| Monday, August 27, 2007 |
| Around Phnom Penh on a basket-bike |
 Yes, people do go to the gym in flip-flops. Haven't seen a towel yet. The only time it's cool enough to get a good workout here without passing out is at dawn, which is a bit of a drag, but better than... you know... passing out. August and September are the wettest times of year in SE Asia, and only a few degrees removed from the fiery heat of the springtime. When storms come through, the power of the rain is amazing.
 My biggest accomplishment so far in Phnom Penh is learning to bike around the city without dying. I do not go out or do much of anything alone because I'm a big chicken with notoriously bad sense of direction, but I am a very good Professional Tagalong. To the gym at rush hour? To Olympic Stadium on a crowded boulevard with irrelevant stop-signals? To the post office, going round and round on the 5-lane roundabout? Lead the way. I shall follow. Most people ride motorcycles, with 1 to 5 passengers and 1 to 5 additional pieces of cargo. After that comes tuk tuks and bicycles. Least common are cars or trucks. If you drive a car, the point is to advertise the what it is, such as LEXUS in huge silver letters. Or, once, I saw a LEXIS. Unfortunate spelling ruined the illusion of genuine brand-name quality. Crashes are rare, but you have to understand the hierarchy. Bikes can go faster than cars but need to get the hell out of the way. Motorcycles don't need to really obey lights, but tuktuks and cars do. Men driving cyclos (bicycle rickshaws) plod along at any speed they choose, as do people walking carts of food and drinks along the roads. Everyone avoids the elephant. If you are a man between the ages of 16 and 75 and you see a foreign girl walking, you should honk, yell "Moto? Moto?" or "Hello!", and/or stare at her as if she's not wearing a shirt. Seriously. Creepy.
Tim, what are you doing?? I said to pretend to push Shannon down the stadium stairs! On second thought, maybe it's not just the Khmer men that can be creepy. |
posted by Raychaa @ 10:48 PM  |
|
|
|
| Thursday, August 23, 2007 |
| Stingy, stingy, stingy! |
 Cuter than Cambodian centipedes: Mama Andria, Claire-bauble, Rocky, Timberrr, Lemming, Justin Timberlake. (Foreground: Kevin and Sally.)  Attempted coneheads.  Moderate scandal of a photo-- look the other way, M/D. Standard practice at Angkor What? is to decorate the tables and walls with graffiti, which we extended to Sharpie tattooing as well. The kids selling flowers outside laughed at us and some of the... pictures... drawn on our arms, and were kind enough to gang up and try and rub the messages off my skin. I lost a few layers of epidermis, but then we played some hand-clapping games and their pimp glared at me for not buying flowers. We finished the night lazing in Claire's bed and listening to romance (or lack thereof) war stories until 3am, and all of us said sayonara in the morning. Very very painfully early in the morning.
Our bus to Phnom Penh was rocking, though, and we got to listen to America hip-hip circa 2002, instead of awful Khmer karaoke. Hey funky deejay, cue "Jenny From the Block"! Back at the bus station, the moto drivers were swarming and and yelling and pulling at our bags and sleeves. Annoyed, we walked away and found a non-aggressive tuktuk driver to take Claire to the airport, and Tim and I kept walking. One of the drivers had quietly followed us for 3 blocks, and suddenly emerged to block our path with his vehicle. He demanded to know why we hadn't given him the driving job, and we said we were walking to our apartment. He called us liars, and circled us a few times in the street, yelling, "Stingy, stingy, stingy! Stingy, stingy, stingy!" before roaring away. We hid on a sidestreet before sneaking into a getaway tuktuk. It's hard when everyone needs your business, but with 10 men pulling on your clothes in the blazing sun, after you've been listening to J-Lo for the past 6 hours with a dangerous hangover, you're not inclined to give the aggressive ones your money. Or, more likely, we are just stingy. Stingy. Stingy! |
| posted by Raychaa @ 8:05 PM |
|
|
|
| Sunday, August 19, 2007 |
| Angkor Wat, take 3 |
 For our goodbye to PP, we had a nice river cruise on the Mekong with all the PEPY staff and some other random NGO people. Climb aboard the unaptly-named Love Boat! I didn't see any scandal or love on-deck, but the music was good and the cookies and tarts (pastries, not unmoral women) were fantastic. In the morning we had a long busride to Siem Reap to start Angkor Wat adventures. We hit the most popular temples-- Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm-- on our first day with a rather uninspired guide. Thailand has been the number-one ransacker of Angkor Wat over the centuries, and bad blood runs strong and deep. The guide pointed out a stone carving depicting a battle between Thai and Cambodian forces: "Notice the Thai soldiers. They are wearing LADY'S clothing!" and he chuckled and continued the story. Our last guide translated Siem Reap as "Thailand lost." This guy: "The thieves are defeated." Not feeling the *love* for Thailand.
