+1Cambodiana

After 2 freagin mad weeks stuck in Cambodia, all i can say is that Cambodia Rawks!! It's one place i'll definitely want to visit again. The people are great, the food is out of this world and the place just rocks. I guess i'm still coming to terms with the fact that i'm finally back in good old Malaysia where no other foreign land can compare to.

A week before heading to Cambodia, i was rather laxed about things. Me and the other 2 lads (Shaggy and Jeremy) had no idea what kinda mad stuff we were up for. The only impression i had was that we were goin to have some really good old fashioned fun with the kids at the FGA Child Care Centre in Cambodia. At first, that seemed pretty true as we got to know the kids and help treat them within the centre itself until we were told by the doc in charge that we would be following him into the forest for a really whacky adventure.

Within the centre that me & the lads were attached to, the kids were supposed to get their annual medical screening which was conducted by the in-house Doc whose name is really unique (Dr. Bun Rong). It was really a breeze and making a diagnosis was pretty straight forward as most of the kids suffer from similiar ailments. Some of them had really funny sounding chief complains like.... tired and sleepy or smacked by girlfriend in the nose. As a whole, it was more fun than work. Work wise, surprisingly, we had to present TBLs of various topics to the doc. In some ways, he wanted to test our knowledge and grasp on general medicine for some reason.


Me and the lads from the centre


Shaggy and our crib

As for the surprise from the doc about the trip to the forest, we didn't really take his word seriously. We just thought it would be some trip to a nearby belukar where some jokers just decided to start a village and populate the place. In some ways, the image of the place we were goin to as told by the doc wasn't exactly true. He told us it was a really nice place about 2 hours from the Centre. After hearing that, all 3 of us agreed to go and were happily making jokes until we hit the road and started to realise the madness of joining the doc on his expedition.

We were told that the roads for the first hour at least would be pretty decent with 'just a few' potholes. That itself made us confident that everything will be A-okay and that motion sickness is something we can forget about. Jeremy and Shaggy even had a more ingenius idea of wanting to ride in the open air compartment of the pick-up truck only later to have been thankful not to have done so. The journey was pretty decent until we started seeing a bunch of cows running across the road. That was pretty much an indicator that the road ahead was gonna be on heck of a rodeo for those in the pick-up truck.

15 minutes into our rodeo, we were all still laughing and enjoyin the thrill of riding in a pickup truck driven like a WRC Rally car. It was one heck of a road with different gradients every few corners. With the dust all over the place and chickens flying off the roads, it was one heck of a ride. That was until we started the journey proper with a road that was really muddy and filled with potholes thanks to environmental agents such as the cow, pig, chicken and the rain which contribute to the uneven terrain of the road.


When the cows have all gone home....


To the forest we come....

After 3 freagin hours of head-banging activity worthy of making Korn look like kids, we finally reached our accomodation for the nite right smack in the middle of our route of travel. It's a pretty nice place which looks like some kampung house with a tinge of an English cottage feel thanx to a windmill which greets us at the door. That wasn't the end of the journey as we still had another 3 hours before we finally make our stop. By the time we reached our destination, we were half dead looking like a bunch of gobloks stuck in the middle of the forest with an appearance of a patient rather than someone we were going to treat. Either way, it was quite an experience.

The journey was well worth it as we managed to see some really interesting cases. One of the highlights was a 14 year old girl who came complaining of chronic cough productive of sputum and wheezing especially at night. On inspection, she had clubbing of the fingers and had crepitations on auscultation. It was pretty much a case of bronchiectasis. All sorts of weird cases cropped up. So it was quite a day. After a long session of treatment, we closed shop for lunch. We were treated to deep fried beef with ginger and rice bought from a shop on the way into interior. Interestingly the dish was named 'Sai-ko'. I think it was more psycho than anything else thanx to the way the in which the dish was ordered and cooked. When we ordered our dish at first, we wanted fried chicken with rice but the shop owner said they had ran out of chicken. She said she could still give us fried chicken but we will have to wait 15 minutes as she had to go chase the chicken running on the road and slaughter it for us. We kinda said no thanx and settled for beef. I wonder what would have happened if she ran out of beef. She probably would have run after a cow with her cleaver and whacked the daylight out of it. Mad cow.


