kicked in the face by a horse.

Well, I haven’t actually been kicked in the face...but I did get my wisdom teeth taken out on Monday, so I look and feel as though I have been. While the slight pain is not enjoyable, this is easily forgotten whilst enjoying a hearty meal of bananas and yogurt (consecutive meals, consecutive days).  In all honesty, it was one of the least pleasant experiences of my life, but I am glad it’s all over and done with now. If anyone else is considering this procedure and opts to have them taken out in the chair I can recommend taking an mp3 player to drown out the sound of your teeth cracking in half...and it will also give those songs special meanings/flashbacks for the rest of your life. The top 2 were quite simple, so some upbeat coldplay songs were enough to drown out my tooth being ripped out of my jaw.  The bottom 2 teeth were a bit more complicated so linkin park on full volume was needed, almost an entire album. Good times.

So, I am writing this from Bangkok (home of the best dentists in SE Asia!) and also home to a 5.5 ton solid Gold Buddha statue (apparently).

I’m not sure if I made any ridiculous promises about how frequently I would write in this thing when I left, but I did intend to write more often than every 8 months (time really is flying over here + low motivation for blog writing)...but here we go...

Coming to highly sophisticated and (mostly) modernised Bangkok was a bit of a shock compared to the simple village life in Rovieng, Cambodia where I have spent the majority of the last 8 months. So, most of you will not have a clue what I am doing over here. I'm on a year(ish) long internship with ADRA, a humanitarian NGO which has been working in Cambodian since 1988.  I have been based out in the scrub in Rovieng, which is north eastern Cambodia, the province which borders with Laos.  I have not seen any other travellers/backpackers out there at all.  So, we just started a mother and child health project out in this province.  The province has terrible health statistics (on par with the worst in Africa) regarding healthy pregnancies, child birth, and mother & child malnutrition.  The stats are a result of lack of access to healthcare facilities, poorly equipped health centres, poorly trained and inexperienced health professionals and dangerous traditional practices.  Our project will operate for 3/4 years and aims to improve the situation by (in a simplified nutshell):

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- Building waiting rooms at healthcare centres; so women in rural areas can come and stay in preparation for their delivery, rather than scramble to get to the health centre (often with limited transport options on dodgy roads) hours or minutes before they give birth.

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Assist in raising the standard of health care professionals (especially midwives) so they can better prepared and equipped to handle complications.

·         Try to increase mother and child nutrition levels be encouraging the use of micronutrient supplements and (probably more importantly) encouraging families to engage with home gardening activities - in order to diversify their available food options and increase their nutrient intake.

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 Start up community groups which will share information about health practices within all of the villages. These groups are facilitated by a local village member and encourage group participation to identify challenges within the community and work together to think of, and implement solutions...

I’ve had a two week break since writing the above (writers block/low motivation for blog writing)

So that ^ is the project I’ve spent the majority of my time working on.  Although I prefer not to be staring at a computer screen all day – the office is where I am most effective, writing reports, proposal, donor communication etc. As fun as it is to be out in the field, you really need to have mastered the local language to be of any use. I have only semi-mastered a fraction of Khmer (mainly food, transport, money, bargaining skills and very basic conversation vocab – the necessities in life!).

Some other fun things I’ve done…

Vietnam

This entailed:

·         Spending 60 + hours on Busses and trains. We preferred to travel in the ‘hard seat’ section on the trains. When we first selected this option we thought “how hard can hard seats be?” They are very hard. It’s a wooden park bench bolted into a train carriage.  On our first trip (9 hours – just warming up) we met Fee, a 60 year old guy who was going 17 hours further north than us just to pick up a letter (using the post probably would have been easier) and then he would turn around and come straight back – at least that’s the story we understood from his charades and 7 words of English.

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    Travelling by trains is a great, and comfortable(comfort is optional), way to see the countryside. 70% of the countryside is rice paddies – and as we were on the train for extended periods of time we noticed that field workers were working hard right up until the last slither of light, and were working again in the morning as the first slither of sunlight came over the horizen.  For all I know they might have just been working all night (couldn’t see any torches, though).  Even if you hate your job, just be thankful that you are not a Vietnamese rice field labourer…

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 Finding a funky straw hat on the road. We looked around to see if someone had lost it (I’m guessing there is now a sunburnt and less cool motorbike rider getting around) but we just saw a roadside stall attendant motioning for Phil to put it on, so he did. This hat became known as the ‘party hat’ (or moo-lah in Vietnamese) the locals were loving it and were astonished when we told them it was the party hat (in Vietnamese) – they were stoked some foreigners knew some random Vietnamese words. We accidentally left the party hat on a bus.  Phil is now sunburnt and substantially less cool.

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    After a quick stop off to see my brother Ben, who was doing a mission/service trip in Nam Dinh…we jumped on a bus for Hanoi…After arriving in a ghetto bus station, jumped into a taxi for the touristy centre of Hanoi…We only had a crude map, and there was a small lake with an island in the middle on the map, just before the tourist place.  After passing a small lake with an island in the middle I said, “This looks like it. Besides, how many lakes could there be in a city anyway?”  Turns out there are 2 lakes in Hanoi (at least) and it took us another 2 hours to get to the other lake with an island in the middle…

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     We went to Hanlon bay (rocks/karsts? poking out of the sea, with sweet caves in some of them). Ill put up some pics, or you can google it.

Engaged:

That title seemed so casual, like it’s something you do every Sunday afternoon (actually, it was a Saturday night) and of course, it was actually quite a big deal.  Think exclusive candle-lit, roof top dinner under the stars. A view over Angkor Wat (google it) (in the distance) and fireworks (sparklers).  Just think of the best proposal you have ever heard of, it was WAY BETTER than that.

So I am now engaged to Jane, who also happens to be the most beautiful girl in the whole world. SCORE! (what are the chances of that?). I’m sure most of you reading this will already know her; but for those overseas or living under a rock, hopefully you’ll get the chance to meet her in the not too distant future.

Part of the fun/experience was buying a ring in Cambodia.  Although my Khmer vocab can handle food, transport and basic conversations, it definitely doesn’t stretch to Diamond carets and gold quality. So I went to a custom jeweller and drew what I wanted on a piece of paper. I left, hoping I would like what I saw when I returned.  It turned out sweet!

I am about do a similar drawing when I order a custom suit. I am not a good artist (nor very fashionable). A circle with a rock on top was easy enough for the ring, but a suit…wish me luck!

Got my wisdom teeth removed:

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 See above. Healing up well (2 weeks later)! Haven’t listened to coldplay or linkin park since…

Of course, this is just a few things that I’ve done in the past 8+ months.  I’m really enjoying the experience, time is flying and I’ll be home in pretty much 2 months +/-.  At the moment, I’m just finishing up some report writing, and then I’ll spend a few weeks building a bungalow out an outdoor Recreation centre. In mid October there is another week of national holidays – I’ll probably jump north over the border and cruise around Laos for the week.  Then more work…draw and pick up my suit…and I should pretty much be on the final stretch home.

I have really enjoyed my time working in the development field.  I think you are most effective when you can commit for an extended period of time – I don’t think I/we will be in that position in the immediate future - but I wouldn’t rule it out further down the track.  Really looking forward to playing cricket, bbqing, surfing, getting married and seeing where life takes us. Fun times ahead!

Seeing that it’s taken me 9 months to write this, don’t hold your breath for another one before I leave…But I will (somehow) keep you all updated on significant life events!

 Hope life is good. Peace.

: ) andy