Water

The theme of this blog post is water.  Water is great. Water is necessary.  Water can be fun.  Here in Cambodia water pools in verdant green rice paddies. It splashes over waterfalls in some of the outlying provinces.  During rainy season, water hurtles down from the sky with alarming volume and force.  A cool shower is much appreciated to rinse of hot and sweaty bodies at the end of the day.  A downpour after a dry spell is fantastic when it beats down the dust and washes things clean again. Most of the time water is nice.  Most of the time.  But when it fills up drains and sewers and it rises to a level somewhere around the knees, then it's not so nice.

Here are some water themed stories that have emerged from this year's rainy season.  We are going to go backwards in time, starting from the most recent and work our way backwards to the Water Festival that took place in early November.


Strange things happen in Cambodia all the time. Things that you wouldn't normally encounter in your home countries (depending on where you're from of course.)  Most of the time this is all part of the adventure. Sometimes it provides a good laugh, sometimes it's a bit frightening, or a little of both.

Tonight's events fall into the latter category.

There have been strange glug-glugging noises emerging from my bathroom at odd times.   Imagine you just put a full jug of water onto a water cooler. That big, strong, bubbling, glug sound.  That's what I've been hearing from my bathroom.  Do I go look or do I (try to) ignore it?  It's loud enough to wake one up in the middle of the night.  Hmm.  Intriguing.

I just sent a text to the roomie below me..." Are you going to the bathroom right now?"  (I know that's a gross, weird and creepy thing to ask someone, but hey, we're in this thing together, right?) Then all the girls emerge into the hallways laughing at the glugging that is apparently happening in each bathroom on each floor the house. We're all glad it's not just our own bathroom doing it. Theories get tossed out. "It must be something in the neighborhood."  "They're working on the road so maybe there's air in the pipes."

Odd things happen in Cambodia all the time, but a gurgling toilet is no laughing matter.  At least I'm on the top floor, because I'm pretty sure Cambodia does not use back flow valves in their drainage systems.



Now that we've talked about water from below, let's talk about water from above.  During rainy season, the precipitation doesn't fall with a gentle pitter patter.  No nice drizzly drop by which to enjoy your cup of tea. It comes careening down from the heavens, and you have to shout to your housemates over the sound of it's roaring.  This is when a quality roof comes into play. Except when that roof isn't so quality anymore and instead of hearing the rain hit the roof, you can hear it hit your ceiling.  Normally I love the sound of the rain. It can be soothing and relaxing.  But when I hear the drips hitting my ceiling directly overhead I get a bit nervous. At first it starts slowly.  A little drip here. Then it gets louder and the drops are hitting that surface above my head faster and faster, louder and louder.  Can you feel my anxiety?   I can't sleep through it.  I imagine puddles over my head with only a layer of plaster in between. We have a great landlady.  She has been to check on it and says she will fix it soon. Like many things, 'soon' is a relative term here in Cambodia.  At the least the rainy season is come to an end she says.



Above, below, the only thing that's left is water from the middle.  The middle you say?  Yes the middle. We have a great house.  Not only does each room have its own gurgling bathroom, but each also has its own balcony.  A balcony to overlook the neighborhood.  A balcony that serves as a viewing platform for the neighbors to stare at you from across the street.  A balcony conveniently fitted up with a drain.  Can you see where I'm headed with this?  The problem with drains is that they can sometimes get clogged up. Which is just what happened. I'm on the third floor. During a strong rain my balcony filled up.  Then my room filled up.  Then it flowed into the hall and waterfalled three stories down the bottom of the house.  Why travel to an outlying province when you can have a waterfall in your very own home?


The rain tends to out pace the drainage systems here so after a good outpouring the low lying areas will fill up.  How does one travel to work and school?  With shoes off of course!

Thouen (our tuk tuk driver) drops his kids off at the Methodist school before dropping me off.  Here they are with sneakers off making their way to class.

The tricky thing about flooded streets is that you can't see where the potholes are down below.  At this point we got stuck.  You know it's a bad section of road because the piles of gravel you see above means it's slated for repairs.  Well, what do you do when you're stuck?  I'm sitting in the tuk tuk.  I can't help without defiling my work-ready person.  Thouen is pushing with all his might to no avail. A group of big boys from the Methodist school are on hand to help. These big kids pushed us up on the side of the road.  Must be a great school that produces such quality teenage boys.

This one's biking (paddling) to school.  

Early in November Cambodia celebrated Water Festival.  They've skipped it in the last few years due to some tragic events, so I was excited to be able to see it this year.  We rented a little hotel room six floors up directly across from the river.  We had a great view.

The boats look like caterpillars out on the river.

If they won the race they'd row by singing and dancing.

Each boat represents a different province or a government ministry.

Getting a bit peckish while watching the races?  You can always hit the bug cart.  Frogs, snakes, water beetles and much much more!

Towards dusk Sisowath Quay started filling up.

At night, lighted floats went up the river playing Cambodian music.

There were fireworks at the end of the evening.  I shouldn't have even tried to take pictures of the fireworks with my cheapy camera, but I did and I think this one is awesome.  I  couldn't have done this if I tried to.

I thought I'd end with a proverb about water. There's some interesting ones out there, some funny and some obvious.  Here's a Jamaican proverb that I thought was appropriate and falls into the obvious category:

"If you saw what the river carried, you would never drink the water."

True that.