Sai-ko


Jeremy sniping at our first health post

After a gastronomical experience, we returned to our head-banging antics on the road for another 3 hours before reaching our accomodation for the nite. The only thing on our minds were SLEEP on arrival. That was interrupted thanx to a freagin huge lizard a.k.a the Gecko which made one heck of a noise that woke everyone up every 5 minutes. Mind you, this lizard ain't small, it was almost 2 feet long. I think it's only function in life is to make that horrible noise, eat bugs, pangsai and reproduce. That was it for our first nite in the forest.


The gecko himself...

Before we hit the road again, we headed for the one and only 'hygienic' stall for breakfast beside the river. Here we ordered our dishes rather blindly since we couldn't speak Khmer and only the doc could order in Khmer. We were kinda at his mercy. To make things simple, we just said yes whenever he asked a question on what we wanted to order. After half an hour waiting, we were served with 3 fried cat fishes of varying sizes, a few pieces of chopped up scrawny chicken, some fried beef and one brutally chopped up pig leg boiled in soup. That rocked. I kinda asked the doc whether all this was fresh. The reply i got was quite an amazing one. He just said that the fish was caught from the river next to the restaurant a few minutes ago and the chicken was slaughtered just before the meal. The rest was left to our imagination. I just started to wonder if good old Porky and Cow who were just wandering outside not too long ago were now 3 metres into our gut.

On our 3rd head-banging road journey, we were off into the highlands of the forest. It was quite a scenic ride with hot springs along the way. After another 3 gruelling hours, we reached our 'clinic' at the foot of a mountain. It was a pretty nice place, only that it was an endemic area for malaria. Here we were served up with some really whacky cases. The first one was a man who had come in with a knee swelling for the past 3 years associated with significant loss of weight and loss of joint movement. Being an ortho freak, i took interest in the case and asked the doc if it was a case of osteosarcoma. As there were no X-ray machines, the doc suggested it was most likely an osteosarcoma as it was pretty common there. Maybe I could go back someday and do some research paper on it. Hehe. The highlight was definitely treating some guy who had rather dark skin on his face with some deformities. At first sight, I seriously thought he had Hansen's disease. After taking some history, i started scratching my head as the diagnosis led to some GI disorder. Shaggy being ever helpful quietly snuck up to the doc to ask what was his real problem. The doc whispered quietly saying that the man was a Khmer Rouge soldier who recovered from a bomb blast. Once i was done with the guy's treatment, Shaggy told me the whole story. I'm still kinda stunned that i treated an ex-guerilla soldier. Wicked.

Once we were done with our last patient, it was our final head-banging, bone crunching journey back to the Child Care Centre in Kampong Speu. This time we were treated to fried chicken with rice a.k.a. 'Sai-chrup' by the doc before heading back home. Not too sure if any innocent bystanding chickens were killed for our meal this time. Either way, it tasted pretty similiar to the fried beef rice probably due to the fact that the ingredients were pretty much the same minus the meat. To add a little more taste to it, Jeremy started pouring copious amounts of fish sauce from Vietnam into his rice. I'm still pretty flabbergasted with how he managed to take the taste. It's has a pretty strong scent. Siao man.


Who needs a 2 seater Lamborghini when you can have a 4 seater 'Lembu-ghini Gallardo'

In general, we had one heck of a great time at the Child Care Centre and the Forest. Despite the torture of the trip into the forest, we were thankful that none of us got blown up by landmines which is still quite a problem in the forest. That was a summary of the first part of the Cambodian adventure. Still trying to digest what happened in the 2nd leg of our whacky adventure in Cambodia. Till the next post. Adios!

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