Knhum tau Tai Ches bi dong… (Dec. 07) - Part 2

The rest of the week went by pretty fast with nothing extraordinary happened. Well, at least until Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was a different day for me. It is the first day which I experienced a full day. The day started with 7:00 am devotion for the leadership team, which comprised of the church-school teachers, all the church leaders, and all the missionaries. It is a weekly event, although this is my first time being invited to. Devotion is like a mini service, singing praises, the study of the Word, and a period of prayer request. It is good but I find it extremely tedious, maybe because I am not used to waking up so early and that I drift in and out of consciousness a few times. Devotion went on until 8:30 then we have an hour break to eat breakfast or drink coffee before each is off to do his/her work. For me, it was a beginning of a 2-hour drive to the village on the outskirt of another province. Again, this is my first time being on this trip and what a trip it was.

We travelled on one of the ‘interstate highway’. The 2-hour drive is definitely far from comfort. First, there are at least 10-14 people going in one truck. What that means is that there are some that are cramped into the inside of the truck. And there are some who has to sit in the back of the truck. On the back of the truck, there are two benches bolted down but they are on the opposite end of the pendulum of comfort as the Lazyboy couches. Another factor is that the road is extremely dusty. A large portion of the way there were spending in cloud of dirt or cloud of carbon monoxide from cars which are too old to be on the road or would never past Aircare. So basically, whoever is sitting on the outside in the back of the truck will inhale a combination of dust and carbon monoxide from other cars on the highway. Basically, I was one of the fortunate few in the back who come to realize the importance of nose hairs. What makes it even worst was the drive from the highway to the village. The road was neither paved nor well-maintained. Thus, the truck kicked up quite a dirt storm while driving through. It is quite an experience driving in the dirt storm for 20 minutes. Side note, I was wearing a white shirt there and by the end of the day, it was reddish brown due to the dirt storm. I ended up having raspy voice to the dirt accumulated in my throat. I pray that I’ll be a lot more prepared the next time I go into this village. The last and the worst part of it all is ill nature of the road. Yes, we did spend a large portion of the time driving on the ‘interstate highway’ but the highways here are not as what we come to expect in the Western world. They are filled with potholes and irregular bumps due to poor maintenance of the highway and large number of overloaded trucks on the highway. Not only that you have to avoid the potholes and bumps but also oncoming vehicles trying to past a slower vehicles. Therefore, it was a constant drive but a series of continuous acceleration and deceleration. Sitting in the back, with no seatbelt, and no cushion required that you are to hang on to the sidebars and experienced a continuous torrent of jerking motions. After having been through all these, I really come to appreciate the sacrifice and the determination of one individual.

His name is Trong Thanh Tran (aka 3T, ba tê, or special bread spread in Vietnamese). There are a lot to be said about this certain individual. If there is one person whom I come to respect and admire, it is him. I must admit, he has a few flaws but his heart for serving God is undeniably there. He is a member of a local church but his responsibilities, at his requests not by recommendation of others, are to Taiches, which is the village I visited on Saturday. He is one of main teachers of Taiches school and its church secretary/elder/treasurer/advisor. He spends every Saturday and Sunday in Taiches to help out with the school and church. So you can probably do the math. He spends 8 hours a week on purely travelling to and from Taiches. On Saturday, he spends four hours travelling with others to Taiches to teach. Granted that he doesn’t drive but he still have to endure the roughness of the trip. On Sunday, he takes a motorbike to drive different preacher to the village so that they can preach. On top of that, he also leads service on Sunday so he has to prepare before hand as to how the order of service for that day. If you are wondering why he is doing all the work and not giving any responsibility to the locals. Well, the church is still in the process of finding those who are capable as most are illiterate. The ones who are capable are not believers. The amazing thing is that he has been doing this for a long while before I arrived.

Another good thing which I admire the most about him is that he is definitely a man with integrity, financially at least. As the treasurer of a church, he has many opportunities to ‘help’ himself. However, he asked my mentor’s wife to help him with the church finance. He even go the distance of asking my mentor’s wife to keep all the money while he only keep the booking. The reason he does this is to prevent himself from temptations due to his family financial conditions. Even when hanging out with people, he often does not feel really comfortable to have people pay for him. He rather stayed home and not go out if he can’t afford to go out. Unlike the majority of people who feel completely normal when it comes to ‘rich’ foreigners treating them, he actually feel uncomfortable about it. Not because he is afraid of people seeing him as a smooch but because he is afraid that he is unable of reciprocate the friendly gestures, although he knows that they do not expect a return of any kind. I can’t say anymore about how I am impressed with his determination to serve and his financial integrity.

