Cambodia

Hello from Cambodia! Sorry I haven't written in a while, but I have been really busy since our arrival!

This past week has been packed full of work! We arrived on Monday and on Tuesday we started working on our second project. It is an ecology and behaviour study we are doing in Phnom Penh and the surrounding province of Kandal. We are hoping that our research will spark a project to help with rabies within the dog population, since nothing has been done up until this point.

Our first day was exceptionally long, trying to modify the survey we will be using and then having it properly translated into Khmer. Translation has proven to be a fairly large obstacle for us, as English is a language that has words with multiple meanings and Khmer is much more precise.

So after a lot of work on the survey, the next day we were ready to pilot test it in the province of Kandal. We went to the Department of Agriculture and got approval to enter into the villages within the province and picked a village that was not selected for our study to pilot the survey. We ran about 5 surveys per group with our translators (totaling 10). The pilot proved to be really useful in identifying any questions that were unclear and other questions that consumed too much time. The next day was spent making more revisions and we did some errands regarding the study (ie - getting small gifts to give to people who fill out the survey).

It was really interesting going into the village and to people's homes - places where tourists never, ever get to go. All of the people were so friendly despite the language barrier. One lady even brought us out some cold tea! I was a bit nervous about the water making me ill, but it is better to get sick than offend anyone, so I drank it.

So that pretty much brings me up to yesterday, which was our second pilot (of our revised version). It went a lot smoother and the time averaged in around 16-17minutes per survey, which is exactly what we needed to be able to hit our target of 250 surveys in 10 days. We made a few more revisions and we are ready to start the actual data collection on Monday.

Last night we went out for dinner to celebrate our first week. They had 'crispy tarantulas' on the menu for appetizers and we decided to order them! It was so weird to have 3 spiders on a plate...they were kind of a BBQ sauce brown colour, tasted like hickory and were really crunchy. I was only brave enough to eat the legs...and convinced Matt to try a piece. If you got past the idea of eating spiders they weren't actually that bad. Ryan ate one of the bodies and said it tasted really bad...he will eat anything!

So this weekend we are going to explore Phnom Penh.I like the city, from what I have seen so far. It is really busy and dirty, but it has a lot of French Influence. They have a lot of nice open squares with gardens and boulevards, which is kind of a strange but nice mix with the craziness. I am excited to actually explore it though. We are also probably going to see a museum and head out to the killing fields as a day trip. Shopping is also a must. We have to wear pants whenever we are working and I have been wearing my only pair for 3 weeks straight. I need to invest in 1 or 2 more pairs, and so does Matt.

Anyways, that's all for this update! Will write again soon. I am going to be making a post on the Vets Without Borders Blog I have as well with more in depth info on our project if anyone is interested! We have to make a post a week, so each of us working on this project will post at least once on that.