she has consciously eschewed some of her more violent geometries, making a building that promises to be unusually attuned to its context. The five functions have been separated into a cluster of individual buildings, echoing the five towers of Angkor Wat, while their structures are formed from great timber columns that split and entwine, like the writhing roots that enlace the ancient stone temples.

If this project does come to fruition, it will be, in my humble opinion, the most remarkable building and grounds in all of Cambodia, excepting of course the Angkorean ruins themselves.

This photo is Hadid's vision for the interior of the Institute's library.

Over the last two decades, Chhang and his team have compiled an archive of over a million documents, photographs, tapes and films, as well as mapped 200 prisons and 20,000 mass graves across the country. From confidential reports describing conditions in the countryside, where a million died of starvation, to confessions under torture of thousands of prisoners killed by the secret police, the archive provided essential evidence during the trial of two former Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan, 83, and Nuon Chea, 88, who were finally convicted of crimes against humanity in August this year.

Although the five buildings are separate at the ground level, they're joined by raised walkways at the upper levels. This reflecting pool in the centre of the school building reminds me of the waterways in and around Angkor Wat.

I have no idea how much of the needed $35 million has been raised so far, but I pray, in these days when money for glitzy hotels, shopping malls and car dealerships seems to grow on trees, that the funding for this important and beautiful project will come together.