We’d found a great new apartment. We’d found sheets for our bed, including an elusive (in Asia) top sheet. We’d found a place to borrow books. We’d found a splendid vegetarian restaurant. One of us had found Aikido classes at a very reasonable fee. We’d found good places to get our annual medical evaluations. And we’d gone back to our previous dentist to get a tooth cleaning, and a filling for the one of us who’d be studying Aikido. Now it was down to business: getting ready to spend a year teaching at our old school, Krou Yeung International.

It was graduation day for the preceding school year when we dropped in, and we were able to see some of our old students, most of whom would also be our new students. In a number of locations around the campus, we spotted ourselves in promotional photos, taken when we were teaching here previously — many of them snapped on field trips or staff outings.

Kimberly accompanied some of the other teachers on one of the periodic recruiting drives to lure in new students, strolling around various neighborhoods, talking to people and passing out flyers. Does it work? Who knows. But apparently the administration at least expects it to, because they keep repeating it.

She also began setting up her classroom. Which did indeed take some setting up, because she’d be teaching Kindergarten, and youngsters at that age require a great many things to interact with in their environment. (She was delighted to see that she’d have a fantastic assistant, Sokia. All the little ones can be a bit difficult to manage solo.) Dennis, on the other hand, had minimal setup, because he’d be teaching Grade 8 — some of whom were in his 6th Grade class last time.

Then we reactivated our accounts with ABA (Advanced Bank Of Asia), which is just across the street from the campus. The school deposits our paycheck directly into our accounts, and an ABA account is incredibly handy for all kinds of local transactions.

The school assisted us in setting up a national insurance account — which is called Social Security and costs us only 6 dollars per month. It’s rather limited, covering only emergencies and hospital stays at a limited number of hospitals and clinics, but we’d later be learning how useful such a policy might be. Not because of our own misfortune, but another teacher’s, a British fellow named Harry.

Coming home on his motorcycle at 2:00 a.m. (on Christmas morning, no less), he was blindsided by another motorcyclist at 60 mph. As a result of which he spent 3 days in a hospital, and had to miss work for 6 weeks while he recuperated. The school assisted with some of his expenses, which could have been even more catastrophic than they were.

We visited him in the hospital, and brought him one of our gourmet PBJ sandwiches, which he raved about. (Quite a compliment, since he previously worked as a chef.) And that visit convinced us that this was not a place we’d ever want to spend a day in, much less a night. It was a tiny room, packed with half a dozen patients and an even greater number of visitors, who had nowhere to sit. There was no bathroom — the closest one was down the hall. The hospitals do not provide food, so visitors have to bring it to the patients they’ve come to see — there is a throng of vendors out front for that purpose. In addition to the crowded rooms, there are bunks offering even less privacy lined up along the hallways. As we walked down through them at one point, a cat moseyed around, seemingly right at home.

Perhaps these conditions apply only to government-run hospitals like this one, and the private ones are much better. We just know that we have no desire to be admitted to one like that one.

The school also supplied bicycles for us, as they did last time around. Kimberly’s bike was missing in action so she got a new one. Dennis used his for a few months until it was on its last spoke and needed to be replaced. So one of the administrators took us each to a bike shop to make the selection ourselves.

A bike is one of the most popular modes of transportation in Cambodia, though a motorbike (“moto”) forms the bulk of the traffic. It’s not unusual to see entire families riding on one poor little moto — and maybe hauling some cargo as well. The muscle-powered edition of the two-wheeler will do just fine for our needs, thank you. And we’re living only about half a mile from the school, which is the main place we need to get to. For locations that are inconvenient for biking to (because of distance, time or weather), a tuk-tuk ride is very inexpensive, with average fare between a dollar and two dollars for just about anywhere in the city.

One other thing the school took care of for us was extending our visas and getting our work permits. They even paid for half the work permit; we covered the other fees but they handled the paperwork. So we submitted our passports and visas to them, and filled out a form, and we were all set.

Well, not quite. Turns our there was a bit of a screw-up on our part. And that screw-up led to some more red tape and a bit of an adventure. As we will tell about in our next post.

Events occurred fall 2025