Category — travels

JUNE

• Ag of the Middle Briefing
• Meeting karl kupers!
• Meeting kathleen merrigan!
• Bates byebye BBQ bash
• NSAC goodbye lunch at White Tiger
• Beck, cam, and marianne’s graduation party
• Beach house for Becky’s birthday & next day’s breakfast
• Weddings!
• Grandma Evie, Grandad Tom, Grandma Sharon, Kong Kong Ron, Ah-Man, Kong Kong, all my aunties, Christina, Greg, Laura, Jen Jen, and all my other awesome awesome awesome friends.
• Submitting AFRI grant proposal

JULY

• 4th of july
• Roadtripping with my mum
• Missouri cousins
• Iowa with Jerry — ATVs and tractors!
• Madison with Kara
• Arriving in Detroit
• Roy Ayers up front!
• Lots of thrift stores and craigslist fun
• Cooking for friends
• Brother Nature + The Pink FlaminGO
• Canoeing

AUGUST

• Blueberry picking & swimming in our underwear
• Lots of hanging out with new Detroit friends
• Yo Yo Ma!
• Preserving foods
• E. Market Welcome Center
• Noodle commences
• Korean BBQ party
• Swimming in the lake

SEPTEMBER

• More noodle and noodle and noodle
• Awesome new Lansing crew
• Spring Green for Labor Day: camping, crackers, pizza, drama, farmers
• Classes! Reading! Thinking! Talking!
• Dally.
• Chopping things in the big farm kitchen at Harvest Gathering
• lots and lots of heirloom tomatoes
• First CARRS potluck success

and more to come!

I love airports and airplanes. I love the feeling of being between places, in transition. And I love the anonymity — it’s the best of places for watching people, and also for meeting folks you might not otherwise meet on the street.

Yesterday, when I squeezed into Seat 14F (a window seat), it just so happened that the man already occupying the middle seat was a farmer. I noticed this, not because of any hint from his dress or demeanor, but because when he kindly got up to let me in,  I noticed his bag — a freebie from some sort of national ag association.

So I asked him about it and he told me that he was a farmer who grew sugar. “Beets?” I asked, and his face lit up. “You must know farming then?” he said. “Well, kinda,” I shrugged, and told him where I worked, and about my brief farming experience.

We talked the rest of the flight — about his clever daughters and about how my parents met and about the time he took his son to the Rose Bowl. I found out that in addition to farming part-time with his son, my new friend was a crop insurance agent and a representative of the Michigan Bean Commission. He traveled around the world to trade shows and meetings marketing Michigan dry beans: azukis, great northern, black beans, to name a few. He had been recently to Cancun and Barcelona and was soon off to Paris.

Apparently, Saginaw is the capitol of dry beans and sugar beets in Michigan. Sugar beets, in case you didn’t know, make sugar — the regular white grainy kind you pour into your coffee or sprinkle on your cereal (do people still do that?). Saginaw Valley, where lots of these beets are grown, lies between the thumb and forefinger of the Michigan glove, about two hours by car from the metro Detroit airport. My friend explained that people grew sugar beets there because the processing plants were nearby in the thumb. This awesome article from MSU tells more about the history of sugar beet production and processing in the state.

Beyond beets, I also learned a little bit about crop insurance. My friend had been in DC to chat with folks at the USDA and on the Hill about the crop insurance business and the proposed cuts to crop insurance in Obama’s 2011 budget. It was fascinating to hear his perspective — “Why should the government penalize me for making a profit?” — and compare it to the perspective I share with the Obama administration and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition where I work:

From Obama’s 2011 budget proposal: “Crop-insurance companies currently benefit from huge windfall profits due to the structure and terms of the Government’s contract with the companies.” The Wall Street Journal reports that “a USDA study showed that a reasonable rate of return on equity for private crop-insurance companies is 12.8%, but the average now is 16.8%. USDA data show government payments to crop insurers have more than doubled in recent years, jumping from $1.8 billion in 2006 to $3.8 billion in 2009 while the total number of policies held by farmers has declined.”

Add to this the fact that my friend explained that until recently, when a former employee set up shop and became competition, he was the only insurer in his local area. I felt less sympathetic then to his side of the story, but it made me remember once again that in the end, farmers are businessmen and to him, these cuts might mean that he won’t be able to pay for his adventurous daughter to study abroad in Paris or to help his son buy land to start his own farm. And there’s the rub of government — how do you distribute resources equitably? How do you re-distribute when something’s not working — it seems much easier to give than to take something away.

