where cider meets condensed milk: Motos and marriage and farewells to Siem Reap!

where cider meets condensed milk

Friday, May 19, 2006

Motos and marriage and farewells to Siem Reap!

Our last day of building was on Saturday, so we finished up the houses, did lots of thatching, attempted to lay bricks, nailed things, and did other random tasks. A storm in the distance threatened to drench us by late afternoon, but the rains never came.

We spent the lunch break cruising around on motorcycles, for which I discovered I have no natural ability, and was an accident waiting to happen. Hanudane, our trusty moto-sensei, gave me advice something along the lines of: "Whatever you do, don't speed up if you get into trouble." Easier said than done! I didn't hit anything, but think next time I'll ride tandem with a more competent driver. The best moment was when we were all standing out in a field in the blazing sun, and Amy-chan took off confidently down the path. Ah, she's from backwater Nova Scotia, we noted. She has clearly done this before and doesn't need instructions! She proceeded to ride straight into a large bush. The workers, laying in hammocks and watching us in amusement, burst out laughing, along with the sweet granny who cooked us lunch every day.

I think every single one of us has posted a nearly identical picture of a moto driver with drugged pigs, because it is so perfect and characteristic of Cambodia. They feed the pigs marijuana, and then tie them up with twine and transport them. They look dead, but you can see them twitch when you get close.

We raced back to the guesthouse for showers and headed straight out to a wedding reception of one of the guesthouse staff's friends... we think. Still not clear on whose wedding it was, but it's considered good luck to have everyone you've ever met attend your reception dinners and parties, so we went as a good luck gaijin squad. The food was a bit sketch, neither friendly for vegetarians nor anyone else. It was all meat or shellfish, so the two kosher/vegetarians and I were out of luck. I also think tripe was on a platter at one point, but none of us were really sure.

Mama and Papa Bear get crabby!

Had nothing all night long except 3 Coca-colas, which meant I was high as a kite for the whole evening. And these empty shells didn't offer much sustenance.

The music choice was bizarre-- karaoke meets The Wedding Singer meets bad bhangra meets dying mammals meets bar mitzvah rhymicity. They had members of the wedding party rotating onstage to sing karaoke covers of Cambodian pop songs, which sound like Indian bhangra (dance/club) mixes if the DJ happened to be a narcoleptic cat with one paw. (Landmine victim, maybe. Shouldn't joke.) Even better was when they did covers of English songs, such as "Hey sexy lady, your body's bangin'..." and "California knows how to party", but with the verses in Khmer. And the tempo slowed down to halfspeed. And Cambodian beat tracks in the background, played by the DJ Kitty's deaf cousin.

The stage crew in action! Dancing involves step-left, step-left, step-right, step-right, while moving your hands in a Cambodian fashion. It didn't seem that any of the songs (except "Hey Sexy Lady") had enough energy or a fast enough tempo for proper dancing, but group dance moves were usually just some type of simple stepping, moving around in a circle. And that's it. We tried to start something different, and were directed into the flow of the circle. There were several rhythmically-challenged men that kept trying to dance with us, which was alright for awhile but then got sort of awkward. Glam and I were pulled up on stage by the groom at one point, which was a convenient respite from the sweaty men, as we had danced ourselves into entrapment up against a gate and couldn't retreat any further. We did our best to imitate the girls in the prom dresses.

The gang: Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Rocky, Amy-chan, Gaia, Jossss, the bride, Granny Bear, Watson/Wilson, Young'n, Glam. (front) Hanudane, the groom, some guy.

We had farewell drinks and Clay-Pictionary in town, and hung out on Bar Street for an hour before crashing at the hotel. I do imagine Mama Cindy Bear has a Mary Poppins-esque suitcase. Who else shows up in Siem Reap with bags of alphabet beads and elastics so that we can all make nametags for our water bottles? Who else would pull out 2 containers of colored play-doh in a bar, so that we can have a final fun activity? Who else was prepared with every single type of medication you could possibly imagine? That's our Mama Bear-- Practically Perfect In Every Way, and clearly born into her profession as an elementary school teacher!

Monks on tuks! HanuDane jumped out of the window of our van to get this picture, and then dove back in headfirst into our laps as the traffic lights changed. Our charismatic Royal-D was often disappearing off by himself, but was never alone, since he made friends with just about everyone in the country just by being his spontaneous and friendly self.I can't imagine the trip without him!

We also visited the landmine museum while in Siem Reap, which I forgot to put in an earlier post. Very sobering, as were so many aspects of this holiday. The museum is also a children's home, and looks like a tiny village, albeit a village filled with deactivated mines. It was set up by a man (given the name Akira by his Japanese patron) who was forced to lay mines while in the Khmer Rouge army, and has now devoted his life to disarming the mines and providing a home for children that have been orphaned, maimed, or otherwise affected by mines. Many people out in the countryside do not know what mines look like, and it's especially common for children to come across mines, play with them out of curiosity, only to be seriously injured or killed when it explodes. The museum was just past the downtown touristy areas, along rutted dirt roads lined with shabby karaoke bars. Karaoke is very popular all across Asia it seems, but karaoke bar is a euphemism for brothel in Cambodia. Does that put Big Echo Herro Kitty in a different light? Is it only in Japan that we think it makes perfect sense pay exorbitant amounts of money to disappear into a small darkened room for several hours with soft couches and really only expect a catalogue of random songs and watery drinks? Are we all so naive? The girls standing outside were wearing loads of white-face makeup and lipstick, geisha-in-hooker-heels style. Our tuk-tuk driver warned us that the path to the museum was "funtastic", but I suppose he meant the bumpy roads as well as the local human flair.

