Tabitha Housebuilding 2009 now complete!

As of yesterday, my vacation officially starts. The hard work is over and it's time to head back to Thailand and hit the beach!!

On Sunday, February 1st, our team of 13 builders headed up to Battambang (4-6 hours north of Phnom Penh, depending on obstructions along the way - chickens, ponys, oxen, cows, motorcycles, wedding party processions, trucks, you name it). With a toilet stop and lunch break, it took us 6 hours to reach Battambang, roughly halfway between Phnom Penh and Siam Reap. Why anyone would venture to Battambang, we have yet to figure out. There's really nothing touristy in town except the bamboo railway, but we saw a number of farang kicking around the streets. It's a far stretch from Phnom Penh - many people we met did not speak English. Our team, along with Srei and her staff, were staying at the Khmera Battambang hotel, about 3.5 kms away from downtown. A bit wacked from the drive up, most of the team split up the first evening and went their separate ways to forage for food. I made the trek into town and wandered around, eventually running into Derek so we went to what I can only describe as a Khmer supper club (complete with cheesy music and large open space for parties and dances - anyone from Ottawa who knows about Villa Lucia - think of the Khmer equivalent). We ordered a few dishes with difficulty - 2 of us with no Khmer, 4 waitresses with no English. I *think* we had chicken, duck and beef, but that's yet to be confirmed. We could as easily have eaten cat, pigeon and rat. Amazingly, we didn't get sick (although Derek was later sick but we think from some street pastries that he ate along the way).

I'll come back and give a more lengthy summary later, but the stats are as follows:

Day 1 - 9 houses
Day 2 - 7 houses
Day 3 (morning) - 3 houses
Total: 20 in 2.5 days with 13 people, 4 contractors and 3 Tabitha staff

Not bad! We had 4 contractors with us and really no dead weight in builders, so the construction went really fast. Only one injury, and only a few sick people - Bob was out for the first 1.5 days, Derek on Day 2, and Terry Jr. and his daughter on Day 3. All with GI issues of some sort. I managed to escape unscathed, although I was feeling a bit woozy on Day 2 in the afternoon, but I suspect more from heat stroke than anything. There was something cathartic in doing manual labour after the hell of the last couple of months, so I put alot of energy into pounding nails and just working hard. Call it stress management and hammer therapy. It was a rewarding few days - 20 houses will now house 138 people. That's incredible when you think of it. To see what these families were living in before, they are moving into luxury, a building by our standards would not even qualify as a shed. But it's a huge step up for them.

Our evenings were spent somewhat quietly - most people tired from the day of work. On Tuesday, since 7 of our team was headed to Siam Reap the next afternoon following the build, we had a group dinner at the Smoking Pot, a Thai-Khmer restaurant downtown. Supper for 16 people came to $65!!! The food was pretty good too (in general, food in cambodia is somewhat disappointing when compared to Thailand). Wednesday after the build, only TBA people were left, so we had a lazy afternoon and then wandered down to the Market and out for supper, followed by ice cream. We left in the van the next day to come back to Phnom Penh. I discovered, the hard way, what happens when you fall asleep on a van bench seat in the fetal position and the van stops suddenly. I wasn't amused at being rudely awakened, but those with me were!!

Back in Phnom Penh, we had an appointment with Janne that evening at the Billabong, to discuss the build, plan next year's, and also to plan out what we want to do in June when she visits. It was a great evening actually - I really like Janne, who is a no bullshit type of person, and I greatly admire the work she does. She was telling us some stories of a Canadian orphanage in Phnom Penh 10 years ago where the children were being subjected to orgies and sexual abuse regularly. It was horrific to think that anyone could be capable of such horrors, especially with kids less than 6 years old. You could travel here and never really see the true side of Cambodia, but when you kick away that thin veneer, the reality of this country is sometimes very scary and startling.

Last night was our last night as a team, although it was really only Bob, Wendy, Nate and I left. Everyone else was gone their separate ways already. Personally, I found it hard to say 'see ya later' when I left to go back to my own hotel. After 1.5 weeks of being with the group, heading out alone is both good and bad. I found it a bit difficult to socialize with the larger group, especially with those that I didn't know well, but it was somewhat of a comfort to be around close friends for the first week.

Today, I slept in until 7am, and then went over to the Tabitha office to pick up silk samplers from Janne, and discuss a bit further our event in Ottawa in June. I hooked up with a good tuk-tuk driver in the morning, and decided to go to the Phnom Tamao Zoo. My driver decided that 40 kms in a tuk-tuk was a bad idea, so he suggested that we go to his house, get his motorbike and he would take me on that. Sure!! Why not! In hindsight, may have been a stupid idea had anything happened, but it was alot of fun. He turned out to be a very nice guy (I have no idea how to spell his name!), 30 years old, with god parents in Regina. And he kinda took a shine to me and decided that since we were both single, we should get together! Which made the trip a bit unnerving as I kept having to figure out how to deflect his advances (he really was sweet!), but fun. The drive out to the zoo was loooonnnnggggg, especially on the back of a bike and not driving. Once there, I was accosted by youth who wanted to tour me around. The zoo is also a wildlife refuge and home to all sorts of endangered species. It was a great experience - monkeys and deer roaming free all around you, following you within the enclosures, and many large, wild-space enclosures with animals I have never seen live before. I saw my first Sun Bear - amazing creatures!! And so cute. And a couple of tigers, Asiatic black/brown bears, cranes, herons, crocodiles (lots in the Mekong apparently), mongoose, white squirrels, etc. It was well worth the hour-long ride out there and the return trip where my ass was killing me. Cost me a fortune in payment for the "guides" and the food they brought along to feed the animals, as well as my persistent tuk-tuk driver, but it was worth it.

Tomorrow afternoon I head back to Bangkok for one evening, and catch a mini-bus up to Uthai Thani on Sunday morning to go to Kin's Muay Thai camp. Amazingly, my foot hasn't given me too much problems, so I'm thinking that I can actually train! Maybe not push it, but at least give it a good shot. I'm looking forward to training, but even more looking forward to going down to koh Phangan the next week - beach time!!

More details to come...