Interpreter required please

In July my friend Nicole and I are going on a holiday to Cambodia. Very exciting!

After booking some very cheap flights to Kuala Lumpur we decided upon Cambodia as our destination. We then discovered that July is in the monsoon season...

One of the activities that friends have recommended is a quad bike tour from Phnom Penh, though attempts to do further research revealed that the tour company's website is entirely in French.

Here are my attempts to translate the website for Nicole.

Killing Fields et villages - $22. Départ à 7h30 ou 12h30 de Phnom Penh. Visite des Killing Fields*, les fosses communes de la prison S21 pendant le régime de Pol Pot. Ensuite départ pour une heure au milieu de rizières et de plusieurs villages typiquement Khmers.

It’s pretty obvious that this tour is of the Killing Fields and villages, and possibly a commune and/or prison.

Le coucher de soleil - $22. Départ à 16h de Phnom Penh. Ce circuit, d’environ 1h30, vous emmènera sur les routes de campagne, au milieu de rizières, pour franchir quelques ponts « exotiques ». Puis, vous profiterez du coucher de soleil au bord de la rivière avec une noix de coco fraîchement cueillie. Un seul conseil : n’oubliez pas votre appareil photo!

Possibly a sunset tour that leaves at 4pm, goes for an hour and a half, something exotic happens and then you have a coconut and a photo.

Le long de la rivière - $45. Départ à 7h30 ou 12h30. Vous débuterez cette demi-journée par la visite des tristement connus Killing Fields. Ensuite, leurs guides vous feront découvrir les pagodes et villages isolés le long de la rivière Prek Thnot. Vous traverserez la forêt jusqu’aux plantations de mangues et bananes, puis irez en jusqu’à la pagode de Kompong Kdol, connue pour ses statues de la vie de Bouddha. Une première approche de la vie au Cambodge!

Guessing this is along the river, visiting the killing fields, and maybe some mango and banana farms and a Buddha statue. I think they are also offering one opening approach to Cambodia?

Une journée à l’aventure - $90. De votre hôtel à 7h, en route pour Choeung Ek où vous attendent les quads. Découvrez le Cambodge tel qu’il est vraiment ! Dans cette expédition, avec des guides professionnels, vous explorerez les campagnes préservées autour de Phnom Penh. En route sur les petits chemins vous verrez ces paysages typiques du Cambodge. Vous traverserez des ponts pour le moins inhabituels, des rizières et des ruisseaux, la forêt de Phnom Tamao qui abrite de nombreux animaux, et surtout vous vivrez des moments privilégiés avec les habitants. Apprenez ce qu’est leur quotidien, et découvrez leurs traditions. L’expédition inclus le déjeuner Khmer pris sur le lac Tonlé Bati, où l’on visitera deux temples de l’époque d’Angkor. Ensuite départ pour le Sanctuaire de Phnom Tamao où des refuges sont donnés aux animaux sauvés des mains de trafiquants ou braconniers. De retour à Choeung Ek, vous pourrez visiter les Killing Fields* . Retour à Phnom Penh vers 17h30.

I’m pretty sure based on the price and length of description that this is the full day tour, or adventure journey, where we might get picked up from the hotel at 7am by a professional something/someone, then traverse past inhabitants and their animals and their traditions and their temples and refugees and animals and whatever a braconnier is, then stop by the killing fields before returning around 5.30pm.


However, I would appreciate any professional French to English interpretation advice people have to offer :)

Bor-ring

I am rather uninspired with this blog lately. I feel like there is nothing interesting to share with my dedicated reader (hi PJ!) and people who stumble into here looking for Rayban Wayfarers or photos of girls in tight shorts.

I've been busy, but none of it seems worthy of a stand alone post.

There is the story of my foot-in-mouth incident on the weekend, when I berated a driver for running a red light as Nathan and I crossed the street, only to find out it was an unmarked police car.

Or the story of my great happiness when told it would cost $550 rather than the originally quoted $800 to fix Rusty's steering head bearings, front fork seals, rear fork seals, rear break shoes, cushion drive rubbers or somethingorother, front brake switch, and grips. That is to say, to make him roadworthy. But it was definitely worth it as he rides like a freakin dream now!

Or the story of when Nicole and I went to the Caxton Hotel for "one drink" after the Broncos game the other weekend, where I insisted on calling every boy I spoke to by a girl's name, had to defend Nicole when someone started throwing ice at her head, slipped down the stairs but somehow regained my composure by the bottom step and looked up expecting applause but no-one saw it, and maintained my near perfect record of unintentionally getting home within 15 minutes of my housemate when we've both been out for the night.

Or the story of how I had to apply for the job that I have been doing for the past five months, and how if I don't get it I will absolutely die of embarrassment and have to leave the country from the shame of the rejection.

Hmmmmm, maybe I'll find something to blog about next week...

Update 2

While I have actually been getting out and doing stuff, there has been a lapse in blogging again. So I shall summarise the goings on of my life in bullet points, because I like bullet points and this is my blog and I can use them.

• I ventured back to the Walkabout at Temple to watch the first State of Origin game the other week, after managing to avoid any updates on the score throughout the day by getting a colleague to screen all of my text messages. Honestly though, you need to be drunk to be able to handle that place and as it was a Wednesday night I was not in a position to have a great time. Amber and Nicole did though!
  
