Sunday 9^th November

I sat in the church for the Kymer Mass, it helps me to follow what the people say and to get the sounds of what the priest says. Fr Jupp said the Mass today, he is very gentle and prayerful and always gives a synopsis of his homily in English as well, very thoughtful. After Mass we went with Fr Panus to Chong Khnies again, one of the floating villages. John came and a lady called Annushka Gregoriek from Ely, an American from Georgia and an Austrian. 

 Above is the congregation at Chong Khnies, gathered for Sunday Mass.



A view from the back of the Church out towards the lake.






The statue of Our lady at the Church.

I am now on my second visit to many of these places, but it was great to go with others who had never been before to a floating village. There were plenty of children at Mass, along with a few adults. This is a Vietnamese community, so the children do not really understand Mass which is in Khmer, but they are very quiet and well behaved. After mass they had rice soup and then we also had lunch together. Fr Panus took us on a tour of the village, for the benefit of the new comers, it is fascinating to see and to try to imagine their way of life.

The group that went with Fr Panus to Mass having lunch together in the Church.








Life on the lake continues.

Floating restaurant

Floating shop







The Church

When we got back to the church John and I decided to go and watch Fr Panus and the young people playing football. They are very good and certainly enjoy playing and some of them are very good. They play at a local sports centre on very good astro-turf pitches. 

We watched but after a while some of the younger ones and two girls started to play on the next pitch, John went to join them for a kick around and scored a very good goal!!

In the evening John and I went out for dinner at a local restaurant.

Monday 10^th November

Today John and Ratana and myself set off to Kompong Tom to see Sr Soklin. The taxi picked us up at about 11.00 for the two and half hour journey, there were three of us in the back, one lady and child in the front passenger seat and the driver and another passenger sharing the driver’s seat. It seemed to work all right, but I am not sure what |John’s former colleagues in traffic would have thought of that!! We stopped for lunch on the way at a café that was doing a good trade and had a light lunch and arrived in KT about 3.30 pm. Soklin had warned us that she would not be there when we arrived, so we sat talking, or rather listening to the assistant priest Fr Bong Bong, (not a made up name!) he is a Jesuit from the Philippines. He is very entertaining, he is also an electrical engineer and fixes most things and re-wires anything that looks dangerous, so he is very busy around the church and house, I suggested he should pay a visit to Siem Reap and do some repairs here. We also met Fr Jinyhot, the parish priest, who is from Korea and a very quiet and shy man. The work in KT is in kindergarten, then scholarships for the young people and working with the sick. They also have a sewing shop making lovely articles for sale, they work also with widows to support them. They have rice fields and grow rice in a project, teaching some people how to get better harvest.

Soklin arrived and wanted to rest after her journey, so I also took the opportunity of a short siesta. We watched the boys playing football for a while and then Soklin took the three of us to see one of her relatives who lives nearby.




The relative is Soklin’s great aunt, the last of her generation, she is 91 and a lovely old lady, a little deaf and losing her memory, but very glad to see us. Through Ratana and Soklin we were able to chat for a while about family, before we left I prayed wwith them and gave the old lady a blessing, she was delighted.

We went straight to dinner with the sisters and the girls who board with them for school. The boys stay in a house near the priests’ house and are looked after by a brother, the girls near the sisters but in the same piece of land. Sr Sudathip is the superior and has been in KT for 18 years, I have met her before and she is a lovely peaceful and very hard working lady.








Along with her is Sr Cheeranun, much younger and in KT just three years and Sr Soklin who has only recently moved back to KT after time in Thailand and Siem Reap, they are a lovely community. There are 14 girls in the hostel, age from about 7 to 19 or so, they have to look after themselves, they all share one room and have to see to their own washing etc, certainly as they get older.



They eat at the same time as the sisters, so we all had dinner together, it was lovely. When they had finished the girls just cleared up, did the washing up cleared the tables away and started to get ready for bed and to do their homework, no instructions were given. We chatted a long time about how to say different words in English, we were amazed to see the speed of Sr Cheeranun parting the dogs when they started to fight and felt sorry for the dog that started the fight! But such a lovely evening.

The river in the early morning at Kompong Tom.

Tuesday 11^th November

After Mass we had breakfast with the community,  a full Cambodian breakfast with lots of variety and then we got ready to leave, they were all leaving to go to the Pastoral Meeting in Battambang. We had a look at the shop with many items from the sewing works and then our taxi came to bring us back to SR.

Breakfast witgh all the community.




Ratana, Sr Jeeranun and Sr Soklin, a veritable set of three monkeys!

The Church at Kompong Tom.

We arrived home around 12.00 and went for lunch in the market and a siesta before teaching English at 5.00 pm. John came to English class and was great because he had new stories to get them started, we also had a book to help us this time. Ratana went to the airport to present her CV to the HR Office and got on  really well, her brother helped her to meet the right people and the CEO, whom she knows from Church also came along at just the right time, we hope they will have a job for her. Ratana’s brother treated her to dinner, so John and I treated ourselves to steak and chips at a Mexican restaurant, and it was very good, only my second European in 6 weeks.