Moo frog chorus

I suspect that there are many among you who thought I was exaggerating when I wrote about the moo frogs. They seem mythical to me, but they are pretty amazing. Sure, we've all heard frogs in the yard or creek at night. This is, I assure you, different. Last evening, after a rainy day, we were treated to quite a chorus and I captured a bit. I don't have a recorder handy so I used my camera. I can't figure out how to put just audio here so I uploaded the video. The steady black stuff is what the yard looks like at night. The sound in the video is amazingly like it sounded sitting on the porch, with the difference that this is just over 30 seconds and we get to hear it most of the night. Some other soloists joined the orchestra later in the evening for a bit of a jam session, adding a nice glissando as a counterpoint to this, but I had already packed up the camera. Just thought you might enjoy it. Call it a taste of the rainy season.

For those who are into musical arrangements, the baritones are the moo frogs. Then you will hear an alto voice that seems to tie the moos together nicely, or perhaps the moos punctuate the alto lines. The percussion from the gecko and insect groups fits in rather nicely, I think you will agree. Overall, a bit repetitious from a melodic perspective, but the arrangement is excellent. Good sound balance too, so kudos to the sound technicians. Here we go.

Songs from the Noir

There is a musical group based in Phnom Penh that is doing some interesting music in both English and Khmer. It is minimalist stuff, almost a coffee house vibe from the 60s, but getting in some sense of Velvet Underground. The band is called Krom and they've just released a CD. I don't know the people, but I liked this video they did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HgmcSZlhE8  There is good footage of life in the city and you can hear how they sound..

Their website is  http://www.themekongsessions.com/

Krom: Songs from the Noir

“Songs from the Noir” is now available for download via CD baby at the following link: http://cdbaby.com/cd/krom12

The rains come, the tourists go

The onset of the rainy season is also the onset of slow season in Cambodia. The rains can make travelling about miserable, so it probably isn't the best time to visit. The rains ease up in October, usually, maybe November and the inrush begins again.

Rainy season doesn't just turn on one morning. We kind of ease into it. Today was a beautiful day, and I took the motorbike into town to get needed supplies (cabbage and Irish whiskey if you must know).

This is one of the normally busy streets at about 0830. The khmer start mornings early, and perhaps the backpackers are all still sleeping in, but I don't think so. Along this street you can buy welding gas, bread, cell phones, some packaged junk food, get your hair done, and a bit further down is the main bank, Acleda.

 Behind the stack of tires is one of the many motorcycle repair shops. This one is just around the corner from the Honda dealer. One lovely thing about riding a motorbike here is that if you have a problem in town, you are never far from someone who thinks he knows motorbikes better than you, and certainly knows them better than me, and has tools and parts.

 This is the Eastern end of our main market (psaa). It was more crowded earlier when I went by. I came back to get a shot of one of the pony carts, but they had finished loading and lumbered off to wherever they lumber to. This is at the intersection with the main road that goes to Phnom Penh and the market really starts down where the umbrellas are and is quite extensive. I bought two cabbages and four nam groaech, which are sweet deep-fried rice flour pancakes.  The shops closer are mostly where you can buy cell phones. My Nokia was less than $20 there.

The shop ('Hang' in khmer) on the right is across the street from where we live. This is where I buy 20 litre jugs of drinking water and Anchor (pronounced "an chore" so as not to confuse it with "Ankor" beer).

A visit to Phnom Penh

The name Phnom Penh literally means "Penh's hill", but the city is rather flat and quite walkable. Our neighbors in Kampot suggested we try a guest house owned by friends of theirs. The name was inauspicious. The Lone Star Saloon does not conjure up images of the pearl of the orient. Still a reference is a reference and these folks are usually pretty good, so we gave it a try. Our regular taxi driver, Mr Mao, took us right to the door in time for lunch.

Our trips to the city are infrequent and usually based around the need for things not available in the provinces. Our favorite way to shop is to hire a tuk tuk for the morning and take advantage of the local knowledge as well as transportation.

Here are some tuk tuks outside the wat that is just at the end of 23rd Street where the Lone Star is located.

They actually seem to do a brisk business ferrying monks back and forth from where ever monks go to when they aren't at the wat.

By the way, The Lone Star was great. Most of the folks working there are Khmer, although the lady who owns it admits to having been to Texas. Her husband is from Texas and the sentiments are his. The rooms were comfortable and quiet and good value. The location is perfect for prowling the city, regardless of what you are prowling for.

Waiting for the rain

It is getting warm in Cambodia now. The nights still cool down, but the afternoons are often quite hot. I can't tell you exactly how hot it gets, because I have given up on getting information from weather reports. There is no weather station here, and the weather is quite different in the big city where there is one, but take it from a kid who loves the tropics--it does get hot. It won't get cooler until the rains come.

April is the cruelest month according to Thomas Stearns Eliot, the American poet who wanted to be a British poet, and did a fair job of that. In Cambodia, which tried being French for a while, April and May are the hottest months, tempered by, at some point, the advent of the mango rains, which produce the best mangoes in the known world. Good mangoes offset any perceived cruelty in my book. And the mangoes are tasty even now.

A mango tree in March, waiting for April showers

A Cambodian mango, but it tastes international

One of the many things I enjoy about Asia is the fresh food. The produce doesn't look like it was factory made. Oranges come in different sizes and some are mottled. They are flavorful, and that is what counts. Cambodians have an interesting way of talking about some fruit. The Romanized pronounciation for the word for orange is groach bpoasut, which doesn't do much justice to the way it sounds, really, and anyway all you need to say is groach to make your point. When I saw tangerines in the market, I asked my neighbor Nak what they were called. She said groach. When I pointed out that that was the word for oranges, she agreed. So I asked how the heck you could send someone to the market for tangerines and make sure they didn't come back with oranges. She said you say Battambang groach, which means oranges from the province of Battambang. Of course the word for mango is pretty close to the word for monkey, so I am learning to be careful what I ask for.

After the mangoes come the rains. The rains are often heavy to an extent those who haven't been to the tropics can't really imagine, but it is a good time of year. Roads are impassable, tourists go home, and the place is relatively cool and quiet. And wet.