Anyhow, back to Taiches, it is basically a big house/building. From a far, it looks just like any other house. On the left is a picture of the school from afar. As you notice, the water has receded quite a bit before I arrived. It was much worse during the rainy season. The water will cover everything and the only way the teaching staff can enter the school is by boat. Just to tell a little bit of history of the school/church. This school/church was build not too long ago. It was a joint project, oversee by Pastor Khang, of the believers and the local villagers. The whole building cost around 4,000 USD. It has wooden pillars, metal sheets as roof, palm-tree like walls, and wood planks as floor. It is not exactly the luxurious castle but it is more than sufficient as a school/church. The church is surrounded by farms and houses of the Vietnamese Khmai. This village is the most ghetto village I have ever been to. There are no electricity and they still are heavily dependent on rain for drinking water. When in the dry season, they used the water from the river for consumption which creates a plethora of health issues.

The whole entire place is one big room divided by screens. Therefore, the noise from one classroom can easily be heard in another classroom. Regardless, it is pretty nice because sometime, one class would try to out-scream another class, especially when they are trying to spell out a word or a sentence. It is pretty funny I thought. There are four classes in this school which are primarily focused in teach Vietnamese to the Vietnamese Khmai here. For most kids, this is the only form of education that is accessible for them. Few kids do have the luxury of going to a public Khmai school but again, the number is an extremely small number. The focus of the school is to give the children who are unable to go to a public school a form of education. Although it is once a week class, most kids love the class and are learning quite a bit. There are two classes of grade 1 and two classes of grade 2. Unfortunately, there is no plan of implementing higher classes as the financial resources are limited and the school/church is not officially recognized as part of the New Hope schooling system. It is currently funded from the personal financial aid from believers outside the country, mostly from Australia and Canada.

My first time to Taiches resulted in many shocks. The first being the trip itself. It was long, extremely uncomfortable, and dirty. I can’t believe there is a village this far out. The second being there are so many Vietnamese people in this village. There have to be at least 20 Vietnamese families here. This place is extremely far away from the borders of Cambodia and Vietnam. It’s not like there is a river from Vietnam which they can just travel to here. I wonder how they got here in the first place, about 100+ people coming together and form a small community. The third being the fact that they are extremely poor. As you can see the picture, those are floating houses. While most live in houses on land, there are a few families who live on boathouses such as these. The reason being that they can’t afford to rent the property and the property tax. If you zoom into the picture, you’ll see that the roof and the walls are made out of dry palm tree leaves. This is extremely bad as the weather tends to destroy the leaves easily leaving the house exposed. Can you imagined experiencing a leaky roof in the cold and rainy season. Third, there are tremendous health issues here. Most of the health issues here are attributed to the source of drinking water. Although they have reservoir / water tanks holding rain water to drink, they are not very clean. However, the rain water is a lot more desirable to drink than the water from the river in the dry season. If there are health issues not resulted from drinking water, then they are due to the poor living conditions of the people here. They can’t afford a lot of food and mostly survive on rice, dried fishes, and whatever vegetable they can get from the land.

So the next day, I get to visit Taiches again. This time, the trip was only my mentoring couple, myself, and Trong. My mentor was schedule to preach at Taiches that day (The churches here operate on a cycle sermon. Everyone who can preach is put into the cycle, myself included. Every week, each church has different preacher although the church may have a pastor/primary caretaker who is capable of giving sermon. Not the best system I find but it works for them and they do not want to change it). So again, at 7:00 am, we started our second trip in two days to Taiches. It is more a lot more tiresome today. A cup of ice coffee, an hour of nap, and a few power naps in between, Trong and myself found ourselves at Taiches village. The service started with the gathering of both young and old villagers. The number of children greatly outnumbered the adults. As a result, the service was often interrupted by the noise of children bickering, swearing, and crying. By around 1, we started heading back and have lunch on the way. I am actually very surprised at my mentor’s endurance. He drove both ways without getting tire. I am very impressed. By 3, I am found myself at home and starting to head to Saigon 2 to pick up Lam (the dude whose picture is above) and Hoai, the dude who does not have the opportunity to go to school and whom I mentioned a blog ago, to go to Mekong church. We were 10 minutes late due to the traffic at the Saigon bridge but it was okay because they were still in the praising part of the service. After the service, a whole bunch of us, Lam, Hoai, myself, and all the Mekong youth group, played badminton, kicked around the Asian hacky-sack like made out of feather, and I pulled out my DS which captured all their attention. All the youth were madly in love with Cooking Mama 2. They can’t seem to get bored of it and even ‘line up’ to play it. It was a fun day. I got to know a few more kids from the Mekong church. It was quite a productive day even though I was extremely lazy.