There’s nothing like a celestial event to put things into perspective.The annual leonid (shooting star) shower happened Tuesday night and I organized a little camping adventure.

Tuesday at 7pm, friends Christina and Mark, my mum and I piled into a car laden with sleeping bags, lanterns, blankets, binoculars, firewood and cocoa and headed up the 5 freeway towards the Santa Lucia Mountains. A few minutes prior, friends Steve, Brandon and Katherine left from Palo Alto driving south to meet us.

Mark said the last hour of driving was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland sans giant cobra. It was a bumpy, narrow dirt road in the stygian night. We passed one campground (the wrong one) but otherwise couldn’t see any signs of the campsite where we were supposed to meet. No cell reception (obviously) and no markers. Google Maps + the GPS = failure.

Eventually, we turned back, planning to camp at the one campsite we had noticed. I turned off the road down the marked path to head towards Navajo campground, but then decided to retrace a little farther on the main road before giving up on the other half of our party. As we came up on an unmarked path, HEADLIGHTS! Hooray!

By that time, it was nearly midnight and cold. We started a fire and unloaded the car and sat around snacking and drinking warm things. Eventually, around 2:30am we headed up a small hill where we unrolled our sleeping bags and gear side by side like individually wrapped sardines and stared up at the sky. Our whoops and hollers at the bright projectiles soon turned into murmurs of appreciation, then some of us dropped off to sleep and it was quiet.

Around 4, we woke up, a few feet down the hill from where we started. The slick sleeping bags had no chance against gravity. We started the fire back up, warmed our numbed toes and soon after, started to pack up to head home.

Me and Christina straining towards the heavens.

Mum, fire-tender extraordinaire.

Christina like an adorable cartoon warming herself in front of the fire.

The crew (I’m taking the picture)

Yes. Looks like the same picture, but wait… who’s that in the middle?

Dawn on the drive home.

This weekend Jaime and I headed off-island to the big city of Seattle for Jaime’s bro Liam’s graduation. We got up a little after dawn to make the 6am ferry to Anacortes and the Subaru pulled up outside Liam’s apartment in Seattle a little after 9am.

It felt strange to be in a city again. I spent a couple of days back in SF en route to the farm back in March, but that was familiar territory, friendly streets, friendly faces. This was folks who hurry by without smiling back at you, and over-tan girls in short short skirts and chainlink fences and unkempt grassy patches on sidewalks.

Of course there are things that are wonderful about cities, like eating a HUGE plate of migas at Portage Bay, dinner in Chinatown, a trip to the famous Uwajimaya, but for the most part, I felt out of place like my heart was being tugged back farmward.

After Seattle concrete, it was lovely to arrive in Bellingham on Friday night. Saturday and Sunday morning were spent lying in the sun, reading, playing with little nephew Adyn, walking into town and eating — lovely lazy time with the whole family. It was wonderful, but it made me miss my own family something awful, and it also made me think of what it’s going to be like when Jaime leaves again.

Since I first visited Jaime five-and-some-months years ago, I’ve come to think that Bellingham is a pretty awesome little town — it seems to have such vibrant community life and a thriving local economy. I know it has it’s issues, but it seems like the very sort of place I’d like to end up. If only there were cheap land, and it were closer to California…

Feasting in Bellingham: Farm-fresh greens, Orzo salad, Grilled wild salmon, Chili crab, and a big glass of milk

It’s amazing what a difference climate makes.

I arrived in Chiang Mai around noon, off the overnight train from Bangkok. I was already elated, having actually made my train despite some serious difficulties, but stepping off the train into the crisp Northern air felt oh-so-good that I was grinning like a mad woman at all the vendors on the platform.

My ten-day jaunt to Chiang Mai happened back in mid-November. The trip kicked off the month-long countdown to my departure from Cambodia for California, and the cool dry weather was so similar to Orange County in autumn that it was impossible not to feel at home.

