Fishing Wars

We went back to Sihanoukville for one night on the Big Yellow Boat to get supplies. This is a very pleasant trip across the Gulf of Thailand, but the getting on and off present quite a challenge! Jetties here are not like any others and health and safety have never been heard of. You have to judge the swell in order to get off, leaping across at the wrong moment onto rickety boards can be unpleasant, if not actually fatal.

Here are a couple of examples! The jetty on the right is about 20 feet above the water.

Not only is the boat the main diving vessel here, it doubles as a free ferry for the islanders and also helps the local community to police their marine conservation and fishing zones.

On the way back yesterday we spotted a boat anchored on the reef in the middle of the protected area and made a detour to check it out. The boat turned out to be a tourist fishing trip from Sihanoukville. The owner wasn't happy to be challenged, but he did eventually move. It felt rather like belonging to Greenpeace!

Then, today, while out on a diving expedition to a wreck site, they found two Vietnamese boats close inshore, fishing illegally in Cambodian waters.

The boats were tiny, with hardly room for one to sleep, never mind three, and they were loaded with fish and clams.

One of them was 'pipe fishing'. This is a really dangerous practice, where a small plastic hose (you can see the coil of blue plastic) is attached to an air pump on the boat and then someone dives to the bottom, sipping air out of the end of the pipe. They walk along the bottom collecting shellfish and spearing bigger targets with home made trigger spears. Sometimes they go down to almost 20 metres and stay down for two or three hours. Apparently many of them die from the bends or necrosis, because they don't understand how dangerous it really is.

The two boats tried to get away, but were no match for the speed and power of the BYB and eventually they gave up with a shrug and a reluctant grin. They were towed back to the island, where they were arrested and their catch confiscated. It seemed very hard. These fishermen are extremely poor and regularly brave long journeys (more than 12 hours from Vietnam) across the hazardous South China sea to fish here, because there's so little left at home. It seems that there are increasing numbers of countries now keeping the hungry out at gunpoint to protect their own people.

Being here makes you question all kinds of things. People who are hungry don't think about preserving the planet, but only about feeding their families. The volunteers on the island want to show the people that it's possible to preserve the environment and feed themselves in an environmentally friendly way that will also protect their resources. They are also trying to convince them that they can earn a better living from eco-tourism.

But then I start asking myself what right have we as westerners to come here, intervene and tell them how to live? Isn't that what got them into this mess in the first place? (the history of Cambodia and Vietnam is a tangled mesh of colonial interference) What's needed are global initiatives for environmental preservation and conservation of food resources. But what are the chances of getting world governments to agree? The issue of climate change is a good example of how difficult it is.

And then, is eco-tourism really ecological? In the first place, when we arrive, we bring all the trappings of western society with us - computers, mobile phones, televisions, fridges - and the people, not surprisingly, want them too. And then, however simply we live when we're here, the amount of fossil fuel we've burned to get here is astronomical.

All I'm really sure of at the moment is that there's a real need to protect communities like this, who still know how to live in a simple way off the basic resources that they have, without our technology, in a way that we've long since forgotten. One day, we're going to need them to teach us how to live.

Snooker, snakes, sea-eagles and spiders

Ma Dot's friend Horz, who runs the No 1 Bar in the village, has branched out from making fishing nets to knotting hammocks. Neil and I were willing customers and soon had a hammock each strung up under the strangling fig on the beach outside our hut. It is bliss swinging to and fro in the sea breeze gazing out to sea, watching the Big Yellow Boat picking up the divers. The only thing missing is a nice glass of wine.

The local tipple is AngKor beer and there are a variety of strange canned fruit drinks. One of them, called Winter Moon, tastes as if it has been distilled in the bottom of someone's trainers. Everyone congregates in one bar or other after the evening meal. There's a choice of two. One is just a table on the beach and you can help yourself out of a cool box.

The No 1 bar is in Horz' house, with her bed in the middle of the floor. She also has a snooker table out on the veranda, with a cloth so cratered and wrinkled, shooting a ball towards the hole is a complete lottery. The local boys are skilled at swerving the balls round them so they're difficult to beat. Under the table a network of blue plastic drainpipes funnel the balls in different directions.

There are people of every age and nationality here - the only common factor is that they all love diving and they care about the environment.

Stuart and Jane are both diving instructors and they co-ordinate the volunteers. Others are here for a gap year, or taking a break after university. There are lots of more mature people here too. P. is an Australian who came to Cambodia on his way to Vietnam and somehow never managed to leave. He's raising money to send young Khmers to university. He himself was one of the children sent to Australia by the British Government in the nineteen fifties. He had been placed temporarily in care when his parents separated and was sent away without their knowledge. He has only recently been able to trace the family he lost.

Everyone here has a story. Danny, who owns the Big Yellow Boat, is a diving instructor who came here from France almost twenty years ago. He has a very simple lifestyle living on the boat and is a passionate conservationist. He has tied saffron ribbons round all the big rain-forest trees here in the hope that they will be recognised as sacred and not cut down.

