Posts made in June, 2011

More sky photos at Skywatch Friday. 

I was in Kratie long ago, stopping there to spend the night, on my way to Laos. The above sign caught my attention as it stands out prominently in the town’s main street. I learned it was put up by the local commune office in Kratie town to call the whole community’s attention and action to clean their surroundings, especially the river.

The main illustration in the signboard shows people cleaning up. On the upper right side  box of the signboard, it shows a person throwing a (plastic) bagful of garbage into the river. Underneath that is another person throwing plastic from the window of a moving bus. Such is the practice here and the government, beginning at the lower level, is making efforts to curb this behaviour and practice nationwide.

Clean environment. Good health. Family has happiness.

Together we clean our village.

Kratie town has a small, charming centre with a very pleasant riverside scenery. Most tourists, especially backpackers, arrive here after a gruelling 8-9hours of bus ride, as the last leg of their Cambodia tour and see the Irrawaddy dolphins, or the Mekong River dolphins,  before crossing the border to Laos the following day.  Behind the sign is the mighty Mekong River that provides a stunning view of the sunset. No wonder this town wanted to protect its beautiful river.

Night shots have frustrated me for some time now  especially that I’m only using a point-and-shoot digicam. My mistake always lie on my use and/or improper use of flash. The ISO setting doesn’t really do much to improve my shots either. They tend to be grainy and artificial looking. Bu then, one night last week, I got lucky. 

I was snapping like crazy while we drove long Sisowath Quay and out of the dozen photos, this one, taken just before we passed in front of the Royal Palace, isn’t really bad.I love how this picture turned out. What do you think?

For more Wordless/Wordful entries, please click here.

and here.

Moving to a new location? No problem. Call Pu, the remorque driver! A remorque (photo above) is a French word meaning “to tow”. In Cambodia, a remorque is a local motorcycle transport with something resembling a trailer behind it. 

For local transport there is the ‘remorque’ : a motorcycle with a big trailer behind. Remorque is French for to tow. This type of vehicle must be very Cambodian, there is definitely no Wiki page available on this. What’s more, if the draft version of the traffic law is accepted the remorque will probably cease to exist. The towed trailer is a bit deep and loose planks are laid from side to side which are meant as the seats. Often these are over loaded, 20-30 passengers is no problem. A major safety issue is that the trailer can easily cause the motorcycle front wheel to make a wheelie and thus steeringless. Lucky thing is that these motorcycles can’t drive fast.  (Source)

In the above photo, the seats were taken off to accommodate the cargo. Although the remorques are banned in the city proper, they are everywhere outside of Phnom Penh, carrying passengers and their produce from the market to the villages. They are the local version of movers.

More photos at That’s My World.