Upon my arrival, I took a winding route from the train station, across the entire town, through the bustling Wararot Market, where I picked up some coconut cream puffs — soft crepe-like dough wrapped around neon green coco-cream filling, past a million wats, past a used bookstore where I happily overpaid for two paperbacks, past about 300 7-11s, and eventually all the way up Huay Keuw road to the hostel. The hostel was nestled in a small residential neighborhood aptly named Natawan Village. The houses were medium-sized brown and white cottage-y affairs that looked faintly pastoral with their thatched roofs and jaunty windows. The hostel drew your typical mix of young travelers, many single women on long-term trips, a few large groups of Irish and Scottish lads who had met up on their way, a Canadian couple, your requisite Germans, and me the only American for awhile. It was extremely clean and friendly, but definitely had a college vibe — with photos plastered on the wall of nights out on the town and group trips to mountain lakes.

My first order of business was to hit up the local mall to pick up some toiletries and a scope out shoe stores to see about tevas for my trek near the end of the week. As I headed back into the village from my shopping expedition, the roti man had just set up his stall at the entrance to the neighborhood and he was making a first order for two teenage residents. I got to talking with them and they kindly ordered for me in Thai and then paid for my banana roti — fried with an egg, and slathered in condensed milk and chocolate, with sugar on top.

Mm.. banana roti in the evening light

This perfect welcome boded well for the rest of my trip. That night, I went to a traditional khantoke dinner-dance show. The food was amazing — and I was entertained not only by the dancers, but also by the very friendly couple behind me from New Jersey who only ate the fried chicken and white rice, so that they had to ask for refills five or six times during the show. The next day, I biked around town, checking out the major temples, taking photos and chatting with monks, and then spent 3.5 hours being scrubbed and rubbed and steamed until my skin glowed.

One of the hilltribe dances at the khantoke dinner.

Temple goodness

I spent one afternoon hopping from one trendy coffeeshop to the next on trendy Nimmanhaemin road. I swam 100 laps at a rooftop pool. I took a cooking class at an organic farm where I made friends with the instructor who shares my dream of someday opening her own food-related business.

Mont Blanc — delicious coffee, yummy cakes and sweet atmosphere

Ingredients for Pad See Ew

Chiang Mai was the land of couples — couples honeymooning, couples on year-long-round-the-world-jaunts, couples who just met, old couples, young couples, and me. Did it make me miss Jaime? Yes, like the Dickens. Did it curb my enjoyment of this beautiful town? Not a whit. (Well, maybe a whit, but not more than a smidge) This was especially apparent at the cooking course, where I was joined by a young clingy couple from Switzerland, a vibrant Danish pair, and a understate but sweet French duo from Brittany. Being without my other-half, I was paired by default with a huge, overbearing, somewhat racist Australian woman who couldn’t stop talking if her life depended on it. In the course of a couple hours, I heard all about the negative qualities of her Laotian in-laws, the amazing abilities of her 3 long-distance swimmer kids, and the time her washing machine broke down and she went out that very day to buy a new one!

Some of my favorite moments on the trip included the twinkling night sky at the gorgeous Loy Krathong festival.

Loy Krathong on the river

Then there was the view from our hut during the overnight trek in Chiang Dao, the luscious green bamboo archways vaulting over our path, the cute little upside down bat in the limestone caverns.

Mist falling over the hills in the morning

There was cheering for the impromptu soccer match — Lisu v. Lisu. And eating with bamboo chopsticks from bamboo boats carved from fresh green stalks by our guide Pol.

Our bamboo lunchware

Visiting the Sunday night market with all the amazing young artists and designers sitting on the sidewalk with their handpainted sneakers and trendy printed satchels and clever graphic tees.

Favorites from the Sunday Market

And motoing up the hill to see Wat Doi Suthep. The temple itself was overrun with tourists — next time I’d go at dawn — but the air on the ride up was crispy and fragrant so that you felt more alive afterwards than before.

For more photos, click here.

Back in October, I took a trip back to Singapore for the first time in about 9 years.

As a kid, I traveled to Singapore with my family six or seven times. I can remember general impressions — tossing around sweaty in my singlet trying to get to sleep; going to the zoo; swimming at the fancy club; my Kong Kong toasting me a slice of bread topped with cheese and sugar or running out to pick up oily chicken rice wrapped in a banana leaf; family members taking us out to fancy meals and giving me red packets; watching terrible Singaporean dramas; going to Sentosa; getting mosquito bites; munching on fried bananas; handing out gum to cousins I didn’t know I had… all, in all, a great experience.

