The year that was: 2013

On the last day of the year, like so many people, I took time out to pause and reflect on the year that was 2013, a year of unexpected twists and turns, a year of wonderful moments and extraordinary highlights, but also a year when I learnt even more the value of appreciating the small things - of smelling the flowers and laughing at the antics of tiny frogs, and the lesson of living each day as if it was my last.

My first six months of 2013 were spent in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and one of the highlights of that time was the two weeks I spent helping out in the workshops of the Giant Puppet Parade project in February. The project brings together children from local NGOs and staff and volunteers from around the world to build a series of giant puppets. The culmination of the workshops is a night-time parade through the central city with the excited children proudly showing off their enormous and very splendid puppets, with the majority of the city’s inhabitants and visiting tourists turning out to watch.

Cambodian children are wide-eyed, cheeky, desperately poor, smart, smaller and thinner than they deserve to be, cute, capable, hard-working, affectionate, creative, playful, sensitive.… One of the joys of my last few months in Siem Reap was managing the transition of Helping Hands, the project this boy attends, into the Globalteer family. It is so satisfying and rewarding to know that in a very small way I was helping to give these children a better future.

If you know me, you know I am addicted to things old and ancient, so living in Cambodia was a paradise for me, offering regular doses of the ruined and the aged to feed my addiction. One day I particularly remember was a trip to Beng Melea with new friend Jill. The 90-minute tuktuk ride there and back was a joy in itself but the ruins are even more superb, especially as they are distant enough from the main Angkor Wat complex to avoid (most of) the madding crowd. Though the ruins have been much ravaged by vegetation, temple authorities have constructed wooden ramps and stairways that help negotiate the fallen stonework easily. It was a superb day out.

I also fed my addiction with almost daily doses of pagodas and I’m sure I was fast earning a reputation amongst the tuktuk drivers as that crazy old white woman, as my weekends were often spent tuktuking through the countryside in search of more temples. Wat Damnak, pictured here, was one of my favourites and was on my circuitous route into town so an easy place to pop in to. You can read more about it and the many other pagodas I explored on my other blogs.

Wat Damnak didn’t just offer beautiful buildings and quiet contemplative spaces, it was also home to some of the local wildlife, in particular frogs and lizards. The frogs’ antics were often laugh-out-loud funny but the lizards also made me smile, with their hilarious dance-like actions, their ability to change colour when aroused, and their truly impressive tails. Both these Oriental Garden Lizards and the tiny geckos that inhabit every nook and cranny of every building in Cambodia, as well as the Tokay geckos that cry out “okay, okay, okay”, charmed and entertained me, and helped provide me with the memories of Cambodia that I’m sure will never leave me.

The frogs and lizards weren’t the only beasties that made me smile in 2013. I am not a twitcher or even a birder but I’m definitely a bird-watcher and a bird-lover. As the great naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough once said: ‘What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?’ In Cambodia, I enjoyed the birds that visited the trees outside my window and the glorious creatures (like this magnificent Indian Spotted Eagle) at the Angkor Centre for Conservation of Biodiversity. In Kuala Lumpur, I spent a wonderful afternoon at the bird park, where the huge free-flight aviary provides a very natural environment for the birds to live in. And since I’ve been back in New Zealand, I’ve enjoyed reacquainting myself with my Kiwi feathered friends.

When I visited that bird park in Kuala Lumpur, it was during a short five-day break, a wonderful birthday treat to myself. I loved the cultural diversity of KL. I loved the incredible modern architecture of the Petronas Towers. I loved the Indian and Chinese temples. and the character of the old shophouses. I loved Merdeka Square with its eclectic mix of British colonial brickwork, Islamic arches, Moorish cupolas and Moghul domes, all bordering a rectangular green where the Brits once played cricket. And I loved sharing part of my holiday with my cousin Julie, who flew up from Singapore for the weekend to help me celebrate yet another birthday.

I’ve spent the second half of 2013 back here in Auckland, New Zealand and, though I certainly didn’t expect to still be here as 2013 drew to a close, I am enjoying so many things about being back again in this beautiful city: the history of her heritage architecture and creativity of her public artworks, the green of the expansive parks right on my doorstep and waking to the sounds of tuis, walking the seaside boardwalks and bush-lined pathways, my tiny but perfectly formed apartment and the convenience of city living, watching the weather and the ships come and go across the sparkling waters of the Waitemata harbour, catching up with friends and the latest movies, and so much more.

Though this return to Auckland was not in my ten-year plan to travel the world, I am reminded of the wise words of the Dalai Lama: ‘Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.’

