Aw shucks....!

I've just got home from a double film-showing at the Meta House, of two Peter Degen films on the Mekong River and the Tonle Sap, produced in the early part of the decade and showing life and livelihoods on the two rivers and the Great Lake. With the prospect of those livelihoods being affected by hydro-dams and more in the countries higher up the Mekong chain, these films could present a picture of life that will dramatically change in the near future. Some great photography though the ineffectual Mekong River Commission seemed to be behind both films, so they were virtual propaganda documentaries.

I was disappointed to see a news report that the Latin pop singer Ricky Martin is in Cambodia, as I was hoping to break that story. I was asked to keep mum for a few days after Ricky arrived in the country a couple of days ago but it seems someone else couldn't wait to spill the beans. Oh well, no big deal, I'll get over it. Ricky, known for his Living La Vida Loca song, is in town to visit projects fighting child trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Nice to see some complimentary remarks by a few bloggers when I did a blog search on my own blog tonight. My thanks to them. Here's what they had to say:
Carl Parkes posted on 15 March, 2008: While this blog may seem obsessed with Thailand, it's only because Thailand seems to consistently produce the most interesting and varied stories within Southeast Asia. Surprisingly, Cambodia is now in the second place, the country that inspires the most offbeat, culturally attractive, and socially challenging stories I find on the net. Indonesia should be second on this list, but it's not really generating stories I feel would be of great interest to the readers of the blog, and that's a pity. Check the blogrolls on the right and you'll see that Thailand has an overwhelming number of blogs or websites that I think are worth visiting or putting in your RSS reader. Not much for Cambodia, but that deficit is made up for by the excellent and consistent posts from Andy Brouwer, who works in the travel industry in Phnom Penh, and so has good reason to wander around the country visiting the more remote locations. He's interested in architecture and old temples (same as me) and speaks enough Khmer to ask the old monks to unlock doors to photograph rarely seen interiors. And his photography is surprisingly good, especially with his flash shots that aren't terribly washed out...something that has always been a problem with my photography. And so, today, I salute Andy Brouwer and his great site about all things Cambodia.

Erik posted the following on 10 December 2007 at Buddhismadjunkt. Andy Brouwer Starts Roaming: It’s always been fun to read Andy's blog - for one thing, he seems incapable of having negative opinions or thoughts. Let me say first off that I don’t always like this: too often in my experience, people with nothing ‘negative’ to say are just in the business of getting along and trying to be liked. But that is clearly (to me, anyway) not the whole of the story with Andy, whose genuine-ness and overwhelmingly obvious love of Cambodia overcomes my suspicious nature. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he shares my love of conscious reggae greats, Steel Pulse, whose Earth Crisis album I found in a public library in Topeka, Kansas, and which changed my life. Since moving to Cambodia (lucky sunavagun), Andy’s been prowling around like only a single man on a mission can do. I’ll readily admit that I’m horribly jealous; and also that I’m enormously grateful for the commentary, the photos, and as always, Andy’s good nature. Not only has he been prowling, but he’s been spending an awful lot of time dealing with my specialty - Cambodian thoughts, ideas, and especially rituals, that might be classified as ‘religious.’ Here he is at the Famed Phnom Baset temple, with the magic monk himself, getting his cell phone blessed, and watching others get splashed with water (a common ceremony called srauch teuk), traipsing around an apparently completed Wat Trai Leak (on the Chruoy Changvar peninsula, I’ve visited many times, but it’s quite a lot further along than I’d imagined possible), adding new genocide memorials to his list of ones visited, and visiting the famed Tampuon cemeteries in Ratanakiri.

Bob Uva wrote on 26 January 2008: The other voice, written not spoken in this case, is that of Andy Brouwer, an expat Brit living in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. I was unable to keep up my reading pace through the past week due to this cold, and Andy has a tendency to become extremely prolific in his blog postings over a short period of time. Fortunately, today I have felt well enough to flee the home for a coffee shop and get some uninterrupted reading in. I had over twenty unread entries in Andy's blog going back to December 30th, so I decided to start there. And am I happy I did. The mix of travelogue, history, humor and humanity that Andy weaves in his writings is truly remarkable. My heart was warmed by the pictures of Khmer children he met at temple visits or along the road, then it is wrenched from my chest as I observed the piles of skulls at the genocide memorial at Sala Trapeang Sva. Then the "three sreys" restored my hope and the painted pagoda at Wat Kork Ksang made me yearn to visit. I felt myself being very thankful that I had been introduced to Andy's blog (thanks Kilong) for his light-hearted as well as his serious jaunts around that beautiful country have been a joy to follow. And finally, he has recommended a book that I am looking forward to reading: The Judas Strain by James Rollins. Andy's recommendation mentions that he's a Robert Ludlum fan. I devoured the Bourne series and am looking forward to reading another author of a similar vein.