The Van Diaries Day 3

wake up, get a cold cold shower on tiles stained by the laterite, still quite clen though, just coloured


off to our real work, before that breakfast

some chinese-like noodle beef soup thingy with livers and such

the noodles were like pan mee only green, and it sweetened the soup

not too bad at all.......had more coffee of course


took a stroll around Snoul, shooting some cutaways. there was a street market that we never bothered even stepping into

lotsa motorbike taxis, small horse carts carying rocks and other construction material

a huge anchor beer billboard, and the locals pronounce it as "angkor" making it clear why it has a strong foothold in these parts

see a huge satelite dish, probably where all the cable is coming from,


and lotsa lotsa red dirt and mud, lots of it.


so after breakie we head to the village of ksem krao, luckily only 20 minutes from snoul, so our arses didnt have to hurt on the road.

as you'd expect,more flat land, animals, and wooden houses

we reached the school site, its almost 70% done structurally, a band of kids in uniform (the first ones ive seen) all hanging around to be on camera, seeing that it was still school holidays.

got a tour from the headmaster who looks like my age, there was about 4 classrooms which will be solar powered, and there will be internet via the motorman system

THE MOTORMAN SYSTEM
-cambodian kids start a search on an engine and save it onto a disk
-a man on a motorbike comes and collect these disks and brings it back to the towns with internet, preparing 10 different possible searches
-the man rides back to the village to update the schools computers
-pretty neat for emails and porn but not to good for MSN


they have toilets, a field for planting vegetables so they can have recess fresh from the farm.

and of course a modern day well pump. its a really nice looking thing, all new and clean, u can push the handle with ur smallest pinky and water from the nearby swamps will come pumping through

but the malaysian donors decided to drink the swamp water on camera to prove that it was clean....even to the shock of our local guide.......he must think malaysians are one crazy bunch


after the interviews we decided to head back to snoul interview the district education officer and work was virtually over, with another 3 days left.

so what else is there to do in cambodia?

the angkor wat of course! not a bad idea, i thought i wouldnt be able to see this architectural beauty, but since its only another 7 hours away and they wanted to leave like straight away, and our arses would hurt even more.............its better than rotting in snoul.


so back in the van with our trustee driver Han, dats his name, not coz i suddenly remembered, but because he msg me recently.

so han and his millenium falcon took us off to a snails pace towards Siam Reap.


road,road,road,road,flat land flat land flat land, animals animals

then they decided to take a shortcut! im never happy to haer something like that, since we aint even on a decent road anyway.


so Han takes us into a gigantic estate, where u couldnt see anything now but rubber trees and an even lousier road, i mean single path where some busses even passed thru.


and we even get held up by dumb goats blocking the whole road, it took about another hour just to get out, and u can see from the drivers face that he wondered whether it was actually worthwhile, coz there were several forks in the road and i guess he just guessed most of the way.


road road road nite time, frightening road road road then small but rapid vibrations!

some weird mini humps.......dat could only mean one thing


CIVI-fuckin-LIZATION!

we had arrived, we put up at a neat guest house, we looked for food, we ate, we slept like how we slept on most of the journey there, except without any vibrations!