December 2010

This was a documentary from 2006 that left me with my mouth wide open. On a number of occasions Mrs O and a friend, who is staying with us, turned to each other speechless. Even though harrowing and really quite sad I thoroughly enjoyed this award winning documentary. It received a 83% rating on the [...]

Kampot, on the south coast of Cambodia, is an extremely pretty town with lots of great examples of colonial architecture. However, with the emergence of cheap building supplies from China the ‘new’ look among many is what I would call ‘Khmer modern’. Anybody who has visited Cambodia recently will see fine examples of this everywhere. [...]

Keeping the flu bug away

December 29, 2010 · 5 comments

When these scarecrows started appearing around our village a few months ago we presumed they were to keep birds off the rice fields. Actually they are for scaring off evil spirits. They are placed outside each home when there has been an outbreak of illness in the area. Their presence, which actually can be quite [...]

Losing weight for 2011

December 28, 2010 · 16 comments

Just before Christmas I realised that my weight was heading in a direction that was getting a little scary. Since I have given up other vices in my life food consumption has always been something that I have struggled with. We don’t have too many temptations down here but when I started buying packets of [...]

A friend of mine passed this on to me the other day. There are many fine examples of bad spelling in this part of the world. You only have to spend a little time anywhere in Asia to spot ‘scrimbled’ eggs or ‘flied’ rice on a menu. This menu, from a local restaurant here in [...]