On Sunday morning we all split up and began to head Japanwards. Emma and I cruised the old market before splashing out on amazing brunch food at a French-style cafe. Given the chance, I will eat (my version of) breakfast morning, noon, and night, and got through most of 2005 on oatmeal, bananas, and imported Cheerios. However, breakfast in Asia usually revolves around rice and fish, which is not really my way of greeting the day. This was my idea of a perfect meal: smooth scrambled eggs, crusty bread, homemade yogurt, fresh fruit, muesli (or what D-ran refers to in combination as 'fruesli'), tangy lime juice on crushed ice, milk tea... mmm heaven. I have yet to find breakfast this good anywhere in Japan besides the $25 buffet at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, which was paid for by the ministry of education, so it was lovely have one proper morning meal before coming back to Japan. In general, I liked the taste of Cambodian food, as it was rather mild, but everything was either drowning in oil or coconut milk, which made me feel ill the entire trip. Back to supporting my tofu salada addiction here in Japan!

I flew back to Phnom Penh on a propeller jet with The Siblings (Mia and Noah), and spent one last night having dinner on the PP riverfront with Amy-chan and 2 other JETs we met in the stairwell of the hostel. I need to be careful with speaking my opinions too directly around strangers, since I find myself sticking my foot in my mouth too often and feeling like an insensitive fool. At dinner, one girl said she had wanted to fly directly to Phuket for the winter holiday, but it was too expensive, so she stayed in Japan.

Me: "Really? You wanted to go to Phuket? Ick, I was there on New Year's. I wouldn't ever ever go back again. Ever. I disliked it even more than Bangkok, if that's possible. Why Phuket?"
Girl: "For the one-year tsunami anniversary. We were there when it hit."
Me: "Oh... um... so, you were in the area?"
Girl: "In the water. I was sucked a kilometer out to sea. And one of our friends drowned."
Me: "Oh..."

Right. Must remember to think first, then speak. I flew out in the morning, but my flight was delayed in Hong Kong, which means I missed the only chance at getting home, and had to spend the night in a stuffy capsule hotel in Osaka. I could hardly sleep, and when I packed up at dawn, I was moving so slowly that I missed the first Shinkansen. Arriving home hours later to find my aparto still standing, I raced to work in my Guppy, already horrendously late. Considering that I have never even seen a cop in my town, and that I usually get overtaken on the winding roads by much speedier cars, karma was clearly NOT working in my favor that day when I was pulled over a kilometre from my house by a cop hiding in a bush. Already running late and on no sleep, I was forced to sit in the hot police van for 30 minutes, unable to stop crying, as the policeman yelled at me in incomprehensible Japanese, took a million fingerprints, and generally made me feel about 2 inches tall. I was on the verge of hyperventilating by the time they let me leave with a 15,000 yen fine ($150), 2 points on my Japanese license, and a huge dose of condescension. I was still crying when I got to junior high school, which was the complete opposite of the entrance I intended to make, and had to pull myself together in a hurry to teach 5 straight classes.
Everything has been similarly on-stop hectic since then, as work has been uncharacteristically busy, and it seems that every project I am involved with has something that is imminently happening. I'm presenting on Volunteering and Social Activism at the conference for recontracting JETs next week in Kobe, so I've been swamped with trying to get that ready along with everything else that is going on, but it is great to be putting energy toward something I really care about. Of course, come Wednesday night when my fear of public speaking comes back to haunt me with a vengeance, I'll become a vibrating force-field of stranxiety, and might swear off orphans and charity work for life (but rest assured I don't mean it). I'll be much more relaxed when the conference is over and I can actually digest more of what I saw in Cambodia, along with cleaning my house and writing letters and seeing long-neglected friends and spending time with anyone besides myself and my laptop. My lone social venture has been a "TGI Wensday" dinner at Joyful with Bae-yon, and the laptop came along since we spent an hour editing my powerpoints and some brochures. (I swear, I'm fun from time to time...)

I hope these entries have been coherent enough, though I don't think I've really expressed how much being in Cambodia affected me. I think about it all the time and am obsessed with plans to go back for a longer period of time, as so many things I saw have settled into my bones. Tourism is skyrocketing at the moment, which could help the economy, but also has potential to destroy the culture. Everything in Cambodia could change so drastically so quickly, but that seems to be how modern history had proceeded. Sorry so long and rambling-- thanks for reading!

posted by Raychaa @ 10:00 PM

2 comments:

At 2:37 PM, Anonymous said…

Love your thoughts on Cambodia, etc. You are such a GREAT writer! Good luck presenting in Kobe!!! Luv, B in the 'shi'
At 8:16 PM, sojourner incognito said…

Rachel...

Ta for the comment on my blog - I read some of yours last weekend (also a link from Vicky's.. blog-hopping.. mindless entertainment). I just remember a post about Siem Reap. You've been on some travels, hey?

I love the name Siem Reap (now I don't even know if I'm spelling it right). But love the name. Same with Abuja. Or Timbaktu, for that matter.

As for the comment "Okayama is the place that style forgot".. Now I'm convinced that I couldn't have received a better placement. I'm the girl that style forgot. And I'm so far behind, that I'll never catch up.

Here's to randomness.

marilu