Saigon

Je pars à Saigon demain matin (départ du bus à 5h30... va falloir se coucher tôt !)

RDV à tous lundi avec un tampon de plus sur mon passeport !

Des photos sont en ligne

Il y a quelque part ma tronche, en train de faire semblant de travailler, comme

Allez sur http://frederic.relange.free.fr/cambodge/ puis cliquez sur Hanuman !

Le proverbe du jour :
Touk taeu,
Kampong naeu.

Ce qui signifie : "Le bateau part, le port reste."

À méditer.

Angkor in the rainy season

Only today dit I take a serious look at the first two rolls which I shot in Angkor with Noémi two weeks ago.

I was using the new 35 mm lens which my parents bought for me for my birthday and which Noémi carried with her.

My lightmeter failed in the middle of our stay in Siem Reap (there is bad connection with the display) so I had to rely on the "sweet sixteen" rule, a.k.a. "sunny 16" rule - thank you Karl for teaching me!- and intuition...

Also my camera got a bit of water and I decided to rewind the film, open the camera and make sur all humidity was wiped before reloading the film.

So, many disturbing factors (maybe the broken lightmeter was actually a good thing because I used to rely too much on it) but in the end some pictures I'm pretty happy with.

Let's start with a postcard-like picture of Angkor Wat's moat.


And an even more cliché picture of monks walking in Angkor Wat (do I sound blasé?)



Now, the rainy season means it rains one or twice a day so here is my best shot of what Angkor Wat looks like under the rain...
More soon, I have to work a little bit...

Land and Public Health in Ratanakiri (draft)

As I probably wrote, Ratanakiri was really an experience, within my experience of Cambodia and there is a lot I would like to write about Ratanakiri.

(According to Google 164,000 pages on the web spell Ratanakiri with double t vs. 112,000 pages spelling it with one t, so I'll write it... the way I prefer, i.e. with a single t.)

I've come to consider Phnom Penh like a big city and I've been in remote places of the countryside around Siem Reap, aroung Kampung Cham, etc. But Ratanakiri really gave me the impression of being the end of the world. The red dirt roads, the forests, the hills, the rain, the villagers: there is an undescribable atmosphere to it.

Do the villagers of Rattanakiri want better health care? What are the consequences of making available to them services that are not in their traditional way of life?

I visited the NGO CFI (Community Forestry International) on one of their projects in Rattanakiri :

CFI continues to support indigenous people's rights in Ratanakiri, Cambodia through the Ratanakiri Network Support Project.

From its beginning in January 2004, the majority of staff members in RNSP have been indigenous people of Ratanakiri. With minimal salaries, the staff provide services to indigenous communities, training people at village, commune, district and provincial level. They provide information about community rights, the importance of maintaining natural resources, the consequences of allowing loss of natural resources, ways to prevent loss of resources, and strategies to resolve conflicts. In addition, they have been promoting the concept of community networking so that communities have a collective way to advocate and address the ever-growing problems of land and forest alienation. The Ratanakiri Network Support Project has been working throughout 2004 and 2005. It has provided services to over target 120 target villages in 23 communes. It has also provided training courses to members of other communes and villages not yet incorporated into the Network. The project has significantly reduced the expansion of land alienation in Ratanakiri. While land problems are continuing as a result of land speculation, encroachment, and illegal logging, the extension activities of the Network has prevented many communities from complete social disintegration and land alienation.

Problème de conscience

Je suis un peu gêné car je souhaite changer le mode de fonctionnement avec mon collègue khmer, Bunchheang, de façon à ce qu'il prenne maintenant les responsabilités - pour que je ne sois que son assistant : inversion des rôles.

Cela pose plusieurs problèmes :
- L'habitude : j'avais l'habitude d'établir les priorités, de prendre les décisions et de donner à mon collègue des tâches, complétant ou corrigeant son travail si nécessaire (j'essayais déjà de faire le moins de choses possibles moi-même).
- La peur : j'ai peur que la qualité de notre travail diminue, que l'on perde la notion des priorités et du calendrier si ce n'est pas moi qui "pilote".
- L'anticipation : je serai remplacé par un autre expatrié au poste de responsable informatique. Que pensera-t-il du fait d'être nommé comme consultant-assistant ? L'acceptera-t-il de bon coeur ?

On peut répondre :
- Des habitudes se changent.
- Il faut prendre des risques. Il faut que je fasse prendre conscience à mon collègue de ces notions de ligne directrice et qu'il s'en remette au chef de projet régulièrement.
- Il n'y a pas de raison, si le nouveau système marche, que mon remplaçant s'en offusque. L'organisation du travail pourra changer si nécessaire lorsque mon remplaçant arrivera (mais c'est ce que je cherche à éviter).

A long day's work

I didn't remember it as so tiring.

One day on this project and already so many problems to solve, so many questions to answer, so many things to do!

