Aww, more Ncv’s and French too- the worst kind, except for Israelis that is: let us be honest here, when French are good- as customers that is- they are good, but the good ones are few and very far between indeed. These were typically bad ones, six bitches abreast, saying oh it is too expensive and we are students, and go for the brunch menu, and take kebabs- I throw in fries for nothing and the water they order - I do not charge for water… ..And as I am down to my last 200 riel (about 20 cts,) I am in a bit of a bind here, and no position to argue, as much as I would like to throw them out, I frankly can’t afford it. Plus they come recommended by some very good French indeed- so I am stuck with that twittering bunch, fries, best beef in cambo for the kebabs- that are meant to accompany some other dish at the expat brunches... well I will do my best I keep telling meself in the kitchen enz. Enz and I do and they twitter and twatter and ask for more water and more fries until I have to tell them no more potatoes- true too, so push to shove dinner for 6, twenty four dollars in total, and then they hem and haw and want the bill split, and I say no, and of course they ask dumb questions and want my life story, not at that price I think and they niggle and naggle and how can somebody not French speak such good French and I say.. Well it happens you know and then my nasty side kicks in (as I am severely fed up and a true bitch) and they insist on my life story, I give them, well a new one: as in sob! ‘Fell in love with the wrong guy and he was with the French secret service- and now I am getting quite a bit of fun out of this one and go on… the truth: my family lived in France for quite some decades… and the truth also is much wilder than the story… now those hateful cows have scrammed and at least I will be able to feed us tomorrow, and stock up- up to a point.. As I think maybe there will be some nice and fun people arriving in the next day or so…

eclipse in cambo (style)

ooh yeah, an eclipse, and a big one too, we heard... after the fact, phones and internet had been down. And it is rainy season too: did we have an eclipse?, i asked Bill. oh yes', he said, kinda forgot to tell you.. remember the other day, when it was so cloudy and then it got so dark and we said, wow, that's gonna be one big rain.. '??". "yeah i do remember". well," Bill said, "that was an eclipse." Oh. wow.

It's Creepy crawler fest all right.

It’s Creepy Crawler fest

.. As a rule I do not have a problem with all those critters, six, eight or whatever legs or none at all... In the rainy season of course they tend to move inside, as like everybody else, they do not relish getting wet. Most of the time a can of spray will do the job. This year is particularly good for spiders, small and big, they weave their nets, and weave and then some. spider webs everywhere, so, I do take a broom several times a day to them, and manage to keep those at bay. Not so the newly homeless spiders that skitter and scatter everywhere in search of a safer spot for their nets.

Most of the other critters do get taken care of by Caruso the monstrous gecko- about a foot tall, tail not counting. He is a noisy fellow who lives in the roof, and is only very rarely to be seen-mostly at night in the half dark to scare the wits out of anybody to come across him. Caruso is at perpetual war with the cat; so far it’s a draw.

There is one little critter I do have a problem with, and sure enough I met one yesterday.

Our bathrooms are open air, quite romantic provided it does not rain.

I even have a bathtub and a water heater. Although it does not work: we do not seem to have enough power to run it. Every time I tried to use it so far I knocked out the power in the entire neighborhood. Not quite an option. So I heat water on the stove like everybody else, or shower- cold. A few sunny moments, made me lust for a bath. Leaves and debris had accumulated in the tub, so I set to clean it… and there it was: a red and black millipede, stinger poised. Aww, I hate and fear those. Although their sting will not kill you, you might wish it would, the pain is excruciating. This one, well not the biggest I have ever seen, but still. As they are not the strongest swimmers, I plugged the tub, and put the faucet on. That did the job- after a while. Fine or it would have been were it not that on closer inspection, all the leaves drifting in the tub had come to life. aww!! Leaches, hundreds of those nasty little heat seeking bloodsuckers, like weaving like little needles.  I have not too big a problem with them, but I hate to give them a free meal!!! (And pretty they are not. A tourist on a trek once asked me: how do leaches mate??? Normally we would have looked that one up, but then decided we could very well live without any knowledge of the secret sex life of leeches. Ehem).