Knhum tau Tai Ches bi dong (Dec. 07) - part 1

Another week has passed, time sure flies fast. It’s time for another update. Last week was quite a busy week, but fun. Earlier in the week, I had the chance to invite two of the youth interchurch committee members out for lunch/dinner fun day just to encourage them. They are also the same two I prayed for in Viet at the first interchurch youth meeting that I attended. Each was the youth leader at their respected church. My goal is to get to know each youth leader as well as encouraged them for the good work that they are doing. Because of the lack in entertainment in this city, I decided to take them to Sorya mall. It is a seven-stories mall, the second biggest/newest mall in Phnom Penh. It is a popular hangout place for teens. I see a lot of teens playing hooky here daily. The mall itself does not have a lot to offer in term of products wise. It, however, offers the ability to kill time through window shopping, the food court, the arcade, and the rollerblade rink at the top level of the mall. I guessed that is the same with the Western mall. However, there is an interesting event which I would like to tell you guys about.

As I was driving Lam and Thuy to the mall, I have a little run in with the traffic cops. Rest assured, I know I was not breaking any traffic law at all. If you wondering about the legal limit of the number of the people on a motorbike, it’s the number that you can fit on your moto. So I know I wasn’t breaking any law regarding this limit. However, as I was driving, this traffic cop came out to stop my moto. He tried to stop me by taking his plastic red and white barber /candy cane batton and smack one right in my chest as I was trying to slow down. I don’t see why he should hit me when I was slowing down. But as I come to a complete stop a little further away due to momentum, the two behind me urged me to just leave. Adrenaline was pumping, all I can hear was “Go, go, go”. Reacted to my impulse, I revved the moto and booked it. It was pure joy to see that traffic cop started to run toward me only to catch me looking at him driving off. It was bad I know. But before you say anything about my poor judgment I really think it is from hindsight), the cop were just pulling me over to haggle some money out of me because he saw that I am a foreigner. Reflecting back at the situation, I had the legal number of people on my bike and my bike has the useless side mirrors which nobody ever used but can be finable if you don’t have one. After driving off, those two pointed out even more cultural issues which I started to notice a lot more during the trip to the mall.

First, traffic cops can fine you for anything and everything. Your moto does not have the useless side mirrors. FINE. You turn on a green light. FINE. You turn with 5 seconds left on the turning light. FINE. You drive through the intersections with 10 seconds left on the green light. FINE. You are driving normally, obeying all the international traffic laws. FINE. You drive a moto. FINE. Do you see a common theme here? Everything is finable.

Second, there is no common spoken / unspoken rule in regard to driving / riding motos here. The laws vary from corner to corner as traffic polices enforces their own laws. You may say it’s usurp but it’s true. It is hard to follow rules here when the rule changes from one intersection to another. Also, they can fine you for anything and everything. Remember in my first post I talked about the fact that polices here are to serve and to extort and that foreigners are cash cows? Well, it has been reconfirmed. I see the locals runs red lights, turn on red lights, drive on the wrong side of the street, making illegal u-turn, and out running cops when the cops try to stop them but the cops would just stand and watch. However, try doing that when you are a foreigner driving a regular moto / car and they will have a welcoming committee waiting for you.

Third, the fine money does not go to the treasury of the state but to the individuals giving out fine. From what I learned and observed, the traffic cops will have a little box with them at the corner. This box contains all the fines collected throughout the day. Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention is that the traffic cops collect fines on the spot. There is no ticket given, no place to go to pay fine, and fines are bargain-able (I have heard story of missionaries refusing to pay fines. The missionaries ended up sitting there for half an hour before the police let them leave because the police know that they can’t make any money from the missionaries). At the end of the day, a decent percentage goes to their officer in charge and the rest are divvy up equally amongst those who are present.