I think I'm going to do none of them and flee: I've already been paid for my services...

Sihanoukville, Saigon, Bokor, here I come!

Kratie : les dauphins

À 15 km au nord Kratie (prononcez Kratcheh), une promenade sur l'eau permet de voir les dauphins du Mékong, qui sont des dauphins "Irrawaddy", espèce menacée par les filets de pêche et la pêche à l'explosif.

Pour nous, ils n'ont pas manifesté un enthousiasme hors du commun et n'ont par exemple pas daigné sauter en l'air et faire des pirouettes. C'est cependant impressionnant d'entendre dans le silence du fleuve la respiration de ces mammifères marins et de les entrevoir lorsqu'ils reprennent leur souffle, parfois à deux ou trois dans un bel ensemble.

Ajoutez à cela un beau coucher de soleil sur le Mékong et cela fait une expérience inoubliable.

Pour votre gouverne, ils n'ont pas de bec comme les dauphins que l'on a l'habitude de voir : ils ressemblent, comme le dit l'article de la Wikipédia, à des belugas.

Bangkok : Jim Thompson

Bonjour à tous,

Je suis bien rentré à Phnom Penh, je reprends difficilement le travail avec pour objectif du prendre le recul maximum pendant le dernier mois en aidant mon collègue khmer à mettre en place les choses les plus importantes mais en faisant moi-même le minimum pour anticiper la passation de pouvoir...

À Bangkok j'ai visité le Jim Thompson Museum : c'est somptueux. Dans un cadre magnifique de maisons traditionnelles en bois (bois de tek pour l'essentiel, "bois de fer" pour les poutres principales verticales), collection d'objets d'art khmers, thaïs, birmans tous plus précieux les uns que les autres.

J'ai eu une autre surprise agréable : le MoMA de New York a une boutique à Bangkok, dans le centre commercial "Siam" avec de nombreuses reproductions d'objets du musées ou de bijoux, cadres pour photos et autres objets simplement inspirés de styles représentés dans le musée comme celui de Franck Lloyd Wright.

À bientôt,

Joseph

Price of electricity

I was always told that electricity in Cambodia is very expensive and that's why no industry can flourish here. I tried more than once to compare prices with France and could not get a clear view because of pricing options and exchange rates.

If I convert French prices to USD they seem high because the euro is so strong now. The prices in France are not indexed on the price of oil though because 80% of the electricity is produced by nuclear plants and most of the rest is hydro-electricity.

Let's try anyway with prices in USD, exchange rates of 1.25 USD/Euro and 4050 Riels/USD.

In France, the price paid for electricity by individuals is between 8 and 13 cents/kWh with taxes (including 19.6% VAT). A small business pays between 6 and 10 cents/kWh. I guess large clients get lower prices.

In Phnom Penh, I pay my owners about 18 cents/kWh but most of my friends pay between 20 and 25 cents/kWh (the price I pay was the cost price for my owners at the time we signed the renting contract and I bet the price has increased since but my owners didn't bother reflecting the price increase because I consume only about 2 $ worth of electricity each month).

=> The difference doesn't strike at first when comparing the price I pay here (18 cents) to the highest price in France (13 cents).

In Stung Treng, on the Mekong in the North of Cambodia (about 50 kms from the border with Laos), they just got an electricity service three months ago.

A guest house owner told me that, before that, he used to pay 1 $/kWh for electricity generated by a neighbouring hotel. Now the price paid to the company is about 31 cents/kWh. The service is very unreliable, though.

In Banlung the price is lower: I heard a price of 15 cents/kWh but didn't get a full answer as to why. I guess electricity comes from Vietnam or Laos which are nearby.

=> Compared to the average income per inhabitant, electricity is obviously a very very expensive good in Cambodia, especially where the is no distribution service and one needs to own a generator or buy from someone who has one: think of someone living on 1 or 2 $ per day and a 1 $ price tag on the kWh... But I'm not enough of an economist to see how the price of electricity in the Phnom Penh area could by itself prevent industry to develop.

Ratanakiri

First of all let me apologize because it will be a lot of words and no pictures: I didn't take my camera with me (two heavy and the weather is so humid now I was afraid I would hae to lose too much time protecting it from the rain).

Itinerary was: Phnom Penh - Kratie - Stung Treng - Banlung.

Kratie: Irrawady dolphins, beautiful Mekong scenery, depressing town.
Stung Treng: depressing town, nice encounter with NGO workers in the evening.
Banlung: nice town, wonderful hotel, (a little bit) adventurous excursions to the surrounding villages and natural sites.

Phnom Penh sweet Phnom Penh

Noémi and I are back from Ratanakiri which was a great experience! Beautiful landscapes, meeting with an NGO called CFI which gave us information about the "land issue" (I'll write more about it soon), sleeping in a very charming Lodge called Terres Rouges and enjoying the crossing of rivers with no bridges...
More to come soon.