Chinese New Year

Cambodia has quite a few holidays. Perhaps this is because people here never get a day off from work. Most of them work on holidays, anyway. I have a long weekend because of the Chinese New Year. There are no classes Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I'm going to take the opportunity to go to the beach at Sihanoukville and relax. After that it's seven straight weeks of classes with no breaks. My schedule this term is insane, so it's going to be a tiring two months.

Here they celebrate their Khmer New Year, what they call the International New Year on December 31 and the Chinese New Year. The latter is a bit of a sticky issue. Cambodia is heavily reliant on China financially and militarily. I've read that the bulk of the national budget here is funded by Chinese aid.

Shortly after I arrived last year a truly horrifying thing happened. After riots in the far western Chinese city of Urumqi, 22 people fled to Cambodia. They were members of an ethnic minority called Uighurs, most of whom are Muslim. They were seeking asylum in Cambodia. Under international law there was absolutely no question that they should have been allowed to stay.

The Cambodian government deported 20 of them back to China, over a chorus of outrage from foreign governments and human rights groups. (Two were and I believe still are missing.) They were deported on a Saturday. Two days later Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was in Phnom Penh to sign agreements to give the Cambodian government $1.2 billion in aid.

A Cambodian government spokesperson said "China thanked the government of Cambodia for assistance in sending back those people to China because under Chinese law these people are criminals. This represents cooperation by the two sides." Cooperation!

To my knowledge no one has been able to find out what happened to these people in China. It is generally assumed they were all tortured and killed. Among the group were two children and a baby. The government here condemned those people to death for money.

Horrifying

Lest we judge too hastily from our comfortable western corner of the world, let's examine the situation. Cambodia is a small, poor country wedged between two bigger, more populous and more ambitious countries. The Thais and Vietnamese make no secret of their wish to carve up the country and wipe Cambodia off the map. People die with distressing regularity in border disputes.

Lately the Thai "Yellow Shirts", the fanatically royalist, whack-job faction that shut down the airport in 2008 has been protesting (again) to get the government to take a stronger stance in the border dispute with Cambodia. All the fuss is over Preah Vihear, a temple on the border. The Thais want Preah Vihear, but in 1962 the International Court of Justice in The Hague awarded the temple to Cambodia determined that it belongs to Cambodia.

Here we go again

Thailand and Vietnam have, shall we say, troubled relationships with China. Cozying up to the Chinese government means that border disputes between Cambodia and its neighbors might result in a few people getting shot to death from time to time, but won't escalate into war. If you don't want people starting fights with you, you make friends with the biggest, baddest guy on the playground. Where would Cambodia be without China? It might be gone.

Even if you remove the complicated history from the equation, the holiday still is a complicated issue. Why celebrate the Chinese New Year in Cambodia? For me, the answer is simple. It gives me four days at the beach, so bring it on!

The nicest gift ever

Before I went home for Christmas I spent a couple days at the beach. As usual, I hung out with my girlfriends.


The little girl in the front is Lin, 8. The other two are both named Srey Oun and 10 years old. They sell bracelets on the beach. You can see Lin's rig hanging from her shoulder. It's a strategically bent coat hanger with bracelets hanging from it. There are dozens of kids their age on the beach, all selling exactly the same bracelets hanging from coat hangers bent in exactly the same way.

Some go to school. Some don't. Either way, they're there every day and every night. You'll see kids working on the beach when you arrive at 8 a.m. You'll see them when you go down to the beach for dinner at 6 p.m. You'll see them when you go back to your hotel at 10 p.m. You'll see them the next day.

These three always sit and talk with me. They ask me to go swimming but I don't. Cambodia is famous, unfortunately, for being a hotspot for child prostitution. If you're a western man playing in the ocean with Cambodian children people will assume you're a pedophile. No way around it.

Dealing with the kids on the beach is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" proposition. If you give them money it encourages the continuation of the system. If you don't give them money they get in trouble. Some have told me they can't go home unless they've made a certain amount of money or sold all of their fruit, lobsters, or whatever. They might be lying for sympathy, but I doubt it, since they are still working when I go home for the night.

I give my "girlfriends" a few dollars to buy food, Coke, whatever. I know they spend it on food because they always offer to share. They are always glad to see me but I wondered how much of it was genuine and how much of it was salesmanship.

One morning Lin wasn't on the beach but the two Srey Ouns gave me a Christmas present. In a box, wrapped, with a bow.


