Prahok

Waiting for the flight to Phnom Penh… Scheduled at 18:30 local time.

An episode from the Reamker…

The performers here are the children of the Kampong Chhnang orphanage.

To brush your teeth, you need a brush, toothpaste and … water.

The Tonle Sap lake is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. It has a surface area of 2,700 km² which grows to 16,000 km² during the monsoon season.

This picture was taken during our last trip to Cambodia.

In Cambodia, small mountains are used to produce gravel. This gravel is used to build houses or to make concrete. Large pieces of rock are hammered into smaller pieces, all by hand. At these sites, you find sometimes a whole family, from old to young, hitting rocks. This child was the youngest…

Cambodia, here we come…

50 hours and counting…

We are almost ready with the packing; camera’s, computers, game consoles, memory sticks, shaving razors, clothes. People here in Belgium are passing by to drop off envelopes with letters, people in Cambodia are calling to ask for (legal) drugs.

Sunday afternoon, 17:15 take off to Frankfurt. 20:15 take off to Bangkok. We will be in Phnom Penh monday evening at 19:30.

The first trip is to Kampong Chhnang where we will stay most of the time:

The second trip with my sister and broter in law, who will arrive on Thursday, will be a trip around the lake:

A third trip is planned to visit some friends in Kep:

People who want to come visit us, here is a map from Kampong Chhnang with the main road from Phnom Penh and the main road from Battambang:

You are all welcome…

First, sorry for not posting recently. I am rather busy at work for the moment.

Yet 9 days before leaving the country to … Cambodia. I got myself a visa here in Belgium at the Cambodian Ambassy. They charged me 20 euro’s, which is not the same as 20 dollars ;). My wife and kids have permanent visa. The advantage: no waiting at Phnom Penh, Pochentong Airport. We can go directly to the immigration desks.

We will leaving Belgium on Sunday, the 15th of July. From Zaventem to Frankfurt. Then from Frankfurt to Bangkok. Waiting… 6 hours. From Bangkok to Phnom Penh. As we arrive on Monday, 7.30 PM, we will stay one night in Phnom Penh.

Thursday, shopping day! Probably, the girls will be at Soriya to get some food, at the Olympic Market for cloths. We boys, we will be at Psar Thmei looking for a mower for the grass. I also need some chemicals for the swimming pool. Late in the afternoon or at the end of the day, we will hopefully be in Kampong Chhnang.

My sister, an orphan from Cambodia, who came to Belgium back in 1980, just after the war, will come to Cambodia on Thursday. It will be the first time for her after 27 years to be back in Cambodia. Her husband and two children will join her. I will pick them up in Phnom Penh, and we will be back in Kampong Chhnang the next day.

Plans for the next two/three weeks:

- A visit to the Kampong Chhnang orphanage. My wife’s aunt, Ma Om, has been the Head of the orphanage for many years. There are 66 children and 8 adults. The cloths we will buy (see day one) are for the children.

- A trip around the Tonle Sap lake. From Kampong Chhnang to Battambang. I was in Battambang in 2005. My wife lived there a few years, just before the famous year 1975. There she saw er father for the last time. From Battambang to Svay Sisophon. My Cambodian sister was born there and lived there until she was taken to Thailand in 1980. From Sisophon to either Poipet or to either Siem Riep. Every time we were in Siem Riep (twice), we visited the temples (Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Bayon, Baphoun, Sras Srang, Banteay Srei, Phnom Kulen, …). From Siem Riep to Kampong Thom. We never stopped at this city. Maybe this time? Next stop is Kampong Cham. Maybe we will visit a friend of Ma Om. From Kampong Cham to the ferry point at Prek Kdam and back to Kampong Chhnang.

- A trip to Kep: we have some Belgian friends who live or stay in Kep. They started a development program for the region. More information about this project can be found at their website here. Click on the hands enter the website.

- A trip to a village somewhere near Takeo. I friend of ours plans to build a small hospital ( 15m x 15m ). I have the plans of the hospital and I will check the offer of a local contractor. The prices seem ok, but the quantities seem not ok.

- Other tips from your side ?

Back to Belgium on the 13th of August or I will (hopefully) miss the plain and be back on …

Two weeks ago, we were in Paris to celebrate the Khmer New Year. If you want to see some photographs, look here.

Cambodians celebrate new year during a three day period: 13-14-15 of April. The western world celebrates new year on the 1st of January. This is the first difference.

There is a second difference: westerns moved to the year 2007, but Cambodians to the year 2551. Or is it the year 2550? Lets find out…

There are multiple calendars in use here. The western world (and most of the rest of the world) uses the Gregorian calendar. This calendar is named after pope Gregorius XIII, who corrected some errors back in 1582 and fixed the counting of leap years to what it is today. This calendar starts counting the years from the year of the birth of Jesus Christ (more or less). Today it is the 1st of May, 2007 AD. The AD stands for ‘Anno Domini’, which is Latin for ‘the Year of our Lord’.

The other calendar is the Buddhist calendar. This calendar starts counting the years with the year of the death of Buddha (more or less). This was around the year 543 BC (where the BC stands for ‘Before Christ’). This calendar uses the BE (‘Buddhist Era’) suffix for a date. The Buddhist calendar is used on mainland south-east Asia in the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Sri Lanka.

Thailand is the only country where this calendar is the official calendar. The Gregorian calendar is also in use, but only in business where the rest of the world is involved. Today, it is the year 2550. You add 543 year to our year to get theirs and you subtract 543 years from theirs to get ours. A new year starts on the 1st of January. But in the past it was different. Before 1941 AD, a new year started on the 1st of April. The year 2484 BE (= 1941 AD + 543) was the first year that started on the 1st of January. The previous year 2483 BE had only 9 months. If you go to the Royal Thai Government’s website, you see that all recent publications are dated to the year 2550 (BE).

Cambodia uses the Gregorian calendar as the official calendar. The Buddhist calendar is used in a more religious context, with one small (annoying) difference. Cambodia is from its new year’s day in April to the end of the Gregorian year (western new year’s eve) one year ahead of the Thai calendar!

So, on new years day, the new year is the thai year + 1! And NOT as indicated in Paris…

Happy New Year Khmer 2551!

These days, all Cambodians all over the world are preparing themselfs for a three day new year holiday. It is a very important holiday for Cambodian’s. It starts this Saterday and lasts three days. Phnom Penh will become an almost deserted city. The area around Psar Thmei and the new Soriya shopping mall will be down during these three days.

As is the new year’s tradition, everyone will be driving up and down the riverfront road, dousing each other with water.

We here in Europe are heading to Paris (next time Phnom Penh?). Located near the ‘Bois de Vincennes’, there is a Bouddha temple. Cambodians gather together for praying, making music, eating, talking,… And the weather forecasts are promising for this WE.

Happy New Year!

សួស្តី​ឆ្នាំ​ថ្មី

Why are there some many different webbrowsers? Why are there different versions of the same webbrowser around? They call it ‘progress’!

As mentioned previously, search engines work with words. Khmer does not use word separators. Therefore, when you write in khmer, you add ZWSP’s (zero width space) in your text. They are there, but are not visible (zero width). This character has the Unicode value 200B.

But it seams that not all browsers, in casu my older version of Internet Explorer 6, do ‘know’ about this character. These browsers show this character as a ‘not so zero width space’!

I’m getting frustrated! Why do other sites, like Wikipedia, do not have the problem I am looking at? After several hours (hacking), I found that the difference was in the style sheet. I had to add the ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’ font to the font-family list. The ZWSP is now a real ZWSP.