On Thursday morning, I bolted straight up in bed at 5:30am as loudspeakers that felt like they were directly outside my window started blaring music. Seriously? A sound check at 5:30am?

truly, I tell you. The following is my firsthand account of surviving my first Cambodian wedding outside of my house.

Later that morning, I rode my bike through the tent as the bride and groom and attendants were setting up. I kind of hoped that everything would be finished up by the time I got home that night - 13 hours later.

But no. The street was completely alive when I got home. The tent was vibrating with music and the energy of hundreds of people dancing and singing and honoring the bride and groom. Problem: our house was smack dab in the middle of the tent. with only a foot of space to spare between the tent and our gate, there was nothing else to do - I had to walk through the wedding wearing my fire engine red helmet and walking my cherry red bike, with at least 17 layers of sweat on my face. The process went pretty smoothly at first. the neighborhood kids who had gathered outside the tent slowly parted so i could get by. i stopped to let a beer girl or two pass by. Tables packed with guests were on my right. Bodies and house gates directly on my left. Only a few inches to spare.

Then it happened. A huge pot of bougainvilleas and a pile of garbage right next to a large table of guests completely blocked my path. I stopped short. I had no clue what to do. Two young Cambodian guys, seeing my apparent confusion, came to my rescue. They picked up my bicycle and proceeded to lift it OVER the plant and the people's heads - all this during a lovely toast to the bride. I kind of did a hurdle to get over the bougainvilleas to the other side as a whole pack of middle aged men watched my every move.

Mortification. Hilarity. I experienced every emotion in what was easily the biggest gong show of my life. But I'm so glad it happened. :)

-Amie

This week, work has led me to the most remote province of Cambodia: Rattanakiri. My guide was Anne, a Laos+Khmer-fluent American lady who has lived in the region for over 10 years. She is a legend around these parts as you will soon see.

Out here there is little access to solar equipment and I was here to go the extra mile and see just what solar power was needed for. Anne volunteers with a couple NGOs who have set up literacy classes for remote minority people groups first in their language, and then in Khmer. The sunlight hours have the people completely consumed with manual labour - rice fields, pounding grain, weaving, and gathering nuts and fruits to name a few activities. The only opportunity for education is at night where there isn't much to do under the light of the stars.

Getting to the villages was quite the ordeal and adventure. Throw bicycles into a pickup, drive 40km north of Ban Lung (capital city of R'kiri) to the end of the road, take a ferry, get on the bicycles and ride 8km, stop at a wedding for rice wine and gong music, continue to the end of the road, ditch the bikes, wade across a river, climb up some hills and then you're there! Villagers don't have any extra food so we eat what we bring, string up a hammock in the guest hut and fall instantly to sleep from over-exhaustion. Except for Anne that is, who yaks with the villagers and apparently is not phased by the ride to the village that nearly killed me. Anne is at home in the village. They are her family and her heart's desire is to help them in anyway and does just this, living a frugal lifestyle similar to many locals.

At night in the village, everyone gathers around a makeshift blackboard illuminated by a solar powered bulb. 3 hours per night is all you get and it's the best social activity in the community - no one misses out. All teachers are volunteers (previous graduates), and everyone is enthusiastic because of previous relatives and friends who have benefited so greatly because of literacy.

-steve

We just finished moving to a new rental flat in Phnom Penh. We usually don't get it right the first time when we move to a city so this wasn't surprising. Some of the things we were moving away from include noisy construction, unending dust, no parking (bike even), non-central location, annoying landlords, and poor airflow. Our new house is everything our other place wasn’t and more (fully furnished, breezy, lovely).

Yes, 40,000 people were tortured or killed in the school next door, but those times are past, and people have filled the neighborhood in the last 10 years overcoming their superstitions and fears of the area. We believe everything can be redeemed, and this school has been - there have been millions of tourists through its current state as a genocide museum.

Of course, since we are in Cambodia, we would never want to live in a place that is too Western. Thank goodness, our new house has enough Chinese artifacts in it to remind us of what hemisphere we're in.

We love our new house. A gentle Cambodian family lives on the ground floor, and two sisters who have a stalls at Russian market live above us.

We've accumulated a few things since arriving in Cambodia but we still only had 2 tuktuk's full.

