Old news made new ..... Battambang Part 5 Children of Cambodia

When Ti-Jin was here, I took him to this school to learn diabolo. This place is run by French NGO, they take in street kids and teach them skills like dancing, circle performance, drawing and of course education too. This is the best school I have seen in many countries, as far as I am concern, the surrounding is better than school in Singapore, Malaysia and China. Just love the surrounding !

I noticed children in Asia play the same games for generations. Boys play marbles and girls play jumping rope with rubber bands joined together.


Let's see whose hand is dirtiest !
On the way to that school.

Most houses (even GEMS ) plant flowers but no matter what, all turn out to be the same colour ..... the colour of DUST
This will definitely be caught by Malaysian traffic police.

Old news made new ..... Battambang Part 4 Morning Glory

Morning Glory ! what a nice name for Kang Kong. In Cambodia, the leaves of morning glory is only fit for cows, not for human.

Yesterday morning after my Qigong in the park, I went to the market, pointed at the kangkong leaves by the side of the vegetable seller and gave her 100 Riel (RM0.10). See how much I got ! If I did not stop her in time, she may give me more. She must have thought that I have a cow at home.

Today I had fried rice with Kangkong, kangkong dinner and may be kangkong lunch and dinner for tomorrow too ! :-) This cow is from Malaysia hahaha.

Names = part 2

Sopheak pharmacy
Sopheak Computer
Sopheak Web

Sopheak Tailor


Names

Sopheak and Sopheap are common names in Cambodia, our NSA secretary name Sopheap, one of his brother-in-law's name is Sopheak and another brother-in-law's wife's name is Sopheap. She works for Gems International school as a cleaner and we have one student name Sopheak too.

Imagine my confusion !

Names - part 1

Have you ever wonder how you parents give you your name ? I was born Chong Bee In, all the 5 sisters before me are Saw Lee, Saw Loo, Saw Phek, Saw Yang and Saw In and why when it was my turn, I became Bee In and not Saw In .

According to my grandma, my father felt that he had too many girls and he wanted to break the Saw chain. My uncle better still, all his daughters are Chong Saw.... but by the time he had 4 daughters, he had had enough, so he called the cousin who is the same age as me "Ah Oun" and that means finished but unfortunately Chong Bee Yeong came along after that.

I am sure none of my children know why my name is not Chong Bee In any more. I became Chong Bee Yim or Chong Bee Ean after my 5th sister Chong Saw In died at the age of 9 and they are worried if our name was similar, the god that is in charge of hell may get confused and take me along, too. Hence my name is Bee Yim now.

One night many years ago (maybe 20 years), my 2nd sister in-law called and wanted to speak to Bee Ean and Fay told her there was no such person in the house. How this name Grace came about is another long story. You see, when I was in Secondary two, I knew nothing about Christianity and let alone Christian names and sad to say that I did not even speak a word of English! But no fear, this cool classmate of mine, from Alor Star where all of us were from the villages around it, one day gave me the name Grace. I always wondered if she knew the meaning because honestly, I didn't. But now I know I am graceful Grace....:-)

Old news made new ..... Battambang Part 3 Wedding in Battambang.

This group is quieter because they use live performers and no speakers.

This is the traditional costumes for the ladies when attending wedding and Prema has a few of this too.

The youngters are more daring as you can see, they are really dressy.


Wedding -the Cambodian way

Prema warned me just before she left, she told be to be prepared because this month is "THE WEDDING MONTH" for the Cambodian and I totally forgotten about that.

It was 5.30 am and I was waken by this very loud music... it seem to come from all the 4 corners. The park was deserted, no one around ? Guess what ? All gone for the wedding...@ 7 am.

If I know how to describe sound, I would say that no sound in this world ever louder than this. The BIG speakers are place on a tall pole to make sure that no body can sleep when they are getting married ! And today there are 4 wedding around the house, North, south, East and West. 4 weddings in one day. I am really not looking forward to tomorrow !

But if you think this is bad, then you have not been to a Cambodia funeral !