Missing Home

I sat down to write this post a few hours ago.  Except I didn't know what to write so I searched for interviews of Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, who it turns out are BFF's.  Then I read my friend's blog (which is awesome), made a cinnamon latte, made some toast, thought about how I felt like watching Chuck reruns instead of writing and checked Facebook and Twitter.  To my disappointment, inspiration was not forthcoming from any of those sources so I looked up quotes about "home."

What I found ranged from the cynical to the odd to the heartwarming.
Some of my favourites:

"The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home." - Confucius

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body." - Benjamin Franklin

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." - Maya Angelou

And then I came across one by a guy called Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe who said, 

"Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home." 

I feel this keenly and have been thinking about what it is about home that I miss so much.  I love this adventure that I'm on and I frequently get a thrill as I take in the heady mix of sights, sounds, flavours and smells that surround me.

That said, the sacrifice of home and all that it encompasses is a very real one.  Living away from home means missing out on not just the big moments but the smaller, everyday ones that make up a life.  It means giving up comfort, perhaps not financially, but emotionally and psychologically.  It means surrendering a lot of what you believe is the best way to do things.  Often it means laying aside your own food preferences and your own language.  Nothing is instinctive and everything must be thought about, all the while knowing that despite best intentions, there will be times when you have no idea what is going on or being said around you and there will be times when you get offended and cause offence.  

Being away has also made me think about what a remarkable country South Africa is and I am more thankful than ever that I get to call it home.

While varying in acuteness, homesickness is always there. Besides the obvious things like family and friends  there is an exhaustive list of things I miss about home.  Some of which are:

• Smarties and Cadbury chocolate
• Nestle hot chocolate
• Going for meandering walks on the common in Grahamstown...

•  and the farm in Harding

• Green

• Sitting as close as possible to the fire in Winter while roasting marshmallows
• Day trips to Kenton, in fact the whole Eastern Cape coastline

• Evening drinks and chips on the veranda with my family
• Driving my car

• South African's (we are a glorious motley crue of cultures and languages and beliefs and I love it)
• Grahamstown Festival

• Walking around my mom's garden, cup of tea in hand, while she points out newly blooming flowers or describes her plans to develop an area of the garden.

• Star gazing
• Mr Price & Woolies (it's so great knowing exactly where to find pumps or a good pair of jeans)
• My typewriter

to name a few...

Beauty in the Walking

I like walking.  I like the slowed down pace; the funny signs, interesting people and spontaneous moments that you wouldn't notice or appreciate were you using a faster mode of transport. I like the head clearing that happens, the perspective that returns, the smiles.

Last Friday night I took a walk along Sisowath Quay aka The Riverside.  It's a feast for the senses.  Aromas wafting out of the countless and varied restaurants, tuk-tuk drivers calling out, amateur and professional photo shoots, boats lazily gliding up and down the river, young guys playing a version of hacky-sack with a shuttlecock and large groups of people doing aerobics and/or synchronised dance moves.

By Sunday evening I'd had an unexpectedly full weekend and was anticipating a quiet night in to recupe, but I was swayed, very easily I might add, to join friends for a drink at the riverside.  The traffic was obscene so we parked our moto's and walked, an altogether more pleasant affair than battling car fumes and other harried drivers while inching forward painfully slowly.  We went to a rooftop bar at a hotel named The Quay and the view is exquisite, as is the mercifully cool breeze so high up.  After great conversation and a delicious, although unwise cocktail (Espresso at 7 o'clock meant I couldn't sleep until after midnight) we meandered back up the promenade and had a delightful ride home on much quieter roads.  I felt buoyed by the walks I'd taken over the weekend, like a sharp wind had blown away the cobwebs and bought perspective to my mind and peace to my heart.

Frizz Cooking Course

The day after my Dreamland excursion, the weekend of glory continued on Saturday morning with a cooking class at Frizz (bucket list item-check), a restaurant in Phnom Penh.  I hopped into a tuk-tuk with some work colleagues and we set off.

