While Thewet is probably the most kid-friendly part of Bangkok, and Banglampu has the best family-friendly budget accommodation, we also had fun staying off Sukumvit Road and exploring the downtown attractions with Tash on our last visit to Bangkok in January 2009.

We stayed at the Federal Hotel in Sukumvit Soi 11, which has been around forever – or at least since the 1960s – where Roo and I had stayed long before Tash came along. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s good value and in a great location. The pool is pleasant, though you’ll want to turn a blind eye to the pink-skinned men breakfasting poolside  on Singha beer from about 10am.

Staying near Sukumvit and surrounds puts you near the Skytrain and Subway, both of which are great for getting around, although be warned that the many stairs make it a hard slog for little legs and pace yourself accordingly.

The Siam Skytrain station is the jumping off point for Siam Square, home of our favourite ‘old school’ coffee shop, the New Light; and the Siam Paragon shopping complex, which houses Siam Ocean World in its basement, the largest aquarium in the southern hemisphere. Ocean World is not cheap but, as described here, it’s an entertaining way to spend an afternoon with kids; the food court on the ground floor is good value, too. And there’s usually something kid-friendly going on around Siam Square: in our case it was a Snow White-themed Christmas display (best not to think too hard about it).

Both the Skytrain and Subway will take you to nearby Lumpini Park, which is about as kid-friendly as it gets in downtown Bangkok. The park has several kids play areas side-by-side: as the equipment is modernised, it seems that rather than replace what went before it, a new play area opens up. The park is Bangkok’s largest and a great place for picnics, Tai Chi, outdoor gym, and that rarest of commodities in the Thai capital, peace and quiet – if you’re not accompanied by a small child, that is.

We hired a pedal boat shaped like a duck to cruise around the lake for 30 minutes or so. The pedalling was bloody hard work but worth it as the lake is brimming with wildlife. We saw fish, turtles, eels and monitor lizards so large we almost mistook them for crocodiles.

The best food find of our time in this part of Bangkok was the Rosabieng bar and restaurant at 3, Sukumvit Soi 11, just down from where we were staying. Rosabieng is the Thai word for the dining car on a train, and there’s one in the restaurant’s leafy garden, as well as a working model train in the air-conditioned interior. The Thai food is sensational, with an exciting selection of dishes. I could have eaten there every night. Tash was made to feel very welcome – she even managed to crash the birthday party of a group from the wonderful Mrs Balbir’s Indian restaurant one of the nights we were there.

Sukumvit also has the advantage of bookshops and department stores where you can stock up on toys for the plane, train and/or beach. Asia Books has a good selection of English language kids books and colouring books; there’s one at Siam Paragon, another at 221 Sukumvit Rd, just past Soi 15.

Responding to a recent inquiry about kid-friendly places to stay in Bangkok made me realise I didn’t have a post on this site about Banglampu. This part of ‘old Bangkok’ on the arc of the Chao Phraya River is well known as a backpacker desination–Khao San Road is situated there–but it’s also a good budget option for families.

We stayed a couple of times at the New Siam II Guest House, located in Trok Rong Mai lane off Phra Artit Road. The rooms were simple but comfortable and good value, considering there’s also a pool with jacuzzi and a good open-air restaurant on the ground floor. Slightly more upmarket is the New Siam Riverside, five minutes walk down the lane and across Phra Artit Road, which as its name suggests overlooks the Chao Phraya. Regardless of where you stay, the buffet breakfast on the terrace at the New Siam Riverside is recommended, the passing river traffic guaranteed to keep the whole family entertained.

Heading down Trok Rong Mai lane away from the river takes you a leafy street that backs on to the grounds of Wat Chana Songkhram. We had breakfast here one morning and watched squirrels tight-rope walking along the powerlines above our heads. The temple grounds are a good place for a morning stroll.

A promenade runs along the river parallel to Phra Artit Road from the Pinklao Bridge. Follow it north past the Phra Artit ferry stop (Thai Phra Artit) to Santichaiprakan Park. This pretty, leafy park is built around the Phra Sumen Fort, part of what were once the fortifications of the old city, and also contains one of Bangkok’s last remaining lamphu trees from which the area takes its name. We were too busy soaking up the atmosphere to take photos when we visited, but there’s a nice one here. It’s a great space for running around or sitting in the shade.

Banglampu’s downside (for some) is that it’s a long way from the Skytrain or subway. But it’s easy and enjoyable to get around by ferry. It’s only a few ferry stops from Banglampu to Thewet, for example, where the kids can join in a fish-feeding frenzy at the pier, followed by a visit nearby Dusit Zoo–see here for more details.

For family friendly eating in the area, the restaurant at the New Siam II is a pretty good option, with decent Thai and Western options and a fish tank containing weird shrimp-like creatures.

But my personal favourite is The Old Phra Artit Pier, an ambient wooden place right on the river with hot Thai food, cool music and cold beer on tap. The staff were great with Tash and they even sold Nancy Chandler colouring books at the bar. The only drawback is you have watch that the kids don’t run out of the restaurant and along the old pier into the river.

You can see how that might happen in this photo of Tash at the Old Phra Artit Pier with our friends Shal and Randy, taken in April 2008: in the distance behind them you can see all the way across the river to the lights on the other side.

Stay tuned for a post on staying with kids around Sukumvit…

A winter weekend in Warrnambool might seem a strange choice for tropical heat lovers like us, considering the Antarctic winds that buffer this booming town in Victoria’s southwest. But on Tash’s advice, we packed raincoats, gloves and boots and braved the elements for a weekend away.

The tourist brochures say Warrnambool is 3 hr and 15 min drive from Melbourne, but with a 3-and-a-half-year-old in tow and a partner with a penchant for op shops, our trip took closer to 5 hours.

At our first stop we enjoyed excellent coffee and cakes at the Winchelsea Larder; I was only sorry we weren’t there at lunchtime for what looked like a great Ploughman’s Platter (AUD$12.90), plus kid’s menu version ($5.30); a genuinely kid-friendly venue with fabulous food and produce.

We lingered longer in Colac, first at the adventure playground situated on the edge of the lovely Botanic Gardens overlooking Lake Colac (follow the signs from the highway down Queen St and turn right into Fyans St; the playground is opposite the caravan park). The park has everything from a wheelchair-accessible swing to an old-school roundabout and half-dome climbing frame. Our personal favourite was the boat on a spring overlooking the lake, which fitted all three of us.

We had lunch at the Botanic Cafe, situated at the opposite end of Fyans St from the playground, also overlooking Lake Colac. Kid-friendly, good value and picturesque location.

Then it was on to Warrnambool, where we stayed with our friends Tam and Bill in a house overlooking the Hopkins River. It was raining when we arrived but as soon as it cleared, we headed to nearby Logan’s Beach for some whale watching. We got lucky: the mother and calf hanging out in the area showed their heads and tails, and at least one of them was blowing while we watched. It turned out to be the one and only time we saw whales in three visits to the viewing platform. Then again, Tash was more entertained playing with Tam’s “binnochios” (binnoculars) than she was by the distant whales.

Sunday, on Bill’s advice, we headed for Tower Hill Reserve, a lush wildlife sanctuary inside a dormant volcano that collapsed in on itself some 30,000 years ago. We parked by the Visitor Centre and within moments we were getting up close and personal with a couple friendly emus, and spied four koalas in nearby trees. We also saw black swans by the lake and a kangaroo in the wetlands area.

Tower Hill has a fascinating history. Despite being declared Victoria’s first national park in 1892, the area had been virtually clear-felled by the 1930s. Restoration work begun in the 1960s, based on a detailed painting of the Tower Hill in 1855 by Victorian artist Eugene Von Guerard. As the In The Artist’s Footsteps website notes, “It is the classic example of where a painting, by a realist artist, at a time when photography was in its infancy, can be a very valuable conservation resource.” These days the conservation efforts are so effective that koalas have to be periodically relocated from the area to prevent them from taking over.

From Tower Hill we drove to Port Fairy and would have meandered longer around this pretty town except that the port area was closed off for a bicycle race. We opted instead for lunch at Time & Tide, as recommended by Tam, a cafe with gorgeous sea views and even more gorgeous cakes. My smoked salmon fritta was truly delectable and the coffee good, too. No kids menu but they were able to rustle up a kid-friendly dish or two ($4.50), and Tash’s hot chocolate came out with a smiley face sketched in chocolate syrup. The gallery setting means it’s better suited to immobile babies than active toddlers. The turn off to Time & Tide is after the Catholic church and just before the water tower; follow the signs down the unsealed road to the beach.

Rain ruined our plans to build sand castles on the beach out front of the cafe. Instead we drove back to Warrnambool, put on our raincoats and went out to play at the Lake Pertobe Adventure Playground. The playground is a fabulous feat of engineering, built on a former swamp whose “pestiferous exhalations” were the subject of written complaints as early as 1879. (The name ‘Warrnambool’ allegedly derives from a Kuurn Kopan Noot Aboriginal term, meaning ‘two swamps’). Nowadays the park is 20 hectares of lakes, lawn and playgrounds and home to abundant bird life.

Having become playground aficionados since the birth of our daughter, I reckon Lake Pertobe is one of our best finds, not least of all because it caters for adults as well as kids: the highlight for all 3 of us were the flying foxes, one for under-12s and another for over-12s. (We were having too much fun to take photos, but there are some here). To find the flying fox station, head right from the main car-park past the maze.

What worked for us over our weekend in Warrnambool was to come equipped for inclement weather, make the most of fine spells to get out and about, and not to be deterred by a shower or two. We had a busy, fun time and I felt we’d only scratched the surface in terms of what the region has to offer.

Also worth noting for the trip back is the castle-like Apex Playground in Terang, which has low doorways hazardous to unsuspecting adults and was a bit slippery in the wet, but is beautifully located overlooking the croquet club and has everything a would-be princess needs to fire her imagination.

Other recommended food stops are the Cobb Loaf Cafe in Camperdown, and Cafe Gravity in Colac (impressive kids’ menu with $7 dishes), both on the main street/highway on the right side heading towards Melbourne.

Tash and I celebrated NAIDOC Day on 9 July 2009 at the Collingwood Children’s Farm in Abbotsford, an event organised by Aboriginal Housing Victoria.

NAIDOC stands for National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee and NAIDOC week is an opportunity to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and the contributions of Indigenous Australians in all walks of life.

