2012 Camping

Hmm.. It looks like all we do is going camping!  Well we haven't done too much since the last post.  Until mid January, I had been at home since November 27 or there abouts.  A very long time.  We had run out of milk powder and flour and even spaghetti.  So since our venture out of Rovieng in January for an ADRA meeting at Kompong Thom, we went to Phnom Penh at the beginning of February for a whole week!  Our SMILE project, on January 10 finally went live. And so life for me is suddenly busy.  We're going to try to keep things posted over here at Project SMILE to see what our SMILE project is doing - the blog is a test monitoring / reporting tool so we'll see how that goes.

Well last weekend we went camping again.  Ben found a new forest to explore.  He went there about a month ago and got a local guide to take him to an Angkor Wat era temple lost in the forest.  Naturally that time he forgot to take his camera.  So this time, loaded with the kids and a camera we set out to find it.  Well what do ya know, it is still lost - hidden apparently.  Jarrah told Ben while he was carrying her through the jungle vines, "maybe the tiger knows where the hidden temple is."  Probably.  We did have a fine time.  There is a spring coming from where the temple is located.  A lovely mountaintop where the kids and I hung a hammock and rested while Ben went off searching.  We think we know where we went wrong after talking to the villagers on our return. 

The day we left home, we almost forgot our tent.  We picked Amelie up from school (her one hour of computer class finishes at 8am).  She asked, "where's the tent."  So off we go back home to pick up the tent and some other things we forgot.  We unfortunately didn't pick up the mattresses.  Why I don't know.  We camped right where our car was parked.  So none of us got a good night sleep - well maybe the kids did.  It also rained - just a light steady sprinkle - enough to make us get up and drape the fly over the tent.  But you know what happens when flies touch the tent - the water seeps through.  So in the somewhere in the middle of the night, there was a lovely puddle in one of the ditches that the tent was set over.  Not on my side at least.  By dawn, I realised I should have been sleeping in the car on the reclining front seat.  Why I didn't think of that earlier I am not sure.  It was a tough night.  

Here are some pictures at least - but alas, none of the temple still.  Maybe next time!!