After meeting at the restaurant we piled into tuk-tuks again and headed off to a market near the riverside, where our class instructor pointed out the different herbs, spices, fruit, vegetables and meats and told us their names and what kind of dishes they were used in.  Between chatting, taking photos, warily eyeing the live fish and crabs  and the general hustle and bustle, I missed a lot of what he said so can't relay very much of use..  However I did discover that turmeric looks like a cross between a carrot and a ginger root.  Also, I discovered what galangal looks like. Ya, that's about it.  Everything was very fresh and the meat was unaccompanied by the usual smells gained by hanging in a hot, close space for hours on end.  In fact, as I mentioned the crabs and fish were still alive!

After our market tour we carried on to the cooking school.  First up were deep fried spring rolls with taro and carrot and a delicious peanut dipping sauce.

After salting and squeezing the liquid out of the taro, a feat requiring a fair bit of exertion, we rolled it with the carrot into cylindrical shapes before rolling it in the dough and then deep frying.  The rather sedate flavours of the taro and carrot were perfectly contemplated by the nutty, spicy dipping sauce.  Sitting around a table sharing a meal with predominantly strangers means politeness levels are pretty high and after we'd all tucked into our rolls, one lone roll lay on the plate for about 10 minutes before compassion overtook me and I offered to put it out of it's misery.

Next was the fish amok, which I might add is an exceptionally tasty dish.  I've tried it at a few restaurants (the best of which was found in Siem Reap) but had never attempted to make it myself.

It's a rather complicated affair involving pounding lemongrass, lime rind, ginger, garlic, turmeric, chilies and shallots in a pestle and mortar, adding red curry paste and then coconut milk and fish.  We pinned banana leaves into a bowl and then cooked the whole mixture in a double boiler.

Once it's cooked you can garnish it with julienne peppers and coconut milk and enjoy with rice. 

It really was delicious and an added bonus of the day was getting to hang out with some of my colleagues, such lovely people, and making a new friend.

http://www.cambodia-cooking-class.com/half-day-cooking.php

Recent Highlights

I recently finished my 2 month teaching stint and, with the onset of Summer holidays, am relishing working afternoons only.  Holidays started 10 days ago, with what will go down as one of my favourite weekends in Phnom Penh.

First up was dinner at the river side and then a long anticipated trip to Dreamland, an amusement park. The combining factors of growing up on a farm in a small town and being an avid reader meant certain things were formed in my imagination as a child that have had a hold on me ever since.  Things like circuses, hot air balloons, Brownies and Girl Scouts, and amusement parks to name a few.

Imagine my delight at visiting a bonafide theme park.. Besides the Royal Show in Pietermaritzburg and some other rides in East London, I'v never been to an amusement park!

First up was the bumper cars, during which I felt my spine disconnect and hang in mid air on 2 occassions after being rammed from the side.  As they say, it is better to ram than to be rammed and so my goal became to avoid getting hit, a moderately successful endeavour.  In among taking various posed shots with statues of Batman, Superman and newlyweds we made our way to Jack's Ice Cream.  Ordering ice cream proves to be the greatest challenge of the night as the lady behind the counter had lightning fast movements and before a sentence was complete had handed over an ice cream holding the flavours you may or may not have been attempting to ask for.  Coke floats, unexpectedly flavoured ice cream found it's way into a few hands before we got the hang of it..  The trick was to get your request out really fast but also be watching carefully and halt her mid scoop if she was putting on the wrong flavour.  Nevertheless the ice cream was delicious!

Next up was the Ferris Wheel.  The company was good, the breeze was cool and the city lights provided a romantic view.  I loved it.  Unfortunately we had arrived quite late and so the park closed before we could go on any other rides but I've sussed it out and next time there shall be whirling tea cups, a carousel, swings and maybe even some ride where you get strapped in and flung around and around..maybe..

