Wednesday, June 25, 2014

S E Asia Travels 2014 continued

DAY 7
Tuesday 24th June 2014.

It was an 'at home' morning with  my youngest granddaughter's  school friend  coming to play. She lives with her parents in a village about an hour away in a rice growing rural area. The two girls were both pretty excited to be together as it was the first time that they had been able to get together like this. When her mother came to collect her I had a chance to chat to her about the work she is involved in. She is part of an organization which focuses on bringing safe water systems to the rural villages. This includes rain water collection and filtering. They also have a concrete toilet unit with septic tank. All of this is tied in with hygiene education. It all sounded very worthwhile.

During the afternoon my daughter  her daughters, Pippa and I drove to the Hope International Christian School, to choose some books from the Primary school library. I was interested to see how much the junior school has expanded since I was last here two years ago.

We then drove a kilomtre of two to the Savvana Shopping Centre. First was to recharge the data part of my SMART sim card. They have a scheme that you purchase a pre-pay $2 top up and then phone in to SMART Exchange to convert it into $30 data credit. An amazing idea which Becky and Phil use all the time – and why not. Unfortunately, after the assistants had tried all sorts of ways to get my phone done like this, they realised that I had a traveller's promotion SIM and SMART Exchange would not work. So I paid and extra $1 and got a traveller's 1GB of data. I do not plan to upload any other videos to You Tube before we head off to Vietnam on Sunday. So 1 GB should be enough. I am using my phone as a wifi hot spot to link my laptop into.

Meanwhile, my daughter and the girls headed up to the third floor to the ceramic painting centre. The girls each bought a shape which they then painted at the work benches. They certainly enjoyed the activity and ended up with a couple of results they were especially proud of. 

Then it was off to the Apple service centre to see if they could replace the shattered screen of a iPad. Seems the answer is no, but they can sell a replacement at a reduced price. We just need to work out how to back up the files to somewhere safe, when your Apple cloud storage is full. Now that's going to occupy us for a few hours tonight.

At Savanna, I checked out the DVD store but it was so congested that I decided not to bother hunting anything out. I have bought quite a number of disks here on previous visits. After visiting the new Aeon Mall on Saturday, this older shopping centre certainly looked a little tired. We did drop into the Lucky Supermarket on the ground floor where I discovered a bottle of French red wine labled Cuvee Laurence. Of course I just had to buy this to try out during the week. 

There was the usual mid to late afternoon rainfall with some wind. Temperatures seem to be a little lower today and conditions are much more bearable.

Finally spotted one of the ghekos which live around the outside of the house. But this one was in Toby's room and looked like it came through a small corner gap. It was about 300 mm long and a pale pastle green. During the night these creatures make loud calling noises. On my first night here I thought that the sound must have been some weird clock chiming the hours; until I tried to count the chimes and found more than 12 in a row. They are surprisingly loud for such a small creature.

Across the lane is the home and workshop of an undertaker. This morning a tuk tuk arrived with planking for coffins stacked up on it. The undertaker has a funeral tuk tuk parked out front. It has a construction like an enclosed garden shed built on it. Highly colourful with decorations of a Buddhist style all around it.

Put a new video up on You Tube. During the process my phone hotspot ran out of data credit with only 86% of the up loading completed. A few hours later when I returned with a recharged phone the up load continued without any difficulties. Something new learned. This morning my You Tube views total clocked in at 8,754.




PHNOM PENH UPDATE

DAY 6 Monday 23rd June 2014

Today's main activity was a trip into the central area of Phnom Penh for lunch at Wills Brunch Cafe. I had been here on a previous visit when it was under different management as The Lounge I think it was called. Some changes and a different menu. Nice coffee. And the food fine as well. I did notice that having a second shot in the $US2.25 long black, cost me and extra 75 US cents. Which pretty much brought it up towards NZ prices.
Nice air conditioning and fast free wi fi, so I was able to load a video up to You Tube very quickly.

LANDING AT PHNOM PENH 3' 59”

Becky used the time to check out accommodation in Ho Chi Min City for Sunday night. She used Trip Advisor and I checked on Hostelworld. Interesting to note that we were getting cheaper prices for the same sites through Trip Advisor. It looks like we have booked into a small boutique hotel very close to where our bus ride from Cambodia will end up at. It was good to have that sorted out. One four bed room, one twin and a single room all confirmed. All a bit different and more complicated to my normal booking of a single room.
\ No doubt about it but the grandchildren are certainly very confident with being out in a cafe. Ever keen Toby works on his video editing.

Then it was off to Monument Books again to purchase a Vietnam guidebook that I had checked out last time. Of course the grandchildren made a beeline to their favourite section for a quick read.