The event was brilliantly organised and included a traditional music and dance session where an Indigenous elder and young dancers invited kids in the audience to learn to dance like emus, kangaroos and eagles. There was also a dance symbolising fishing and the celebration of a good catch. Tash was too shy to join in the dancing but was rapt to witness the didgeridoo played live (she’s only seen it in books and heard it on CD).

My friend Helen alerted me to the NAIDOC Day event and we met up with her and her 2+ year old daughter Iris, sister Genevieve and her 4 kids for the celebration. We participated in a smoking ceremony, where the kids had their faces painted with ochre, followed by a boomerang painting session that all the kids got into.

There were drinks, fresh fruit, cakes, damper and barbequed sausages/vegie burgers in bread–all free, thanks to Aboriginal Housing Victoria and the fabulous volunteers at the Collingwood Children’s Farm.

It was wonderful to be around so many Aboriginal families and kids having fun.

The Farm itself was a great venue, the landscape forming a beautiful backdrop to the ceremonies, and lots of farm animals on hand to entertain the kids afterwards. For Tash the highlight was hand-feeding fresh grass to a white horse; I was rather taken with the 10-day-old black piglets.

We last took Tash to the Collingwood Children’s Farm when she was just under 18 months old, thinking that because she enjoyed reading about farm animals and emulating their noises, she would enjoy seeing the real thing. In fact, most of the animals–bar the ducks and chickens–scared the hell out of her. This visit was much more successful.

I’d always thought the Children’s Farm, whilst wonderful, a bit expensive to visit at $16 per family; but entry was free on NAIDOC Day and Helen tells me it only costs $2 per adult on Farmers’ Market days, the second Saturday of every month, which is great value.

I forgot the camera, but Helen took some great photos, including the one above of the white horse kissing Tash.

I hope to make NAIDOC Day at the Children’s Farm an annual event – even if it means skiving off work to be there.

Oh, the places you’ll go this week celebrates 10,000 hits. We named the site after the classic children’s book by Dr Seuss, with a clue in the URL ‘great balancing act’ as to what it was all about.

We started blogging 18 months ago as an on-line diary to keep friends and family up to date with our travels during our ‘year off’ – though it would be more accurate to call it a ‘year on’. A year when the work-life balance was tilted very much in favour of life.

The photo above shows Tash asleep in her father’s arms at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, just before our flight to Cambodia, our home for the year. It was as if Tash had already absorbed the ability of Thai people to sleep anytime, anywhere, after only a few days in the Kingdom. It was the first of many instances where she slipped with apparent ease into a strange and wonderful environment.

As we wrote on during our months away, it emerged from our ‘blog stats’ — the figures that tell you what search terms people use to find your site and what links they click on when they drop by — that the site was filling a gap in terms of upbeat information on travelling in Southeast Asia with small children, especially in countries like Cambodia and Laos. At least one of our readers says she was inspired to take the plunge and head off travelling with her small son on the strength of our posts — which is about as good as it gets in terms of compliments!

This has inspired me to keep the blog going as a guide to travelling with children, wherever we are in the world — a reminder to recapture the spirit of travelling even at home. To slow one’s pace. Take in the sights. Be in awe and appreciation. Take joy from watching a child experience the world in all its glorious diversity.

Thanks to everyone who has followed our travels and visited our blog. Keep on dropping by and feel free to leave comments.

Oh, the places we’ll go…

Today we went to a crocodile show at the Melbourne Zoo called Crocodilia. Almost five months ago to the day, we went to a crocodile show at the Phuket Zoo in Thailand. Can you spot the differences?

I know, I know, it’s easy to see: at the Melbourne Zoo, the keeper is handling a juvenile American Alligator, whilst in Phuket, the keeper is handling a full-grown Asian crocodile.

Seriously though, there were also differences in what we learned at the respective shows.

At Melbourne Zoo, we learned that crocodilia have evolved with five key characteristics that have enabled them to survive for more than 2 million years: the ability to be submerged but breathe above the water; the capacity to draw energy from the sun through their backs; a rudder-like tail that propels them through the water; estivation, or the ability to hibernate during hot, dry times of food scarcity and re-emerge once the rains come; and being communicate with their young, even whilst the babies are still inside the eggs. A mother crocodile may use her teeth to help a baby having trouble breaking out of its egg.

In the first photo, Tash can be seen far right standing next to the zookeeper and holding a megaphone to ‘demonstrate’ a baby crocodile communicating with her mother. And because she was part of the show, she got to pat the American Alligator afterwards [photo 3].

At Phuket Zoo, we learned sometimes a crocodile will simply not be roused, no matter how many times it is poked, prodded and dragged by the tail [photo 4] — and even when someone lies on top of it [photo 3].

The Crocodilia show is part of Melbourne Zoo’s school holiday program and is on at 11am and 1pm in the marquee next to the Carousel park.

The Crocodile Show at Phuket Zoo is a feature attraction and can be seen at various times throughout the day.

Exploring the temples of Angkor with young children can be challenging. But it’s also rewarding to see these wonders through your child’s eyes, as Angela Savage reveals.

I first visited Siem Reap and the surrounding temples in 1992. Back then, the United Nations was running Cambodia, civil war was still raging in the countryside, and there was just me and my partner—literally. We barely saw another living soul.

Sixteen years later, we returned with our nearly-three-year-old daughter to a town that had changed so much it was unrecognisable, and temples crowded with foreign tourists. It was a very different experience but equally worthwhile.

The first thing that struck me about visiting Angkor with our daughter was that what excited us was rarely the same as what excited her. Exploring the jungle-covered ruins of Ta Phrom might be fun, but what really had her riveted were the tiny frogs and giant snails that shared the stones with her (we were warned against touching the snails as they can cause a rash).

While she showed mild interest in the carvings of the apsaras at Angkor Thom, she was thrilled by the group of apsara dancers in traditional costume who posed for photos with her for a mere $1 donation.

Another friend’s kids most enjoyed the grassy expanse in front of the Terrace of the Elephants, and watching the real elephants ferry the tourists around Angkor Wat. The horses, too, are popular with the kids.

But visiting the temples themselves can be boring, if not gruelling for a toddler. So here are a few tips, gleaned from a number of families, for making the trip as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

1      If your back is up to it, consider carrying your child in a baby/toddler backpack. If you live in Phnom Penh and don’t have your own, someone on the Yahoo group Cambodia Parent Network might lend you one. Contact cambodiaparentnetwork@yahoogroups.com

2      If your toddler is too heavy or active to be carried, make sure they have decent walking shoes that don’t cause blisters (seems like a no-brainer, but we got caught out on this one).

3      Be realistic about what you can achieve: visiting 2 or 3 temples is probably enough for one day.

4      Hire a guide: in kid-friendly Cambodia, a good guide will be sensitive to kids’ needs, such as pointing out all the fantastic animals to be seen on the bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat and the Bayon. Ours even carried our daughter up the steeper staircases so we could all enjoy the view.

5      Stay at a hotel with a pool and make the most of it to take time-out between tours.

Some midrange, kid-friendly hotels recommended by resident expats are the Auberge Mont Royal d’Angkor, the Borann l’Auberge des Temples and the Pavilion d’Indochine. All have pools, gardens and kid-friendly touches. The Majestic Angkor was also recommended for older children (pool but no garden).

If you really want to enjoy the temples at your own pace, consider travelling with another family or other adults and taking turns at childcare and temple viewing.

That said, seeing the temples through the eyes of a child can be an enriching experience. While I remember the breath-taking grandeur of the temples on our 1992 visit, travelling with my daughter made me appreciate the details.

Amongst our friends, the jungle temple of Ta Phrom seems to be the biggest hit with the kids. Visiting early around 8 or 8.30am will get you there ahead of the tour buses.

In Siem Reap, the Butterflies Garden Restaurant is worth a visit. If the butterflies don’t keep the kids occupied, chances are the ponds, bench swing and garden will.

There’s plenty for kids to see at the enclosed Night Market, too, and the juggling cocktail barmen at the fabulous Island Bar in the middle should keep them distracted long enough for you to enjoy a cool drink.

Also recommended are the traditional dance shows. The Apsara Theatre (also referred to as ‘Angkor Village’) on Wat Bo Road has a 6.30-8.00 pm dinner and show—free for toddlers—which our daughter found captivating.

This article was written for an AsiaLIFE guide to Siem Reap.

Last stop on our Asian adventure of 2008-09 was Phuket, Thailand’s most populous island and amongst its most popular with foreign tourists. I didn’t really warm to Phuket, and in a bizarre way I was grateful for that: it made it easier in the end to go home.

That said, it wasn’t all bad. We stayed at Kata Lucky Villa, which I’d happily recommend (the photos on the website don’t do it justice), and Kata beach was nicer than I’d expected. The sand was clean and soft, the water calm and clear, and the banana lounges only two-deep. We spent most mornings there, surrounded by Russians and Northern Europeans who, as Roo pointed out, must think it’s Paradise. There’s also a decent place to eat at the southern end of the beach called Kata Seafood, right next door to a bar built beneath a sacred tree.

We visited old Phuket town a couple of times. Established by Chinese traders and tin miners, and there are some well preserved shophouses and other buildings from the 1900s up to the 1960s, especially on and around Thalang Road. We had a great curry lunch at Aroon Restaurant at 124 Thalang Rd; and the shophouse at the China Inn Cafe (also selling textiles and antiques) at 20 Thalang Rd was particularly beautifully restored. We also visited the Phuket Provincial Hall, the setting for the US Embassy in the film The Killing Fields. There’s a terrific walking tour guide available here.

Phuket’s other prime attraction (at least in my opinion) is its drag shows, the most famous and polished of which is Simon Cabaret. The intrigue starts with a line on the brochure, “She is more of a man than you will ever be and even more of a woman”, and I’m willing to bet there are audience members who leave without realising all the performers began life as men.

Simon Cabaret is energetic and great fun, with over-the-top sets ranging from Ancient Egypt to Imperial China, Brazilian Carnivale to a faux rainforest. Numbers are sung in Chinese, Japanese and English — Dreamgirls providing rich material — though surprisingly little in Thai, apart from a traditional Issarn song that starts out as a slapstick by a large, mannish, middle-aged kratoey but ends as a rather poignant performance of ‘I Will Survive’. That performer danced among the audience and planted a sparkly kiss on Roo’s cheek, and for once Tash was not the main attraction in our family.