Fourth, the missionary rule ‘When at lost, do what the local do’ do not apply to all situation. Since the traffic police are looking out for foreigners, they will skip / turn a blind eye to 10 locals who are breaking 100 traffic laws just to catch 1 foreigner who may or may not be breaking 1 traffic law. So doing what the locals do would only get you in trouble with the traffic cops. Or you could do what the locals do and just drive off when they try to pull you over.

Having said all that, I do not have any negative thoughts regarding the culture. In the words of a missionary I know, ‘It’s not bad. It’s just different’. I found out that learning the culture is a day by day immersion of experiences. It’s not something you can learn in a few months time by reading a book. As the day progress, I am learning more and more about Cambodian culture and I am learning to appreciate it more and more. Days of reflection tell me that all culture has its good and bad. I am just praying that I can keep the good and block out the bad. But that is enough, back to the day with two youth leaders.

Having undergone the traffic experience with them, I have plenty of questions to talk to them about and learn from them. Honestly, I thought it was going to be awkward considering there is a huge age gap, cultural difference, and different mindset but that traffic incidence really helps the conversation going. We ended up walking around the mall a bit before heading to the arcade to play. The arcade here consist of a lot of those ‘claw-to-win-stuff-animals’ machine, a bunch of poker machines, a row of machines contain shooting games. That is it. It is smaller than what I expected. Even so, this is considered pretty fun for them. We poke fun at each other miserable attempts at the stuffed animals machines as well as each other extremely poor hands-eyes coordination at the shooting games. We followed it up by having dinner at a restaurant inside the mall called Master Grill. It is basically a hybrid of MacDonald and KFC. They sell both burgers and fried chicken. Each combo ranged from 2-3 USD. The food was cheap according to Western standard and extremely expensive according to Khmai standard. Considering an average person wage is around 2-3 USD a day. It is quite expensive. I asked them if they have ever tried these kinds of food and they both shake their heads saying that it’s impossible for them to try because they don’t even work. It made me realized what a privileges it is for me to be able to afford these kinds of meal for myself. It is somewhat a cultural shock for me to be able to witness this as I could never imagine somewhere else in the world can be this impoverished. I mean sure you can read book, read newspaper headlines, and even watch TV news about world poverty but all those do not come close to the first-hand experience I just experienced.

Afterward, we went around the mall for a bit and just did more window shopping. It was fun and we ended the day with ice cream at Swensen. For those of you who don’t know what Swensen is, it is an extremely pricey ice cream parlor with extremely delicious ice cream. I am not trying to flaunt my wealth to them by inviting them to eat here with me. Rather, I want them to know that the work they are putting into their respective church and the interchurch youth group is greatly appreciated. I confirmed over and over that I really admired their willingness to serve even though it may be more than an inconvenience for both to do so. We had a blast just talking and eating ice cream. It was fun. We talk about their lives and how they are coping with the business of school and church. It was fun. They tried to hide from me when I went to pay the cashier. It was cute. Little did they know that I had the key to the moto and could easily left them behind. But it was their act of playfulness which makes me feel at ease with the both of them.

The following day was horrible. I was extremely thirsty throughout the whole day. I do not want to eat anything except for drinking glasses and glasses of liquid all day long. I tried to work on my sermon for the monthly interchurch youth group meeting this Saturday but eventually give up because of the constant run to the washroom. I later found out that I have a minor MSG reaction. I found out that MSG doesn’t like my body and vice versa. The good thing is that I found out the source of the problem which cause my body to behave erratically. The bad thing is that I have to be extremely careful of what I eat because MSG in food is as common, if not more, than salt and sugar in food. Khmai people love sugar and MSG. They go together like fish and water; grass and cows, etc. (pardon my poor attempt at being a poet). The rest of the day went fine as I was able to meet up with Duc and had a venting session with him. He told me about various things and we also went to get his Bumblebee painted. The bike looks really sweet after the paint job. It now resembles the real Bumblebee. It looks sweet.

