{"id":5,"date":"2012-02-15T05:22:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T19:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcher.co\/p-f\/?p=5"},"modified":"2023-12-09T16:10:57","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T06:10:57","slug":"adventures-in-the-cambodian-jungle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcher.co\/p-f\/adventures-in-the-cambodian-jungle\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Adventures in the Cambodian Jungle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First posted 20 November 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the 14th of September 2011 I was in the village of Chi Pat, in the jungle of Western Cambodia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chi Pat is, by Western standards, a very basic and not at all wealthy little village with very basic accommodation, electricity five hours a day and, strangely enough, 24-hour 3G mobile phone coverage that\u2019s better than what I usually get at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before I left for Cambodia I discovered a job I was\ninterested in, and wanted to apply for it. Being a government job, it would\nrequire a detailed 2,500 word response and was due mid-way through my holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to work on the application during my travels, but\nwith the combination of so many things happening, my procrastination, and the\nfact that I was on holiday, I didn\u2019t get too much done in the early stages. So\nthe night before it was due I prepared most of the material, and got only a few\nhours\u2019 sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day the application was due was also the day I\u2019d be\ntravelling out of Chi Pat, making working not quite as easy as it might\notherwise have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 07:15 on Tuesday morning I was sitting on a little\nrickety local river boat. If was bucketing down with rain. I put the rain coat\nthe boat driver gave me over my backpack and put my own big rain coat over my\nhead. I put my laptop on my knee and under the rain coat, activated internet\naccess for my laptop through my phone, and proceeded to do the final editing\nand lodgement of my application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rain coat allowed no air through, because it\u2019s designed\nto allow no water through. So it became a bit of a sauna under there. A sauna\nin a boiling hot jungle location. A beautiful boiling hot jungle location that\nI was missing completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My laptop battery was fading fast because I’d had nowhere to\nplug its three pronged plug in the village for the last three days. I\u2019d gone\nthrough one and a half long-life laptop batteries already (I was carrying a\nspare), saving my photos from my \u201cadventures\u201d and working on my application.\nThe laptop said it had a little over one hour of battery life left. I had 1:45\nleft to the deadline at 09:00, and knew it would be tight, and the deadline was\nnot variable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the boat trip the internet connection kept\nfailing, probably because the boat was moving around corners and behind hills (although\nI often had trouble when the phone said it had a good signal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My laptop kept getting wet as the edges of the raincoat over\nmy head didn\u2019t provide perfect cover. I was increasingly worried that my laptop\nwould die under the endless dripping water (but fortunately not the downpour on\nthe other side of my raincoat on my head). As it was, my laptop has been giving\nme hardware error messages since that experience – probably because a USB power\nconnector on the side of the laptop shorted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept having to stop to wipe water off my screen and\nkeyboard, in the process brushing the Wi-Fi on\/off button so losing my internet\nconnection. Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often I lost my internet connection when I was part way\nthrough filling in a complex on-line form as part of the application. Sometimes\nI lost all the data I\u2019d just spent 15 minutes writing, sometimes I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I started I checked how much credit I had left on my\npre-paid Cambodian mobile phone SIM. It said it had what I thought was enough.\nI discovered later that I didn\u2019t \u2013 my connection ran out of credit almost\nimmediately after I\u2019d finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t spoken to the boat driver at all. We didn\u2019t share a\nlanguage, but I normally try to exchange grunts and it felt odd to me that I\nwas just hiding under this raincoat with a laptop while we putted down the\nriver. I\u2019m sure it seemed a little odd to him too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The on-line application system for the job gave a time to\nthe deadline. I saw it say 45 minutes. Then 25. I\u2019d lose my internet connection\nfor ten minutes at a stretch, and I didn\u2019t know whether I\u2019d have to re-do some\nforms as a result of the lost connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d written up most of my application the previous night,\nbut discovered when I was finalising the application that part of my response\nwouldn\u2019t work, so had to do some frantic last-minute modifications. Very last\nminute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know when the boat trip would end. I didn\u2019t have\ntime to check my location on the GPS unit in my phone. But if it ended before\nI\u2019d finished then I\u2019d have to pack everything up, losing my work and time in\nthe process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was getting more than a bit stressful. But I was\ndetermined to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d like to go through the list of things that seemed to be\ntrying to stop me finishing the application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to work while on holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working on a professional Australian job application\non a little boat on a river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 in the jungle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 in Cambodia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was being helped and guided in my travels by people\nwho probably couldn\u2019t dream of the income of what I considered to be the very\nordinary job I was applying for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n