It was all I could do to keep from crying. Heck, I'm watering up now. It was a few trinkets: a bracelet, a necklace, a keyring and a snowglobe. Who knows if they even paid for it. God knows I don't want them spending their money on me! But that they took the time to put it together, box it and wrap it ... I just don't know what to say.

They knew I was going home for Christmas. I had shown them pictures from home. They especially liked pix of my neice and nephew in the snow. They said they wanted to give them presents too. I asked them to make bracelets with Christopher's and Sarah's initials.

Lin got word that and wanted to make one too. I asked her to make one for my little cousin Erin. Let's just say I paid substantially more than the market rate for these bracelets...

Police Blotter

When I started traveling, and then when I chose to live abroad, a question I heard often was "Aren't you afraid?". My standard glib response was "I live in Baltimore. How scary can it be?" I have spent most of the past two years in mainland Southeast Asia and I can say in all honesty that I have never felt afraid. I know that sounds hopelessly naive. There have been times when I've been quite stupid, such as walking home from a nightclub at 4:30 a.m. I deserved to be robbed!

Phnom Penh has a reputation for being extremely dangerous. Even a few years ago this reputation was deserved. Now I would say it's actually less dangerous than most major cities. There are a lot of guns here, far more than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Seriously, there are no guns in Vietnam.

The news is peppered with accounts of often horrific violence. Violent crimes here tend to be crimes of passion committed by drunk people against people they know. Just like everywhere else.

Theft is common, whether by drive-by bag snatchers or pickpockets. I had my iPhone pickpocketed by two ladyboys. While I was sitting in a car! I am surprised, though, at how little violent crime there is against foreigners. Cambodia is quite poor. I have read that as much as 85 percent of the population here survives on less than a dollar a day. I make as much teaching one class as most people make here in a month.

I would not blame people here for robbing foreigners, quite frankly. I would get a bit frustrated if I was busting my butt working in a restaurant or garment factory or construction site then saw foreigners dropping more on one meal than I make in a month. If I were a local here I think it would bother me seeing young girls on the arms of fat, old foreigners.

I would, however, advise against visiting Cambodia if you are a witch.

The Police Blotter section of the Phnom Penh Post is a must-read for its morbid entertainment value.

Here is a recent update update:

Swords at 10 paces for nine lovestruck students
Nine students were detained after an argument “over love” devolved into a swordfight in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district on Sunday. Police said the students, all boys, were from three separate high schools, but that they were close friends. However, on the day in question, an argument erupted over girls, prompting the boys to unsheath the swords they happened to be carrying. When police arrived at the scene, the students stopped fighting among themselves and began kicking the police car. All nine were detained, and their parents were called in.

Man stabbed on way home from dance party
A 40-year-old man was stabbed to death after dancing at a party in Kampong Cham province on Sunday. Police said the victim was killed on his way home from a night of frivolities. The victim’s wife said they were walking along the road when a man came up and stabbed her husband with a knife before fleeing. Police believe the suspect is from the same village, but the wife said she could not make out his face.

Homeless woman may die after police neglect
A homeless mentally ill woman who was hit by a car in Kampong Speu province could perish because authorities are refusing to help her. A witness to the crash on Sunday said no one knew who the woman was, but that she always slept in front of houses and markets. The driver of the car immediately fled the scene. The witness said she had called police, but had received no response from officers. Now she fears the woman will die if no one helps her.

Hammer attack results in serious injuries
A 51-year-old woman was hit with a hammer and robbed while walking home in Kampot province’s Kampong Trach district on Sunday. Police said the victim was in serious condition, and they concluded that she was assaulted with a hammer after finding the tool covered in her blood at the crime scene. Her family said her necklace, phone and some money was missing. They have called on police to catch the suspect.

Officers on hunt after wine session gets nasty
Police are on the hunt for a man accused of beating his friend to death with a hammer during a drinking session in Siem Reap town on Sunday. Police said the two old friends were drinking wine at the suspect’s house when they began to argue. The suspect then allegedly grabbed a hammer and proceeded to hit his friend four times. The victim was sent to hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival, while the suspect escaped. Police say they know the identity of the accused and “hope to catch him”.

Let's review, shall we? In one day there was not one but two stories of people getting beaten with hammers. A group of boys is in trouble for swordfighting. Every day there's a list of bizarre and often grotesquely violent crimes. In fact, this might be considered a slow day since there are no stories about someone getting hacked to death with a machete.

Sadly, a recurring theme in virtually every crime story is the inability or, more usually, the unwillingness of the police to do anything. More on that in a future post.

Translator required

I really wish I could read Khmer sometimes. I saw a sign on a wall near my apartment. I'd love to know what it means in English. Oh wait -- someone was nice enough to translate for me.