  
• Jodie has returned from Australia but is yet to find employment, which leaves her free to hunt around on the internet for cheap theatre tickets – yay! We went to La Clique the other week and it was fantastic! The venue was really cosy and set up sort of like a circus, with strings of lights, and the stage in the middle. And the acts were great – a man who squeezed his body through a tennis racquet and made me laugh so hard I cried, a couple that did amazing spinning tricks on roller skates, a massive black man dressed in drag singing, a little guy dressed as Freddie Mercury that did juggling tricks and jokes, and crazy acts.
  
  
• This week we got £10 dress circle tickets to La Cage Aux Folles (aka the Birdcage) which was pretty good. The highlight were the five extremely fit, male chorus dancers, who were extremely entertaining from the stalls, but I don’t think I would have liked it as much if I was in the front row tables!
  
  
• Last weekend we did a day trip to Brighton which was really fun. The weather was unexpectedly gorgeous, and we all ended up getting a little sunburnt. We went down to the water, played games on the pier, went on our favourite ride – the Crazy Mouse, had fish for lunch (actually I had salad), did some shopping in the Lanes, and then whiled away the afternoon at the beachfront bar, le sigh…
  
  
• PowerPlate is either going to be my body-firming saviour, or the death of me. I’ve started doing PowerPlate classes at the gym, as I got a few sessions free with my membership. The idea is that you do exercises on a platform that vibrates, so a 30 minute session is equal to a 90 minute session on standard equipment. And at the end of it you feel like you’ve done a 90 minute session. The good thing is that the last couple of minutes you lie on the ground with your legs on the machine and get a muscle-stretching and cellulite-busting massage.
  
  
• I have been invited to the wedding of a colleague friend of mine in September, which is very exciting. When I asked what the dress code she was rather vague, though stipulated that most women would be wearing hats or headpieces. Crap. So the search starts now in the hope that I will find something appropriate in the next two and a half months.
  
  
• Just to fuel the fire that Jackie started at Christmas lunch, I bought a pair of Birkenstocks on the weekend. I had quite the internal fight prior to the purchase – extreme comfort and purple patent leather vs blatantly looking like a lesbian. Comfort won out. Though I won’t be wearing them with my new green skirt from Joy, as I saw an actual real life lesbian wearing the same skirt a few months ago.

PS. Mum, I am not a lesbian.

J’adore France!

What a weekend! Nicole declared our little sojourn to Dinard, France to be the best weekend ever, and I would have to say that it is up there on the list.

Amber, Nicole, Charlotte and I flew from Stansted to Dinard on Friday afternoon for Charlotte’s 30th birthday party. The Ryan Air flights only cost us £60, which is a bargain. Though you have to put up with vinyl seats and a horrid yellow and blue interior, which Amber said screamed emergency. Amber also said that the bottle of red wine she bought to help calm her nerves (she hates flying) tasted like pigs blood. She has such a charming way with words.

We all stayed at Charlotte’s family’s summerhouse, a huge place that sleeps 14 people and has a brilliant little cubby house. Charlotte made us Brittany crepes for dinner, and then we headed out to La Palm for some drinks. The night was fairly quiet until Amber and I decided to move from vodka cokes to champagne. A few more of the party guests turned up, a few bottles of Mumm were purchased, a few too many in the car, a few mispronounced French words, you know how it is.

Saturday morning we went to the local markets, which sold fabulous fresh produce as well as clothes and crafts. I bought a scarf, some suspenders and a gorgeous vintage handbag that reminds me of Murder She Wrote for some reason.

The weather in Dinard was just as crazy as it is in London. On Saturday afternoon we were going to go down the beach and enjoy the sun, when it started to hail. Yes, people, hail. Small pellets of ice. Crazy.

Saturday afternoon everyone helped get the food ready for the party, which incidentally didn’t really get eaten until 6:30am Sunday morning when we got home....

About 20 of Charlotte’s friends came from Paris and London for the party. They were the nicest group of people I have ever met and have all been added as friends on Facebook. As the red wine started to flow, so did the conversation, and the giggles. Amber’s French is pretty good, but she took delight in misinterpreting for Nicole and me. At one stage Amber told a group of people that I was actually raised by wolves rather than people, and so to excuse my behaviour. I retaliated by telling everyone that Amber was actually a mermaid. Even stevens. The joke of the night was from Amber’s speech: pardon my French, but you’re an a**hole! The Frenchies LOVED it, and I cannot tell you how many times I heard it over the weekend.

Amber and I started cracking open bottles of Mumm around 11pm, as the red wine was putting me to sleep. And that’s when the fun really got cracking! At midnight we all piled into cabs and went to a club high up on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The 20 Euro cover charge per person was a bit of a shock until I found out that it also included several bottles of vodka for the group. We took our ticket up to the bar and walked away with three bottles of vodka, a stack of glasses, a bucket of ice, and bottles of juice and softdrink. Then we set up our own little bar in the corner and proceeded to get messy. Knowing that my mum and dad read this, I will omit any incriminating details (*cough* Nicole *cough*), but I will say that there was a lot of drinking and a lot of dancing on tables. There was also a cat fight with a 50 year old woman, after which I had to play the “oh, we don’t speak French” card with the bouncer to distract him from kicking Amber and Christelle out of the place. It was a fabulous change of scenery from London though – the French, especially the men, are absolutely gorgeous!

Sunday was spent cleaning, sleeping, comparing stories and war wounds (an 18 year old kid pinched my arm in the club), and making plans to see our new French friends again.

J’adore France!