Siem Reap’s Giant Puppet Parade

The vulture

“Khnhom koeu tmat (I am a vulture),” shout the kids, as they proudly wheel and carry their giant red-headed vulture puppet around the inner city streets of Siem Reap, their little faces beaming with pride, their smiles wide and bright. 

The Giant Puppet Parade, held in Siem Reap every February for the past seven years, is the culmination of months of planning and three weeks of intensive workshops, with kids from local NGOs and staff and volunteers from around the world helping to build the giant puppets, designed by the parade’s artistic director and master puppeteer Jig Cochrane. And this year I was privileged to join in the workshops.

Firstly, let me stress, these are indeed giant puppets – this year’s vulture is perhaps 30 feet long when all its bits, from top of beak to tip of tail, are laid out and, if extended outwards, the wings would flare out approximately 20 feet. And they are made up of many pieces – the vulture has at least 15 main parts, as well as many feather panels that have been added to its body or were flapped about by excited children on parade night.

And the vulture is not the biggest of the puppets, which this year include the Asian cobra, a porcupine, two frogs, the slow loris, a bee and a stingray, as well as our red-headed vulture. These creatures are all endangered and one of the ideas behind the parade is to raise awareness of the rarity of the creatures, both with the general population and with the children. Where possible, the workshops include a talk to the children about the creature they are making and the creatures are also profiled on Facebook.

As well as educating people about the rarity of these beautiful creatures, the Giant Puppet Parade aims to foster creativity and artistic ability, in the artists and volunteers who come from overseas to volunteer with the project, in the young adult artists from the Phare Ponlue Selpak Art School in Battambang, who help to lead the workshops and, most especially, in the young Cambodian children who take part in the workshops.

This year, children from the projects run by 16 local NGOs took part in the puppet-making process. They were mostly from within Siem Reap city, though one group travelled an hour from their rural village to take part, and they ranged in age from perhaps 7 or 8 to their late teens. Some had worked on the puppets in previous years, others were first-timers so needed more help, and all were just wonderful to work with.

The kids taking part in the first weekend workshop came from the Landmine Museum Relief Centre, and many had been the victims of landmine explosions. Some had missing or artificial limbs, some limped badly, but all were happy, constantly smiling and laughing. It was humbling and inspiring to see how well they coped with their disabilities. As well as encouraging their creativity, the Giant Puppet Parade helps to shine some light in their otherwise dull lives, to let these kids enjoy some much-needed fun and excitement.

And the workshops themselves? Each session began with games – Jig is also a master showman and motivator, and very good at creating the right atmosphere, getting people warmed up and the kids laughing with games like “Zip. Zap. Boing.” Then the puppet making began in earnest, starting with Scotch tape to fasten two or three pieces of rattan strips together. These are the basic construction materials of the puppets and the barrel shapes we then built with these strips are the basic building blocks. The barrels can be small or large, thin or fat, and can be added to to make larger structures, like the heads of the vulture and the cobra. We used globe shapes in the same way – circular strips were taped together to form circles, with more and more circles added to strengthen the whole thing.

Next, the kids taped sheets of various colours of tissue paper over the rattan. Then, the whole was smothered in glue – we used industrial strength PVA diluted with water – and more paper added, to cover the Scotch tape, to intensify the colour and to further strengthen the structure – the glue hardens as it dries.

These structures were decorated in a variety of ways – the kids cut slices and slivers out of pieces of square, circular and rectangular metallic paper to make snowflake and doily designs, then glued these on to the shapes.

The porcupine, for example, was basic white, with plain black circles and squares and gold metallic strips stuck on. It’s a very effective way of decorating the whole and the creatures looked stunning when assembled and lit up from within.

Following the week of puppet-making workshops with the NGO kids was another week when staff and volunteers put the finishing touches to the puppets, fastening together their pieces, adding the moving parts, sound and light, and mounting some on platforms and wheels.

On the night of the parade, the kids and staff from their NGOs, guided by the project staff and volunteers, wheeled, lifted and pushed their brilliant creations through the streets of Siem Reap in a haze of wild excitement. This year’s puppets were bigger and better than last year’s, more people came to watch the glorious parade, and the project was a stunning success – a shining example of how a community arts project can provide a creative platform for disadvantaged children to foster and promote self-confidence through art.

I didn't actually get to see much of the parade myself as I was roped in at the last minute to act as number 2 puppeteer on the Hanuman puppet (one of two puppets with their roots in Khmer culutre) and we were the teaser, dancing around at the head of the parade, playing with the crowd, helping build the excitement and anticipation for what followed. So, I'm already planning on being in Siem Reap next February so I can see it all again for myself ... and maybe help out with the puppet making again, too. It was such a brilliant experience. Why don't you come too?

Hanuman and Sovann Macha

The slow loris