 What's cooler than a 7-headed mythical naga snake? Six heads on our too-hot-to-handle August trip!  Siem Reap only exists as anything more than a village due to tourism. It's a strange town that changes dramatically every time I've come. In 5 years, Bar Street will be identical to Khao San Road in Bangkok, which is a shame since Khao San is an area in Thailand with almost no Thai people. I think our best night out was at a Khmer nightclub called ZoneOne where we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Undeterred by a "no guns, no hats, no flip-flops" sign on the door, the bouncers didn't frisk us and we walked our flip-flopped selves inside. It was packed, it was bizarre, it was fun, we left at 3am. Good times.
 Trusty Tim says... I am coming to eat your children. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 7:03 PM |
|
|
|
| Saturday, August 18, 2007 |
| You can find me in the Club |
 Our days were at RDIC, our nights were at the Club. Have fun on the Waterslide of Death at Club Evergreen, but no weapons! The Club was rather posh-looking, but is found down a dirt road, 45 minutes from the city, next to a village, central nowhere. In the spirit of posh-ness, we used air-con for the first time in weeks. (Protect the earth, protect yourself... but it was really hot. We had to. Don't tell Captain Planet.) When we stayed here on the May trip, the hotel food was awful and Sarah and I lived on choco-chalk Caloriemate bars. So good. By August, the Club E kitchen had mysteriously been shut down, so we ate at the RDIC coffee shop. Often in Cambodia, things are cooked with a hint of meat, which means every meal is an unwanted treasure hunt. Bring on the chalk.
 When we got back to Phnom Penh, we spent an NGO afternoon with our old friend, Master Kung Nai, or the Khmer Ray Charles. He had just returned that morning from a trip to England, but he and his son and 2 other students played for us on this traditional Cambodian guitar-like instrument called the chapei. He is supported by Cambodian Living Arts, which aims to keep traditional culture alive by supporting masters and students of music and dance. We also saw the same dance class as in May.
 Pretty girls at CCF! Our final NGO visit was to Cambodian Children's Fund, which is the fantastic children's home and educational program we visited the past 2 years. Most of the kids used to work at Steung Meanchey, the municipal garbage dump, picking out recyclables for money. There are now 3 facilities, but we just went to the main one and saw some classes. We attempted a discussion about the environment with some of the older kids. Several of them thought that illegal logging and water pollution were the biggest threat to Cambodia's environment, and a few cited the dwindling populations of river dolphins in Kratie. It was great to see these kids again!
|
| posted by Raychaa @ 9:16 AM |
|
|
|
| Wednesday, August 15, 2007 |
| Arsenic and old goats |
 For 3 days, we headed to the countryside to work with Mickey and the RDIC gang on sustainable development projects. Rice-husk latrine, anyone? This is the same organization we worked with for Golden Week for our rainwater collection unit, and they are jaw-droppingly amazing. However, the certainty of rain makes building concrete tanks problematic in August, so we worked on other projects. Everyone who has ever met Mickey wants to marry him, and it took about 10 minutes for most of us to agree. He's sort of magical-- the type of person who starts explaining a complex issue and when he finishes, you'd like to believe that's what you'd been thinking in your head all along. He's a funny, charming, family man from Kentucky and everyone at RDIC is doing really great work. They do everything from water testing to well-building to health education to animal husbandry to karaoke/media presentations to tree grafting to fish-raising using goat manure runoff to feed the algae which feed the fish... I could go on. The goat pen also featured the biggest stud I've ever seen in my life. He was the size of an oxen with gigantic horns and I was terrified. RDIC offers a 2-for-1 goat exchange, where they give 2 goats, offering stud service for free, and get one back in exchange. I miss my goat babies.  Our time there was fun, but a bit inefficient in terms of how much was accomplished and how much time we waited around. It's hard to have groups of volunteers show up without specific skills who really want to help in any way they can, but there isn't always something convenient or useful to be done. We did have a good outing to a village across the river, where we visited some families' homes and tested their water for arsenic.  Arsenic is a common contaminants in the river delta area and excessive ingestion leads to arsenicosis. A visible symptom is hyperkeratosis of the skin, especially on the hands and feet, which looks like big black spots. The effects are irreversible and can lead to liver and other organ failure. In the body, it can substitute for phosphorus, causing many of these health problems. Many of the pumps in this region were installed by development or charity groups, but the water cannot be used for drinking. RDIC is researching effective ways to remove the arsenic, or else install wider, shallower wells that do not bring up water with the higher levels of the toxin. Da (above) was our main guide for the day, though he usually works in the lab instead of doing village visits. He took DJ to the village volleyball game that night. It turns out that the tall, athletic foreigner (and, shhhhhhhh, part-time model) didn't stand a chance against the buff, hardcore Khmer volleyball men.  