For her part, Tash was rivetted by the show and all the ‘princesses’. “That was really fun!” she said, as we piled into the minibus to go back to our hotel.

Tickets were 750 baht including door-to-door transport and we felt we got our money’s worth. The showgirls are happy to pose for photos outside after the show, but be aware you have to pay a 100 baht tip per performer in the photo. The most popular performers pull the lesser stars in so they can get tips, too, and it’s wise to be gracious about this. They’re only looking out for each other.

On our last night in Phuket, we watched a captivating sunset over the sea — a novelty for us who live on the southeast coast of Australia — then chanced upon the swanky Kata Beach Resort and Spa offering a buffet dinner in a garden overlooking the beach. This in itself was lovely, especially with Tash on her best behaviour. But we really hit the jackpot when the keyboard player/songstress duo pumping out the slow rock classics gave way to a group of performers I could only describe as ‘Simon Caberet rejects’.

The open-air show was cheesy beyond belief, with performers out of step and wardrobe malfunctions all over the place. But we all loved it! Tash alternated between emulating the dance moves of the ‘fairies’ — there was an excess of feathered wings, headdresses and tail pieces — and sitting at the foot of the stage, absolutely captivated.

It was the perfect last night.

Tash got to choose the destination for our last morning in Phuket, and we spent it at Phuket Zoo. It was pretty ordinary as far as zoos go, but four months later Tash still remembers the dodgy show we saw there and the man putting his head in the crocodile’s mouth.

I wonder how much else she remembers.

We flew home from Phuket via Sydney to Melbourne, arriving home just in time for a heatwave, followed a week or so later by terrible bushfires. Both Roo and I started new jobs within weeks, fortunate to find work and to find employers flexible enough to let us work four days per week, giving us both a day each at home with Tash.

It was never going to be easy settling back in at home. Our year in Cambodia saw the work/life balance tipped very much in favour of life. Back in Melbourne, the scales seem tipped to the other extreme.

But we are trying to keep alive the spirit of The Great Balancing Act by making the most of our days off with Tash and doing our best to get out on the weekends, too.

And so we’ll keep this blog going, with a shift in emphasis from Asia to Australia.

At least for now…

With Krabi province offering such gorgeous beach destinations, some might not see a reason to venture into Krabi town except in transit to the coast. But there are at least five good reasons to make the trip.

1 Night Market – Top of the list is Krabi’s riverside food market, an area beside the port that fills up with rot ken – vendor carts – in the evenings, selling delicious local food. Atmospheric, highly affordable and packed with locals, the night market alone is worth the trip into Krabi town. In addition to all the vendor carts, there’s a fold-away restaurant, Nong Eang, where you can sit down to fish fried in garlic and pepper or duck soup with noodles, and cold Singha beer. Tash tucked into the local biryani. There’s also carts selling Issarn favourites such as som tam – spicy green papaya salad – dried beef and sticky rice, sweet roti or ‘Thai pancakes’ and every imaginable snack on a stick. There’s a toilet block (squat-style) costing 2 baht to use. The night market is on Thanon Khong Kha, a 5-7 minute walk towards the river from the main songtheaw stop on Thanon Maharat.

2. Neanderthal statues holding up traffic lights - What genius came up with the concept of cavemen carrying traffic lights? Krabi province is the sight of some ancient human remains, but putting that minor point of interest together with traffic control takes special talent. According to one website, “Traffic lights have never been fun, and they rarely qualify as points of interest. Krabi Town saw that as an opportunity.” I can’t believe we didn’t get a photo of them, but there’s one here on the aforementioned website. The traffic lights are on Thanon Maharat at the intersection with Thanon Sukhon.

3. Fortune telling machine, Vogue building – Vogue on Thanon Maharat is Krabi town’s only department store (not counting Tesco Lotus en route to the airport), a quaint collection of clothes and accessories stalls. But the real attraction is on the landing between the first and second floors: an old-fashioned, coin-operated fortune telling machine. Five baht will set the Wheel of Fortune turning; inside a rotund Buddha raises a branch above his head and brings it down on a numbered groove on the wheel. Your fortune is on the corresponding slip of paper in the numbered pigeon-holes in the base of the machine. You’ll need someone who reads Thai (or Chinese) to translate for you. If your fortune isn’t so lucky, roll the slip of paper into a strip and tie it around a tree to alleviate the bad luck. (I was advised to do this, though it didn’t prevent the accidents I’d been warned about: beware of the slipperiness of the freshly mopped tiled footpaths in Krabi town!).

4. Day/night market – on Thanon Sukhon, the main day/night market is a great place to shop for fresh food and to eat lunch or dinner. Try the fantastic geng pum pla, a spicy fish soup typical of the south, made with pumpkin, potato, pear-shaped eggplants and dried fish. The phad khi mao, a stir-fried dish of bamboo shoots and fish balls with chilli is mouth-numbingly good. The most authentic and exotic food in Krabi.

5. Toy shops, Thanon Maharat – one for the parents of infants and toddlers. Krabi’s main street hosts several toy shops with all the things you need to buy ten minutes of reading time. The large newsagency in the same strip has a fabulous selection of colouring-in books, too, some in English, most in Thai–not that it matters, if you’re just buying them for the pictures!

There’s an unofficial hierarchy when it comes to island hopping tours in Krabi. First you do the ‘4 Islands’, followed by the Phi Phi Islands. Then if you still have time, throw in the Hong Islands or ‘5 Islands’ tour. I wonder if there’s a subtext in the tourist information: stay long enough and get rewarded with what is possibly the loveliest of all the island tours.

We returned to Barracuda Tours to cruise the ‘5 Islands’ by longtail boat. First stop, Koh Deng, is a rocky red outcrop where Roo snorkelled and Tash fed green, black and white striped fish from the prow of the boat, sitting with our otherwise purely decorative guide Em.

Next up was Pakbia Island where we had a swim and collected huge shells to decorate the sandcastle built by Canadian twins Roya and Yasmin, whom Tash had befriended on the boat. The twins’ parents Christina and Nadim were taking the girls on a year-long world tour. Watching them made me realise how much easier it is travelling: a) with two children; b) with eight-year-olds. I can’t remember the last time I got to read on the beach!

We stopped for lunch on Lading Island at a small idyllic bay called Paradise Beach where five Thai police were stationed to protect the resident swallows’ nests (a kilo of which fetches 100,000 baht on the export market). These were the most laid-back Thai cops I’ve ever met, which is not surprising as this must be the cushiest police posting in all of Thailand. There was just enough infrastructure on the island – rough-hewn wooden tables, benches and a huge swing – to indulge in the three most important traditional pastimes: eating, sleeping and sanuk (having fun).

Then it was on to the main attraction, Hong Island. Hong meaning ‘room’ in Thai refers to the lagoon in the middle of the island, accessible only at high tide through a narrow chasm. Inside the hong, surrounded on all sides by limestone cliffs, it felt like being let in on a wonderful secret.

To one side of the same island was an exquisite beach: soft white sand, aqua water (‘aqua’ in Thai is si far talay, literally ’sea-blue colour’), limestone outcrops and tropical fish to gaze upon – with or without a snorkelling mask. Tash found a ‘baby pool’ in a cleft among the rocks and Roo and I took turns at swimming with her and with the fish.

Apparently there is an walk that shows how far a boat was tossed inland by the December 2004 tsunami, but we were too enchanted by the beach to drag ourselves off to see it. And true to form, we were having too much fun to take photos – although there is a good one of the beach at Hong Island on Christina and Nadim’s travel blog.

Tash slept wrapped in a towel on my lap during the ride back to Ao Nang. It’s hard to know at times if she really enjoys what we plan for her, or whether she feels obliged to enjoy it because of our enthusiasm. So it was a great moment, as we got off the boat, to have her come out unprompted with, ‘That was fun!’

[As I write this, almost three months to the day since we took the 5 Islands Tour of Krabi, a State of Emergency has been declared in Thailand and parts of Bangkok are on fire. Krabi is a long way from Bangkok, but concerned travellers can check the Paknam Web Thailand Forum Q&A site for updated information on the security situation].

‘Island hop til you drop.’ Normally a tourism website slogan like this would leave me cold. But in Krabi province, I felt compelled to answer the call. We did three island-hopping tours in the space of a week, visiting around 13 islands. And I’d do it all again tomorrow!

First up was the ‘4 Islands Tour’ by longtail boat, starting at Phra Nang (‘Princess’) Beach near Railay — strictly speaking not an island, though it feels like one as it’s only accessible by boat: limestone cliffs bar access from the mainland. Princess Beach is an exquisite crescent of gold sand and aqua water overlooking a bay studded with limestone islands. We fell in love with the place and subsequently made it our regular morning swimming beach, travelling there each day by longtail boat from a ‘taxi stand’ at Ao Nang.

At Princess Cave (Tham Pranang) at the end of the beach, locals pay homage to the spirit of an Indian princess believed to have perished there in a shipwreck in the 3rd Century BC. Fishermen pray for a good catch, while women pray for a good catch of another kind, leaving offerings of flowers, food and phalluses to the princess spirit; the cave is full of graphically carved wooden penises, some almost as tall as me.

Next stop after Phranang Beach was Poda Island — more gold sand, aqua water — where schools of green, black and white striped Admiral fish swarm in the shallows to eat bananas offered by tourists. Then we cruised around Chicken Island — named for a rock formation which does look remarkably like a chicken — and snorkelled in deep water off the boat. Despite having Tash on my back (both of us in life jackets), I managed to see some Moorish Idols, parrot fish and purple-lipped clams, while Roo saw an octopus.

Last stop on the 4 Islands Tour was Tup Island where a sandbank appears at low tide, connecting it to Chicken Island and another rocky outcrop. When we arrived, people were wading knee deep between the islands, but by the time we left, the sandy bridge was fully exposed and we could walk from one island to the other. Tash and Roo made sandcastles while I went for a solo snorkel, the highlight of which was spotting three families of False Clown Fish living in wavering pink anemones.

Our second tour was to the Phi Phi Islands, this time by speed boat. It was enough to convince us to take a longtail boat next time around. The ride might have been less wild and bumpy if bare-chested young Thai men weren’t at the helm — everyone on board was soaked by the spray — though in their defence, the sea was choppy. Get fitted with a life jacket before embarking and take towels for protection if you choose to go by speedboat.

