We enter the pagoda compound with the car and stop in front of the sala (or dining hall). It is typical Khmer wooden building on stilts. I step out of the car and see Madame Yort Norng standing at the entrance of the sala at the top of the short but steep stairs that lead to the entrance. She see me great me with the typical smile that can be found only in the rural […]
So we left Cambodia. In these four years I have often thought about an article I red while I was in the preparation course with DED in Berlin in the summer of 2001. The article was written by an Italian doctor who had worked in Battambang at the hospital of Emergency, an Italian NGO. He wrote about his feeling while sitting at the departure hall of Phnom Penh airport: relief. Relief after the hard work […]
Every morning, when I cycle to the office, I cycle along the laterite road on the Stung Sen riverbank. I pass the village; see the women working in the garden and watering the vegetable and plants, pass the kids in school uniform (white shirt and blue shorts) walk to the local elementary school. At the end of the road, just before turning left to pass the bridge on the national road that cuts through Kampong […]
It is nice to be back in Cambodia. Heavy monsoon clouds have greeted us here in Kampong Thom. Warm rain is falling this afternoon, trees are shaking with the wind and the fields have become finally green now that farmers are planting the new rice. At the exit from Pochentong airport yesterday evening the dump warm air filled me its tropical-Asia-flavour. I kind feel at home as here is where we have the house and […]
An Italian journalist who lived for more than twenty years in Asia once wrote that traveling and living abroad makes you tired, it makes you older. After three and half years in Cambodia I start to believe that this is true. I feel a bit tired, though I am not sure I feel older yet. Signs of this tiredness are more evident after a trip to another country, having the opportunity to observe another way […]
Dear all, After a long break,here you are. Again the hot time, it is never cold though, but now it is hot and it is only the end of February the two next months are the real hot season, it is now the fourth hot season for us in Cambodia and maybe the last. Thermometer reached 37 degrees inside the house yesterday. It is a bit like holiday feeling on Saturday afternoon going around […]
Today I received an email from a friend from Finland. It was a forwarded message that found its way until my PC here in Kampong Thom, Cambodia click after click, along a strange and unforeseeable sequence of connections. It had an attachment a picture of a young child, of two year of age who has lost his parents in the Tsunami that hit Thailand almost two weeks ago. He has a Scandinavian face, blond hairs, […]
It has been sometime. I know. Anyhow we are here. Last 12 months in Cambodia before moving back to Finland. I will come back soon with some more stories from this unique country. Arnaldo
How it is to go to Cambodia with Olga, one month old child? Of course not for traveling. Holidays with one month old child are not exactly the thing that every parent wishes for. There is enough new world to get used to inside the walls of home, going to other side of the world is not really necessary at this stage. But now that our life and home happens to be here, on the […]
It may be true: life becomes more serious the more we grow older. Work commitments make us have more responsibilities and have less time to enjoy time for ourselves or with our friends. Moreover distance may come in between and we live more apart from friend and family. I myself live far away from family and friends and though I have made new friends living far away, I miss the friends back home and the […]