On the Road Again….

Phnom Penh’s new airport is named Techo International Airport and it is very large, far beyond the current needs of the city. Part of Cambodian culture is for the whole family, even the village, to go to the airport to see the person off. They arrive at the airport hours early and sit on the floor waiting.
These are four of the deaf people who made up our delegation to the Asian Deaf Catholic Conference. The twins (red shirts) are non-Catholic Christians but the others were all Buddhists!
At the Seoul airport deaf volunteers in orange jackets met all of the deaf people arriving from 20 countries. The volunteers first met us and then we waited with them to meet these two young deaf men from Timor Leste.
Then we all went outside to wait for the large bus that took us to a youth retreat center about fifteen miles outside of town.

On the Road Again….

St. Joseph Church

This is the new St. Joseph Church, now in use for the Cambodian community, and the old seminary building. We use the old St. Joseph Church hall for the English Catholic Community.

This is the Saturday night church venue in St. Jude International School which we use on Saturday nights. One of the changes made after I left was to white albs for all the altar servers.

On the Road Again….

Sorry for the lack of posts from this trip! There have been wi-fi problems all along but today I finally got a special roaming adapter that allows me to connect my computer. Before that we could only connect phones.

The Internet problems have been complemented by time problems. Every day the schedule starts at 7:00 AM and it doesn’t finish until 10:00 or 11:00 PM, and there is no free time except for an hour for meals. There is no opportunity to catch up on work unless I skip something in the schedule. Grueling….

This is a photo of our Cambodian deaf group–interesting because there is not one Catholic deaf person in Cambodia! More on that to come. At the far right of the photo is Fr. Park Min Seo, the deaf priest from the Seoul diocese who is hosting this 4th Asia Deaf Catholic Conference.

On the Road Again….

The best part of a return trip to Cambodia is meeting up with friends. L to R are Wyn, Maria, Charlie, Julie, Pedro, Robert, Kylene, and Kila who have continued the Maryknoll tradition of meeting every Wednesday (now Thursday) for a home liturgy and meal.

Another good part of a return trip to Phnom Penh is being in a city where there are people on the streets, interacting, passing each other, and not just contained in air-conditioned homes and offices and cars.
The new Phnom Penh airport terminal.

The name ot the new Phnom Penh airport which opened a year ago is Techo International Airport. ” Techo” is an honorific, an adjective title given to the Prime Minister and to a few others. it basically means one who is great. So it’s something of an oddity to name an airport Great International. More irritating and confusing is that the way Cambodia has presented the name, the name of the destination appears on flight schedules and gate boards as Techno, not as Phnom Penh. It’s bizarre. Some Cambodian ministry didn’t think this one through. Travelers looking for their flight to Phnom Penh need to know they are looking for Techo.

On the road again….

I’ve been in a lot of airports in a lot of countries around the world and Cambodia is the only one where I’ve found signs against tipping, at passport control, at the baggage claim, and other places.

It’s a brand new airport, open less than a year, but the signs represent decades (centuries?) of the tradition of expecting to pay if you want something done by officialdom.

On the road again

Again, I’m sorry for the days with no posts. The flat I’m staying in while the owner is away has wi-fi and I can connect, but there is no Internet access. I tried using my old Cambodia phone’s hotspot and that worked for a day, but when I transferred that number to my iPhone, now I cannot connect to the iPhone hotspot. Frustrating…

This is a United flight at the Louisville gate I was to use. The subsequent flight to take me to Houston/San Francisco/Singapore/Phnom Penh was delayed so long, though, that United at the airport rerouted me through Taiwan instead.
My new flight from Louisville went to Chicago and then Taipei. This is Gate C1 in Taipei, a colorful and creative environment with a good workspace. I always like when I transit through Taiwan. The rerouting only delayed my arrival in Phnom Penh by three hours.

On the road again…

I leave in about an hour for the Louisville airport for a trip to Cambodia and Korea. I go Louisville/Houston/San Francisco/Singapore/Phnom Penh. After week in Cambodia, I go to an Asian Catholic Deaf conference in Seoul for a week. I’ll be back in Louisville at midnight on October 21.

I’m sorry for all the days I missed posting here. I have run into a multitude of problems, mostly computer related, and have spent many hours trying to unblock accounts, changing passwords, etc.