Phnom Tamau Wildlife Sanctuary

On Saturday Matthew and I went to the greatest zoo I have ever been too. I loved every minute of it. Touching and feeding many of the animals was completely fine. Warning signs--none.  It was the perfect day to be there. It was raining for part of the time, so we nearly had the place to ourselves.

The zoo consists of rescued animals that for whatever reason can not be released back into the wild. I was impressed with the quality of the animal enclosures. It seems like this place really does great things.

When we arrived, some girls sold us pieces of sugar cane, a bag of potatoes, and a bunch of bananas to feed the animals. One of those girls followed us around and offered to carry the bags of food for me. She was trying to give away our food as quickly as possible to any animal she could find so that we would buy more from her, so I had to take the bags back.  So cheeky!  Most of the bananas were stolen by a lone monkey who snatched the bunch from Matt's hand. I chased that monkey but he made it up a tree and probably spent the day eating bananas by himself. Everybody was laughing. It's funny when it is stolen bananas. If it is your camera that gets snatched by the monkey, not as funny.

Our little friend who was trying to help us get rid of the food we bought from her

We saw a few wild boars roaming around loose. When one came toodling over near us and a group of Cambodians, we were all a little nervous.  Our friend who was following us started feeding it, and before long we were all touching it.

Matt with a wild boar 

Another highlight was five adorable river otters. As soon as those otters saw us coming, they dropped what they were doing and started begging at the fence.  They wanted us to buy some fish to feed them.  We pretended that we were walking away to see what they would do, and they scampered away to play again.  When we came back, they came right back to the fence.  We bought a plate of fish to feed them for a dollar.  Otters are one of my favorites.

Hungry little face poking through the fence

Beg, plead, beg!

Hope, wait, plead!

Fish from Matt!

The otters patiently waiting:

One of my other favorite things was the monkeys.  There were monkeys running wild around the zoo, and a variety of rescued monkeys in enclosures.  It was fun feeding the little monkeys that were running around, but our favorite was an old mama gibbon.  She had a huge cataract in one eye and part of one of her hands was damaged.  I offered her some sugarcane and to our surprise she rejected the treat and instead grabbed my hand and placed it on her head to get scratched!  Then she wanted a leg massage.  It was so fun.  I held her little hands and stroked them and looked at her fingers.  She was so sweet.  I could have stayed there with her all day.

Our favorite gibbon

Here's the footage:

This sanctuary is making a big effort to save sunbears, an endangered species in Cambodia.  They have been hunted to the brink of extinction because bear paw soup is a delicacy in China.  It's really sad how many of Cambodia's resources are permanently destroyed in various ways for short-term supplies of cash.  I guess that is a problem everywhere in the world though.

Endangered sunbear

Elephants in Cambodia have also been nearly killed off for their ivory.  This guy is one of the few left in Cambodia.  We saw him roaming around so we drove up to check him out.  He came over to our car and we rolled down the window.  He stuck his trunk in and I gave him a treat and a pat on the trunk.  It was so great!

 Elephant at the window

We also saw tigers, cheetah, and a variety of other mammals and birds.

Coin rubbing

The apartment we are renting provides daily maid service to the tenants. Every day I try to talk to the maid a little bit, just about daily things, to practice speaking. It usually doesn't result in much actual information being communicated since my Khmer skills are so poor, but the maid seems to enjoy trying with me, which I appreciate. She is a really sweet woman. I thinks she has the impression that I understand more of what she is saying than what I really do. When I say "I don't understand" in response to something she says to me (which is true for just about everything she says) she seems disappointed, so I don't have the heart to tell her that I have no idea what she is saying very often.

Yesterday I asked her if she had children and she told me she had 5, 3 girls and two boys. Finally, a conversation that was resulting in actual information being exchanged! She said she also had a husband. Then, continuing with the small talk, I heard her say the word for "hurt" or "sick". She pulled up her sleeves and her arms had huge bruises on them. She pulled down the front of her shirt a bit, and her chest had huge streaks of bruising as well. I immediately became very concerned. Since she had just mentioned having a husband, I asked if it was her husband who caused this. She said no, and kept making rubbing motions back and forth over her bruises.