I love being half-Singaporean. It’s always seemed way cooler than just being half-Chinese. Singapore’s exotic, the land of beautiful stewardesses and orchids and canings. Whenever I hear someone with the quirky slightly British, totally distinctive, Singaporean accent with its liberally sprinkled “lah-s” and “aiyah-s” I feel a warming in my soul. But my love for all things Singapore is sort of an uninformed infatuation, rather than a deep passion bred by understanding. So though I thought my heritage was spiffy, I never really felt Singaporean (my aiyahs are forced and I hate durian).

So that’s why I was a bit surprised when my recent trip made me feel like falling straight into the bosom of my motherland. Hanging out with my cousin Aidan and his friend Alex, walking around Singapore and eating at the hawker centers — I felt at home, like I belonged. I was a little embarrassed because I didn’t know the proper name for anything and I didn’t ever know the protocol. But still, I felt like I could fit in here, like other people were like me somehow.

I was sitting at the kitchen table playing dominos with my aunties and uncle and Aidan and Alex. I had one leg hanging down, and one foot up on the chair, leg bent up against my chest. I sit that way without noticing, but my auntie noticed and told me that that was the way my great grandmother sat. Then one of my mum’s childhood friends took me to her mum’s house for lunch. Her mum remembered my mum from when she was a teenager. She kept calling me beautiful and telling me that I was a “simple girl” just like my mom.

The city is full of hapas — half this and half that. In a way it’s annoying because being a half-breed is just par for the course here, but it’s also weirdly comforting. And then there was the food — the chili laden, deeply flavored multiethnic food. I figured out why I love to add so much spice to everything I eat. It makes complete sense when you come from a food tradition with such exuberant smells and tastes. So many things to eat and drink that I associate with childhood and comfort — pineapple tarts, ovaltine, chicken rice, satay, kuay boluh, char kway teow, paratha, chrysanthemum drink, milk tea, barley water, fishballs.

It’s strange to think how differently we experience things as we grow up. When I was young, going to Singapore was like going to another planet. Yes, these were my relatives, but I barely knew them. But going back this time, I felt like in some indirect, but powerful way, this country helped define me. Even down to some of its more repressive elements. Perhaps that’s why I never had a penchant for flouting authority (or maybe it was growing up in conservative Orange County?)

The casual dress, the obsessive academia, the love of food — they all spoke to me; so when my cousin Aidan suggested that I move out for a year to take another Masters degree or teach English or do random anthropological research related to food, it sounded like an amazing idea. I’ve since revised my initial enthusiasm — for someone who hasn’t grown up there, the heat of Singapore simply saps all my life force — but though it probably won’t happen next year, I’m not ruling out the possibility of coming back.

The Singapore skyline as seen from the Flyer

Last week, I had a few days off for Pchum Ben (a Cambodian celebration of ancestors), so I headed down to Phnom Penh with a plan to meet up with some friends heading south to the beaches. I arrived in the city with a terrible earache and ended up spending 3 days curled up prone, half in tears, on the couch of my dear friend Lauren. Eventually, Lauren took charge and brought me to a Francophone doctor (no English speaking medical professionals in Phnom Penh apparently) who prescribed me a barrage of heavy duty antibiotics. (My time in Cambodia has made me into something approaching a feedlot cow in terms of doses of antibiotics consumed per month, and my digestive track is most definitely devoid of any and all good critters.)

Thankfully, the meds cleared up the pain, and on the morning of day 4, I was able to hop on a bus out to Kep to meet up with a small crew of friends who had all made it down in the previous 2-3 days and were already a day or two deep into hard partying. It was a good night despite not being able to hear from one ear — good music, good food, good company, dancing, and a sea breeze.

The next day, we had breakfast at the Led Zep cafe — burritos which tasted more like pizzas in pitas — and said goodbye to one of our crew who was headed back to Phnom Penh, then we rocketed off to Kampot. Jam and Matt had ridden down on bikes they borrowed from their NGO (a eco/development-tourism business called Pepy where they both are volunteers), so they sweated it out the 30 or so kilometers. Achaya speed off dangerously on his rented crotch rocket, and Alison and I lived it up in the back of a vacationing family’s truck.