First stop on the Phi Phi Islands tour was Bamboo Island for rock-pooling, then a long trip to Phi Phi Ley, a rugged, uninhabited island of limestone cliffs. We toured Pi Leh Lagoon, a secluded bay enclosed by sheer rockface, then stopped at Lohsamah Bay for snorkelling. Tash freaked out in the choppy water so we contented ourselves with feeding bread to the fish from the boat while Roo snorkelled.

Then it was on to Maya Bay, insanely popular because the 1999 film of Alex Garland’s novel The Beach was filmed there. It is a lovely beach — white sand, aqua water, limestone cliffs on three sides — but it loses some of its ambience when there are 24 speedboats and 10 longtail boats moored in its relatively small bay — and that’s in a low year!

Lunch was at Ton Sai Beach on Phi Phi Don, the main tourist island. The Lonely Planet describes Koh Phi Phi’s beauty as a curse and I could see what they mean. The beach was built up, wall to wall, with bars and restaurants all advertising parties at night — you could imagine the din as they all competed for customers. Koh Phi Phi’s beaches were flattened by the December 2006 tsunami. Sadly, rather than take the opportunity to question the scale and impact of unbridled development, the place was simply re-built as it was before. Some say it’s even more ‘developed’. Pity, really, because the beach is lovely.

Last stop on the Phi Phi Islands tour was Monkey Bay, my favourite of the day’s destinations. A crescent of white sand so soft my feet sank into it like sponge. A bay of turquoise water fringed with a coral garden alive with colourful fish. Kid-friendly pools and shady trees. So picture perfect, I enjoyed it too much to take any photos.

I’ve been meaning to write a post or three about our beach holiday in Krabi Province in southern Thailand. I was having way too much fun to blog about it at the time — which speaks volumes — and settling back home in Australia and starting a new job has left me with little time or energy for blogging. But at home on a (welcome) rainy day on (unwelcome) sick leave, I’ve been sorting through hundreds of holiday photos and reminiscing…

Andrew and I couldn’t believe that in all the time we’d spent in Thailand, we’d never been to Krabi province before. But over 10 days in early January, we realised what we’d been missing. My journal entry at the end of our first day at Nopparat Thara Beach begins, ‘Today has been close to a Perfect Day’ and ends ‘…this is just the holiday destination we needed.’

Nopparat Thara is about a 45 minute drive from Krabi Airport, west of Krabi township. Through the helpful website www.yourkrabi.com, we’d booked a bungalow at the family-friendly Sabai Resort and arranged for a transfer from the airport. The Lonely Planet guide Thailand’s Islands & Beaches is a bit disparaging about Nopparat Thara Beach, but it was ideal for our ragtag little family.

Nopparat Thara is a stretch of shell-studded sand with calm, clear water overlooking limestone islands — some close enough to walk to at low tide, others beckoning from the distance. The beach is ideal for small children to swim and build sand castles and popular with Thai families who swim fully clothed to avoid their skin going darker, and gather on the weekends for picnics in the stretch of green that runs alongside the shore.

Women spread out plastic mats, unload rice cookers, home-cooked curries, som tam (spicy green papaya salad), hard boiled quail eggs, pots of tea. They hang caged birds from the trees overhead and wrap newborn babies in towels to protect them from the ‘cold’. Children cajole their parents into buying pinwheels, inflatable toys and fluoro-coloured fairyfloss. Men sit around drinking cheap whisky mixed with lemonade.

Vendors walk around with baskets over their shoulders selling snacks on sticks or fresh fruit. And out of towners like us simply order a feast from one of the nearby restaurants to sai thoong (literally ‘put in a bag’) and eat on the grass. We bought fried chicken and a whole fried mackerel, som tam, and sticky rice for about AUD$10 (270 baht). The meal included the loan of water glasses, a tray and an ice bucket, and we ate in the shade in view of the beach and islands.

For desert there were pancakes/roti sold from vendor carts and topped with unimaginably sweet stuff — think jam and condensed milk and sugar — and long thin icy-poles on bamboo sticks. A woman in a sequined hijab gave Tash a red icy-pole and made her day.

A great place in Nopparat Thara in the evening is at the other, eastern end of the beach, a seafood restaurant on the sand called the Wang Sai — recommended by Tina, Chai and Apple, the friendly and helpful staff at the Sabai Resort. Although the Wang Sai appears to be entirely staffed with drama queens, the Thai food is good and the views of the sunset sublime.

On our first night in Nopparat Thara, we celebrated Andrew’s birthday with dinner at the Wang Sai. At one point during the meal, a man appeared on the beach below our table selling large paper lanterns — the kind they send up into the sky at the Loy Kratong/Yi Peng festival in Chiang Mai to take away bad karma. I bought one for Roo and the three of us walked down on to the sand to set it off.

It was a beautiful sight, watching the red and white rice paper lantern inflate as the man lit a flame beneath it. We helped with the launch and the lantern rose rise like a star and floated through the sky. We watched until it disappeared behind the headland. Magic!

The following article first appeared in the ‘Next Generation’ column of the February 2009 issue of AsiaLIFE magazine. Photos are the author’s own and did not appear in the original article.

Poolside

Phnom Penh is situated on the confluence of four rivers, but that doesn’t mean people know how to swim. Angela Savage interviews Andrew Schultz about his efforts to teach water safety skills, and looks at child-friendly pools in the capital.

Swimming classes for kids
‘High five!’ says Andrew Schultz as the three-year-old successfully steers her kickboard across the pool.

With a friendly style and the energy to match a toddler, Andrew is a natural teacher. His praise helps reinforce the skills and confidence the child is developing as a pupil in his ‘tadpole’ swimming class.

Andrew arrived in Phnom Penh in October 2007. With a background in health promotion, and qualifications as a swim instructor (Austswim) and exercise physiologist, he looked around for a way to harness his interests to what he describes as an ‘exciting environment for business, where you can try new things out.’

‘I was surprised by the interest people had in learning to swim here,’ he says, ‘and also by the lack of ability.’

Data from Thailand and Vietnam showed high rates of death by drowning, and there was evidence to suggest the situation was similar in Cambodia. Andrew knew that teaching people to swim helps prevent drowning, and his straw poll suggested there was a local market for swimming lessons.

Thus CAMSWIM was born, kicking off in March 2008 with swimming lessons for children and adults. From its base at the pool at the Phnom Penh Centre on Sothearos Boulevard, the business has grown steadily to offer 16 classes per week.

Kids classes are offered in 14-week terms, three per year, at a cost of USD$4.00 for expatriates and USD$2.50 for Cambodians per class. The term starts mid-January 2008, but participants can start at any time and pay for the remaining number of classes in the term. The classes attract roughly equal numbers of locals and expats.

‘The parents of toddlers enjoy seeing quick improvement and progress in their children’s skills,’ Andrew says, ‘such as being able to put their face under and move independently in the water.’

And as for the children, ‘Kids love the songs we sing. For them, it’s learning through play.’

Children learn to swim fastest around the age of four to five. But they are at highest risk of drowning between the ages of one to four. Andrew teaches water safety skills for babies as young as six months.

‘The main thing is that if they’re not in the pool themselves, parents should only ever be an arm’s length away from their children and should watch them intently when they are in the water.’

Swimming classes for adults, too
Expatriate parents should also be aware that Cambodians who care for their children might not be able to swim, and might consider investing in swimming classes for carers. With adult classes costing $3 for Cambodians and $5 for expatriates and following the same 14-week terms, it’s a relatively small investment for a life-long, potentially life-saving skill.

Andrew’s current challenge is to train up local staff to become fully-fledged swim instructors, to meet the shortage of swimming teachers in Cambodia.

When it comes to kid-friendly pools in Phnom Penh, Andrew recommends choosing a place undercover or with plenty of shade. In most cases, it costs less to attend one of his half-hour classes than it does to swim in one of the pools listed below.

Kid-friendly pools in Phnom Penh
The Villa Langka is our family’s favourite. The pool isn’t huge but it’s clean, the lush garden always offers shady places, and the pool usage fee can be off-set against the cost of food and drinks. Cost weekdays USD$5/adult, $3/child; weekends $8/adult, $5/child.

The Himarawi Hotel has a large outdoor pool, separate kids’ pool and Jacuzzi. Cost of pool use weekdays $7/adult, $4/child aged 10-15 years and $3/child aged 5-9 years; weekends $8/adult, $5/child aged 10-15 years and $4/child aged 5-9 years. Children under 5 swim free.

The Billabong is a family-friendly hotel with a shady poolside area and open-air restaurant. Pool use costs $5 for adults, $3 for children.

The Kabiki is a family-friendly hotel run by the same people who run the not-so-family friendly Pavilion. The Kabiki has a separate kids’ pool and covered day-beds in a spacious garden. Pool use for non-guests is $5 for adults, $3 for kids.

The Parkway Health Club on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard near Spark Red has a large indoor pool with a semi-circular kids’ section at one end. Entrance fee of $8 is on the steep side but provides access to gym, sauna, etc.

Children use the pool for free at L’Imprevu Resort, Highway 1, 7km past the Monivong Bridge. Cost for adults is $4 at weekends, $2 on weekdays. The separate kids pool is in a shady area.

CAMSWIM
Andrew Schultz 017 986 297, email: camswim@mail.com

Villa Langka
14, Street 282, ph 023 726 771 www.villalangka.com

Billabong Hotel
5, Street 158, ph. 023 223 703

Kabiki Boutique Hotel
22, Street 264, ph 023 222 290 www.thekabiki.com

Parkway Health Club (Parkway Square)
113 Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. Open 6am-10pm.

L’Imprevu Resort
Highway 1, 7km past the Monivong Bridge. Ph 012 655 440 www.hotelimprevu.com

The following article first appeared in the ‘Next Generation’ column of the January 2009 issue of AsiaLIFE magazine. Photos are the author’s own and did not appear in the original article.

Playing indoors

Only as a last resort, on a rainy day in the middle of winter, would any self-respecting Australian choose an indoor play centre over a park or playground. But a year in Phnom Penh with a toddler has given Angela Savage new appreciation of the merits of playing indoors.

A list of ‘Instructions for the Tourist’ in English at the entrance to the Paragon Centre’s indoor playground warns “If the tourist has heart disease, infection disease, psychosis disease, stupid disease, any disease is forbidden to play in it.”