What makes this really funny is that in Southeast Asia there is nothing wrong with a man pissing ... anywhere. Busy city sidewalk in broad daylight? No problem. Need to stop on a long drive? Don't walk off into the trees, just stand there on the side of the road.

I was walking down the street in Hue, Vietnam, admiring the scenery along the Perfume River, when I looked up just in time to avoid a man pissing. He looked like he was about 150 years old and had just whipped it out in the middle of the sidewalk as people walked by on both sides. If I hadn't been paying attention I would have walked right into him and his ... well, you know.

Funnier still is that this wall is part of Martini, the most notorious bar in Phnom Penh. It's okay if you want to take home one of the hundred or so prostitutes inside -- but don't piss on the outside wall!

New money

I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop, which unfortunately is called Brown. I spent eight years working at UPS, so the name reminds me of my days toiling away in a cubicle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter. If my managers hadn't been gone so far out of their way to make me miserable I might still be there instead of here!

I love SE Asian coffee. They make it very strong and add condensed milk, so it is both very bitter and very sweet. The Western-style coffee shops are expensive by local standards. A large latte here is $3. I can buy coffee from a street vendor for about 50 cents.

The food is also very good and relatively cheap for a Western-style coffee shop. About once a week I go to a coffee shop to do internet nerd stuff and satisfy my urge for frou-frou Western coffee.

However, because it is Western or, more to the point, modern it has also become a hotspot for well-to-do Cambodians. It's becoming increasingly popular with the local nouveau riche. The problem here, as is true everywhere else on Planet Earth, is that people who have just come into money have no effing clue how to act in public.

Please understand, I am not slagging Cambodians or even rich Cambodians. One of my pet peeves is people who move to a foreign country and then constantly criticize it and its people.

The problem with these people is {insert offensive stereotype here}. This place is never going to get any better until they learn to {insert misinformed and unrealistic observation here}.

No, instead I am slagging people with new money everywhere who act like jackasses. I am merely pointing out the Cambodian flavor of this phenomenon.

Because of the bizarre historical nightmare of the Khmer Rouge, the resulting civil war and the epically inept United Nations peacekeeping efforts, Cambodia's development is decades behind its bigger, more populous neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. The buzzword here, as mentioned above, is modern. Anything modern is good. There is a fascination with Western culture, especially American, but there is also fascination with the technology of Japan and Korea, for instance.

The local nouveau riche come to Brown to show off their toys. In the loudest manner possible. The other way to show off your newfound wealth is to buy a big-ass SUV. This is one of the few cities I've been where Hummers are common. It's also a city where there is no parking. This phenomenon deserves its own post. Heck, I could write a book about traffic in Cambodia.

The celphone networks here don't always play well together, so it's not uncommon to see people with more than one celphone. I should say that in the past the mobile networks weren't always compatible, so people needed multiple phones. These days most of those technological problems are gone so carrying multiple phones is done more as an affectation and display of wealth than out of any genuine need. And, like everywhere else in the world, people who have iPhones brandish them conspicuously, as if they just won a gold medal at the Olympics.

One day I was sitting here next to a table of four men. Two of them were older, stocky men with crewcuts who pay people to drive them around in monster SUVs. They're cut from a mold. The odds are they are cops, government bigwigs, gangsters, or some combination of the three.

The older men mostly sat there like statues, looking and feeling important while their younger companion talked on his celphone. Sorry, celphones. He probably didn't need to use a phone because he was talking so loud. You may have heard him from where you're reading this. The point, of course, was to impress everyone within earshot how important he is. He does, after all, own four celphones!

(I had to surreptitiously take these photos with my phone so please excuse the quality.)

You can see the latest iPhone model on the table in front of him. Very important that you see that... It's the most modern iPhone. See it? He would frenetically switch from one phone to another as if he were coordinating the Normandy invasion and trying to get orders to his generals. And yes, to answer your question, he did in fact have conversations on more than one phone at the same time. I think I permanently damaged my eardrums turning up the sound in my eardrums to drown out his barking. All to no avail.

As I sit here four young Khmer guys are sitting across from me. Each has an Apple laptop prominently displayed on the table. The one closest to me is playing Korean boy-band videos. The others are whoopin' and hollerin' like they're at the concert, and not in a busy restaurant.


Morons.

To truly understand how annoying this is you must be familiar with Korean pop. I pray for your sake that you are not. I'll write about it in a future post. This is painful enough for now.