New world hair salon - a slice of heaven for nine bucks

Being the day before Valentine's day, I felt it was high time to do some beautifying. Thank goodness that in Phnom Penh this is a fairly inexpensive effort. (A good thing too since the amount I sweat in this country requires increased measures to become more beautified).

So I went to the hair salon - New World Beauty Salon - upon the recommendation of several friends.

I am so glad I went.

I walked into New World Hair salon and explained briefly what I wanted - a hair wash and cut.

So the kind Cambodian woman walked me to the back of the building and got me to stretch out on a big bedlike thing with a sink at the top. As I relaxed back, with my head in the sink for the wash, the bed started massaging my back. A massaging chair! Then she thouroughly massaged/washed my hair for 20 minutes. Absolute heaven - or at least a piece of it.

Then the kind Cambodian woman walked me out to the main hair salon, sat me down in the chair and massaged my shoulders - of course an important requirement for a hair cut!

At New World salon, the women wash/massage and the men do the cutting. So after briefly explaining what I was looking for, a Vietnamese guy chopped and cut for 1/2 an hour. Styling was the icing on the cake.

And all that for $9. I may need to go and do that more often!

-amie

While Wayne and Steve spent some quality father-son time on Cambodia's coast, I spent some quality sister time in Chiang Mai!

The trip to Thailand started with a 12 hour bus ride to Bangkok, complete with goats packed in with the cargo below the bus! After the ride to Bangkok, I hopped on another overnight bus to get to Chiang Mai for early Saturday morning. After 24 hours of travel, I made it safe and sound and joined Chantelle and Andrea on a series of adventures during the weekend!

1. Thai cooking class. This is always a well spent $20. shopping at the local market, a free recipe book, and one-on-one attention from the chef all afternoon! We also ate 5 meals in 4 hours - and when that involves Thai food that's always a VERY GOOD THING!

2. Around Chiang Mai. My eyes almost burst out of my head when I saw a Starbucks. The store shone with a lovely western glow after six months of Cafe Sentiment in Phnom Penh. Don't get me wrong, I love Cafe Sentiment, but Starbucks was such a treat!

3. Flight of the Gibbon. This was awesome! 10 ziplines, a couple of drops, and swinging bridges, all 50 feet above the jungle floor. We screeched and screamed and loved every moment of it.

4. The Chiang Mai Flower Festival. This was wild - floats made entirely of flower! It was lovely to be there!

A very fun weekend with fabulous company!

-amie

It's sad that it has taken so long for us to get invited over to a local house for dinner. We find that people are usually too embarrassed to invite because of their living conditions. This all changed when I convinced a workmate that our standards are pretty low.

It turned out to be great! My work friend's place is half an hour out of town and the menu for the day included lawnmower duck and fresh on tong (eel). Lawnmower duck means hacking up with no intention to separate meat from skin from bone (also must include head, feet and tail - the best parts!). Fresh eel means the eel wiggles around in a pail and occasionally escapes until it is ready to join the rest of its dish. Eels aren't as agile as their reptile cousins in the dirt as we observed. Eels on the loose also cause a great disturbance and confusion to dogs, ducks and other land loving creatures.

Eating outdoors also has its disadvantages as dogs and wild chickens are always starving for your food. The entertainment value makes it all worth it though. At one point in our meal, my buddy grabbed one of the crazy chickens and fed it a little Johnny Walker (whiskey). This apparently had no effect on the chicken at it continued to stealth jump onto the table to cannibalize its fallen mallard cousin.

-steve-

We’ve been in Phnom Penh for about four months and it seems that as we settle into life, the things that were once unbelievable, exhilarating, comical or completely farcical, have lost their novelty. I suppose that happens to everyone at every stage in life – as we get comfortable we see things through the lens of the mundane.

But there are things that we see everyday that I know are not your standard fare in Canada. Like naked kids running around everywhere, or a whole family on a motorcycle, or the inane ability of Cambodians to maximize space...you will see what I mean if you scroll down to the pictures below.

I went around Phnom Penh this morning on my bicycle, armed only with my camera, in search of some of the sights that are quintessential Phnom Penh. The following pictures are what I found.

And so, my ode to Cambodia – a refreshing reminder (for me at least!) of what it is that I love about this country.

-Amie

It was a whirlwind trip, but fantastic to have Amie's family with us in Phnom Penh for Christmas. We spent time in the capital before heading to Siem Reap to explore the Angkor Temples, and then on to Koh Chang Thailand for some fun in the sun.

-amie