We collected samples and tested for arsenic levels, which will be used to create a map of the country to find safe and unsafe well locations. Catherine and I were the science nerds, and even this uber-simple reaction made me almost miss chem lab. Almost. It was a little strange to be just walking into people's homes, taking water samples, playing with the kids, and then coming back to say that their water was dangerous to drink, but apparently our presence as foreigners helps legitimize the work of the Cambodian staff. Very strange. We had a whole gang of kids following us, and were able to get a good game of PET-bottle baseball going by the end of the afternoon. Our last morning was back at the RDIC factory again, painting liquid silver on water filters and getting dirty in the garden with hoes. Ah, how the "Where's your hoe?"/ "She's over there!" joke never gets old. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 10:51 PM |
|
|
|
| Monday, August 13, 2007 |
| Shoga nai: Cambodia style |
My last night in Kampot, I came back to the guesthouse, went to my room, and had the key break inside the lock. They decided there was nothing to be done, and had me stay in an empty room. They must've told a cloud of mosquitoes to join me as well. At breakfast, they still hadn't done anything about it. It can't be helped. Nothing to be done. In Japanese, you can say to this, "Shoga nai". This really means that they've done everything they can, asked their boss, discussed it at a meeting, determined it can't be helped, and are thus expected to apologize while racked with guilt and shame. In Cambodia, it often means that no one can be bothered to do anything about it. I asked again. Came back at 11, nothing had changed. Someone finally showed up, unlocked my room, and I rushed off to catch my bus back to Phnom Penh. I fear that when I open the sachet of famous Kampot pepper that I bought in that strange town, it will be infested by sneeze-maggots or something else will have gone wrong. Shoga nai.
 Back in Phnom Penh, I lounged around and vaguely helped until trippers arrived on Saturday. Tim works in the PEPY office and did all the heavy lifting for this trip whereas I just did the emailing beforehand. I think of him as older than me, but actually he just graduated from Notre Dame 3 months ago. So it's not an issue of more years but of competence. The longer I know him, the more I'm convinced he's secretly some charity/development/volunteery Superman. Seriously, this boy can do anything. Trusty Tim to the rescue!  
My August companions: Catherine, Claire, Andria, and DJ. Avoiding the dust? Safe from bird flu? Escaped from the lab? On Sunday, we visited the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields, which still feel haunted to me. Melancholy and lethargic, we went for a requisite meal at Friends, which has the joint revival powers of great food and a positive social change program in action. From there we visited a new posse on the bulging Phnom Penh NGO scene. The group is called Tiny Toones, and is a breakdancing group for kids and teenagers, primarily from the city slums. The founder, KK, was a refugee from Cambodia to America. While growing up in Los Angeles, he joined the Crips, spent 3 years in prison and was then deported. Back in impoverished Cambodia, some local kids heard that he was a breakdancer and begged him to teach them. Eventually, he gave in. The group has grown from about 9 original students to a few hundred. They drop into the "studio" (whichever house they have found to rent and haven't yet been evicted from) every night to practice and learn. All the students have to be clean and sober to join the group, which gives many the incentive to fight the temptation of street drugs. They also help the kids enroll in school, and give free English classes. Some children, especially those from rough family situations, end up sleeping in the studio all night.  KK is quiet, tattooed neck-to toe, with a long ponytail and a beautiful smile. He chain-drank iced-coffee-in-a-baggie throughout the day, and seemed to be surrounded by ring of adoring kids wherever he happened to be sitting. (In the last photo below, he's in the front row in a white shirt.) We went on a Sunday, for the weekly dance-off in the park between different neighborhoods. We sat on the pavement, with the square roll of linoleum serving as the dancefloor enveloped by rapt faces of children, adults, and a few foreigners. Our group judged, Khmer Idol-style, as each group faced off, each kid bringing insults and challenges to outdance one another. There's our judge, Claire "Nicer than Simon, sassier than Paula Abdul" Bauble! It was the Tiny Toones clan that mysteriously took the top prize, and thus got to dance-off with KK and some of the other older dancers and teachers. This guy in red: so hot. Maniac, maniac on the floor...
