Kampong Speu

Kampong Speu - Khmer New Year 2014

Meizel and I were invited by some Khmer friends to join them for a celebration in Kampong Speu for Khmer New Year. I had recently purchased a used moto but had only driven it around the city. For this journey I had to drive the moto about 50 Km outside of Phnom Penh to get to the celebration. I was very nervous about my first moto journey outside the city. Even scarier was that I didn't know how to get there so I had to drive fast enough to keep up with my friends.

The way to Kampong Speu required driving on a Cambodian Highway with many other motos, cars and large trucks driving much faster than I was used to. For about the first 40 Km I think every muscle in my body was clenched. After about an hour I started to relax and began to loved the feeling of driving the moto out in the country.

The celebration in Kampong Speu began with everyone (except for me, I was in charge of watching the bags) visiting a temple to be blessed by a monk.

After the blessing we went to a bungalow to eat food and relax in the shade. Exhausted from the drive I laid down for a while to get some energy. After that our Khmer friends played cards and Meizel and I decided to explore a little.

While exploring we saw this bridge and decided to cross and check out the other side. The bridge was not exactly an engineering feat rivaling Ankor Wat. We  timidly crossed the rickety bridge at the same time as hundreds of others going in either direction. Because of Khmer New Year, the bridge had a lot more traffic that it was used to. We made it safely across and looked around the other side of the river. It was filled with people eating and relaxing in the shade of the trees. (Did I mention Cambodia is fucking hot?)

After an hour or so we decided to head back to meet up with our friends. In line about 5 meters from the bridge we heard a loud "SNAP". The sound was the obviously one of the cables on the not so sturdy bridge breaking. Nobody fell but the floor of the bridge was now slanted downwards on one side and not safe to cross.

We needed to get to the other side to retrieve the moto so our only option now was to was across the waist deep river. Along with hundreds of Cambodians made the slow and slippery trek through the water to the other side of the river. We arrived, wet from the waist down, safely on the other side. We immediately saw our friends waiting for us and headed home.

The trip was fun, exhausting and exciting. What I really gained from the trip though was a love of driving my 100 cc moto outside to Phnom Penh to explore new parts of this beautiful and unique country.

 

Intro

I arrived in Cambodia August 8, 2013 in search of a new adventure. I enrolled in LanguageCorps Asia's TESOL program to become certified to teach English. I knew very little about Cambodia and was planning to complete the program in Thailand and teach there. I decided after two days in Cambodia to stay here and teach.

When I arrived in Cambodia everything seemed so new and foreign. The tuk tuks navigating the Phnom Penh traffic and the moto's carrying a family of five seemed outrageous. The tendency of driver's to drive on the opposite side of the road to avoid a traffic delays, the dusty streets and pedestrians casually walking into on coming traffic to cross the street was very chaotic and exciting.

My girlfriend, Meizel is an employee of LanguageCorps and we currently live together at the Marady Hotel where the LanguageCorps program is based. This blog will focus primarily on our adventures together while we explored this exciting foreign country in Southeast Asia.

I was raised in Northern Virginia and then went to college at the University of Kansas. I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona when I decided to fly to Cambodia to start my new adventure.

Meizel Nuera was raised on the island of Bohol, Philippines in the town of Trinidad. She was living in Cebu when she decided to move to Cambodia to complete her TESOL with LanguageCorps.