| Wednesday, September 26, 2007 |
| I'd Like to Extend to You an Invitation to the Pants Party |
 The Pants Party on the Mekong River for Tim's birthday coincided with my last night in Cambodia, Michael's 3rd, and Jonathan's 1st. Wear some fancy pants, funny pants, shiny pants, dragon pants, zebra pants, lady pants, any pants at all, or not at all. Found my $3 zebra trousers at a random little market near the house, which made me look somewhat like a Florida woman headed for a buffet dinner at a casino. It started drizzling while I was buying them, which quickly turned into a good rain, which became a downpour, which turned into a legitimate river running through the aisles as people scrambled to cover their wares from the leaks in the tin and tarp ceiling and the floodwaters below. When I finally biked home, there was so much water on the road that your foot goes fully under with each pedal, and little kids were fully submerged, swimming in the mucky water. Given that Phnom Penh has sketchy sewage systems in place, I hope those kiddies have immune systems of steel.
 Met some other foreigners on the boat who lived in my same dorm at Northwestern, 2 years later, so was able to utter the infamous line, "Yeah, I lived in Bobb." Oh Bobb-McCulloch and the almost-fond memories. It was a very late night, followed by sunny and very early morning tuktuk ride to the airport. Hopped over into Bangkok in another rainstorm. Sayonara Cambodia!
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posted by Raychaa @ 10:06 PM  |
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| Wednesday, September 19, 2007 |
| "We'll be saying BKK the rest of our lives, like some demented airline employees..." |
I suspect I'm bad luck when it comes to international travel, but my sister says just lucky. This Thailand trip didn't coincide with anything tsunami-scale, but my flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok arrived a few hours before another discount airliner crashed and burst into flames after touchdown in Phuket. It was pouring rain on my bus-ride into the city, with thunder and lightning as I was running to find a decent guesthouse. Funny how my only thought was annoyance about my lack of raincoat, whereas that's right about the time 88 Thais and foreign flyers perished. I've done the Phuket-BKK route 4 times, but not on 1-2 -Crash. Fingers crossed that Airasia keeps its planes in better shape and doesn't try to fly in such dodgy weather.
For now I'm reluctantly in Bangkok. Did one night on Khao San Road for convenience and then headed to more relaxed Siam area. Khao San is as bright and tacky as ever. The tiny charms dissipate more quickly each visit, and are fully replaced with exasperations. Tourists dressed the same, in cornrows and clothes inappropriate for weather and body-type. Bored, apathetic shop employees. Creepy tuktuk drivers. Tailor-shop men that block your path in alleyways and then glare and say muttered things in English and Arabic if you don't stop to talk and get a suit made. (Although, they may just be talking about the weather or football in angry tones.) Each time I had to walk away from those headbanded "hill tribe" ladies, I felt a little more dead inside. They grab your arm with a pitiful look in their eye, and that mournful crickety-crack of the wooden spine of their frog toys haunts me.
Siam is the mega-shopping area that I usually avoid for lack of funds/shopping-desire. I've now spent 2 full days walking and shopping around here, for lack of other sightseeing to do. After 2 months of wearing backpacker clothes that were either closer to jammies or sewn by street children, it's exciting to have new things, and even some grown-up work clothes! Met up with Bec for day one of the shopping attempts, and then we joined Steve for Egyptian food and sky-high drinks on the 60th floor of a hotel. The rooftop bar was more classy before the men with their hookers show up, but you can't avoid that here. We had to change into our new clothes in the bathroom and hide our flip-flopped feet just to get inside, but apparently wearing a skirt so short that you can't walk up stairs properly helps keep up hotel appearances. Overheard:
Lady of the night: (shriek) Oh my gaaaaawd! Beautiful view!
Drunk 'n' Dirty Old Farang: And what a beautiful You!! Beeeautiful you!
I hope you're paying her well to put up with that level of slurred pun, old man. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 12:20 AM |
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| Friday, September 14, 2007 |
| Jazzercise |
 For the low cost of 500 riel, or 12.5 cents, you can join several hundred others in aerobics class atop Olympic Stadium! This is Shannon's and my section, which I suspect was beginner(loser) level. Each has its own stereo and announcer, so if you walk the circumference of the stadium, you will pass through 10 classes. Next time I'm joining the advanced (hardcore) class. In lieu of Billy's Bootcamp, I need my 12.5 cents worth.