It’s one of several gems guaranteed to entertain you while your children entertain themselves in ‘Toys Land’, one of several indoor play centres Phnom Penh has to offer.

Coming from part of Australia known as the ‘Garden State’, I was skeptical about taking my child to play inside an air-conditioned shopping mall. But with limited options for entertaining an active toddler, especially during the hotter months, I had nothing to lose.

What won me over was seeing how much my daughter enjoys these places. She can interact with local kids her own age and easily play for an hour or more without getting bored. ‘That was fun!’ she told me after a recent foray-high praise coming from a nearly three-year-old.

Sometimes known as ‘Naughty Palaces’, indoor play centres combine brightly coloured, padded vinyl climbing equipment and slides with tunnels, suspension bridges, obstacle courses and the highly popular pen filled with coloured plastic balls, which kids can jump and/or slide into.

The play areas are fully enclosed and make the most of limited space by extending up several levels, like a three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders. They are cleverly designed for children to safely explore and practice a range of motor skills-climbing, balancing, rolling, crawling-and they are more likely to get ‘stuck’ than hurt. Most centres have employees who will come to a child’s rescue, but you should also expect to supervise.

Toys Land on the second floor of the Paragon Centre is among the cleanest and quietest places in town and costs 2,000 riel (USD 50 cents) per child.

When it comes to the Naughty Palace at the back of Pencil Supermarket, getting there is half the fun. Tickets cost 2,000 riel at the check-out counter at the rear of the supermarket. Then go out the back door, up the stairs on the left, through a dimly lit bar called Mr M Café, through another door at the rear of the bar and up another set of stairs to the play centre. The Naughty Palace is popular with local and expat families and contains a trampoline and some fun obstacle courses, as well as the usual slides, tunnels and pen full of coloured plastic balls.

The first-floor playground at the Sydney Shopping Centre on Kampuchea Krom (2,000 riel) has room to run around. In addition to a jungle gym, a free-standing unit with four slides, caterpillar-shaped tunnels and a helicopter, the playground contains two deep tubs of plastic balls for jumping into. There are also small seesaws and rockers. A section next door offers video games and toddler-friendly rides, including an incongruous Mickey Mouse armed with a pistol. Tokens-actually old 50 cent coins from Hong Kong-cost 500 riel at the ticket window.

The ‘Space Ship Zigma II’ upstairs at the Big A shopping centre on Monivong Boulevard (1,000 riel) has seen better days, though its pint-sized patrons didn’t seem put off by either the shabbiness or the smell. In a variation on a theme, the entire floor is covered with coloured plastic balls.

Supermarkets and shopping malls are not the only options for indoor play in Phnom Penh.

The playroom at the Living Room café contains a doll’s house and toy car-park, books, blackboard and chalk, and pencils and pictures for colouring in. There’s a change table for babies, plus a footstool in the toilet to help toddlers reach the seat.

Children are made to feel welcome at Annam Indian restaurant, where a staff member is generally on hand to play catch the ball, balloon or inflatable animal in the air-conditioned playroom. Our toddler likes to watch her dosa being made in the glass-fronted kitchen.

City Suki on Monivong Boulevard has a jumping castle netted off at the front of the restaurant, though this was deflated when I went to inspect it.

Fresco on Street 306 has a room at the back for kids, with beanbags, books, puzzles, a magnetic whiteboard and a large flat screen TV and DVD player. Popular for ice cream.

Annam
#1C, Street 282, open 11am-3pm, 6-11pm. Closed Tuesday.

Big A Superstore
#266-272 Monivong Boulevard. Open 8am-9pm

City Suki
Around #400 Monivong Boulevard

Fresco
Cnr Streets 306 and 51. Open 7am-7pm

Living Room
#9, Street 306. Open 7am-6.30pm Mon-Thur, 7.00am-9.30pm Fri-Sun

Paragon Centre
#12 Street 214. Open 9am-9pm

Pencil Supermarket
#15, Street 214. Open 8am-9pm

Sydney Shopping Centre
139 Kampuchea Krom (St 128). Open 8.45am-8.00pm

On Saturday 7 February the temperature soared to 46.4 degrees Celsius (115.5 degrees Fahrenhiet) in Melbourne and hot, gale force winds raced across the state of Victoria from the north. Authorities warned of high bushfire danger, the land parched more than a month without rain. But no one anticipated the hell to follow.

‘Black Saturday’ saw vast parts of the state engulfed by fires too fast to fight or flee. Witnesses describe flames ‘raining down from the sky’, ‘like a snowstorm of red embers’. Trees exploded, homes burned, cars were vaporised. Whole towns–Marysville, Kinglake, Flowerdale–were razed.

At last count, 181 people have died. More than 50 others are still missing. Most burned to death in their cars as they tried to flee.

Victoria has been in a state of shock and grief this past week. Everyone seems to know someone affected by the fires.

An appeal set up by the Australian Red Cross has so far raised nearly $50 million. Donations can be made here.

Only days later, the temperature has plummeted as low as 12 degrees overnight. No one dares complain about the sudden cold: for the first time this week, conditions have improved for those still fighting the fires.

And I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the weather in Cambodia. I miss the reliability of the heat. I  miss the torrential monsoonal rains and the cooling, kite-flying winds. I miss the moist air that made my skin glow and hair curl. Yet when I wrote a list of all the things I would and would not miss about Cambodia in the days before leaving Phnom Penh, the weather was on the list of what I would not miss.

Nothing like drought, heatwaves and raging bushfires to put things in perspective.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Our year in Southeast Asia has been bookended by heatwaves.

Last weekend, Roo, Tash and I returned home, just in time for Melbourne’s worst heatwave in one hundred years.

Today is the second day of a predicted four days of temperatures over 40 degrees celsius. Yesterday it hit 43.2 degrees. Fortunately, we didn’t suffer power cuts, unlike others around the state, though I suspect our turn will come.

I haven’t been this hot since we left Melbourne just over a year ago. I remember arriving in Phnom Penh and someone asking if we found it too hot. ‘Are you kidding?’ I said, ‘It’s ten degrees cooler here than it was back home.’

And we’re not talking the wet, redolent heat of Southeast Asia that envelops you like a cloud and almost feels as if it could hold you up. Hothouse heat that makes things grow so fast you can almost see it. This is the heat of deserts and kilns that leaves everything hot to the touch, hurts the eyes and threatens to knock you out. Heat that kills.

Our parks are bleak expanses of dead grass and dust. No one has lawn anymore. Carlton’s streets are strewn with leaves that couldn’t hold on until autumn to fall off and die.

That said, the native plants–ghost gums, grevilleas, leucadendrons and grass trees–appear to be thriving. Our own front yard is flush with Australian natives, an embarrassment of riches amongst the withered European gardens of our neighbourhoods.

By contrast, the survivors in the back garden evoke the Mediterranean: fig tree, pomegranate, eggplants and Greek basil. We coax the tomato and basil plants to stay and fight another day with water bucketed from showers, baths and washing up.

Yet neither the hellish weather nor the bleak economic forecast can diminish how happy we are to be back. There are many things we’ll miss about Cambodia–see forthcoming posts on the subject–not to mention southern Thailand, where we enjoyed a blissful, last-gasp holiday.

But it feels good to be home.

A few days out from departing Cambodia we managed to pull off one more trip, to a province we’ve wanted to go to ever since arriving – Kratie (pronounced kra-che).

A small town on the banks of the Mekong in central Cambodia, Kratie is best known for its proximity to one of the last remaining groups of fresh water Irrawaddy dolphins left in the river. They are under threat, not least of all due to the Cambodian government’s plans to dam the entire width of the Mekong about 35 kilometres north of the town, but more about that later.

Kratie is six to seven hours by public bus from Phnom Penh. It is actually not nearly that far but instead of going in a straight line, all the buses detour from Kompong Cham to Snoul on the border with Vietnam, which adds a couple of hours.

Aside from dolphins, Kratie is well known for its kro lan, sweet coconut flavoured sticky rice sold pre-packed in bamboo tubes from street vendors along the river front.

It also has a couple of other unique features.

There is some fantastic architecture, a lot of it in quite good nick due to Kratie being spared from much of the US bombing that devastated much of the rest of the countryside in the early seventies. These buildings, mainly congregated around the central market, include Chinese-style shop houses and French villas. On the side of one abandoned pre-war style building it is still possible to make out the words Banque Commerciale D’Etate (State Commercial Bank) in French and Khmer.

Kratie is still a great place for traditional Cambodia poster art, the oil paintings of motorbikes, telephones, electrical appliances etc, shopkeepers use to advertise their business. Good examples of these are increasingly hard to find in big cities like Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

The town’s other quirk is more barbers and hairdressers per metre than any other place we have been to in Cambodia.

Then, of course, there’s the Mekong. There are a number of small open air bars along the bank, the perfect place to sit back with a cold beer and watch the sunset. At night the river and opposite bank is almost completely bathed in darkness, occasional engine noise the only indication you are overlooking a river.

There are a number of hotels and guesthouses to choose from. We stayed in the Heng Heng II guesthouse on the bank of the Mekong, which although not particularly ambient is quite good value at US$7 a double a night.

One thing you don’t go to Kratie for is the food, especially not at places catering to tourists.

Uttong II has ok fare at moderate prices. Red Sun Rising is also quite good value, although its hours are erratic: basically whenever its owners feel like opening from what we could tell. As the guidebook says, Mekong Restaurant is a hole in the wall with good local food. Angela said the sweet and sour fish was particularly good.

But the main reason to visit is the dolphins. If you are lucky (we were), you’ll be able to see them swimming in rapids about 15 kilometres north of the town.

Tours to see the dolphins are advertised in every hotel in town, including travel to the site and a boat to take you out to the section of the river where they live. My only advice is to shop around. We took the first tour offered to us but could have got the same deal for half the price.

One of the last pockets of these creatures left in the Mekong, some estimates say there used to be a thousand dolphins in the river before the war. But the last few decades have seen their numbers decline to around 80-100 due to rising pollution levels and dynamite fishing.

But the most serious threat they now face is the government’s plans to build a dam that would block the entire width of the Mekong at Sambor about 35 kilometres north of town.

Fisheries experts and critics of Mekong mainstream hydropower development are scathing of the dam’s potential impacts.

“Devastating, the worst possible dam currently planned along the mainstream of the Mekong,” was how one informed observer I spoke to assessed the impact.