We went on a marine trash clean-up round the bay this morning and were lucky enough, not just to see the fish-eagles, but to get good photographs. Their wing-span is impressive and they are unimaginably beautiful, cruising around over our heads.

The rainy season has stopped abruptly and we haven't had any rain at all for three days. It's very hot during the day with clear blue skies and temperatures up in the high thirties. At night the lack of light pollution means that there are more stars than you could ever believe possible.

We are in a new hut on the edge of the conservation project's plot. It's still not completely finished, but we don't mind that, or being on the fringe of the forest. Neil's son detailed the night watchman to take special care of us.

Unfortunately Net took his instructions rather too literally and he came and put his sleeping mat right on our doorstep, about three feet from the bed platform. As he speaks only Khmer and we speak only English it was a little difficult to convince him that we were fine on our own!

But we were very glad of his presence, when we discovered another unwanted visitor on the inside of our mosquito net. Not quite a tarantula, but as big as the palm of my hand. It was a tree spider and the following morning we saw his sibling on a web outside.

That hasn't been the only encounter with the inhabitants of the rain-forest either. During supper tonight, the cat suddenly ran in with something in its mouth and there was a cry of 'Feet up! It's got a snake!' I had my feet on the table in a time that would easily break the world speed record. Danny managed to detach the cat from the snake, which he carried outside on a stick and I got my camera out to get a shot of it for identification purposes. Nobody is very sure what it is yet - possibly a krait (not a good species!) - but someone is going to check when they get back to the mainland. Fortunately they do have a stock of anti-venom here, but I'm not intending to have to use it!

Buffalo, bull frogs, boas and boats

Our evening meal was cooked by Ma Dot, seen here minding the baby.





We ate sitting round a long table while bullfrogs lowed under the floorboards like sick cows. It was raining when we arrived and this obviously drove them to a frenzy. Afterwards we went to bed with a lamp, safely tucked up in our mosquito net.


We were woken in the night by a strange snuffling noise and in the morning found the hoofprints of water buffalo all round the hut. Surrounded by rain forest, it's not surprising that wildlife is everywhere. Butterflies the size of tea plates, frilled lizards, the odd boa constrictor. Someone was lucky enough to photograph a boa eating a lizard up in the beams of the main building, but we haven't seen anything like this yet.


There are apparently a pair of fish eagles on the other side of the island, despite the competition for food supply. There doesn't seem to be any lack of fish at the moment. When we went for a walk on the jetty, shoals of tiny silver fish were jumping out of the water and falling back like a shower of rain.




In the morning we walked through the village, followed by a flock of curious chldren, all practising their English: 'Hello! - What is your name?'











All the houses are on stilts here and you can see why when the ocean is so close.





We found stacks of rafts, like surf boards, made from layers of polystyrene and bamboo, bound together with fishing line.







The local chldren use them to fish for squid - some of them as young as 8 or 9 go out as far as four or five kilometres.







The fishermen use the slim, fast, longtail boats, but they are having to go further and further out as their own fishing grounds are being invaded by the huge bottom trawlers with their stern dragnets.


The sad thing is that these foreign boats are only here because their own fishing grounds are so depleted.

One of the longtails had sprung a leak and we all helped to turn it over and bail out, so it could be beached for repairs.


Tomorrow we go back to the mainland in the big yellow boat, but we are coming back to the island the following day after getting new supplies. We like it here!

One of the Last Edens

Only three hours by boat from Sihanoukville and it's another world out here. The Cambodian islands are one of the least developed places on earth and still a safe, friendly environment. About 200 fishermen live here on the fringes of steep, densely forested islands. They subsist on a diet of fish, supplemented by a few pigs and chicken kept under their houses.

TheDiving 4 Conservation centre has a generator for lighting in the evening, but is otherwise completely environmentally friendly. All the volunteers live in palm thatched huts a few feet from the beach, among the mangrove trees. Our hut has a bed platform with mosquito netting and a wooden cubicle with a dip shower. You soap yourself, dip a scoop into a bin of rainwater and rinse yourself down. The toilet flushes in the same way. This is the land without toilet paper!

There are about 12 volunteers here at the moment, diving on the reefs. The waters around these islands are one of the most prolific breeding grounds for sea horses. They have the largest number of species in SE Asia - all of them endangered by the practice of bottom trawling - which also threatens the livelihood of the local fishermen. Fuel prices have hit the community hard too - at the moment it costs as much in diesel to take their catch to market on the mainland as they get from the sale.

When they're not counting sea-horses or removing marine trash from the reefs (another problem), the volunteers work to improve the lives of the local community. There are no medical facilities out here and, while tourists can pay for medi-vac, the local people can't. So one of the volunteers runs a daily first aid session for minor injuries. The Conservation organisation have just built a clinic in the village and raised the money to bring an experienced ER nurse/midwife out to live here. She arrives next week.

Other volunteers run classes for the children. There is a school - built by a big company as a gesture, but as there was no money provided for teachers or books, it remains empty. The volunteers are currently trying to raise money for a teacher - the school still can't be used because it's the property of the company who built it.

There are some fantastic people here - of all age groups and from all corners of the world. We are absolutely loving it! More tomorrow.

