Monday, 1 January 2001 This morning I took the 0700 fast ferry boat from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, a five-hour ride up the Tonle Sap River and across the Tonle Sap Lake. Tickets cost $14 for Khmers and $22 for foreigners, an example of the dual-pricing system that is common in Asia. The last time I took this boat, I sat on top, in the cargo rack--a favorite place forthe tourists--because there was only one exit from the long, slender, flashlight-shaped boats, and I didn't want to get trapped inside. This boat today, though, had windows that could open and be kicked out, and I was really tired from a short night last night, so I opted to sit inside even though I was way in the back in seat #86 of 100. I had made a reservation at the Popular Guest House in Siem Reap, but when I got off the boat which nosed into the bank there, I couldn't find my name or the guest house name on any of the signs being waved by the drivers of the different guest houses, come to pick up their clients. I was getting ready to hire a motordupe into the city when one young guy pulled a folded "Popular Guest House" sign out of his pocket, and then we were off for a 14-kilometer ride into town. I got settled into my $5-a-night room, with bath, ate some fried rice for lunch, and then took the motordupe out to the Krousar Thmey office, way outside the city. That is KT's first project here in Siem Reap, a center for abused children. Prum Thary, the KT program director in Phnom Penh, wasn't there, though, so I motorduped back to the brand new KT deaf school which we had passed on the way out. There I found Thary just finishing a snack with one of his staff, and they introduced me to the delicacy of fried crickets. Not bad. Taste a little like bacon bits. The long back legs get caught in my teeth, though. I took some photos of the staff doing finishing touches to the school on this holiday, and then I started walking back into town. I stopped at the tourist office and get one free map and bought another, and just looked around. I hadn't been able to do that the first time here because we were always running from one temple to another.

Tuesday, 2 January 2001 I took a motordupe out to Krousar Thmey's new deaf school this morning at 8:00 AM and then spent the morning sitting in on classes with the students. The forty boys and girls there now range in age from about 6 to 12 or 13 but all of them are in the first grade. They've never attended school before. They were working on learning the colors today. Part of my job in the future will be as a consultant with Krousar Thmey and so I was especially observiing the teachers and their techniques and the overall dynamics of the classroom. I ate lunch with the teachers and then went back to the guest house for a rest while the teachers and students did the same at school. I was expecting to sit in on more classes this afternoon, but all the students were working outside preparing the grounds for the dedication on Thursday. Teachers and students from the Phnom Penh school and the Battambang school also arrived today and were helping with the preparations. It was good to see them all again. At 4:00 PM, a four-wheel drive from Phnom Penh arrived with more of the Krousar Thmey staff. The 185-mile trip had taken them ten hours over Cambodia's impossible roads!

Wednesday, 3 January 2001 Today was a tourist day. After breakfast I arranged for a motordupe to take me southeast of Siem Reap to area called Rulous where there are three temples that many go to see. It takes about 45 minutes to get there on some rather dusty, and sometimes bumpy, roads. Overall, though, I have been impressed that Siem Reap's roads are MUCH better than those of Phnom Penh. To go even further, I would say that Siem Reap is a more civilized place, too. The people are friendlier and more polite, there are FAR fewer cars, and the lesser traffic actually follows rules and shows some regard for other people on the road. It's not perfect, but it's sure better than Phnom Penh. The temple ruins at Rulous are some of the oldest in the 77-square mile area known as Angkor. Angkor Wat gets all the attention because it is the largest, the best preserved, and the most photographed, but there are about 100 temples in the whole Angkor area dating back to the Khmer golden age from the 9th to the 12th centuries. We went back to the guest house in time for lunch, and then in the early afternoon took off again, this time for three of the most well-known temple ruins. First, I went to Banteay Kdai and then across the road to Sras Srang which is a huge rectangular artificial lake with an elaborate landing dock. These lakes or barays had ritual uses, but they were also part of the hydraulic system which is an essential element of the ancient system of temples, dikes, barays, and rivers in this area. Ancient life, and even modern life, vary much moves according to the rise and fall of huge Tonle Sap Lake by Siem Reap, and the control of the waters for irrigation and distribution gave rise to the great Khmer empires. From there we went to Ta Prohm, a large and intricate temple which has been allowed to remain in much the same condition as when the French explorers relocated it one hundred years ago. Huge trees grow through and over and around and in the walls of the temple, slowly crushing it into collapse. It was decided not to rescue this one temple and to leave it as a monument to the eternal struggle between the ancient ruins and the jungle. It is one of the temples everyone must see here. I finished the day at Angkor Wat which today was crowded with Japanese and European tourists. The nice thing about Angkor, though, is that there can be huge numbers of tourists but because there are so many temples and some of them so massive,there is seldom a feeling of crowding. Many people like to end their touring day on the higher levels of Angkor Wat--which faces west--to watch the sun go down.

Thursday, 4 January 2001 This morning I went out to the new Krousar Thmey deaf school on the road to Angkor Wat for the ceremony for its official opening. The students have been in class there since December, but today Prime Minister Hun Sen was to come to inaugurate the school. There were police and soldiers all over the road leading up the school, but Hun Sen didn't come, reportedly because of some internal disputes within his party that he had to take care of. In his place the Minister of Education came to do the honors. KT is one of the NGOs that believes in inviting the government to functions like today's dedication; other NGOs prefer to keep their distance. I hadn't been sure how long the dedication program would last, but I was back at the guest house by 11:00 AM so I started planning another tourist expedition. This time I took a motordupe southwest of Siem Reap to Phnom Khrom, a 350-foot hill which is the site of an ancient temple. The temple isn't much but the view is incredible because Cambodia is generally flat as a pancake and from the top of this hill there is a 360° view. It is located near the edge of Tonle Sap Lake which is now receding as we enter the dry season. The countryside looks horribly flooded, with trees sticking up from the water everywhere, but that is a normal occurrence here. Each year the lake increases fourfold as snows melt in Tibet, China, and Vietnam to the north. At its largest, the lake covers 7% of the land area of Cambodia. Phnom Khrom is near where the ferry boats land from Phnom Penh so I next took a small power boat around the floating village there on the edge of the lake. The village moves as the lake moves. It is a full village with a floating school, police office, gas pumps, etc. It's an amazing sight to see.

Friday, 5 January 2001 This morning at 6:00 AM we left the guesthouse and headed for the ferry boats taking people to Phnom Penh and to Battambang. The road is just the higher center of a 25-foot wide spit of land with little bamboo huts along both sides where the fishing people live, and soon the various vans and four-wheel drives from the city's guest houses had clogged the one-lane road. It probably takes an hour or so for that traffic to sort itself out each morning. We were on motordupes so we got off and walked the rest of the way to our boat when the traffic stopped. I had asked for a seat near the front of the pencil-thin ferry boats used on this route because if a boat ever sinks, there is no way the people in the back are going to get out the only exit in the front. The first part of the trip is two hours of barreling across Tonle Sap Lake, out of sight of land, until we enter the Tonle Sap River on the other side and head downstream to where it meets the Mekong River at Phnom Penh. I stayed in the cabin and read till we crossed the lake, and then stood on the outer walkway around the cabin for the rest of the trip, watching the fishing people--mostly Vietnamese--making their living.