where cider meets condensed milk: March 2008

where cider meets condensed milk

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Ants in the land of Land Ruisers

Every morning on my moto ride to work, my favorite street stall is a signmaker's. Examples of signs you can have commissioned: (Khmer Rouge) Trial Judge. Police. Lexus. Land Ruiser. The idea is to let people know that you are powerful, and/or are rich, and/or drive a fancy car but don't spell that well. Someday I hope to afford a Land Ruiser, which I will eat during a nice dinner of Tofurkey with a Tuno sandwich.

I live 2 kilometers from work now, in a quiet tree-lined street surrounded by governor's houses and a golf driving range. My balcony overlooks a gated community across the street, with huge mansions with swimming pools and shiny cars. Perhaps even a Land Ruiser or two! In my new crib, I have a washing machine (good) and a tin roof (bad). When it rains, it echoes so loud in my room that it sounds like gunfire during an earthquake. Good thing I'll be moving before monsoon season. I also have huge spiders with webs up in the roof and ants everywhere and plenty of chirping house geckos. Some say ants hate cinnamon. This isn't really true. What they DO hate are rivers of body soap on the wall. This kept them away from food and the sink for a good half-day, until the river ran dry and stained the paint a faint shade of citrus-mint refresharomatherapy. At least they aren't mukade. Sadly, the ants are staying, but Mr V is leaving me for a visit with the husband (Mister Mr V) before she heads home.

My daily highlights are teaching my English class, because my kids rock. The weekly highlights are trips to the day care, because those kids are so great and so exhausting. I remember a time when I ran with 4-year-olds and didn't need to bathe in Lysol later, but MAN these kids would make you smile. Trust me. Last week, the big adventure was a trip to CCF 4 for Scott's birthday party. All 300 kids, all the staff, and the biggest birthday cake ever were in attendance! These gingerbread men have no idea that they're two months late for Christmas. Cake, snacks, playtime, dancing until 8pm... Phnom Penh knows how to party.

At the community center last week, a mother started petting my arms (very normal), asked me some questions. Response: "I am America, 25 o'clock naah?" (Yes, I am actually studying Khmer. No, I'm not retaining it well yet.) A pleasant staff member came over to translate more thing she wanted to say: "She says you have soft hands. She wishes she did, too. But, she works with semen." I looked down at her hands, faintly coated with gray and white dust, and immediately, I wanted her to stop touching me. Germs and headlice don't faze me, but...

Two minutes later, I came to the conclusion that she must have been a construction worker. I hope.

posted by Raychaa @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Demented airline employee returns to BKK

Back to Bangkok... again. Mr V (Deenaree) and I both had to jet out of Cambodia with expiring visas in order to stay longer, so we went to spend a long weekend with her extended family. Of all places in the world, her mother is from Beloit (!), but her father is Thai. Her aunts and grandmother and cousins and the maids took excellent care of us, and we came back to Phnom Penh after 5 days relaxed with nicely ironed clothes. Leaving was a disaster, as we had to work all morning, move out of the hotel, drag all our stuff to the office, arrange a new lease, and get to the airport in time. Our students probably think we're crazy bag people.

Below is a spirit house outside her grandmother's restaurant, which is for protection and respect. We ate so much good food, mostly Chinese-Thai style. It was right across from Lumpini Boxing Stadium, and is *famous* for Half-Century Barbecued Chicken Satay. Couldn't try it, but it did smell tasty. And famous!

Instead of satay, how about large seafood? Yeah, we ate these giant crabs for one meal, along with prawns the size of your foot for another, and smoky tofu with broccoli and rices and all sorts of noodles. Did I mention the mochi dumplings filled with kurogoma (black sesame), in a sweet-spicy ginger sauce?

And in true Bangkok style, we did a lot of shopping. And in true will-work-for-sticky-rice- and-free-drinking-water volunteer style, we couldn't really buy much of anything. Ah well. It didn't stop us from spending 3 solid afternoons at MBK and finding multiple excuses to drink bubble tea while we were there. We spent most of a Sunday at the weekend market, in search of not much of anything in particular, but found cowboys! (Deenaree said it didn't make her miss her apartment in Houston. Secretly, I think she ran back and bought a bootleg bluegrass CD.) We had iced coffee back at the house with Bizen Betsy, who was in town for master's research, and we had some natsukashii moments. (Remember that time we were all in a huge article in the paper for no reason? Remember how lame and yet fun Okayama was after OD'ing on karaoke and chu-hai? Yeah...)

And at the risk of this becoming food porn.... this is so beautiful. Hello, my love. The Oishi Grand is a fancy J-buffet and it's freaking amazing. Deenaree's aunts took us and her brother out for a sayonara dinner, and I think I've stashed enough tempura calories to outlast any bout of Camborexia. So. So. Good. See you again, dear sashimi, when I'm in another sufficiently developed country.

posted by Raychaa @ 10:19 AM 1 comments

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Hotel, Motel, Guesthouse, Apartment, Hostel, Holiday Inn? Paragon!

Not much to say on this blog lately because everything has been too overwhelming, but it's all circling back around to good again. Also, no camera yet, and that makes me very annoyed. Here is one surviving pictures of some friends I made in the fishing village out in one of the provinces a few weeks back. I really dislike Phnom Penh right now and feel like it's draining away my energy, but need to be here to do my job. So.... give me a few weeks and I'll be comfortable again. Going to BKK on Thursday and hoping it gives me the stress relief I need. (More importantly, it'll give me the new visa I need when I come back.) Apartments 1 and 2 have both bitten the dust, and I now live in a champagne-backpacker/ low-key-business-traveler hotel. Weird? A little. Nice? Yes. Deenaree is the ESL volunteer with me at CCF, and we moved in together to our place on the riverside to escape Things That Go Bump In the Night. In her previous guesthouse, the final straw after a flooding room and strange smells was a confused German man taking a spare key from the desk and waltzing in her room at 2am. We stay somewhere a little more classy now, because that's the kind of classy (paranoid) gals we are.

Besides voting, there is lots to do in Phnom Penh. Eating, drinking, playing sports, getting a headache from dealing with moto drivers, and so forth. Job is great-- I'm mostly in the office but also am teaching a class for some of the older kids every evening. Already, the thought of leaving makes me break inside, so I'm rearranging everything to put off America for longer. We also have a newly-hatched day care program at the community center by the rubbish dump, and Deenaree and I each go once a week. (We both have names that are hard to pronounce in Khmer, so she gets called Mistah Vee or Nary and I'm called something close to RayCHAEY.) They are lovely and it's everything that is important to me (little kiddies, health programs, community building, early learning, nutrition, etc) all squished into one program. They all wear striped black-and-silver polo shirts. A week before I came, I happened to buy a top that is black-and-silver striped. It's either fate or I share the same fashion tastes as 4-year-olds. I'm banking on fate.

posted by Raychaa @ 6:35 PM 0 comments

So wrong it's right. And then wrong. And then wrong again... welcome to the inaka.

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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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