Cambodia

Our Cambodian adventure didn't get off to a particularly good start. A phone call, while we queued at Heathrow airport, told us that Neil's son, his wife and two tiny children had been subjected by burglars to a gas attack while they slept. They woke up to find that all their possessions of any value had been stolen. Worse - the two year old toddler and six week old baby reacted badly to the gas and had to be rushed off to the local hospital. So you can imagine our state of mind by the time we boarded the plane. Better news waited for us by the time we got to Singapore. The baby had recovered consciousness and no one seemed to have sustained any lasting effects.

There are lots of reasons why this might not be a typical tourist theft. Cambodia has its share of those, but is still relatively safe if you are sensible. But organising Marine Conservation in places such as Cambodia is fraught with danger. Even though the government support the project, there are a lot of powerful people who want to keep the status quo. Foreign dredging companies taking advantage of a cheap supply of sand; foreign fishermen, who come to trawl the rich waters here - reducing the coral reefs to rubble as they do so. Off shore government patrols carry machine guns.

We continued our journey feeling relieved, but in a much more serious mood. Obviously there is more than the weather to worry about. Leaving Singapore in daylight we could see the weather systems we'd been warned of - gigantic cloud systems covering hundreds of square miles. This is a photograph of one of them at 38,000 feet.

This summer tropical storms have sluiced over Cambodia, one after the other. As we flew into Phnom Penh there was water as far as the eye could see in every direction, like an inland sea, with houses like houseboats marooned in groups in the middle of submerged farmland and roads. The original track of the Mekon River was just visible in one or two places.

The atmosphere, about 80% humidity, is a bit like being hit with a hot, wet flannel, and will take some getting used to.


I took some of these photographs on the road from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville (about three hours driving) on the southern coast, where we are staying in a room in a Cambodian house. The shower is cold, and there's a plastic bin under the sink to catch washing water which you then use to flush the loo - all very sensible ecologically!

There are palm trees, mimosa and a frangipani tree outside the door. We are tired, but relieved to be here. The door was double locked last night and tomorrow a policeman has been hired to guard the premises.





Everything here is done by 'moto' - from selling kites to family removals!

This afternoon we are going out to the islands to look at the Marine Conservation site and meet some of the volunteers.

From Indian Summer to Cambodian Monsoon

So here I am, suitcases packed, passport in pocket about to head off into the unknown. Cambodia, although more of a tourist destination than it used to be, is still out of the comfort zone for most travellers. Unless they're on a glitzy package deal to Ankor Wat. Which we are not. Neil's son is running a marine conservation project on some small islands off the coast, in the South China Sea and we will be spending part of the time there, with no electricity or other western mod cons, sleeping in hammocks in wooden huts built to house volunteers.

The weather today in the north of England has been beautiful, warm sunshine, autumn reds and golds in the trees - real indian summer weather. Out in Cambodia it's very different at the moment. A category 4 typhoon called Melor is curling its way across the ocean, just off the Philippines (which have just been blasted by it's nasty twin Parma) and the weather is going to be windy and very, very wet for a few days.

Tomorrow we start off by bus to the nearest train station - a long train journey to London. Then to Heathrow, where we board a plane for Singapore. Then another plane to Phnom Penh and then a long car journey to Sihanoukville on the coast. I dread to think of the size of our carbon footprint, though I suppose the huts and the hammocks will be a penance for that! We're due to arrive there sometime on Thursday evening and as soon as I've recovered I'll post some photographs.

Image courtesy of RoughlyDaily.com

Freewriting in Cyberspace

It's a beautiful sunny day here and the mill and the weir are looking glorious in their autumn colours. I'm still feeling very travel-lagged, but aware that I have to start travelling again on Tuesday, bound for Cambodia. So I'm running around throwing things into the washing machine, or into the suitcases and occasionally getting it the wrong way round.

It's also the first week of a new university term, so I've begun tutoring creative writing on-line again for the Open University. Really enjoyable, but much more challenging on the internet because there's such a lot that can't be communicated by a message or an email. That wonderful group feeling of trust and support is very difficult to generate online, and I miss the way that ideas can spark themselves off in a face-to-face group leaving everyone feeling good about themselves and their work.

One of the very first things that students have to tackle is the Freewrite. I know that some writers find freewriting very stimulating because it's supposed to release the creative unconscious from the inhibitions of the controlling areas of the brain. But a lot of students find the technique difficult - putting the pen to paper and just letting it go can be a bit challenging - and some find it impossible. I use freewriting occasionally - if I'm blocked on something and can't breakthrough, I try it, using the association of ideas, putting down words randomly and seeing where I go. But I'm such a control freak that my freewrites usually come out structured in some way! I'm no good at morning pages either - another technique that many writers swear by. My ideas come in the middle of the night when I wake up for no obvious reason at all and find myself wandering around with a cup of tea. Then, I can write reams and reams and my sub-conscious has no problem putting its hands up and saying 'I give in. Don't shoot! I'll tell you everything.'

I guess one of the most important things to communicate is that everyone is a different sort of writer - what works for one person doesn't for another.