A chicken in every pot – oh’ how we hardly knew ye!

Feb 9 – Happy New Year!

Well, Happy Chinese New Year at least. This is a big celebration even in small Kampot, even if the Chinese government is trying to emphasize austerity this year (http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20130209/AS.China.Lean.New.Year/).

 

Just outside of the hospital gate is a small roadside “store” that sells a variety of things (see the photo below), that includes Angkor Beer, various food items and gasoline stored in old 0.5/1.0 litre Pepsi bottles for the motos that come by (we assume this ensures exact measures are dispensed). These small stands are everywhere in Cambodia. At the one by the hospital they have put together a karaoke bar. So they play music at a very high volume which we can hear from our bungalow. It is especially raucous for the New Year and you can hear car horns beeping up and down the road as they pass the stand. Maybe one night Michelle and I will try our hand at Khmer karaoke. :^)

It is also the Year of the Snake which is a little freaky considering that I have been reading up more on venomous snakes in Cambodia and I hope that I never run into one. “fatal neurotoxin” doesn’t fill me with loving sugar plums (see: http://www.ngo-handofhelp.org/index.php?page=snakes-cambodia-en).

 

Anyway, Michelle and I are on our back porch with the elephant mountains in our view (see our initial post for the picture). The small song birds get broken up with the occasional rooster crow from the adjacent coconut plantation-in-planting and the New Year celebrations. God’s creation is amazing!

Now as to the brief life and quick end of a chicken (read on until the end) - Yesterday we ventured out with two other volunteers here, Tom (IT specialist) and his wife Dr. Mia Theresa (cardiologist) to explore the caves outside of Kampot on the road to Kep (not far from the Vietnam border), visit a pepper plantation, and have a very authentic Khmer lunch. We hired Mr. Sokhon who is a trusted tuk-tuk driver here. You can see it below with Mia sitting in the back. The moto is the same 125cc kind everywhere here. Mr. Sokhon owns the tuk-tuk rig but rents the moto for $3 for the day. He is saving to buy his own. He is very safe and reliable and speaks English well enough to translate for us. And like all the Cambodians we have met, he is especially nice and genuinely helpful.

 

Note the pool of liquid under the motor. Being a gearhead this concerned Tod! But the white container on the back of the bike holds water that drips through a small tube onto the fins of the cylinder head. Since it is hot here and the moto is pulling so much more weight than designed to do, this adds a clever way to additionally cool the motor.

Here are some shots on the way to the caves.  

 

The roads here are a challenge in terms of their condition (and the bridge above from the Vietnam War era is in this category although there is a new bridge about 1 km up the river). Some roads are almost new like the one up Bokor mountain, while others haven’t seen maintenance for many years. So the ride is a rough one. Once we got outside of Kampot City we saw an endless tapestry of small family farms growing all sorts of produce from the ubiquitous rice paddies but also egg plant, tomatos, sugar cane, and even corn. A lot of the small farms have rigged up retention ponds and pump water to the crops since it is in the dry season until May. Dogs, bikes, motos carrying whole families, and smiling children are everywhere. The children all love to wave at us as we go by.

Here we are at the caves:

 

 

 

 

We had several “guides” meet us as we came in. The four boys (above between me and Dr. Mia and Tom, Mr. Sokhon is far left) were very happy to help us for a small fee. We negotiated 2000 riel each (4000 riel = $1), but we gave them each $1 when we finished. This is very good wage. The men working the local quarries only get about $1.50 for a day’s wage. But the boys were very helpful, spoke English well, and gave us the low-down on what “images” resemble. Take a look at these:

 

 

Can you see the turtle the baby elephants behind the makeshift altar? And the “monster” – look at the photo with the two “eyes”, the openings in the cave roof.

We learned a sobering fact too. During the Khmer Rouge, many Cambodians fled to these caves to escape the genocide. The ones that stayed survived, many others who left did not.

The Buddhist temple in the photo above dates back to the 6^th century according to our guides. Inside it is a bit unsettling if you let your imagination run a bit. You can see in the photos what looks like “pods” (like in the movie “Aliens”) which are just odd cave formations.

After the caves we went to the Starling Farm pepper plantation (www.starlingfarm.com). We promise that the chicken story is next!

 

You can see the pepper plants with the green peppercorns growing up the brick towers. Biting into a green peppercorn produces a muted pepper taste on the palate. It also stays with you more than the peppercorns do after they are roasted. They use only organic process including, from their website, “mix of cow manure, bat guana, neem tree mulch and fish meal”. Yum! There was a huge pile of cow manure sitting there when we were by the pepper plants. We used the fresh pepper later on in the evening in some homemade bruschetta we put together – awesome!

Take a look at the vodka they were modifying on the shelves (black and red peppercorn varieties):

 

We tried just a sip and it sets your mouth on fire! I don’t know how anyone can take more than a thimble-full.

We left there with a small bag of their best red and black peppercorns, vacuum sealed, for our trip back home.

Now onto the chicken… See we promised!!!

Here is the restaurant near the “Secret Lake” or per the local tongue, ''Tomnop Tek Krolar''. It was built during the Khmer Rouge, but is quite beautiful and serene.

 

We worked with our tuk-tuk driver to understand the menu and settled on one chicken meal for all five of us. The restaurant owners offered to make the chicken into a roasted pepper chicken (more fresh Kampot pepper) and chicken soup with lemon grass. See the meal set out below (with some new canine friends):

 

You have to be careful with meat here due to lack of refrigeration and sanitary practices in many areas. But here by the Secret Lake it turns out that in just 30 minutes they selected a live chicken, killed it (snap!), dropped it in a boiling pot to make it easier to pluck the feathers off, chopped up (you could hear the whap, whap, whap of the cleaver), roasted and served. It was amazingly delicious and about as fresh as it could be! Below is where they were boiling and plucking the chickens:

 

Dr. Mia found all of the cool chicken parts in the soup which we all investigated. She identified the heart, liver, feet, and lungs (they have pink areola just like ours)! Mr. Sokhon enjoyed the liver and heart. No one tried the lungs. We just went with the meat on the bones. We tossed the remnants to the dogs that caught them in midair and they crunched the bones like they were nothing. We would never do that with a dog in the US. They were well-trained and never tried to take the food unless it was given to them.

 

On our way back, we visited a market (like the one below) - for some fresh vegetables and fruit (had the watermelon this morning and it was so sweet!) We had a tremendous time and felt very blessed.

 

Please keep us in your prayers that we can make a difference here in many ways. Next week is more work on the website, the annual report, and learning the power system. April 1st is the planned opening of inpatient wards and 24/7 operations.