Puppet parade returns

The Giant Puppet Project’s colourful annual street parade will take place on February 27. Organisers are now selling fundraising tickets for a bumper raffle, with a draw at Abacus restaurant at 9.30pm on February 20, a week before the parade.

Tickets cost $5 and are on sale at Abacus, Miss Wong and Warehouse Bar, and from puppet staff.

Prizes have been donated by local businesses and include luxury weekend breaks, horse riding and quad adventures, deluxe spa treatments, Cambodian cooking courses, vouchers for clothing and music outlets, wine hampers, a cocktail course, intimate dinners and a signed copy of John McDermott’s lavish new photo book.

All the puppeteers have arrived from the UK and have started master classes with the students from Battambang. These run for one week beginning tomorrow, with local expat children also working with child landmine victims from the Landmine Museum.

Golf tourney is back

Another event that debuted last year and is making a triumphant return is the Angkor Amateur Open golf tournament, hosted by Angkor Golf Resort.

The resort’s manager Adam Robertson, born in St Andrews, Scotland, the spiritual home and starting point of golf, this week confirmed that the numbers were in, the sponsors mainly lined up, and the tournament was all systems go for later this year. Dates and further details will be announced probably next week but yes, it will be bigger and better.

The 2009 Open saw golfers from eight different countries around Asia and Europe compete over the Nick Faldo designed golf course.

Return of the Cox

Flamboyant, flame-haired Geraldine Cox, founder of the Sunrise Children’s Village orphanages in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, has returned to Cambodia following her “completely unexpected” battle with breast cancer, which resulted in a double mastectomy operation in Australia late last year.

When her strength has returned fully, she will revisit Siem Reap to say hi to her kids here.

Meanwhile, her recovery has been hastened by a letter from one of her seven-year-old Khmer charges.

The letter, translated, reads, “Dear Mum, I was so sad to hear you had to lose your breasts. It is so unfair, because they were very nice! I pray you can beat all evils and diseases so you can be with me until you are 100 years old. Love from one of your sons.”