 And, for free, you can play soccer anytime, anywhere. This "court" was lined by garbage and all the corners smell of pee, but usually we play on the red-dust fields below. We've played a few times on weekends with these same kids, in the ultra-grubby rags. They are tough as nails, and I had an old Cambodian man saunter up to tell me about his university study days in London and to warn me that these boys might try to take my wallet. We also had a special kid adopt us for a few days, who spoke some type of mumbled Khmer that the other kids laughed at. He insisted on giving me rides on my bike, and then inadvertently pulled off the entire tire valve while playing around with the gears, deflating it in 3 seconds flat, and causing me to take the gimpy bike home in a tuktuk.
 It is a rather significant change from spending days with these kiddies to an evening at the 2nd poshest hotel in town. My uncle Michael comes to Phnom Penh a lot on business, and treated us to dinner at the Raffles, where he was staying. My parents told me that A-belle "approved" of the Raffles as a nice joint, but I don't know that I put much weight on the opinion of a girl who has been sleeping on a mat in an Indian ashram all summer. As a certified Champagne Backpacker, though, I will certify it myself as fancy. I felt underdressed walking in the lobby among the Raffleites. Dragged Tim away from his beloved spreadsheets long enough for a fabulous dinner that included sushi, melt-in-your-mouth sea bass with ginger, and Khmer tapioca soup with bananas, which is now my favorite dessert in the world. (Chocolate is a food group, not a dessert. Different criteria.) I haven't seen U-Michael since last summer, and it was fun to chat and visit with fam from afar, in a mutually foreign country.  Today marked my last day as general helpful hobo at PEPY, and it's been a packed week. Daniela has been nominated for a business plan grant through Cartier, and the final plan is on its way to France at last. We will try to get her to exchange PEPY bracelets (woven by kids at an orphanage) for a gold watch. Because of that, there is lots to do in the office and everyone else is working all the time. Tiny Tim wants to be Tiny Toones-- as stress release, bring on the breakdancing! Or at least the fledgling attempts at headspins. |
| posted by Raychaa @ 1:17 AM |
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| Monday, September 03, 2007 |
| Tiny dancers |
 Still in Phnom Penh, and still loving it lots despite my general fear of cities. I've been working in the PEPY office since the trip finished, which doubles as the PEPY house, which means we live and breathe PEPY. It's very Real World, if the producers wanted to film in a developing country, and put a bunch of NGO types in a barbwire-gated colonial villa, snuggled up next to a rundown temple and some slum neighborhoods. Most of Phnom Penh is like this: poverty bleeds right into wealth. Even for the ambassadors and military types living in the gated mansion communities, you only need to step onto the chaos of the street to remember where you are.
Feeding the pepyaddiction has been fantastic, but I might go into withdrawal in a few weeks when I leave. Last weekend's highlight was a repeat performance by Tiny Toones, our little breakdancing friends. They performed at a new nightspot called Q Bar, which uses white white white everywhere and the biggest bed you'll ever see in Cambodia. Better than anything I'm used to in Okayama, but it has the desperation of a little bar that wants to be cosmopolitan yet falls short. Because of the kids, a lot of the hip-hoppers and thug men of the city were there, and we watched some of the foreign girls prey on that crowd on the dance floor.
As for daily life in the city, the food is good and you can get any type of cuisine you can imagine, due to the enormous expat community. The fusion food is the most fun because you can't get it elsewhere. This happy smiley fish was pretty phenomenal.
  And my pretty PEPY family is pretty phenomenal, too. Maryann is the interim director while Daniela is in the States. She is casually running things while working on her PhD in sociology and learning Khmer. Shannon is from Chicago and runs the office with an iron gavel, a chocolatini, and a box of pop-tarts. Finish your task list or else!!
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| posted by Raychaa @ 6:29 PM |
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| So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka. |
| About Me |
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Name: Raychaa
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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)
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