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.

Rambling on quiet holiday streets

Cambodia was of course part of French Indochine, and the architectural influence of that colonial era is still evident.  The buildings are falling apart in many cases and being demolished in many more, but as I walked and cycled around the city during the Pchum Ben holiday, I found quite a bit of architecture to appreciate when the streets were mostly empty.

Many of Phnom Penh's colonial buildings have rounded corners, but this one, a hotel, also has some gorgeous art deco details.

On the opposite corner is another hotel, somewhat puzzlingly named Le Grande Palais Boutique Hotel.  (Are boutique hotels grande?  Never mind, this one is.)

Many of the two- and three-storey apartment buildings in the city also bear the sort of rounded corners I associate with Francophone cities like New Orleans. This one is near the Orussey Market.

I don't know enough architectural terminology to describe the vertical lines on this building's corner. Modernist?  Modernish? Superfluous?  Anyway, I do like them. This photo also illustrates one of the frustrations of photography in Phnom Penh:  the ubiquitous clumps of electrical wires strung everywhere. There's just no avoiding them. 

Contemporary Khmer architects have a new take on the rounded corner.  Many examples of this "glass rocket ship" show up in the Facebook group, "The Ugliest Buildings in Cambodia".  This apartment building is in the posh expat neighbourhood, BKK1. I presume there are foreigners who actually pay a hefty amount of rent to live in this aesthetic atrocity.

This building does not have rounded corners, but it does have lovely arched windows and green shutters, and I hope it will assauge your outraged senses after the photo above.

One of the things I most wanted to do over the holiday was cycle over to the neighbourhood known simply as Olympic.  It's home to the Phnom Penh Olympic Stadium, designed by the country's most noted architect, Vann Molyvann, built in 1964.  It was the site of mass executions during the Khmer Rouge years, and now there is talk of demolition as the developers of high-rise buildings look at the site and wring their greedy, greasy little hands.  I'm not sure if the site is officially open to the public; the guards behind the main gate seemed puzzled that I wanted to come in and look around, but they eventually opened the gate and waved me in.

This is the indoor stadium.  

It echoes now; the only sounds are dripping water and nesting swifts. It's an eerie space. 

The indoor stadium is three or four storeys, and although there are reflecting pools throughout the lowest level, I saw no sign of a swimming pool.  

The only other people I saw at the stadium on that day were three students of Urban Planning from the National University of Singapore. They didn't seem to share any of my fondness for the stadium and didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that it faces demolition. The fact that it's one of Molyvann's most admired works didn't impress them a bit. "I don't know," said one of them. "It's just kinda old, I guess."  They went off in the direction of the encroaching high-rises.

The outdoor stadium is simply massive. I just took a couple of photos of the berms into which the seating is built.  I think there may have been some pop concerts held here in the past few years. 

For whatever reason, they've removed all the toilets from the indoor stadium and dumped them on one of the access ramps.  Any hope for using this facility again for its intended purpose (or any purpose, actually) is dim.

I pedalled home thinking about the stadium, its past and its future.  I spotted a foreign man walking down the street carrying an unusual-looking stringed instrument, and as the streets were empty, I zipped across and interrupted his walk. His accent gave him away as a North American, and although he seemed shy, he was happy to tell me about his chapei dorng vwairng, a traditional Khmer instrument whose name translates simply as 'long necked thing'.  He'd bought it here in Phnom Penh. He showed me its bone frets and the little bone pick that is parked in a hole in the center.  He had adapted the instrument so he can connect it to an amplifier. He graciously allowed me to photograph it (though he declined to pose with it).

One oddity:  The chapei dorng vwairng player strums only two strings. You'll notice, however, that the instrument has three pegs.  

There is in fact a third string that runs beneath the other two; it runs through small holes drilled in each fret.  Because it's behind the other two strings, it's impossible for the player to pluck or strum it, so what is its purpose?  No one has been able to tell him, so the musician surmises that it is simply to keep the frets from falling off and getting lost if they come loose from the neck. I really enjoyed his impromptu concert, and was thankful to have crossed paths with him.  

The other side of the Mekong

As I mentioned in my last post, Pchum Ben is the 15-day Khmer religious holiday to honour elders and ancestors; the official holidays are Monday-Wednesday, 22-24 September.  Like Khmer New Year, Pchum Ben is the occasion of an exodus to the provinces, which renders Phnom Penh a ghost town.  I was eagerly looking forward to these days, because they're one of the few times I can cycle through the city without constantly wondering if an imminent traffic accident will send me off to join my own ancestors.

On Monday, I went on a cycling junket to a more rural area on the other side of the Mekong River with my friends Malcolm and Kathleen. Malcolm has chosen feet over wheels in Phnom Penh, and he walks over much of the city, but he borrowed a friend's mountain bike for yesterday's expedition.

Malcolm's a tad over 70, but don't tell anyone.
[...she says, posting it on the internet for all to see.]

We pedalled down to the bank of the Mekong and wheeled our bikes onto this little ferry. What? Why bother pulling the loading ramp up? You can fit a few more vehicles on board if you leave it down. Anyone who's careless enough to roll off the stern ramp had better know how to swim.

Bundled up in knitted caps for the sea voyage.
(A 10-minute river crossing in the tropics)

The villages on the other side of the river are rural. It's a 10-minute ride to another world. Poultry, gardens, heavily fruiting trees and this pretty, sturdy little bay mare.