Knhom tiw sala (I go to school) – December 2

This week has been a little slow. Nothing much happened except a few meetings with people and a welcoming party. First and foremost, I had a meeting with the person who is in charged of the interchurch youth ministry. His name is Tuan Anh. He is the person who is in charged of the monthly interchurch youth meeting which I talked about in the last last update. He’s a carpenter by day, pastor-to-be at Kilometer 11 and bible college student at a local seminary when he’s not working. He’s a pretty busy guy all around. Basically, if it’s involved youth ministry, it’s under his jurisdiction. We meet up for breakfast. Went to a decent restaurant according to Khmai standard. It was good. The food was okay. The talk was very informative. I found out that there are many needs, ministries, and definitely many difficulties concerning the youths here. There are many factors which the teens face here. Female teens who are decent looking are endangered of being sold into prostitution. Male teens are mostly likely to quit school after they finished grade 5 (they started school late so by the time they finished grade 5, they are 15) to help out the family financial situation. Very few Vietnamese teens here are able to study past grade 5. Even for those fews who made past grade 5, they are forced to go to public school which they will be endangered to negative peer influence. Honestly, there are ‘educational landmines’ everywhere for teens here. Those who made to higher education (above grade 8) are so rare. The talk involved mostly of the teens and the problems they are facing. It was good until he dropped the bomb on me. He wanted me to preach at the next monthly interchurch youth meeting on December 13 (IN VIET). Of course I said no but he was very insistence. He told me that eventually I will have to preach to churches so I might as well get some practices in. It made sense so I accepted his proposal. Of course, it was extremely nerve wrecking.

The meeting with Tuan Anh was over around 11. Not because we finished talking but I had to attend another meeting. It’s the missionary meeting at cô (aunt) Kim Ngoc’s house. In case I have never told you who she is. She is basically my friend’s aunt whom I meet 3 years ago in Toronto when I first became a believer. She was also the person who sowed the seed of Cambodia in my head and heart. Needless to say, she made an impact in my life about missionary work in Cambodia. The meeting with the missionaries was about various issues and upcoming events regarding the Christmas season as well as the possible scouting of new church locations. And of course, I have the privileges of seeing David Manfred at work. I have more and more respect for him as he is calm, collected, sharp, and always considered the national churches interests while getting the job done. I think this is a perfect fit for him as the role seemed so natural to him. After an hour and a half, the meeting was over. As many Asians out there know, there can’t be a meeting without a feast afterward. And what a feast it was. It featured Vietnamese salad roll (self roll of course), Vietnamese noodle, and Khmai soup. The best part is that it’s a welcoming party for Duc and I to Cambodia. Unfortunately Duc did not show up. Fortunately, I got all the glory to myself. Muwahahahahahaha. Oh yeah, the best part about the party is that I get to drink ‘ginger beer’. Wait, before you think ‘what is up with missionary meeting with beer at noon’, let me explain what ginger beer is. It basically grinded ginger paste with a little sugar water frozen as ice cube and 7up for fizzes. It looks like beer. It tasted somewhat like cooler. BUT it has 0 alcohol content. So no, we didn’t get drunk on anything but the Holy Spirit during lunch.
Another interesting event occurred this week is that the rein on my Pegasus broke. Basically, my gas throttle cable snapped while I am out with my brothers and two of his dormmates. The good: it snapped while I was idling. The bad: Duc and I as on the way to drive his dormmates home so we can attend the missionary prayer meeting. The worst: it will cost us 10 USD to haul my bike back to my brother’s dorm. But again, God is always good. He not only solved the situation but also blessed me with an awesome Cambodian experience. After 20 minutes of deciding on what to do, the four of us decided that we will drive my moto home. Basically, we have Bumblebee which is running fine and Pegasus which is fine but can’t gas it at all. So we decided that two of us will sit on Bumblebee will pull the other two on Pegasus while putting Pegasus on neutral. It takes some time to get used to driving but we got back to Duc’s dorm fine. The awesome part is that people weren’t even staring at us as it was an odd thing. It was perfectly normal. If I remembered correctly, we saw a dude on a moto pushing another broken moto by putting his foot on the other moto’s passenger stand. It was quite an experience. I don’t think we can ever do that in Canada. Only in Cambodia. I ended up saving 10 USD so I bought dessert for all the guys in the guy dorm. Those two deserved it because it was quite a work out for them to be pulling us. I had videos of us driving home and videos of us driving to place where they fixed my Pegasus. It was a very memorable event.