Then I remembered something Matt had told me about treating illness in Cambodia and I immediately felt relieved. Cambodians and other southeast asians often treat illness by having someone rub their skin with a coin until welts form. Enough force is applied that it causes bruising. By showing me her bruises, she was letting me know that she was sick and had been treated. She said the illness was in her neck, and I heard her coughing a couple of days earlier, so I'm guessing it was a cold.

I was glad I knew about coin rubbing, otherwise I would have spent the whole day worrying that the maid had an abusive husband, a blood disease, or some other horrible thing. Phew!

The market

I have been here for just over a week now and I'm really loving it so far.  I met a girl from Ecuador at church who said the first month in Cambodia is the honeymoon period, then you become disillusioned for a while, and then you start adjusting and feeling okay about life again.  I'm definitely honeymooning right now.  We'll see how I feel in a few weeks I guess.  Matt has been here for over a month now and is doing really well also.

I love the apartment that Matt found for us.  It is really nice and comfortable and feels very homey.  I also like the neighborhood, Toul Kork.  It is relatively quiet yet it is so close to everything for me.  It is near the Royal University of Phnom Penh where I am going to start Khmer language classes in a week, the church we go to, a Western style supermarket with a lot of imported products, and also one of the best hospitals in Phnom Penh.  I am already familiar with that hospital because I went there to get my wounds cleaned once.  Best of all, the Toul Kork market is probably about a block away from our house

Matt picked a really great location for me because I can either walk or take tuk tuks for short distances to get  to the places I'll need to go to the most.  Matt is allowed to take home a Red Cross car to use on the evenings and weekends. He uses that to drive across town to and from work everyday.  That is so nice to have available, and I feel much safer riding in the car for longer trips.

I am usually such a picture fiend, but I haven't taken many pictures so far because I don't want to look like a tourist.  I really stand out in our neighborhood. People watch me when I walk down the street and they remember me.  I'm the only Caucasian besides Matt that I've seen walking around, and a vacationer taking pictures isn't the image I want to project.  Yesterday when Matt was with me at the market I decided to just grit my teeth and take my camera out, even though it pained me to do it.  I've also taken some pictures while in the car.

I go to the market almost every day and it's a great place for me to try speaking. Most of the time, I feel really optimistic about learning Khmer and love trying to speak using the very few things I know, but one day, after a particularly confusing time at the market, I was feeling discouraged and felt like progress was going to be impossibly slow and difficult.  I decided I couldn't go any longer without knowing the numbers and so that night Matt taught me the numbers from 1 to a million as well as money terminology.  Things went so much more smoothly at the market the next day.  I was so happy and excited.  I just have to add that I am so lucky to have Matt to help teach me.  He speaks flawless Khmer, he has an degree in linguistics, and he is an all around great teacher.  I may be biased, but I am totally convinced that I have the best Khmer teacher in the world.

One of the entrances to the market at the end of the street

 

At the market

The little kids there are so cute.  A majority of the vendors are women and they bring their kids with them.
 

 

Yesterday, Matt and I heard a sad little kitten crying somewhere in the market.  We zoned in on the sound and a nice man asked if I wanted him to catch it for me.  It was so alone and so sad.  There are tons of cats and dogs around, breeding like crazy.  Some of the dogs are kept as pets, but all of the cats are feral. The man told Matt that they don't keep cats as pets or even let their children play with cats because the cat fur will get in their nose and give them asthma.  Another man piped in and told Matt that cats with three colors and long tails are magical.  They can just look at a bird and it will fall down dead.  Interesting.  He didn't say whether the magical cats are an exception and can safely be kept as pets.  I'd like to know.  Anyway, I felt so bad for that kitten.  It was so scared of people and all alone.  I wanted to take it home with me.  Instead I let it go and it hid beneath something and started crying again.  

The saddest little kitten

 

I'll include one more picture at the market for this post.  The English words and phrases that get printed on things and the English names given to some businesses are an endless source of entertainment for Matt and me.  This t-shirt was cracking me up.  I might have to go back and buy it:

"Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation, such as snow, hail, and HAPPY SMILE"

There are even lollipops and a cat wearing socks and on it.  Brilliant!