"Seh," said the old lady in front of the house.
It's the Khmer word for 'horse'. Either she wanted to
build up my vocabulary, or she thought I'd
never seen such a beast before. 

Kathleen was taking her new mountain bike and all her fancy new cycling accessories on their maiden ride, so this was pretty much the last we saw of her for quite some time. My city bike has no gears nor proper shock absorbers, so I moved a bit more slowly along the rutted dirt road, and Malcolm was gracious enough to stick with me, even while I stopped to photograph all the gorgeous beasties.

"Ride past us, ride around us...You can try riding
over us, and we probably won't object. Can you say 'placid'?"

I still have my PAWS t-shirt that I bought to support the animal shelter in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. It's not as slick as all of Kathleen's designer lycra stuff, but I still love it.  My bamboo bike, despite being a city bike, performed like a trooper on the rough dirt tracks.

Old bat on a bike.

Some miles on, we pedalled across a flimsy bridge, looking out to either side over water choked with marsh grass and water lilies. Just as I was rolling off the end of the bridge, Malcolm delivered a quip that nearly sent me wheeling right into a tree.

"Hmm. Just like Cape Cod."

We pedalled at last to a different ferry dock and wheeled the bikes onto a boat that would take us to the northern end of Phnom Penh. Again, even though the journey across the Mekong is about 10 minutes, there are services aboard to cater to those who didn't think ahead and pack provisions. On the left side of the bowl are boiled quails' eggs. The things in the plastic bag are some sort of roasted larvae or grubs.  I watched the transactions, and a few hundred riel ($.10 or so) bought a fairly large sack of crunchy bugs.

The purveyor of eggs and bugs hid beneath her rose-coloured hat.

It was wonderful to get out of the city for a few hours and to find such a dramatic change of scenery so nearby. It's a different ferry, and the port is some distance from the Phnom Penh city centre, but Malcolm and I agreed that our next destination is Koh Dach, or Silk Island, which is criss-crossed by groomed trails that weave around and through villages where the residents still harvest and weave silk.  Stay tuned.

Pictures? Patience, please.

My apologies for having gone AWOL for a while.

I have been working, as incredible as that may sound.  Following the advice of a friend, I placed a couple of proofreading and copy-editing listings on a website that lists all manner of freelance services. To my alternating amazement, delight and consternation, the work has started to pour in.

I've been correcting the business emails of Korean post-grad students, ensuring proper and consistent comma usage in erotic novels, correcting spelling and sentence structure in an application to a California seminary, jazzing up some web site copy for the developer of a new app to hook up fitness addicts with gyms and trainers, compiling a list of 750 words to illustrate all the phonemes in the English language for the Vietnamese developer of an early-reading application, and oh so much more. Oh, I forgot -- I'm also writing copy for a construction/renovation company in Mallorca.

I'm old enough to remember life before the internet, but I still marvel at this turn of events.

Here in Cambodia, though, we have now entered the 15 days of Pchum Ben, the lunar holiday to honour the ancestors.  The official holidays are the last three days, which fall on Monday - Wednesday, 22 - 24 September this year.  Like Khmer New Year, this is another holiday which results in an exodus from Phnom Penh as Khmers go home to the provinces.  I have been eagerly waiting for this, very keen to ride my bike all over the empty city.  When I do that, I'll take my camera with me, and you shall have photos galore.  Good photos?  Don't push your luck.

The land of the 20-somethings

I recently came across a blog post that quoted Cambodian scholar and former director of  the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, Ou Virak. He believes that a Cambodian Spring -- an uprising along the lines of the Arab Spring -- is highly unlikely.  There were many interesting points in his argument, but a set of demographic charts drove one point home very powerfully: Cambodia's population is young.

Take a second to look at these charts and think about the implications. As a 52 year-old female, I fit into the largest age demographic in the US, but I'm well on my way to obscurity here in Cambodia. The 20-24 group rules here. Simple observations tell me that most Cambodians are younger than I, but the exact proportions on the chart are astonishing. Ou Virak puts it plainly:  "Cambodia is one of the youngest countries in the world."

Many travellers come to Cambodia with an awareness of the Khmer Rouge history; they visit the Toul Sleng Prison Museum and the Choeung Ek (killing fields) Memorial.  The Flicks shows The Killing Fields -- the 1984 film -- every week at their riverside location (the tourist area), and nearly every show sells out. 

Here's what Ou Virak has to say about the relevance of this genocide to today's young Khmers:

...the majority of Cambodians were born after the Khmer Rouge fell from power. Most of the electorate has no memory of the killing fields.... This also explains the resentment most young Cambodians feel at the way their country is portrayed in the global media. Everybody in Cambodia knows of someone who died during the three years of Khmer Rouge rule, but most of the country's population has never met any of them. For most Cambodians the killing fields belong to the past that rarely seems relevant to them or to the problems the country faces today. But when the rest of the world looks at Cambodia, they see nothing but the killing fields. 

 For many years, we saw the following slogan on web sites promoting travel to Cambodia's neighbouring country:  "Vietnam:  We're a country, not a war!" And of course Cambodia is more than killing fields and Angkor Wat. It disturbs me deeply, though, that a majority of Cambodians is dismissing a horrific historical period as both an aberration and a tourist attraction. I have no idea what, if any, history is taught in schools here, but I suspect it's minimal.

If they see no connection between the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1974 and the one-man rule in Cambodia in 2014, how can these young citizens understand the dangers of complacency?