• Making an awesome new friend
• Madagascar 3 in 3D (watch this awesome preview if you're not yet convinced you should see it)
• Getting whatsapp - making communication with faraway friends much easier.
• Chancing upon a great read, "Peace Like A River" by Leif Enger.  It's a captivating story of fierce, unconditional love and redemption and is a lyrical and evocatively written book
• Having time to myself 
• Devotions on a quiet beach in Sihanoukville
• Those moments in conversation where your heart soars with the resonance of another's words
• Discovering fresh strawberry smoothies at the market near my house

The Good Stuff: French Toast

I love food.  Cooking it, baking it, thinking about it, eating it.. you name it.

I also have an inherent mistrust of recipes and very rarely will I follow a recipe to the letter.  At times this has been disastrous (flat, sticky, rock hard 'cake' and sticky, rock hard, spoon bending mulberry jam come to mind) and at other times it works out perfectly (and so I keep releasing my inner Nigella, convinced my idea will work just as well if not better than the recipe I'm cooking from). I frequently don't even bother with a recipe (except when baking, that story is for another day).

Anyway, inspired by my friend Claire and the fact that I have the day off work, I decided to make my own version of French Toast for lunch:

I'm fairly sure you'll like it..

A Joyful Thought.. from Ecclesiastes 9: 4

Some music I've been enjoying lately:

1. Garden Party - Owl City
2. Control - JJ Heller
3. When We Were Young - Sucre
4. Come On, Come Out - Feist
5. Quill - Bison (not the best recording but you can download their album here
6. Hiding Out - Sucre
7. Deer In The Headlights - Owl City
8. Flowers In Your Hair - The Lumineers
9. Dancing In The Dark - Mat Kearney
10. Cubism Dream - Local Natives
11. Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
12. A Dustland Fairytale - The Killers
13. Mr Rock and Roll - Amy Macdonald
14. Ships In The Night - Mat Kearney
15. Read My Mind - The Killers

Long Distance Communication Fail

The downside of living halfway across the world from the people you love is that you don't get to see them in person.  The upside is that you get to see them in grainy, pixelated form with jerky facial movements and stuck with unfortunate expressions, as if the wind has suddenly changed direction and the old wives tale is true. Skype, what a wondrous invention.  

This afternoon I had an appointment to chat with not just my immediate family but a few cousins and aunts and uncles too, all gathered for my aunt's 60th birthday party.  

The chat went like this:

Me: hello? hello? hello? Can you hear me?

[Lots of sighing, peering at camera, fiddling with buttons while family does same.  Remembered that camera was on and wished I’d turned it off before peering right into the camera, sticking face up close and scrunching it up in frustration..

Typing:

[5:06:59 PM] Victoria Simpson: i can see you but cant hear you

[5:09:00 PM] Victoria Simpson: can you hear me

[5:09:02 PM] Victoria Simpson: ?

hang up, check sound (it’s working), check mic (it’s working) call again.

Typing:

[5:09:55 PM] Victoria Simpson: cant hear you..is your sound on?

[5:11:00 PM] Victoria Simpson: can you hear me?

[5:12:19 PM] Victoria Simpson: can you hear me?

[brother and dad alternately stick mouths right up to the camera and mouth words, of which I can work out exactly none.

Typing:

[5:14:13 PM] Victoria Simpson: type

[5:14:20 PM] Victoria Simpson: hello?

[5:14:39 PM] Dale Simpson: Vic wer can hear u (sic)

[5:14:55 PM] Victoria Simpson: ok well i cant hear you guys..

[5:15:01 PM] Victoria Simpson: just see you:)

[5:15:05 PM] Victoria Simpson: is your sound on?

[5:15:09 PM] Victoria Simpson: i mean your mic

[5:15:21 PM] Dale Simpson: u talk we will listen

Me speaking : no I can’t do that, that’s arb.

[dad begins mouthing words again and someone points camera hurriedly at each family member, reducing them all to a blur of light and colour]

The “conversation” carried on in this vein for close to an hour: cousin making faces, alternate family members waving, more frenzied camera movement and close ups of faces at odd angles, more typing and me talking to silence and laughing ruefully and waving and grinning at each other.

I love my family. And while I like it when Skype works, sometimes it’s funny when it doesn’t..