The dam would block fish migration, isolating fish stocks from historical spawning and rearing areas, with effects far upstream to southern Laos and beyond, and on Cambodia’s Great Lake [Tonle Sap] fishery. The Tonle Sap contributes almost two thirds of Cambodia’s annual fish catch, largely comprising migratory fish species.

The World Conservation Union has also identified the dam as a serious threat to the habitat and movements of the endangered freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin. The stretch of the river between Kratie and the Lao-Cambodian border, one of the most important in terms of deep pool habitats along the Mekong, is a crucial dry season refuge for the dolphin.

The Sambor project is part of a major push by Cambodia to develop its hydropower potential for internal use and export to neighbouring countries. Only 20 per cent of Cambodian households currently have access to a reliable supply of electricity, a figure the government wants to raise to 70 per cent by 2030.

Five dams are currently under construction in Cambodia in addition to the two currently operating, and over 20 are being studied in partnership with private companies, most Chinese.

While observes agree steps need to be taken to improve Cambodia’s access to power, not all agree that hydropower is the best option and say national energy policies should prioritise innovative renewable and decentralised electricity technologies that are now available and cost competitive.

For better or worse, Kratie, like so much of Cambodia, is set to experience great change as the government makes up for lost time, trying to cram decades of development into a few short years.

Get there while you can.

Roo has reflected elsewhere on the delights of Khmer food and how much it has changed in the 10 years since we last visited Cambodia.

Like other forms of cultural expression, the local cuisine–not to mention the food supply–was decimated during the Khmer Rouge period. Eating Cambodian food has an added pleasure in this respect: a celebration of Khmer resilience and survival.

Of course, many people in this country survive on a subsistence diet of fish and rice, while years of scarcity–and sheer necessity–have also given local people a taste for unusual (to a Western palette) sources of protein, such as deep-fried tarantulas, crickets, ants and bee larvae, some of which is actually quite tasty.

Also, little is wasted in Cambodia when it comes to food. Whilst not quite as extreme as the Laos where ‘if it grows or moves, you can eat it’, it’s common for people to eat animal and plant parts that we’d discard without a second thought. Lotus stems, roots and seeds, banana flowers, fish heads, pigs eyes–these are just a few examples. Even the rice that gets cooked on to the bottom of the rice cooker is soaked off, dried in the sun and sold as pig feed–though I have seen desperately poor people eat this, too.

On a good day at Boeung Keng Kang Market, in addition to a plethora of fish, meat and poultry, you can find frogs, crabs, snakes and eels.

Anyone’s list of favourite restaurants in Phnom Penh is bound to be subjective, even controversial. But for what it’s worth, here is ours.

Top Cambodian Restaurant:

Boat Noodle - corner Streets 288 & 63 for authenticity; at 8B, St 294 for the beautiful wooden house setting. Low-cost, authentic food, the spicy soups are particularly good.

Breakfast:

Malis – 136 Norodom Bld. High-class joint with reasonably-priced traditional breakfasts in lovely garden setting.

Seven Bright – opposite the GPO; what was Gerard Depardieu’s bar in The City of Ghosts is now a hugely popular place for breakfast noodle soup and good local coffee.

Dosa Corner - 5, Street 51. Cheap dosas, idlis, vada and other Indian delights.

Stir-fried lort (caterpillar shaped noodles) from numerous vendor carts around town. At 2,000 riel (USD50 cents), probably the cheapest option. Enjoy on the footpath with tuk-tuk drivers and school kids.

Other highlights:

Tom Yum Kung – 10, St 278. We’ve probably eaten here more often than anywhere else in Phnom Penh. Great Thai & Lao food, including larb and sticky rice. Try the yam ta krai pla tod (spicy lemongrass with fried fish and herbs) for a real treat. $8-$12 for a  2-person feast!

Romdeng - 74, St 174. I like this place more than Roo does. Gorgeous villa setting, good local food and it supports vocational training for former street kids. Great place to take visitors, especially during tarantula season!

54 Langeadh Sros – 15a, St 178. Bustling Cambodian beer garden where you can DIY BBQ over a gas jet on your table, or order cooked food like prawns with black pepper or beef with black ants. Beer can be ordered by the ‘tower’ for USD$5. Lethal.

Annam – 1C, St 282. Excellent Southern Indian food, genuinely kid-friendly, great lunch thalis. Not to be confused with…

An Nam – 118 Sothearos Bld, another kid friendly option where you can eat a wonderful variety of delicious Vietnamese food. Not cheap but dessert is free.

Singapore Kitchen – 110CD, St 360. Tasty Singaporean and Malaysian food at bargain prices. Good mee wan ton, sambar, laksa, etc.

Suzume - 14 AEo, St 51. Affordable and delicious Japanese food.

Le Cedre – 1, St 360 (near Norodom Bld). Never though Brunswick locals would be impressed with Lebanese food in Phnom Penh. Great for take-away.

Diplomat’s Bar/Sarika – 69, St 566 (Tuol Kork). A recent find: bar in a romantic wooden Khmer villa, a former diplomatic residence, above a garden restaurant. Huge, tasty entrees – try the pork sausage with crispy rice and herbs.

Honorable mentions:

Living Room – 9, St 306. Tash’s favourite place for breakfast pancakes. A community hub in a beautiful villa. I’d like to live there! Award for the friendliest staff in Phnom Penh would be a toss up between here and…

Le Jardin – 16, st 360. Serving home-made ice-cream in a lush tropical garden, complete with sand-pit and cubby house for kids, day-beds for grown-ups.

Van’s Restaurant – 5, St 102 (next to GPO). A must for lovers of French food, in an exquisitely restored 110 year old colonial building. Cocktails on the rooftop are recommended.

There are more I could add, but maybe I’ll throw open that challenge to my readers…

This post is dedicated to my foodie friend Yee Khim Chong.

This week I met Martel, one of my favourite people in Phnom Penh, at Malis, one of my favourite breakfast venues (right), providing me with the perfect segue to blog about Cambodian food.

Martel and I spent a Saturday in November at the popular Cambodian Cooking Class organised through Frizz Restaurant. The classes are run by Heng, a lovely man and a natural teacher, who graduated from the Friends training school.

Our day began at the Psar Kandal, where we inspected the fresh ingredients that characterise Khmer cooking: lemongrass, tamarind, lime, ginger, pra hoc (smelly fermented fish sauce), Asian basil, saw mint and a range of other herbs whose name I don’t remember. Chillies are used sparingly and everything contains (palm) sugar and salt.

The class itself was held on a rooftop with space for us to prepare, cook and eat the food as we went. Most of our fellow budding chefs were resident in Phnm Penh, too–ECCC interns from Singapore, Ireland and the US, a Canadian PhD student, a couple of Australian teachers–a friendly group.

We began with fried spring rolls stuffed with shredded taro and carrot and accompanied by home-made sweet chilli sauce. It would violate intellectual property for me to post the recipes here (something no self-respecting author would encourage), but it’s probably fair to share a few useful tips: i.e. crowd the wok with spring rolls and turn occasionally when frying to ensure even cooking.

Next was one of my fave Khmer dishes, banana flower salad. Tip here is to use only the outer white petals and, as you shred, soak in water and the juice of a few limes to prevent discolouration.

Then came the really hard work: carving a carrot flower. Never again will I take for granted those intricate floral garnishes on the side of the dish. Vegetable carving is an artform; a bit more useful and it could become a craft outlet here for people like me who miss knitting!

After the carrot flower challenge, pounding spices in a stone mortar for a greung paste was almost a breeze. The greung was the basis for fish amok, probably the Khmer national dish, which was absolutely delicious.

But before cooking the amok, there was another crafting skill to master: banana-leaf cup making. Probably a more useful skill than carrot carving, the tip here is to cut the banana leaf into circles and soften over a gas flame before folding and fastening pleats with toothpicks.

I seldom eat dessert, but for mango with sweet sticky rice, I made an exception.

We left with full stomachs, recipe booklets and the skills and confidence to try this at home. At USD$20, it was excellent value and a great was to spend a day in Phnom Penh.

Stay tuned for a follow up post on favourite places to eat in Phnom Penh…

Bon Om Touk or the Water Festival is probably the biggest street party I’ll ever attend.

Our Filipino neighbours likened it to the People Power movement of 1986. A French friend said the area around Phnom Penh’s Independence Monument looked like the Champs-Elysée after the French won the World Cup. For us, it was a unique experience, one which showed Phnom Penh at its best.

Bon Om Touk sees literally millions of people flood into Phnom Penh from the provinces to watch boat crews from around the country compete on the Tonlé Sap River. Municipal authorities set up temporary accommodation in parks and on pathways for those visitors who cannot stay in the wats. For three days the riverside is lined with spectators, watching the tail-boats compete in heats, the final of which is watched by the Cambodian king.

The boat races coincide with a time when the river changes direction, from flowing into the Tonlé Sap River to emptying into the Mekong River. Two stories date the festival back to the 12th century, when it may have either marked the start of the fishing season, or served as a re-enactment of the Khmer naval victories depicted in the bas-relièf carvings on the walls of Angkor Wat and the Bayon.

This time also marks the Buddhist festival of Loy Pratip (Loy Katong in Laos). But in place of the humble banana-leaf boats illuminated with candles that I’ve seen placed in the river in Vientiane, Phnom Penh celebrates with the launch of massive floats, sponsored by various ministries and other institutions and illuminated with electric lights, which cruise up and down the river between about 7 and 12 at night–just as the fireworks finish.

Meanwhile, the full moon that coincides with Bon Om Touk has its own festival, Sampeas Preah Khe, to wish for a good harvest, while the feast of Auk Ambok celebrates the eating of a special flattened rice dish at midnight in the temples (not sure what that signifies).

Roo’s mother Judie and sister Barbara were still with us for the opening of Bon Oum Touk, which was wonderful, as Phnom Penh was spruced and sparkling–literally–for the occasion. Over the remaining days, we mingled with the crowds, watched the nightly fireworks shows, and generally soaked up the amazing atmosphere.

On the final night, we were invited to join the director of Tash’s school, Mrs You Muoy, and some of the teachers at a table on the rooftop terrace of the Pon Lok restaurant on the banks of the Tonlé Sap river. There we had a spectacular view of the final races, the fireworks, the rising of the full moon, and the cruising of the ministerial floats, celebrated in wonderful company.