Wheels on wheels

I was watching the BCS championship at a sports bar on the river when I saw what looked at first to be the aftermath of a traffic accident. At first glance it looks like a car drove off the sidewalk and through a tuk-tuk. It's actually a father and the tuk-tuk driver loading a battery-powered miniature SUV to take home. The guy had brought his little son (in the back seat) to cruise around the riverfront.

Usually when I see people crazy things on tuk-tuks or motos I don't have time to get my camera out.

Home sweet home

One thing a lot of people asked about while I was home was my living arrangements. I moved to Phnom Penh in April, during the Khmer New Year. I decided my first order of business should be to find an apartment before classes started. On my first morning I got up and prepared to hit the streets. I asked the girl at the hotel where I always stayed if she knew of any apartments to rent.

She excitedly ran out from behind the counter and led me around the corner. As it turns out her extended family owns the entire street. Her aunt had an apartment for rent. It was the first place I looked at. I took it. I spent about three minutes apartment hunting. It was tiny and a little pricey, so I figured I'd stay there for a month or two until I could find something better.

However, it's also one block from the river. It's within walking distance to ... everything. I could walk to work in 15 minutes, although I didn't, because it was April and the temperature hot enough to melt lead. The biggest problem, of course, was inertia. What I'm trying to say is that I'm lazy... I knew I needed to find a new place but I just never got around to it.

My trip home for the holidays gave me the perfect chance and excuse to get out. A colleague offered to let me store my stuff at his apartment. Adam is a 30-year-old Englishman who started working at my school last term. His place has two bedrooms, so he asked me if I wanted to rent the room for January. It's a lean time for teachers here. We have a one-month break. We only get paid when we are in the classroom. One month with no work is one month with no pay... Hopefully we'll get along and I'll stay. It's been a long, long time since I had a roommate. So far, so good.

The location is good in that it's close to work. My school is just on the other side of the big building in the center.


There's one big intersection on the way with a 90-second stoplight. If the light is red it nearly doubles the commute, from two minutes to almost four.

Incidentally, notice all the construction going on. One of the reasons I wanted to live here is that things are chainging quickly. It seems like an exciting time to be here. There were no tall buildings in the city until last year, when the Canadia Tower was built. you can't see it because it's in the distance behind the big building on the left. After the grand opening the fire department said, "Oh, by the way, if there's a fire up there, we have no way of putting it out." Such are the growing pains of a developing country.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

The location is good or bad, depending on how you look at it, because it is next to the most notorious bar in Phnom Penh, Martini. If I'm talking to a girl I tell her I live by Del Gusto (a charming and perfectly respectable restaurant) and Flicks (the small private movie house). If I tell a girl I live by Martini she'll roll her eyes, laugh and maybe continue talking to me. Martini deserves its own post. You really have to see it to believe it.

When I say I live next to the bar this is what I mean.

In the foreground you can see the railing of our balcony. The roofs below are Martini. The trees are in the bar's open courtyard. Our house shares a wall with the bar! At night we can hear the billiard balls clacking below. The noise isn't bad though, at least not from the bar. It's the new place across the street that's the problem.


It was a restaurant, but apparently sales weren't good, so they ripped off the roof and now it's -- gasp!! -- a karaoke bar. Or a bar with a really bad house band. Either way, every night we suffer through would-be idols mangling treacly Cambodian pop songs and the worst slow Western pop songs from the 1980s. I'd rather live next door to a slaughterhouse and listen to the sounds of dying animals than hear one more person wailing "Eternal Flame".

If the caterwauling continues I might have to move. I don't think I want to get used to it. It would be a shame, because the family that owns the house (and lives on the ground floor) is as sweet as they can be.


They speak little English. I speak less Khmer. Our encounters consist mostly of smiling and nodding. We have a washing machine, which is a bit of a luxury. I was paying to have my laundry done at my old place.

There is a washer but no dryer. I wonder how many clothes dryers there are in Cambodia, since the temperature never drops below 70 degrees! Unfortunately the buttons are in Japanese so it's not exactly user-friendly. I am fairly computer literate but I have looked online for a manual in English and it is beyond my meager powers with a search engine to find one.

If we open up the front and back doors we get a surprisingly strong breeze in the hallway.


The weather is really pleasant now. Just beautiful. Warm (not hot) during the day, cool and breezy at night. Like May or September back home. We'll see what kind of breeze we get when the suffocating heat of April sets in...

The kitchen here is almost as big as my last apartment, which was basically a hotel room.

Before Adam left England for Cambodia his friends threw him a big party and pitched in to buy him an iPad so he could keep in touch. His departure was a little different than mine...


