Me getting down to business

More photos of the whole team here http://phnompenning.com/photos/ddd/

Spiders for dinner

MORE PHOTOS HERE (From my friend's blog)

It's 9:30 on Sunday morning and I'm sat on the balcony just having finished a big bowl of noodles and tofu for breakfast. It's really hot already.

Yesterday I went out for a really long walk around Phnom Penh and then in the late afternoon I met with about 15 people from work and we hired a a boat to cruise around the Tonle Sap, Meekong and what ever the other two rivers are caled that converge in Phnom Penh. The Cambodian contingent were asked to bring the snacks. Imagine our delight as they produced whole deep fried finches (I think), silkworms and tarantulas!!! I munched a tarantula's foot (that's a sentence I never thought I would write!). Actually, I'm not sure that they really have feet as such. Maybe an ankle. Or hoof? It tasted pretty much like barbequed salmon skin. The taste itself really is not a problem, it's just the psychological aspect (even James Bond is scared of tarantulas). I was told by my friend that with the silkworms the problem is not just psychological - they really do taste awful. The boat trip descended into a bizaree Kareoke, freak-dance-off. With everyone making proper idiots of themselves. In a good way.

The place to be?

By the time I had walked 200 metres down my street today I had been asked 7 times if I wanted a motobike taxi, two times if I wanted a tuk tuk taxi, I was offered drugs twice and offered my choice of either Cambodian, Vietnamese or Thai girls.

Later I went to the western style supermarket and while in the tuk tuk in a traffic jam I got hit by two street kids (lightly I hasten to add).

Phnom Penh is an interesting place to be. It's an experience. I don't think may people would claim that it's a pleasant place to be.

The sweaty spirit of compromise

I just practiced my negotiation skills in order to get the aircon turned down from 30c to 24c.... yep, it's hot today.

Party Khmer Style!

Last night I had the great privilege to attend the birthday party of the son of the nephew of my friend Toro. Down some backstreets by the entrance to a garment factory, the small house looked out onto narrow streets lined with corrugated iron houses. There were perhaps 20 people in attendance, plus lots of children running in and out. The men sat at one table and the women and children at the other. The women made and served the food while the men drank Angkor beer and ate frog soup and roasted fish.

Every time we wanted to drink out beer we had to raise our bottles and chink them with everyone elses. That's a lot of chinking. "Why?" I asked.

"You have five senses. You can see the beer, you can smell the beer, you can taste the beer and you can feel the beer in your hand. But you cannot hear the beer. To use all five sense we must hit our bottles togther."

My friend Toro

Toro drives a cab for a living. Like almost everyone in Cambodia he has an interesting story. I only know the story from the point that he was conscripted to fight the Khmer Rouge. He spent two years living and fighting in the forest, eating whatever he could find. Pythons apparently were regular fodder. Initially the fighting was fierce, but eventually Toro's fellow soldiers and adverseries called an unofficial truce to stop the exhausting violence. Toro finally escaped to Thailand and became a fisherman ("we worked so hard, so hard you wouldn't believe") before returning after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Toro asked me recently why I had so many Jewish colleages where I work. I said that I guessed there may be an element of shared experience - Hitler's extermination of the jews and Pol Pot's extermination of so many Khmers. Toro replied, "Yes, but it makes me so sad that my country did it to itself."

(I asked Toro's permission to write about his story. Like most Khmers he is keen that it is heard)

Dazed and confused