This week has also been a blessing for me as I was able get to know my mentor couple a little bit more. We had many opportunities during the week to sit down and talk. It was very good. My mentor’s wife told me about her life growing up in Vietnam, her finding God, meeting up with her now husband, and of course, the process of her becoming a missionary. She is very open and very awesome person to talk to. I feel like I can talk to her about anything. My mentor, however, is the exact opposite of his wife. He is the serious traditional Vietnamese fatherly figure. He naturally has this solemn demeanor to him that gives the impression that he is a no non-sense kind of guy, and he is. In public, he is just a very well respected man. However, there are a few random moments when he becomes the jester of the house. Although those moments are few, I am beginning to see more and more of that side of him every day, especially when he is around his wife. They are the most “whacked” Vietnamese pastor couple I have ever encountered. Separated, they are your standard serious Vietnamese people, but together, hell breaks loose (in a good way of course). They are serious but funny in a weird way. They way they communicate with each other are almost childlike. Yes, there are times when things may not be smooth but most of the times, they poke fun at each other, make each other laugh, and causing troubles for each other. They are the most unique old Vietnamese couple that I have seen. I really admire them as a couple. They have this joy that not a lot of other couple has, which I can only attribute to the joy they have in God. Each was a firm believer prior to meeting each other. Both wanted to become missionaries at a very young age. Both have a strong relationship with God. You can see it resonates in each of their lives. I can’t help but secretly wish that my future wife and I would experience the same joy that they have in God and as a family. Anyhoo (my favorite nonsense word), enough with the mushy stuff. Let’s move on to the introduction of more people.

Aside from my mentor’s couple, here is another person I would like to introduce to all of you. Her name is Vo Bich Van. She is our house helper. As the oldest in her family (if you are wondering, she is Bich Thuy’s oldest sister. The one I mentioned about waking up really early to go to school), she does not have the luxury of going to school past grade 1 in Khmai school or grade 3 in Vietnamese school. She is 21 and is extremely shy. At first glance, Duc and I thought she was a 13 year old Cambodian girl. She definitely looks really young for her age. Or maybe it’s the Asian thing. She started the same day I started living with my mentor so we were both getting to know each other. (And no, getting to know does not imply courtship, Emma. And she already has a boyfriend who is a really close friend of mine). She started at 8am in the morning and worked until noon. Her job is to clean the house and to prepare lunch for us. Although she stared at 8, she normally arrived at 7:30am for ‘family devotion’ or so I like to think of it. My mentor, his wife, myself, and Van normally have devotion together at 7:30am or whenever Van comes. The reason I called it a ‘family devotion’ is because the atmosphere of our morning devotion is a picture perfect, at least in my mind, what I would imagined a God-fearing family would have every morning prior to the business of life. In a way, I see my mentor couple as the parents leading their kids in the ways of God. I am really glad for these morning devotions, although I am barely focus, because they offered me a fresh start to my days. Another reason that I really appreciate having Van around the house is that I have a ‘free’ Khmai tutor. Throughout the course of the day, I would often come to bother Van with my Khmai questions.

Talk about Khmai questions, here comes the highlight of my week. I am starting Khmai language study at Khmai School of Language center. It is pretty much a house about 5 minutes walk from my house. This place is very well known Khmai language school among the foreigners. A majority of the people who attended this center are new missionaries, Catholic priests, international workers. Quite a few of the CAMA missionaries study Khmai here. It was highly recommended by my mentor as his wife and himself are also students of this school. The school offers different type of programs which are tailored to a wide spectrum of students. For myself, my mentor opted that I should study Khmai phonetic. It focused on the speaking, dialogue conversation, and not on the writings system. As an intern student with only 8 months living in Cambodia, he felt that I should not worry about the writing part but more on day to day conversational skills. They have a 2-months, or 40 hours, book which would cover quite a bit of day to day needs. Without further adieu, here is a picture of my teacher. His name is Samnang. He is 23 years old but looks a lot older than me. Maybe because of his dark skin. He is an extremely funny dude. He jokes a lot during my class which makes the lesson fly by pretty fast. One of the most extremely awesome qualities of his is that he is very knowledgeable in English, compare to a lot of Khmai people I have encountered. The downside to this is that he has a strong Khmai accent which makes him hard to understand on numerous occasion. Overall, he’s an awesome guy. He loves food as much as I do. He even recommends quite a few good restaurants around Phnom Penh. If I ever get fat while being here, I would definitely blame him for it. I think that is it for this week, stay tuned for more update.