Category: On the Road…

Retreat: Saturday

Saturday was a departure day. We had mass at 6:30 AM and then breakfast and then almost everyone was on the road by 8:00 AM, heading back to their parishes throughout Cambodia.

Looking downhill toward the sea–which isn’t visible anymore because of development that has taken place.
Looking sideways across the hillside. Just four or five years ago, there was nothing taller than the red tile roofs of the retreat center buildings in the foreground.
St. Michael’s Church at the center is a distinctive building, designed by Cambodia’s foremost architect. It is noteworthy as one of two churches left standing by the Khmer Rouge in their four years of terror. They used the church as a barracks for their troops.
Bishop Olivier was genuinely pleased to offer a gift of a wooden statue of Mary, carved by Cambodian craftsmen, to Archbishop Julian Leow who gave us a wonderful retreat.

Retreat: Thursday

This meeting room is so nice now compared to what it used to be. As you can see it is open on both sides and there usually is a breeze blowing across the room so it is fine without air conditioning.
Today Archbishop Julian continued his theme of relationships, talking about our relationships with society.
The food service students from the Don Bosco Vocational School are really busy all day. They will be glad when this week is finished and they can return to a more normal school day back in Phnom Penh.
The Catholic center is up high on a hillside, overlooking the sea. In past years the sea could actually be seen but now the view is obstructed by new construction.
From a far corner of the church property the port of Sihanoukville can still be glimpsed through the trees.

Retreat: Wednesday

At our services in the church, the guys have the option of sitting on the floor–as many of them do in their parish churches where they have no chairs–or sitting in chairs.
We do a bit of walking each day. These men are walking from the meeting hall a good distance away back to the residence buildings.
These young women come from the Don Bosco Vocational Training School where I have mass every Monday morning. The school offers commercial courses in food and beverage services. These girls are students cooking for the priests retreat to get real work experience.
There are 62 priests attending this retreat so the students prepare a lot of food.
The center hires some local people to wash dishes for the week. No stainless steel sinks in a sparkling kitchen for washing dishes here!

Retreat: Tuesday

Gathering for breakfast after morning prayer.
Later in the morning we were back in the dining area for a break after the morning talk.
This first mass of the retreat gathered all the Phnom Penh priests with Bishop Olivier as presider.
Bishop Olivier is keen on recording in photos and text all that goes on in the diocese and usually has several staff from the Catholic Social Communications office at events. Here one man takes still photos while another uses video.
In the afternoon session Archbishop Julian Leow continued his theme of relationships, talking today about our relationship with ourselves.
Kampong Som Province is the wettest of all the provinces and we have been having several showers a day, some of them real downpours drowning out the archbishop’s voice even though he is using a PA system.

Retreat: Monday

Four of us drove from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville this morning on the new highway just opened up. It is like the Interstate highways in the U.S. and cut the travel time from 5 or 6 hours to just 3 hours. A great improvement!
The highway is finished but the rest areas are not. This one had a functioning gas station but all the planned commercial sites were empty except for one coffee shop.
While no one could use the Catholic center during Covid, they did a lot of renovations. Because of my advanced age–not because of any significant achievements!- -I got a room in the VIP section where the four bishops stayed. This is a far cry from what it used to be with a small bed and bare concrete walls!
The first official act of the retreat was vespers together at 5:00 PM.
Then Bishop Olivier had a formal welcome for everyone in the outdoor dining area.
Then the electricity at the center went out. A generator powered three or four lights in the courtyard but our dinner was in darkness broken by phone lights.
The retreat sessions were held in a different building apart from the residence buildings. The meeting room, too, has been completely redone and is so much nicer now.

Retreat–Introduction

The priests of Cambodia came together today at the Catholic center in Kampong Som on the southern coast for a week long retreat. Internet connections were almost non-existent so I have had trouble getting online. I think I have found a workaround so now I will be able to follow up with daily posts.

Above is Archbishop Julian Leow, the bishop of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who will be guiding our reflections through this week.

Health Update

In the last year I have spent quite a bit of time in the Surgery Department at BNH Hospital in Bangkok. A routine physical exam in May, 2022 discovered cancer on my kidney and I had surgery then. After that I was back in November for a post-op follow up and in going through that they found more spots on the kidney. So I had to come back this week for CT scans to see what they were, but two scans indicated the spots were not cancer but scar tissue from the previous surgery. So all is well. Deo gratias.

The other part of BNH where I spend a lot of time is the fourth floor, the general medical area where I have my physical exams. This is an interior courtyard on the fourth floor. It used to be all grass and landscaping but during the Covid time, they added some small offices and consultation rooms for an allergy unit. They made a good mix of work space and pleasant landscaping.

The architects created very comfortable and aesthetically pleasing connections between the existing interior rooms and the now-more-visible garden area outside.

A Good Idea…

For me, one of the real irritants in air travel is waiting for luggage at the big airports. I don’t mind the waiting so much, but people crowd up right to the edge of the carousel so that others cannot see the bags that are coming. And it’s even worse when they bring the luggage trolleys up to the carousel. Bangkok puts this red-and-blue line around the carousel and asks people to stay behind it, and then everyone can see. Obviously (see the photo) not everyone follows this directive but it sure makes things better.

November Trip to Bangkok

Tomorrow I go to see the surgeon in Bangkok who in May removed part of my kidney, for a six-month checkup. I suspect it will all be rather routine but it requires a trip to Bangkok. The beginning of that trip was not routine–beset by horrendous Phnom Penh traffic–but then, maybe that unfortunately is becoming routine also.

The first thirty minutes on the tuk-tuk ride to the airport were not so bad but then about a mile from the airport chaos reigned. This is on the street in front of the airport. These are the three westbound lanes with cars going in every direction, some trying to turn into the airport, others trying to turn around and go back the way they came. But the eastbound lanes are just the same. Gridlock.
This is a view back to the highway from inside the airport grounds. I sat in my tuk-tuk in that mess for about fifteen minutes and then paid off the driver and just walked between cars in the middle of the highway to the airport entrance.
These are cars and tuk-tuks trying to get out of the airport on to the highway.
Once I got in the airport, I checked in within three minutes. Finally it was time to board. This view from the jetway shows much less congestion on the airside of the airport.







I was on an economy airline and limited to just a carryon so I exited quickly, bought a Thailand SIM card, and headed for the airport bus stop. I took at A3 bus to Lumphini Park, the closest I could get by bus to the Maryknoll house. From the park I then took a taxi to Maryknoll. Today the the US dollar = 34.21 Thai baht so the 50-minute airport bus ride was 50 baht, about US$1.50.