Of Bus Trips, Boat Rides and Bungalows

Two days after arriving in Phnom Penh, I was privy to a group discussion around where to spend Khmer New Year, which fell over the weekend of the 13th April.  It's a good thing the people taking part in the discussion became my friends, because way back in February they invited me to go on holiday with them..

Two months flew by and the much anticipated holiday drew nearer.  Bags were packed, camera batteries charged and the night before we left, the holiday crew slept at our house so we could leave as early as possible.

The air conditioned mini van, pad kos (road food), lots of good conversation and laughs made the trip seem pretty short (except for when we got lost) and after a few hours we uncertainly unloaded ourselves in a quiet fishing village, amidst a few giggling kids and the odour of fish. A rickety pier took us to the boats, but not ours...  We hung around until our boat came to fetch us and we chugged off in the direction of the island.  At this point I was ridiculously excited as I have dreamt of such a holiday for years and couldn't believe that I would soon be spending a few days in a bungalow, lying in a hammock, on an island.  And that the bungalow was literally right on the beach..woah!!

So in this state of disbelieving excitement we arrived at Koh Thmei Island.  What followed was a glorious few days of hammock lying, book reading, beach walking, sea swimming, tube floating, sun burning, cocktail drinking, delicious food eating, card playing, sunrise admiring fun:)  I returned feeling refreshed and incredibly grateful to have had such a great experience. A few photos of paradise:

rose bedecked bow/stern

slops

our bungalow

dining area & bungalow

fish eyed boat

view from the doorway

the water was so warm

sunrise - day 2

one of my best photos ever

perspective

fishing boat spotted on a walk

admiring the sunrise

yip, it was even more beautiful than it looks

tranquility

On a side note, some of us decided a swim in the rain would be a fun thing to do.  As soon as the rain got heavy enough we charged off into the sea.  What had been envisioned as a frolic in the rain turned into yelps and squeals as we realised we'd gone into a shallow, rocky area (by realised I mean the jagged rocks were cutting into our feet and tripping us up).  Optimism prevailed.. Surely the sea would get deeper and we'd escape the rocks soon.  Except we didn't and as we gingerly floated along, the owner of the island appeared on the pier and started waving and shouting, "move over there! sea urchins" Sea urchins? What the heck are they?  At that moment, I discovered what they were as one of them shot a spike into my thumb and I tried to contain my thrashing about to the surface of the water.  Gosh, I was relieved to get into deep, rock and sea urchin free water!  

For the interested, this is where we stayed: http://koh-thmei-resort.com/eng_home.html

Siem Reap 2.0

Siem Reap is such a charming town.  After the hustle and bustle of Phnom Penh, it was great to take meandering bike rides along the river and out to Angkor Wat (although meandering became lung-killing, leg- wobbling speed as we realised we might miss seeing the sunset from a mountain overlooking part of the temple area), discover walkways bursting with restaurants and quaint boutiques, very little traffic and a laid back atmosphere.

After our Angkor Wat adventure which included walking around the temples for hours before going home for a break and returning on aforementioned bikes for the sunset (which included a roughly 16km cycle both ways and a hike up a mountain only to discover we'd missed the sunset) we spent the evening at a restaurant called Temple whose selling point was the opportunity to watch a free show of Apsara, traditional Khmer dancing.  Delicious chicken amok served in a banana leaf (I'd tried the Cambodian signature dish of fish amok for lunch), ice cold coke, beautiful dancing and good conversation followed by a roadside banana, chocolate and condensed milk pancake would have been enough to satisfy but we'd decided on one last treat for the evening...a Dr. Fish foot massage.  For the unitiated, you sit on the edge of a big tub of water with your feet dangling in the water and little fish eat your dead skin.

It was very ticklish and really freaked me out at first and I had to force myself to keep my feet in the water as the fish FLOCKED to them but you get used to it and it feels good, although I preferred not to watch the fish nibbling away.

wobbliest, most rickety bike I've ridden

self portrait

another part of the night market

street food is changing my life

view from Temple restaurant, home of delicious chicken amok

Siem Reap was lovely and I'm so grateful for the unexpected opportunity to spend a few days there.