Kampot was sleepy as usual, but so were we after the previous night, and the plan was head out ASAP. The idea was to stash the bikes, rent motos and make like Charlie’s Angels onwards to Sihanoukville. However, post-coffee, rain still spitting down, our not-so-tough crew decided that riding was out and so we went van-hunting. Eventually, after much incredulous eyebrow raising and reminders of “holiday prices,” we settled on a share taxi for $5/head and $5/bike.

Jam was strapped and in a nasty mood. Lucky for him, his whining and empty threats to just stay in Kampot alone were met with good natured cajoling and convincing by his friends, so after much hee-ing and haw-ing (and rolling of the eyes by yours truly) he stashed his bike on the van and hopped on the motorcycle with Achaya.

The unwitting and unlucky rest of the crew (Matt, Allison and I) pile in the back row of the van next to Mr. McDrunkerson who proceeded to grab me and attempt to lay one on before Matt graciously offered to switch seats. 5 hours, one new oil filter, one new van, 3 roadside Anchors courtesy of Mr. Tipsy, and many drunken-Cambodian-anecdotes later (songs about seahorses, anyone?), we finally arrive in Sihanoukville ready for a shower and a drink.

Later that night, we end up at the dark empty venue where they host crocodile and snake shows during the day. Apparently, one of our party was mistakenly informed that this was an “off-the-hook” night spot. On the upside, the tuk-tuk trip afforded a crazy roller-coaster ride up and down the hills of Sihanoukville, the clear highlight of the night.

Eventually we find ourselves at seedy Khmer night club with a cover charge of $4 (free beer included), unflattering blue lights, and creepy staring bouncers. Allison and I are clearly the tallest people on the dance-floor, and we become the unofficial hubs around which the smaller energetic contingent eddies and swirls. The Cambodian boys dance together holding hands. They shake it like they mean it, and scream out loud with ecstatic arm gestures and coordinated pelvic thrusts at appropriate moments while the girls stand around swaying slightly and looking more than a little embarrassed.

Then, amidst all the joy and chaos, the crazy cat who’s still sore about his mistake with the abandoned croc farm disappears. Those concerned for his welfare recognize this as a cry for attention and accommodatingly text him messages of love and concern. Croc boy is found upstairs, and we eventually convince him to head back to the hotel with the rest of us. We drink some bad vodka and chat and some of us stay very quiet, meditating on how we wish croc boy was left behind. This uncharitableness can be partially blamed on croc boy’s non-stop verbal outbursts, bragging about about how his Hindi advantage got him into the VIP lounge and chastising us for dragged him away from the apparent apogee of the S-town social scene.

The next day, Matt was in a bad way with his stomach and the other boys were knackered, so Alison and I headed down to the beach for awhile. We whiled away the day in various ways, but ended up all together again around 6pm for the first drink of the evening.

I’m 23, but rarely do I feel that age. Instead, my feelings and actions swing from those of a 10-years old to someone around 35, only occasionally (uncomfortably, unnaturally) ending up somewhere in between. That particular night, I started as an old 35, not in the mood for the drinking, party, flirt with random strangers thing. I was very thankful to meet Elida, a friend of Achaya’s (actually his ex-boss) who provided some interesting conversation, agreed to dance, and didn’t seem to mind that my libations were only half-hearted. Then, croc and I had a tiff. The others tried to mediate, but I made like a pre-teen girl and he made like a reptile, and though things were smoothed over, I still felt disgusted. (Who tries to excuse their anti-social behavior by likening themselves to Mother Teresa?)

The next morning, I was up at 7am to a glorious sunny day. The rest of the contingent slept while I headed out to the beach for a small sunning. Then I called Elida and we headed out in her SUV to a secluded beach where we swam and splashed and sunned and built a mini-version of Angkor Wat in the sand and felt completely content when our castle was recognized by the small Cambodian children frolicking about us.

Eventually we headed back to meet up with Elida’s fiance and after a small dip in her hotel pool, I headed back to Phnom Penh.

When we set off to Kampot last weekend to trek up Bokor Mountain, the footage in my head played back a gently sloping dirt path through luscious (but just-so neatly pruned) jungle — the occasional whoop of a monkey, the busy chirp of cicadas, the far-off trickling of a waterfall. The word “trek,” in fact, seemed to be a romanticized overstatement, for marketing purposes only. Though it wasn’t the soul-scraping, test-of-will adventure of the kind I imagine you get in Nepal or those other countries where rosy-cheeked sherpas laugh behind your back at you and your shiny Patagonia gear, it required more sweat than I anticipated.