If ever a post needed to be depicted in photos, rather than words, this would be it. Unfortunately, broadband here is slow and unreliable (top of my list of ‘Things I will not miss about Cambodia’), turning the task of uploading photos and linking them to the blog into a half-day activity. But you’ll find more of Andrew’s wonderful photos here if interested.

I highly recommend planning to visit Phnom Penh during Bon Oum Touk. There’s nothing like it.

The following article first appeared in the ‘Next Generation’ column of the November 2008 issue of AsiaLIFE magazine. Photos are the author’s own and did not appear in the original article.

Green spaces

Phnom Penh boasts more green space and parkland than first meet the eye, as Angela Savage reveals.

A new public playground recently opened near Wat Phnom, the first of its kind in the Cambodian capital.

For local and expatriate parents alike, the Western-style playground, bordered by Streets 94, 19 and 102, is a welcome addition to the city’s facilities for children.

Designed for kids up to ten years old, the playground contains two sunken areas lined with spongy tiles, one filled with jungle gym equipment. Kids can climb steps and ladders to access suspended bridges, monkey-bars and slides of different heights and shapes. There are plans to fill the second space with more playground equipment.

A Cambodian friend who studied in Sydney said his children were thrilled to visit the playground, described by his son as ‘just like the ones in Australia only better.’

As the only one of its kind, the playground tends to get very crowded, especially during peaks times mid-morning and mid-afternoon. This can be part of the fun for some, overwhelming for others.

On sunny days, the ground may be too hot for little barang feet by about 9.30 in the morning—shoes have to be left outside the play area—although busloads of Khmer kids arriving at this time seemed unperturbed. Cold drinks and food can be bought nearby and there are shady places in the surrounding area to sit and eat.

It’s early days yet, and the municipal government, which is behind the initiative, is still ironing out issues like parking, security, supervision and waste disposal. But for now use of the playground is free of charge. It is open from sunrise until well into the evening.

Phnom Penh’s other public parks are not specifically designed with children in mind but can be very kid-friendly.

The relative cool of the late afternoon and evening sees Khmer families and friends gather to dahleng¬—literally ‘walk-play’—in the green spaces east of the Independence Monument and south of the Royal Palace. Young couples flirt, babies toddle in squeaky shoes, friends chat and snack on peanuts and clams, elderly people do stretching exercises. Men and boys play chequers on makeshift boards scratched into concrete or penned on park benches, one player on twigs, the other on shells.

More spacious and less hazardous than the riverfront, these are some of the best places to take an evening stroll with small children, who will be made to feel welcome and admired wherever they go. You may even find yourself posing for photos with complete strangers so they can snap your cute child.

Wat Botum Park is particularly popular for soccer, volley-ball and badminton. Children wandering through makeshift playing fields are often invited to join in. Or you can bring your own equipment and stake out a patch here or on the lawns of Independence Monument Park. If you forget your ball, a roaming vendor will be on hand to sell you one.

As the winds pick up towards the end of the rainy season, kite-flyers are out in force in these parks, too. You can buy kites in the shape of phoenixes, bats, sharks and superheroes for US$1-$3 from yet more vendors and join in the fun.

Also worth a mention is the section of Hun Sen Park opposite the Hotel Cambodiana between Sisowath Quay and Sothearos Boulevard. This modest grassy triangle features two large concrete elephants and a statue of Khmer poet Uk Ou surrounded by a pond perfect for floating paper boats. Late afternoon sees Khmer picnickers feasting on noodles and unidentified frying objects prepared in temporary cafes set up on the garden’s perimeter.

What little shade there is in these parks tends to be over benches on the footpaths, making them unsuitable for playing in the heat of the mid-morning or mid-afternoon.

The green space in front of the National Museum off Sothearos Boulevard between streets 178 and 184 offers some shade during the day, as does the leafy garden surrounding Wat Phnom. Just watch out for the villainous monkeys.

Alternatively you can retreat to one of Phnom Penh’s garden cafés such as Le Jardin (cubby house and sandpit), Gasolina (BYO tricycle), The Living Room (kid-sized outdoor seating), Elsewhere (not-so-kid-friendly pool but great garden) or Romdeng (kid-friendly pool and garden).

Other options may open up once construction of the promised public gardens along the Tonlé Sap is completed.

Almost 16 years to the day since our first visit, Andrew and I returned last weekend to the temples of Angkor.

This time we our daughter Natasha, Roo’s mother Judie and his sister Barbara in tow. While Tash has more foreign visas in her passport than she’s had birthdays, Roo’s mum and sister had arrived in Cambodia via Singapore for what was their first trip to Asia.

Much had changed. Sixteen years ago, the civil war was still raging, the UN was running the country, and Roo and I had the temples virtually to ourselves. This time around, there were way more tourists, less jungle and more scaffolding around the temples. De-mining and better roads have made more temples accessible, but restoration and concerns about the impact of tourism have made parts of individual monuments off-limits: for example, you can no longer climb to the top of Angkor Wat.

But in many respects, it was as if we were visiting the temples for the first time all over again: they lost none of their allure on a second viewing, and being with Tash, Jude and Barb gave us a fresh perspective, especially seeing the temples through Tash’s eyes.

We visited Ta Prohm, a sanctuary dedicated by prolific builder Jayavarman VII to his mother, which has largely been left as it was when ‘rediscovered’ in the nineteenth century. Encircled with the roots and branches of spung and fig trees, the stone looks as if it is slowly being crushed by the jungle.

Jude and Barb were suitably impressed. Tash seemed more taken with the tiny frogs that lived among the piles of ancient stone than Ta Prohm itself, though she showed some interest in the carvings of apsaras-defined in one guide book as ‘mythological celestial nymphs’ and by Tash as ‘dancing princesses.’

Next stop was the former royal city of Angkor Thom, another legacy of Jayarvaman VII, with the ethereal temple of The Bayon at its centre. Huge faces smile serenely from all four sides of each of the Bayon’s 49 towers, the effect mesmerising. No one knows whose face this is-our guide Chamrong put in a plug for the Buddha-a mystery that only adds to the allure.

Bas-reliefs at the Bayon depict military and political history and daily life in exquisite detail. An abundance of animals, particularly crocodiles devouring fish and humans, kept Tash amused. But the real highlight of the Bayon for her were the dancers in traditional costumes-apsaras, demons and monkeys-who posed with her for photos.

Our last stop on day one was Angkor Wat, a holy city built in the early twelfth century by Suryavarman II, and a structure so significant in Cambodian culture that it features on the national flag. We had a wonderful, leisurely stroll around the complex, the inner courtyards of which feature some of the finest apsaras of all, and much to Tash’s delight, encountered another photogenic group of traditional dancers on the way out.

Minutes before boarding our minivan, I was hit by a gust of the coldest wind I’d felt in Cambodia and the heavens opened. Undeterred by the rain in the presence of two enthusiastic babysitters in Nana and Auntie Barb, Roo and I hit the town of Siem Reap for a pub crawl. For what it’s worth, my recommendations are:

• Dead Fish, Sivatha Boulevard: former crocodile farm turned bar/restaurant still housing eleven of the original residents in the basement, this eclectic venue has great atmosphere and horrifying health and safety standards. Best as a first stop.

• Island Bar, inside the Night Market: great décor and performing bar tenders; think Bryan Brown and Tom Cruise in Cocktail, only with more talent and better weather.

• Funky Munky, Pub Street: balcony seating in old French shop house; movie posters, cool music and potent cocktails.

The Hotel Borann L’Auberge des Temples is a great place to stay: family-friendly, lovely rooms, good pool, tropical garden; quiet part of town 10 mins by tuk-tuk to the action.

Day two took us to the tenth century Banteay Srey, ‘Citadel of the Women’, the only temple built in pink sandstone, also renowned for its deep carvings. Scenes from the epic Ramayana – called the Reamkeh in Cambodia – predominate. Tash was a bit bored here though perked up when she recognised Ravanna, the ten-headed demon from the children’s version of the Ramayana we read to her [Rama and the Demon King, Jessica Souhami, 1997, DK INK, New York].

After stopping off at the Landmines Museum, we visited Banteay Samre, a less glamorous but more accessible temple where, in the inner sanctum, you can make an old man’s day by slipping him a dollar to bless you by tying a red string around your wrist.

We’d taken the boat from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap across the Tonlé Sap Lake, not as scenic a trip as I’d hoped, and marred by grumpy Europeans who kept giving Tash the evil eye – such a contrast from travelling on public buses full of Cambodians who make travelling with a small child a pleasure.

So for the return trip on Monday, we hired a minivan, steeling ourselves to idle in traffic in the build-up to Bon Om Touk, the three-day Water Festival that is Phnom Penh’s biggest party of the year, when literally millions of Cambodians flock to the capital. To our surprise and relief, we breezed through, with more than enough energy to take to the streets that night and join in the celebrations.

But the Water Festival – still going strong at the time of writing – warrants its own post.

[More photos to follow...]

This time last week, I was anxiously watching developments in the border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia for the most selfish of reasons: Tash and I were due to fly to Bangkok to meet up with my mum. If hostilities worsened, worst-case scenario, our flight would be cancelled. Or we’d make it to Bangkok and get stranded (I packed extra underwear just in case).

In the end, the Thais and Cambodians kindly desisted in declaring war against each other and Tash and I were able to make the journey.

It was actually the second time Mum and I had been in Bangkok together. Twenty-three years ago, we stopped off our way home from Europe and stayed with our friends the Paola family. Prior to that, I’d spent eight months living in Europe and left convinced I was a European trapped in the body of an Australian. But then we hit Bangkok and I was blown away. It was my first experience of Asia — the one that started it all — and like any first love, the city will always hold a special place in my heart.

I wanted to take Mum — whom Tash calls Gugga — around Bangkok and show her why I love this magical city. But she doesn’t cope well with the heat, plus we had an active nearly three-year-old in tow. What to do?

We opted for a visit to The Jim Thompson House. In 23 years of visiting Bangkok, and 18 months living there in 1997-98, I’d never previously made it to this exquisite museum. Beautiful, traditional wooden Thai houses filled with treasures in a lush tropical garden. Dining room with garden views from every window. Sarn prapum (spirit house) in the northeast corner, the one point where the house doesn’t cast a shadow. The tour was a bit much for Tash but the garden kept her entertained, especially the pond containing a freshwater stingray one metre in diameter, and a couple of Jurassic-looking alligator fish.