 |
| posted by Raychaa @ 11:21 AM |
|
|
|
| Thursday, August 09, 2007 |
| Salt & Pepper: Kampot |
 Kampot, one province to the east of Sihanoukville, is the black pepper capital of the culinary world, though they've also instituted a thriving seasalt operation near the coast. Get your famous salt AND your famous pepper! Total domination of tabletop spices. I was extorted by a thug of a taxi driver when I went, and was forced to stay at the guesthouse he took me to. Someday I will be strong enough to face confrontation, but that day has not yet come. I would rather lose a few dollars than argue with punk Khmer cabmen with huge arms and a glare in their eye.
 Feeling upset by a day of being hassled, I wandered the town of French colonial architecture left to ruin. A lovely man who teaches English at the local junior high approached me for a chat and then took me out to see some famous caves. Salaries are low, so he supplements his salary on vacations by being a tour guide on moto. At the mouth of the biggest cave, there is a small 6th-century Hindu temple. We crawled through the darkness on hands and knees and on slippery rocks for about 15 minutes, only to find a holy man who was living there for the entirety of the rainy season. He had a hammock set up near one of the altar-like places for Buddha, at a place where light streamed through from above.
 Other than caves and pepper, the only real attraction is the Bokor Hill station, inside a national park that is under threat of illegal logging. The ride up was 2 hours in the back of a pick-up truck on a crazy dirt road. We saw monkeys along the way, one of which broke off a chunk of a branch and waited until we passed underneath him to drop it. Angry monkey.
Bokor is a mini-town atop a hill where the French used to work and play before the war, and now it's crumbly and ghostlike. The church walls were covered in graffiti, and the hotel had chamber after chamber of broken-tiled rooms coated in dirty rainwater. It would be the place to set a horror book, atop a hill haunted by ghosts of colonists past.
 |
| posted by Raychaa @ 1:31 AM |
|
|
|
| Friday, August 03, 2007 |
| To the Cambodian coast and back again |
 For the week I had between my Japanese visa expiring and meeting up with the PEPY staff, I cruised around a bit of southern Cambodia. Started in Sihanoukville, the beach resort city. The beaches were littered, everything is a bit run-down, and it wasn't a warm fuzzy place to be. The popular place to stay is near Serendipity Beach, which is decent. Along the beachfront, there is a line drawn in water: foreigners in one area, Khmer in the next. Skin color aside, it's easier to tell by what people are or aren't wearing, as most Khmer swim in all their clothing, usually just whatever they are wearing that day. It's a popular destination for wealthier families from Phnom Penh to escape for the weekend. Anywhere there is sand, there are little kids selling bracelets and trinkets and they are experts at hassling and hustling. I had a few friends that were pickpocketed by the roving gangs of cuteness. Kawaii with a bite, apparently.
Every tourist beach in Asia seems to offer the same boat tour, and I sign up every time: $10 to feel seasick, swim, do a bit of snorkeling, walk through some forest/jungle/marshland, get rained on, and have a nice lunch complete with just-caught fish. There are also some beautiful waterfalls outside of town, and I had a very friendly (if not overcharging) moto driver who chatted with me the whole way there.
 Serendipity appeals to the backpacker crowd, but in low season, there are as many people as bars and the nightlife resembles Okayama's: dead. But at least Okayama has far less hookers. The prostitutes couldn't find business at any of the sparsely-populated bars and looked quite angry. I spent time with some Aussies and a pack of beautiful Danish missionaries, and took off for Kampot after a few nights.
 A chili, a wave, and a footprint... and a little bit of garbage in the sand. Won't be back again, Sihanoukville. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 7:27 PM |
|
|
|
|
| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
| About Me |
|
Name: Raychaa
Home:
About Me: “No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.” (Florence Nightingale)
Profile
|
| Previous Post |
|
| Archives |
|
|
| Shoutbox |
For travel-volunteer junkies Responsible Nomad My favorite place, favorite kids
PEPY Ride: Cambodia
|
| Pretty People |
|
| Powered by |
 |
|