 

Now the question is how do I get the leeches out of the tub?? Not even gloves will keep them away; they will just climb and suck on and climb some more until they find a nice piece of skin and get to work…

 In the end I left the tub for what it was and took a shower….the leeches? Still floating on leaves in the tub.

 

 

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and may the force be...

Telecommunications in Cambo.. Have gotten a lot better over the years, at least in the lowlands, up here, well not quite yet. We still gleefully call out ‘may the force be with you’ whenever somebody tries to use a phone, say, during a thunder storm.

 The three big providers are not called Mobihell, camshit and scammitel by us for nothing. And now after month of precarious and expensive- internet via the mobile phone that did not work most of the time anyways, it seems we are getting ‘real’ internet, or so they say. A Vietnamese company is taking advantage of the proximity of their country to our little outpost. So of course, I paid up: come today they say, make cable today, tomorrow internet. (That was a week ago.).Yeah sure, of course they did not come. So I made a stink as the powers that be that had not given me a receipt… and a young man with a ‘station’ came, looked around and said not bring cable. And left. That is what they did not do, and I did tell them so. And back to the shop, tell them again, and a fourth time, and a fifth. Now it seems they are doing something in the street, the cable or whatever- presumably. My friend Olga from wwf says that once you have it, it is surprisingly good, yeah, but when, when. The telephones service meanwhile has broken down completely in town...

Something somewhere must have been hit by lighten, a storm or both yet again... ahh the joys of the rainy season!!!

And here it is, and fast, a miracle!! (The installation was well a bit fun, Elvis tried to bite one of the monteurs who was stringing the cable from tree to tree, the geese did bite!!

Then they did not quite get that I will use the lappie in two (!) locations- oh horrors!!- easy pug-unplug, move-plug back in. or so one would think, no cannot do they said ( can of course, so I let it go and move the thing around, got them to leave me with enough cable for just that. How these guys ever got Angkor Wat together is beyond me!!!), but who cares: internet, hooray, finally!!!

 

What is it with people and sharpies?

The bullies look truly fearsome, and I would think that when they approach a stranger,-

  Running towards him or her looking like something just recently and hopefully only temporarily released from Hades or some other unsavory Stephen King place, they would scare the daylights out of whomever. Not so: it is happy little Iddy, skipping away like a baby goat, tail wagging, from whom the strangers flee in horror: just yesterday she was merrily chasing three Korean businessmen trough the banana trees. The businessmen yelped “chine dog! chine dog! ooouaah!” It took quite a bit of diplomacy to calm them and get them to sit down and have a beer…. (The whole thing ended with the bullies going free and Iddy doing time on a leash- grossly unfair. But it seems that she has to learn not to approach strangers. I’d rather not that she- nor do the other dogs for that matter do such thing anyways. But that is because I am afraid that the dogs might come to harm, i.e. being stolen and eaten or tormented in some thoughtless way as in children and so….

In the end the Koreans stayed - a big thunderstorm that hit helped of course. All went without further mishap: as Koreans are notoriously accident prone hereabouts, it was a lucky break: in my old guesthouse in snookyville I would automatically reach for the first aid kit upon their arrival, usually highly necessary- one once fell out of his bed and broke a collar bone…they also tended to drown when going to the beach or get their toes into the spokes of their motor bikes.(don’t ask.).

Iddy tends to get into inappropriate barking jags though: it is not always easy to shut her up, I tell her, in a rather sarcastic tone that she:” acts like a Dutch keeshond, is she a Dutch kees hond? - ooh how utterly utterly baaad.” That tends to do the job.

As none of us has been able to go to Phnom Penh recently, we all are out of dog food, and have to find other ways to feed the beasts: rice, and boiled bones and some meat tend to do the job. Yesterday a friend told me she fed hers with instant noodle soup. Great idea!! So I bought some and dished it up: three dogs and a cat looked at me like:” what is this? Are you a chef?? Surely we are not supposed to eat this crap???”” Is all you getting “I said. They looked me up and down and filed out to the avocado trees to steal some…looks like noodle soup is out…