Next stop via the Skytrain was the Siam Paragon Centre for lunch in the Food Court, where tables surround tanks full of tropical fish. Great for preoccupying kids of Tash’s age, and the food’s not bad either. I couldn’t help smiling as Tash tucked into the mee noodles and won ton soup I fed her with chopsticks while the nearest Thai kid hoed into his French fries.

Siam Ocean World was a tip-off from our friend Kath and turned out to be the perfect place to take a bored nearly three-year-old and a heat sensitive mother. I’m not sure how ecologically sound the place is — surely there’s unintended irony in lamenting the impact of global warming on coral reefs from an airconditioned aquarium in the basement of a six-story shopping mall in downtown Bangkok — but we had a ball.

We thought Tash would be most impressed with the sharks, which are pretty damn impressive: you walk through a tunnel in the shark tank, so the sharks, stingrays and other fish swim around and over you. But her favourites were the Moray Eels (like Flotsam and Jetsam, familiars of the sea witch Ursula in ‘The Little Mermaid’) — particularly watching the little blue ‘cleaner fish’ dive into the eels’ mouths only to re-emerge unscathed minutes later.

My favourite: the tiny sea angels. Mum’s favourite: any fish wearing purple — and there were many.

Tash also greatly enjoyed the kitsch floorshow out front featuring maraca shaking mermaids in sequins dancing with stuffed versions of the star attractions: sharks, water rats (or where they otters?), penguins, and any creature featured in the movie ‘Finding Nemo’.

Another highlight of the trip was the Elvis impersonator at the Tivoli Coffee Lounge in the lobby of the Asia Hotel where we were staying. I can’t help falling in love with a showman who welcomed being upstaged by a singing, dancing nearly three-year-old.

But by far the best thing about last weekend in Bangkok was hanging out with my mother and child.

This post first appeared as the ‘Next Generation’ column in AsiaLIFE Cambodia October 2008 pp72-73. Photo by Andrew Nette did not appear in the published article.

Reading Rooms

It’s never too early to encourage your toddler to curl up on the couch with a good book. Phnom Penh’s places to read, listen to stories and buy books let your child explore the pleasure of reading as a social or solo pursuit, as Angela Savage explains.

Open Book
The children sit on the floor listening to the man read a story. He moves like the animal characters in the book, draws pictures on the whiteboard, allows his voice to rise and fall. His face is animated, his enthusiasm infectious. The children are captivated.

The man is Mr Som Theang, better known as Tin, Director of Open Book, the NGO with a mission to promote the pleasure of reading.

Up to 80 children visit Open Book each day, spending hours at a time poring over the books that line the walls of this welcoming reading room on Street 240.

‘We aim to create a happy place open to all,’ says founder Catherine Cousins. ‘Hopefully, as the children grow up, they will associate having books around them with feelings of happiness.’

While the primary audience is local, Open Book encourages people of all nationalities to come together.

Open Book caters to readers in an impressive range of languages; English, French, Khmer and Japanese are the most common. They also stock books in Korean, Chinese, Russian and Spanish to name a few. Books are colour-coded by language and displayed on bookshelves Tin himself has made.

The reading room is a perfect refuge on rainy afternoon. Volunteers, mostly high school and university students keen to practice their English or French, are on hand to read stories to your children, or you are welcome to read to them yourself.

As well as books, there are puzzles, blocks and educational games to keep the kids occupied while you browse Open Book’s small library. Lifetime membership is USD$15.

Open Book’s reading room is open 7 days a week, 10am-5pm.

Storytelling
Several venues host regular storytelling, presenting an opportunity to meet other (mostly expat) families and get exposed to quality children’s books you can buy locally, online and/or ask friends to bring when they visit.

Open Book has story telling in Khmer followed by drawing every Thursday at 4pm. Storytelling at Monument Books is the first Wednesday of every month, 3.30pm sharp until 4.30pm. Although it is pitched at 3 to 5 year olds, younger children welcome. There is also drawing and colouring, too. Storytelling for 6 to 9 year olds is the third Saturday of the month, 10.30 to 11.30am. All these sessions are free.

The Living Room café will resume its weekend storytelling sessions in October. Check their notice board or the Yahoo group ‘Cambodia Parent Network’ for details. US$3 covers materials for craft activities and a child’s healthy snack plate. You need to register in advance.

Friends Flea Market, on the last Saturday of every month, has a range of kids’ activities including storytelling, followed by drawing classes and/or music. See posters or announcements on the Cambodia Parent Network for details. Again admission is free.

The Médiathèque at the French Cultural Centre has storytelling for young and old one Saturday each month at 10am in French or Khmer. It also has a good selection of children’s books and a comfortable reading area.

Book buying
NGOs such as Room to Read, White Elephant/Domrei Sor, Wildlife Conservation, etc produce books in Khmer plus English or French, with a focus on folk tales and stories set in Cambodia. Most range in price from 4,000 riel to $6. These can be purchased at Open Book (ask to see the selection), the Friends ‘n’ Stuff shop, Carnets D’Asie, larger stationery stores, and the markets. Great if your kids are bilingual or aspiring to be, and a fun way to learn about Cambodian culture.

Monument Books’ Kids Corner sells children’s books at US prices. Carnets d’Asie has new children’s books in French.D’s Books has a children’s section at the back where it’s possible to pick up the odd second-hand gem for $1 to $3.

Upstairs at Pencil Supermarket on St 214 are inexpensive picture books in Khmer and English printed in India. Also Indian-made colouring-in books and quirky posters such as the ‘Visual World Dresses Chart’ featuring couples in national costume.

The Russian Market also has a good range of inexpensive sticker- and colouring-in books to while away rainy season afternoons.

Tip: When leaving Phnom Penh, please consider donating your pre-loved books to Open Book or Friends. Your toddler can help put things in ‘Keep’ or ‘Give Away’ piles. Those of us left behind will be grateful.

Open Book
#41 Eo, St 240. Open 7 days, 10am-5pm (except during the Water Festival).
Tel: 012 876 623. Email: openbook240@yahoo.com

Carnet D’Asie and Médiathèque

French Cultural Centre, #218, St 184. Email: mediatheque@ccf-cambodge.org

Monument Books
111 Norodom Bvd, Tel: 023 217 617

Living Room
#9, St 306, Tel: 023 726 139

Friends / Friends Flea Market
Friends ‘n’ Stuff, #215, St 13. Flea Market is next door, last Saturday of every month, 9am-4pm

Pencil Supermarket
#15, Street 214

Since publishing this article, I’ve also discovered the treasure trove of cheap and quirky books upstairs at IBC on Sihanouk Boulevard, next door to Lucky Supermarket.

We mark the start on Saturday of a four-day holiday for Pchum Ben—Festival of the Ancestors—with a day trip to Kompong Chhnang town, capital of a province with the same name, 91 km northwest of Phnom Penh.

I’m tempted to say it’s a bad idea setting out on a road trip on the first day of a long public holiday when everyone heads to their ‘homeland’ (province of birth) to visit the family graves.

Yet the slow progress and 45-minute way each way at the Prek Kdam ferry intersection gives us the chance to see some amazing sights. Like a minibus containing 30 people, the three girls at the very end riding on a flattened seatback overhanging the tailgate, the hatch left ajar, secured with ropes, to accommodate them. Or the crowds in the tray and on the roof of utility vehicles, draping themselves in clothes and towels to protect their skin from the sun; and when it rained, taking shelter under large sheets of plastic like giant shower-caps.

By contrast we travel in comfort in a small 4WD owned by one of Toro’s brothers and driven for the day by Toro. En route to Kompong Chhnang, Toro tells us his version of the legend of Kong Rey, which goes something like this:

‘Kong Rey was the daughter of a giant, who fell in love with a human man. But he left her and she was so sad, she lay down to die at Kong Rey mountain.’

(I’ve heard a couple of variations on this story before; the mountain is said to look like a supine woman).

‘So why did her husband leave her?’

‘Oh, because her mother and father the giants killed his family and all the people in his district.’

Yes, that would cause marital discord.

‘Khmer people believe ghosts eat humans,’ Toro says. ‘What about in Australia?’

‘We don’t have giants in Australia,’ says Roo diplomatically.

The other anecdote I’ve heard about Kong Rey was that when her body lay down and formed the mountain, her pubic hair transformed into a fragrant herb, m’orm, used in local soup dishes. But only women seem to tell that part of the story.

Her husband’s name was Rithy Sen and there are statues of the two in Kompong Chhnang near the Independence Monument, Rithy on a rearing horse, hand raised, rebuffing Kong Rey who lies supplicating on the ground in his wake.

The Independence Monument itself as a smaller version of the one in Phnom Penh, the attractive town apparently planned by former King Sihanouk, with wide roads, open space and public parkland.

The road northeast of the Psar Leu—flooded on either side at this time of year—leads to the banks of the Tonlé Sap River and the ambitiously named ‘Tourism Port’ where noodle sellers and drink stands line the banks, men cast nets, wooden boats—available for hire— bob with the current, and a floating villages juts out on to the river beneath a galaxy of TV aerials.

Across the road old French colonial buildings, Chinese shop-houses and a dilapidated Vietnamese theatre cling on for life amidst renovations, extensions and gaudy new developments.

A stroll through nearby Psar Krom is a reminder of how most Cambodians live. People work and sleep in the same cramped spaces overhanging the water, buildings patched together from wood, tin, cardboard and plastic. There’s a noticeable Vietnamese presence and Tash gets (wo)manhandled like she did in Chau Doc. I admire the resilience of this minority community that as recently as ten years ago was still targeted by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge in violent attacks along the Tonlé Sap.

In the Psar Krom and throughout the town we see plenty of the clay pots—chhnang—that give the town and province its name. Tash and I stop in one pottery producing household for a closer look. Even the spirit house is decorated with clay pots.

The town is a picturesque place to cruise by car and on foot. Our only mistake was to stop for lunch at the Mittapheap (‘Friendship’) Restaurant, where an hour’s wait produced only two-thirds of our order, and what we did get was bland and oily. But I could have forgiven all that if they hadn’t also run out of coffee. Next time I’ll eat noodles on the riverfront.

And my eternal gratitude goes to the noodle seller who, despite my almost non-existent Khmer, managed to rustle up and iced coffee for me via a friend on a nearby boat. Made with condensed milk and sugar, and coming after an eight-hour wait, coffee never tasted so sweet.