Category Archives: My work

Hitting the Halfway Mark

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The month of August has been filled with ups and downs.

For the first two weeks of the month the hotel was extremely busy with just about 100% occupancy and what is normally a quiet, calm place became a bustling hive of activity. As part of my internship package, I stay in one of the rooms of the hotel (I am one of the lucky ones) and because the hotel was so full I spent about 5 days staying in a different room every night and one night off property which was kind of fun but at the end I was glad to be settled in one place.

My major project of this month was to create a presentation on Breakages. At Les Roches when we break things (once I saw a whole stack of plates go down in Market Place) we get reprimanded and told to clean up the mess and life goes on. It changes a bit when the cost of the equipment you’re using is related to the expenses of the department and the profit of your employer and maybe even your staff evaluation at the end of the year. So my task was to make this presentation to see why our team was breaking so much and how we could try to fix those issues.

Cambodia Travels

We had a kind of Management Retreat which I was invited to join. I have to say that it is amusing to watch your managers, who would normally be well dressed in shirts sleeves and black trousers, wearing sports gear and jumping around with a badminton racket and playing volleyball. After we played sports we drove out to East Baray.

A Baray is a manmade lake and this one is part of the complex of Angkor Wat, it is not certain whether they were made for symbolic reasons only or if they were used for irrigation as well. We had lunch on the rice fields and spent a lovely afternoon eating and resting in hammocks.

Baray

The Rice Fields where we had lunch

Local Food

I also had the chance to visit Happy Ranch Horse Farm. It was almost like home and I loved sitting around playing with the horses and dogs and chatting with the stable hands (although I’m not sure they understood any of what I was saying).

www.thehappyranch.com

However, towards the end of the month, near to the 3 month mark I started feeling down. Internships are a lot of fun and can be very exciting but that doesn’t stop you from missing home. It isn’t as though you want to go home immediately but I realized that the whole summer had passed and I, for the first time, was not there with all my friends who were on break. It is something to think about when you choose your internship. As my grandmother would say, it’s “character building”!

Time flies when you’re having fun… or working hard

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During the first month in the hotel, things were not very busy as this is low/rainy season but now after the second month there have been a few weeks of full occupancy and I have a taste of how crazy it can get. I barely noticed that another month had gone by.
My major focus this month has been doing some menu revisions and putting together a Pick up Chart for the service team. My wine course came in very handy for this. I had an entire a la carte menu, an extensive wine list, pictures and an ingredients list to work with. It took some long hours of consideration and much back and forth with corrections and revisions between the Chef and me and the GM and me but I finally finished. Having learned the importance of knowing exactly what was on the menu at school, I knew the pressure was on the make sure what I came up with was on the ball.

So now every day in briefing time the whole service team is doing pick up chart training with an emphasis on the wine pairings.

Otherwise, I have been getting more and more used to being here and the different customs of the culture. And as I get more involved in the work itself, I realize just how valuable the little things we learn at Les Roches are. That when you know how to do something properly, it simply makes things easier and quicker. If I could add a word of advice to any new or prospective students: there will be times when you wonder, why am I learning this or how in the world could this be useful? Embrace all of the training that we get because it will be important and I am try to help my Cambodian colleagues who don’t have much formal training to see these little things and ways of working and adopt them.

Cambodia Travels

On one of my days off, I went to visit the BanteaySrey Butterfly Centre where they farm butterflies and provide some local residents with the tools and equipment to participate in this sustainable activity and a small source of income as some of the cocooned specimens are sold and shipped abroad.

I also saw the War museum where local men who fought in the various Cambodian wars have a tour of the old artifacts. There was everything there from fighter jets to landmine shells, most were either Russian or Chinese made.  It gives you a sense of the destruction that took place here,  but as I left, it made me realize how far Cambodia has come in the small number of years they have had war-free.

1 Month In…

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Angkor Wat Temple and its reflection

I have now been in Cambodia for a month. And what a month it has been! On arrival at the smallest international airport I have ever seen, the first thing I noticed was that it smelled like lemon grass and the air was warm and thick with moisture (its rainy season here), so unlike the mountains in Bluche. It was a welcome change after having travelled for a looong time. I spent the first few days taking it all in and getting over my jet lag.

Tuk tuk or taxi

Siem Reap is a very historically rich area and there are a number of ancient temples which span reigns of both Buddhist and Hindu kings and the overlapping of the two eras makes the buildings even more interesting.  I visited Angkor Wat and was blown away by the attention to detail throughout the structures and the homage paid to the gods of both religions. The town of Siem Reap is very busy and colourful with bicycles, cars, trucks, mopeds, tuk tuks and people sharing the thankfully wide roads.

A window in the temple gates

It took me some time to figure out exactly what side of the road Cambodians drive on and found that officially it’s the right but I must say that not many take this into consideration. There are a number of markets and quite a happening night life of pubs and restaurants filled with travelers.

Travelling alone, as I am, isn’t a problem at all as most are open to meeting any and all new people.

La Residence d’Angkor proved to be more beautiful than the pictures I saw before coming here. The property is absolutely stunning, full of greenery and wood it has a certain old-world charm. So far, work has been good, not overly busy because it is officially low season here along with the rain. When the rain stops sometime in October, tourism high season begins. My duties have not been too numerous yet as I am still getting used to the way of working here and the hotel itself. The staff members (and all Cambodian people so far) are very welcoming and ready to answer any questions. I feel quite at home already and ready to sink my teeth in.

I am certain that I will learn a lot, not just the techniques and service styles and the running of the hotel but culture and working with people as well.

Today I bought a bicycle… wish me luck with driving on the right side of the road!

Animal friends… beware of the biting monkeys.