We set off from Sen Monorom guest house at 7am, bellies full of pork rice, doused in 97% DEET, hanging on for dear life as we perched on the sides in the back of the pick-up truck. The core crew consisted of

1) Lauren – lover of trees and of the French and my first friend in Cambodia;
2) Tom – Lauren’s new boyfriend, a younger man, interested in knowing things about current events;
3) Chris – Lauren’s easy-going ex-high school boyfriend, randomly in Cambodia;
4) Matt – a pescatarian designer who likes beer and is training for a marathon with Lauren;
5) moi

L&T were nearest the cabin and Chris and I were directly across. Matt hung precariously off the left-back corner next to Lauren.First we stopped to collect Alps Man, a solitary, broody, slightly greasy figure, who (despite our well meaning attempts at friendliness) sat down next to me, then got busy ignoring everyone and focusing his dark energies on strategies to conquer the mountain. At the next stop, a couple hopped up into the cab, an attractive Puma employee and a very German German Finance man, who I only later realized were emphatically just friends. Next, at a guesthouse called Orchid (or something similarly tropical) some familiar faces from drinks the night before — Ricky and Mandy — a cheery, young and thin British pair, clean and pretty like a soap ad. Last in were our Khmer guides and so we were off.

The ranger and his gun who were scheduled to accompany us up the mountain had apparently had too much to drink the night before, so after waiting 30 minutes, we decided to brave the wilderness sans automatic rifle and headed towards the trailhead.

At first the going was easy. Then, we began to hit sections where the trail wound up and up so that I often bent my smallish legs at 90-degree angles to take the next step and found myself flailing at smooth saplings to pull myself up and over the next slippery obstacle. We stopped at a waterfall and sighed at the hugeish multicolored pile of plastic & styrofoam (miraculously absent previously on the trail) and did our best to snap artsy shots of the huge and diverse lepidoptera. While some folks showered off the sweat, our camo-clad ranger and his gun snuck up on us, his posture an awkward mix of sheepish and don’t-give-a-damn.

It’s not clear whether everyone else was simply a powerhouse, or if they, too, were shamed by our wiry nearing-50 guide who leapt blithely up the hill; a man in comparison to whom we (graceful Mandy included) could be nothing but large clunky white folks. But despite the slight shame, I felt good. I’m sure any and all toxins that lurked in me oozed out with all that sweat; the rests were sufficient, and I had an extra bottle of water. And best of all, two hours in, we met a group coming down who exclaimed (not a little jealously) over our breakneck speed.

So we put our chins down and puffed our chests out and continued up the hill, and at the point where our jungle trail intersected dirt road, we refused the offer to wait awhile for a lift from a truck.

Eventually, we hit the summit and the King’s Concubines’ retreat. (In fact, it only took about 3.5 hours for the 3000ft ascent — not bad at all). We rested and at lunch — a sort of potato, veggie fried rice concoction with an egg a-top that made all of the boys ill later that evening. Then we started off on the last 8 or so miles of mercifully flat dirt road.

Unmercifully, the flat dirt road turned out to be nothing much more than advertised — and flat dirt gets a bit boring after awhile, so around mile 6, I flailed my arms at a huge yellow dump truck, and to my great delight, I saw that the guide’s son had beat us to it and already made arrangements and motioned for us to clamber on in.

Hair blowing in the wind, feet sinking in construction clay, we made our way over the last few miles to the ranger station where we’d spend the night.

The sky was clear around the town, despite previous reports and expectations, so after a brief sit-down on the steps of the ranger station, a few of us broke off and went to explore the concrete ruins up on the cliff’s edge. We skirted the massive hole where construction of the new casino was underway. Scampering up between two buildings, past a huge concrete umbrella (or mushroom?) we headed towards the old casino. As we made our way up, the mist dropped silently in around us.

The hotel-casino was covered in moss and emergency-orange lichen, dripping and disintegrating and now shrouded in dense grey.

We explored the building basement to rooftop ceiling, thoroughly spooking ourselves considering the ghosts of the lavish parties of the haute monde that must have boogied down in the decaying ballroom.