I enjoy travelling around the streets of Phnom Penh. There is always so much to see, with tuk tuks rushing along with all sorts of loads, not just passengers, there are equally interesting loads on motor cycle powered flat trailers. Then there are the thousands of motor scooters with combinations of loads and riders, up to four on a bike seems common.
Then there are the road side stalls and tiny shops we pass and always there are labourers at work. Interesting.

I am beginning to work out directions again and the streets around the house are becoming more familiar. As are the streets I learn from previous visits. The problen is just that I have not yet connected the two, so I have the this gap in the middle.
The usual afternoon downpour came and mostly went. But the heavy clouds hastened the arrival of darkness. It was pretty much night by 5:45 pm. Phil had been working in a village clinic over an hour away on the city edge and had a long often damp ride back in the darkness. He got back after 7:30 pm.
There was a chance to watch another episode of The Midwife on DVD before bedtime.

Day Five
This was Sunday and we all decided that a quiet day at home would be appropriate after the rather busy previous day. Unfortunately for my son-in-law, he still had to front up at University and run the second of two Sunday seminars on Sedation for a group of local dentists. So it was a 6 am departure for him and his motor bike. The early departure is needed to give him time to get through the daily traffic congestion.

We had passed the Faculty of Dentistry building yesterday and saw where he works. He has quite a distance to travel each day to get there.

However, a quiet day for the rest, which started off with my 9 year old granddaughter making pancakes for breakfast to go with syrup and fruit. Nice to be eating Dragon fruit, fresh pawpaw and mango again. Later in the day, I had mangostein with its thick outer case rather than a skin protecting the inner white sweet flesh. She has become a practised pancake maker.

Other than a trip out to the nearest equivalent of a corner dairy, or more a local supperette, One on One, which is across the road from Hope International Christian School. It was a quiet day with everyone focusing on their own activities or watching a Mr Bean DVD. My oldest grandson is focused on making costumes and various articles for and Ancient Roman soldier and for other characters. My 12 year old grandson was video editing and successfully working out audio features of his new Sony Vegas editing programme. I am very impressed at the way the four grandchildren can settle down to their own interests and activities.

We had invited an ex Howick family around for tea and they duly arrived, four on a single motorcycle as happens here, during a heavy monsoon downpour. So we had a great time with the family. We have known him since he was an infant. These days along with his wife they focus on working with the disadvantaged and those at risk. Particularly young people. They have set up a mentor programme called Alongsiders and this has taken off in a really exciting way.
The children had a lot of fun together.

Our friends headed off home between show ers around 10:40 pm. It had been a really nice time.

Travels in S E Asia 2014

Well I Have Got Here
19th June 2014

This will not be a regular or daily update – have given up on trying to maintain a daily blog of my travels. In fact I have done a bit of travelling since the last time I actually did maintain a travel blog. Rather this will be just a few descriptive comments ( or rambles) as the journey continues.

So here we go with the fact that I got dropped off at the Auckland Airport before the check in desks actually opened. A bit unusual for me. So I joined the opening stampede once the check in counters opened, not sure why as I already had my seat pre-booked for like or the sum of an extra $25. It was at check in that I was told that the plane was late arriving and would be that much late leaving. My bag was given a 'Hot Transfer' label. In the end the 12:15am departure was more like 1 am. That was to mean that I would have about 1 hour in transit at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The economy class was full. My seat was 21 J, which was the aisle seat with one other seat next to the window. I was thankful that:
a. I was not seated in the middle of the 5 seat centre block
b. That I had a friendly neighbour – an Early Childhood teacher from Thames.
c. That although minor turbulence stopped each hot drinks round, at least the meals came through ok. A sort of potato and roast chicken with fruit salad after take off and a fritta and fruit breakfast two hours before
d. That Malaysian Airways still has seat pitch (space between seats) of 34 inches.
e. That the passenger in front did not ease his backrest into a semi recline. In fact I didn't notice anyone doing that either.

At KL it was a brisk walk to the inter-terminal railway shuttle and then down H wing to the Phnom Penh plane. That boarded very slowly as there was only one x ray machine and we even had to remove shoes.

The flight to Phnom Penh was on a very modern Airbus and I had booked a window seat so that I could look out on the cloud cover and then the ground as we landed in Cambodia. Just a bit over one hour travel time. A chicken and salad roll, tub of fruit salad and white wine provided a pleasant snack and time filler.

Visa on arrival went smoothly and quickly as did immigration and walk through customs. Biggest hold up was organising a SIM card before finally exiting. This turned out to be a Travellers' promotion with the problem that you can not up grade the data amount as locals can via SMART Exchange, where by $2 prepay is exchanged into $30 data. Sounds a great idea, it works, just not for visitors.

