National Fish Day !

June the 29th
National Fish Day III

Is it really only a year since the last National Fish Day?
It must say something about me working at the Ministry of Fish that this year I hardly even snigger anymore when I say ‘National Fish Day’…

I am looking at my gold embossed invitation from the Prime Minister of Cambodia, requesting the pleasure of the company of ‘His Excellency Darren Conquest’.
It does still makes me laugh when Khmers refer to me as ‘Your Excellency’ if only they knew me better :-)

03:30 – yes, half past three in the morning – my alarm goes off, it takes every ounce of will power I process (yes, both ounces) to drag myself out of bed at this most ungodly hour.

04:10 – I am sat in the office with a very strong iced coffee waiting for the rest of my colleagues
to turn up, my boss is pacing up and down the car-park muttering ‘no discipline’ to himself and me

05:00 – the large air-conditioned bus is here…

05:15 – the rest of my colleagues turn up and the bus that ‘had to leave at 04:30 or we would be late’ finally get on the road
I manage to doze a little on the road out of town, but once we reached the provincial roads there was no chance of it. You maybe able to avoid the bumps and potholes on a bike, but on a 44 seat bus you just hit everything.

06:30 – we reach the ferry town of Neak Luong, a place I have been to half a dozen times over the last year. Stretching our legs for the 15 minute ferry crossing of the Mekong river we are accosted by numerous people selling cold drinks, snacks, nik naks and keepsakes, all par for the course.

06:45 once over the Mekong the bus pulls into a petrol station – presumably to fill up on contraband petrol smuggled here from the Vietnamese border which is only an hour away from here. So we all descend on a small pavement restaurant and set about eating breakfast; my usual rice with pork and chilli’s came with an added bonus in this part of the country hard boiled barbequed eggs!?!? Slightly tough in texture, but quite a pleasant taste!

07:15 we are back on the road for the final stretch to the lake

07:45 – cutting it fine I take my seat on the dais with the Prime Minister, one of the deputy Prime Ministers (they have 4 you know!) the Minister of Agriculture, the Director of Fisheries and other assorted big wigs.

08:00 – the opening speech is from H.E. Suran the Minister of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries, I hardly listened to the simultaneous translation earpiece, I had edited and rewritten this speech last week, I could have given it!

While I am busy not paying attention to my own Minister I am looking at Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, he is sat one row in front of me and 3 seats to the left. An old woman is sat just behind him with an aluminium briefcase which I see her open. She starts taking out the contents and lays them out on the coffee table in front of Hun Sen. A gold and ivory ashtray, a gold lighter, a packet of 555 brand cigarettes, a crystal glass with silver filigree base, handle and lid, several chilled packets of wet wipes and an ice cold bottle of Evian water. - now that is what you call personal service, guess it pays to be a Prime Minister even in a poor third world country :-)

08:30 – the Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen get up to make his speech, taking the silver/crystal glass of ice cold Evian with him… As usual his 30 minute speech lasted 40 minutes and only about 10 of that was about fish, the rest was his usual relevance safari about monks, education, history, the king and the obligatory anecdote about ‘when I was a boy growing up in a rice field with no shoes…’

09:10 – speeches over, those of us on the dais head down to the marina to start the ceremonial releasing of fish into the lake, half a dozen huge fish tanks have been set up on the end of the dock, filled with fingerlings, baby eels, crabs, lobsters, et cetera. We all had some flat shrimping nets and took it in turns to fish out some critters and toss them in the lake.

09:30 – and the chopper is spinning up its blades to fly the PM off to his next engagement, I meanwhile an walking through a dusty field looking for the damn bus because everyone else had already wandered of.

12:00 – back in Phnom Penh safe and sound, spot of lunch and then back to the office for a meeting. Think I might leave early though…