We walked over to the edge where cloud dripped off the high plateau onto the thick forest cover below. Up beyond the construction site, the compound was completely silent, but approaching the edge of the cliff, the sounds of the jungle rushed up to envelop us in a sort of acrophobic, one-with-nature trance.

We tucked into bed by 9pm, only that late by extreme exercise of will. I got lost for an hour or two with a German, but the hike down the next morning was otherwise uneventful. By 1pm, we were in Kampot eating fried rotis and drinking piping hot masala tea.

Last week, I headed off with our office staff to a 3 day retreat to Steung Treng, a city at the very Northern tip of Cambodia at the border of Laos.

The trip was a mix of work and play: a day and a half of presentations and then a full day boat trip to a large waterfall.

We left at 7am on Sunday — piled into the minivans. The five-hour trip got off to a bumpy start — right off, we had to make a couple of bathroom breaks, pick up some Department of Education folks who had come in from Ratanakiri, and rebalance ourselves amongst the vehicles after the drivers complained that we were so heavy that the insurance wouldn’t cover us in the event of a crash.

Our organization is like a big family. Already, Cambodians call each other “bong” (sister) “om” (aunt) “boo” (uncle) and a plethora of other familial names regardless of blood-relation; then, on top of that, everyone is friendly with everyone else despite the fact that many of them work in difference offices, and this friendliness extends to new employees and the spouses and children who came along. It makes me so happy to see the seemingly complete lack of social awkwardness — people seem to understand inherently how they fit in to the group which makes for everything quite harmonious.

We arrived in Steung Treng around noon in time for a big lunch at the hotel’s restaurant, and then had time for a short rest before a half-day of meetings. Everything was conducted in Khmer, so I had to sit close-by one of the English speakers and nudge them every so often for a summary.

According to Kurt, this was the first staff retreat planned and run entirely by the staff. The first retreat 4 or 5 years back was run entirely by advisors, which demonstrates how far the staff has come. All in all, it was definitely an interesting introduction to the way meetings happen here. All forty folks were in a room around some tables, including the drivers and cleaners. The content progressed in three ways: either someone presented (think powerpoint slides filled with Khmer text), or there was opportunity for feedback (people passing around the microphone to give their opinion), or there was groupwork (folks writing down ideas on big sheets and presenting them back to the group).

One thing really surprised me. In the US, you hear that people rate fear of public-speaking above fear of death, so when you see every staff member happily standing up in front of their peers to talk (often at length) about what they think, it’s a all a bit shocking.

On the second night, there was a big going away party for Brigitte with food and toasts and dancing! That night we were instructed to wait until everyone had arrived before starting to eat — on other nights, everyone tucked in to the food so quickly that if you came 15 minutes into it, you’d see half the tables already starting to be cleared. We danced some traditional Khmer dances — the Rovull and the Madison — as well as some more Western numbers: the Macarena, and some knock-off Cambodian rap.

The next day was the boat trip, so we got up early to eat breakfast and headed out in our vans at 7am. We crossed the Mekong on a ferry and drove for about an hour to a small village on the bank of the Sekong. There, we piled into a bunch of powered-canoes, 3-4 per boat, depending on your weight, piloted by a crew of boys and men from the village who ran the service as a small village enterprise. We spent about 2 hours heading up the river, stopping a couple of times to clamber and sweat through the brush on the bank where the river got a bit dicey, and eventually arrived at a rocky bank where we got out and started the climb up to the waterfall. Preparation being as it is, some folks had on sandals, some of us were luckier in flip flops and a select few had on good shoes. We hiked over spiky rocks and through bushes until we finally arrived at a multi-part waterfall. I found a spot, plopped in my feet and scarfed down the lunch we had packed along, then took off to explore.

The more intrepid braved sharp slippery rocks and swift currents and went up to the “big fall,” the ones with younger children just lay in the shallows in all their clothes. As it got hotter and hotter, with some encouragement from my boatmen, I decided to embrace life Cambodian-style and went for a swim in one of the bigger pools, longsleeve shirt, pants, and all.

On the way back in the boat, we stopped at a mini-island (about 100 ft sq), took snacks and watched a pod of Irawaddy dophins play in the river.

The next day, burnt, tired and happy, we headed back to Kampong Cham.