It was very nice to see my daughter and the four grandchildren waiting with happy smiles. The ride back to their home was a quick re-introduction to travel on the ground in Cambodia. The toll road which is supposed to be quick was under repair but with little sign of actual work in progress. So it was very rutted and pot holed, but still crowded and slow moving. Then along various streets with varing traffic densities, but mostly busy with tuk tuks and motor bikes and of course varying condition of road surface.

It was nice to arrive at my daughter and son in law's house. I had not been to this one previously. It is located down a narrow single vehicle width lane apparently without a name.

Their home is double story with a large ground floor family room i.e. lounge and dinning, plus a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. This bath room actually has heated shower water which while not really 'hot' is enough to take the temperature to a pleasant luke warm.

Upstairs are bedrooms opening up onto an open common space. Also a bathroom with a cold shower. I am particularly appreciativeof Toby's willingness to give up his bedroom for me.

It was pretty hot when I arrived, well into the 30's and very humid. That and the long trip without a good night's sleep was the excuse to have mid afternoon lie down which became a sleep. When I woke I really did think I had slept through the night rather than the couple of hours it had really been.

See the video: LANDING AT PHNOM PENH 3' 59”

Day Two seemed a little cooler. Perhaps even less humidity, although we did have heavy rain mid afternoon. In the morning we drove into the City Mall to book seats for the afternoon session of 'How To Train Your Dragon Pt2' at the Legion Cinema on the top floor of the Mall building. The interesting thing about the tickets for children is that the right to a child ticket is based on height. So Pippa had to stand against a wall measuring scale and this 9 year old found that being just above the 1.3m cutoff point; she was an adult. I think she rather liked that. Ticket prices: Child $US3, Adults $US5 and this for a new release in 3D.

When we returned for the afternoon screening complete with tubs of popcorn and cans of coke, I found that our cinema (called a Hall) was every bit as modern as anything back home. In fact it proved to be one of my better 3D viewing experiences. Hall 1 would have seated around 200. They screened a cell warning. 'Turn it off before we come to get it”

While the Mall is modern and has many smaller shops, it is set out more like a modern department store than the sort of Mall we know in New Zealand. What did interest me was the DVD stand with a large range of modern movies. I was able to buy several from recent NZ Film Festivals

We also called into a nearby Lucky supermarket so I was able to recall my memories of Cambodian products and packaging. I always find it rather fascinating to wander round supermarkets in overseas countries.
During our travels around the streets I was able to try out a small and cheap ($NZ63) Thompson Action Camera which I had bought just a day or so before setting out on this trip. Looking at the test footage later I was very impressed with what such a matchbox sized camera could achieve.
See the video:
THOMPSON ACTION CAMERA REVIEW 5' 53”


Day Three.
We spent the morning around the house with everyone engaged in their own quiet activities. Toby and I spend several hours sitting side by side working through video editing and looking at his version of Sony Vagas – a popular editing programme. I also worked on a couple of videos to upload to You Tube at some stage soon. One is a review of the little action camera. Have now worked out how to use my phone as a wi fi hot spot – easy really.

We took Pippa to a friends house for a sleep over. As a result, like yesterday after the movie, we were driving in the Phnom Penh rush hour. Well truthfully on the Phnom Penh streets, every hour seems like rush hour. It was just that this time was worse, not only on the main streets but also in the narrower side streets. Thousands of motorcycles some with up to four some how fitted onto the cycle. Often one would be an infant held in the arms of a rider or the driver. There are also the tuk tuks loaded down with all sorts of high loads as were some of the motor cycles too. Fascinating to watch and wonder about the safety of the child.


There are a few rules for driving here – in my opinion. Do whatever you want too, but do it slowly and carefully helps. So if you want to change direction and drive into the on coming flow just keep to the edge – either edge that is – or wherever you want to go. Having a large vehicle helps. If you have a large black Lexus with dark windows, then you seem to have the right to drive with a sense of priority over everyone else. And if you want to go down a road on the opposite side of your street, then just aim for it and slowly edge through the opposing traffic flow. Everyone will move around you except perhap a Lexus or large truck.

In the evening we drove to a small Indian Dosa restaurant. Cheap but so nicely cooked and presented. I was very impressed. Only problem was the traffic to go through to get to the other side of town. Next to the Dosa restaurant was a DVD shop with more interesting titles. We did have some discussion when I realised that I was being charged $1.50 a disk instead of the more common $1 and the sixth one free. The price came down.

So we finished the day watching another episode of 'The Midwife' on DVD. At present the family do not have TV and most likely will stay that way. It is easy enough to get recent series on DVD and watch at your own speed as it were. I was pleased to get two series of 'The Newsroom', a show I have only seen part of one episode of previously.

Day Four – Saturday.
An early start to travel across town to pick up Pippa from her overnight stay. Her friend lived more on the edge of Phnom Penh and we travelled not only along some congested roads, but also over some very rough surfaces. Then it was off to Mercy Clinic to get the children's inoculations updated. Proceeds from this central clinic fund work in the slum areas. Run by a local doctor who trained and is registered in the USA.

Next stop was one of the city's main markets. Orussey Market is one more used by locals and it does not have the touristy stalls which the Central and Russian Markets do. Here we were also able to book our bus tickets for Vietnam. The bus company will also organise our entry visas.


I didn't find Orussey to be as crowded as the other markets and the aisles were less congested. Less pressure to buy from the stall holders. Or more like no pressure. It is always interesting to wander around markets like this and although lots of stalls have the same goods it is interesting to especially spot the local hardware needs and the tools available. On the electronic stands there were lots of USB flash drives with emphasis on 2 – 4 Gb and less on 8 – 16 Gb, I did see a few 32Gb capacity. SDHC cards all seemed to be class 4 which is very slow and really totally unsuitable for any movie making use. Low capacity cards were the order of the day. The two brands were Adata and Transcend and their packaging did look like these brands have back home. There was a stand with Sony 10 inch tv monitors stacked up. But all analogue in a world fast changing to digital.

We stopped at an outside stall to buy cool drinks. The first quoted price of 1500 R was quickly corrected by the boss (?) to be 2000 R. So we guessed that the first was the locals price and we paid the tourist price. Two tier pricing. 2000R = 50 cents NZ. We mostly chose Coke or Sprite. The process of serving is for the bottle to be opened and poured into a plastic cup filled with ice. A straw is put through the round top cover and then the cup is placed in a small plastic carry bag, while the stall owner retains the glass bottle. The Coke tasted right, came in the traditional shaped bottle but was rather flat. It lacked any real bubbles. But it was nice to have a cool drink as the outside temperature was in the 30's and inside the market building must have been higher.

Back in the car which was parked on the roof car park and more driving along a mixture of wide boulevards and narrow congested streets, finally inching along to the car park enterance of Phnom Penh's newest attraction, the Aeon Mall. Three floors of shopping and a fourth for car parking. Having just opened this week, it was crowded, actually very crowded. Full of excited shoppers especially fashionably dressed young people.

The ground floor included a huge fresh vegetables and fresh fruit area every bit as y as any supermarket has back home. Certainly a vast difference to the local market stalls. Next to it was a large wine and beer area with a big range from around the world. Big price range too. There was a big supermarket all neatly set out with a couple of eager young staff to greet you at each aisle. My young researchers also known as grandchildren, inspected the breakfast cereals selection. Not big enough, not enough choice in the 'flakes and things'. Was a larger range of international 'healthy' musseli alternatives – at a price.

Ground floor also had a range of meals and snacks for sale. All being prepared in spotless kitchens areas. Noodles, sushi, bugers, pizza, and varieties of local foods. Plus a bakery which would not be out of place anywhere at home. Even with two payment counters and lots of staff, the queues moved slowly.

Floor two was fragrance level with lots of recognizable brands each with there own stand and staff. That greeted you at the top of the escalators, which were soon to brake down and stop working, resulting in congestion as crowds squeezed in lines up and down the same stopped escalator steps.

There was a large area of whiteware and home appliances. Lots of Samsung, LG and Panasonic. The same brands featured in the big television area with Sony joining in. No unknown third level brands here. Samsung where featuring their new curved screen tv sets. My first reaction is that the more expensive 4K technology sets certainly had sharper image but the actual sets are too small. Even a 55 inch curved set is too small in my opinion. I feel that sets need to be really large for the curve to engulf you into the picture. At one point two curved screens were positioned next to each other to create a wider curve and that did begin to work.

The Mall floors were all ivory coloured glossy stone tiles. So everywhere there were staff going around mopping them. One woman was on her knees with a cloth spot cleaning. Lots of staff everywhere. Lack of rubbish bins in the eating areas so that finished plasic containers and bags and unfinished food were just placed on the floor beside seating.

The Mall is not yet completely finished and there were large areas still curtained off with construction noises coming through.

While the Mall is impressive, I am told that most goods can already be found on sale in the city. But it is more 'up market' than other city Malls I have visited here. The car park exits by ramp from the fourth floor down onto a busy narrow street. Already regularly congested the car park traffic just adds to the confusion. Whistle blowing security and traffic staff only add to that. The exit took at least 20 minutes and we had parked right near the fourth floor exit ramp. While other Mall parking is 1000R (25 cents), here it was 3000.
I guess for me the thing is the tremendous contrast that exists between the two markets I visited today. That they represent the range of life styles and economic levels existing side by side in the city. There will be big sections of the population who will never visit Aeon Mall, who will never be able to afford to shop here.

See the video:
TWO MARKETS IN PHNOM PENH