We're on the top floor. I park my motorbike inside the gate for free, which is another upgrade over my last apartment. There there was no parking, so I had to pay $10 per month to leave it in a parking area with a security guard.

As you can see, aside from the end of the street, where the two bars are, it's a quiet residential street. This is BB, the family dog, who basically comes and goes as she pleases.

People who know me know that I love dogs. They generally love me. BB might be the only dog in the world that doesn't. This has led to some awkward encounters when I arrive home late at night and she barks at me. And barks. And barks. And wakes the family. Nod and smile, nod and smile...

The best part of the place is the balcony.


Adam spruced it up with a bunch of plants and a hammock. The place has one TV, which we wheel from room to room to balcony as needed. I think they bought the furniture from Guantanamo Bay. My roommate bought some pillows but the sofa and chairs are still pretty much instruments of torture. Again, we'll see how much we enjoy the balcony when it gets really hot...

Directly below is a brand-spanking new apartment building next to a traditional Cambodian home. I love the juxtaposition of the two. The old-style houses are built stilts because of flooding during the rainy season. They're mostly open, because of the oppressive summer heat. Air-conditioning? Hah! The fence and barbed wire weren't there when the house was built but are necessary now.

Plenty of good seats still available

It's tough being a fan of American sports if you live in Asia. I am 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time here so, for instance, if a game starts at 6:30 pm Sunday there, I see it at 6:30 am Monday here. When I do watch sports it's usually just after I've woken up.

If you're a soccer fan you're in luck. There are approximately 5,000 television channels that show soccer 24/7. If you're more into cricket, rugby or non-NASCAR motorsports, you can always find a place to watch your game of choice.

It's hard to find anywhere to watch American sports because most places that show sports aren't even open when the games come on. An additional complication that no one really cares. During the World Cup sports bars were packed beyond capacity, even though most games started at 11:30 pm or 1: 30 am. Places would stay open beyond their normal closing time to accomodate the crowds. The already overworked staffs of these places had to work additional hours with no additional pay.

The Super Bowl is a big deal. I was living in Saigon during last year's game. A buddy of mine sent me txt messages through the day to keep me updated. He tried to go to the sports bar we hung out at, but he couldn't get in. We went to the same bar to watch the NCAA basketball championship. It was one of the great college basketball games of all time -- and we were the only two watching!

I've always been more of a college sports fan. I was excited to watch the BCS championship game between Oregon and Auburn. I was curious to see the teams' video game offenses in action. There's an Irish bar on the riverfront that shows sports. During the World Cup it was difficult to even walk past the place, let alone get in, because it got so full the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk and even into the street.

For the BCS game ... not so much.


This is the scene at halftime. It was nice being able to watch the game, but a little disappointing that one of the biggest sports events of the year drew exactly five fans. Of course, the game did start at 8:30 in the morning here...

The game was a huge disappointment. Sure, it was close. Sure, it was one on a field goal as time expired. But both teams looked sloppy and unprepared. Both coaches looked completely lost on the sidelines. The game turned on a fluke play -- Michael Dyer's "was he down or not?" run -- on which the refs botched the call because they didn't understand the rules. (Just for starters, in college football the whistle does not have to blow for the play to end.) And of course it's a disgrace that Cam Newton was even allowed to play.

I think TCU would have convincingly beaten either team.

Mom update

I wrote about how my mother is the toughest person I've ever met. After undergoing a hellish spinal reconstruction surgery, she is going home early because she is recovering ahead of schedule. As my father said in an email, the doctor "thinks she is superwoman".

I've gotten questions from people about exactly what she had done. I'll do my best to explain. This was the fifth surgery on her cervical (neck) spine. It was actually two surgeries. Doctors wanted to do one, then let her recover and see if the second was even necessary. To me this sounds like they simply wanted to be able to bill the insurance company twice. My parents were able to convince them to do the whole thing at once.

Three of her past surgeries were done from the back and one from the front, through her throat. Because since this was really two procedures this time they had to go through the front and back.

Basically, my mother's spine is crumbling. In the past they would literally bolt the vertebrae together to stabilize them. More deterioration, more titanium "instrumentation" as the docs say. The spine is a complicated mechanism, however. It's meant to bend and act as a spring. The procedures she had done were state-of-the-art at the time but unfortunately they changed the dynamics of her spine. The "fix" created additional damage, in addition to the normal deterioration that would have happened anyway.

I'll let my father explain.

"This latest procedure was to correct the curvature of her spine, shave one her discs that was slightly tilted and reposition it and remove and replace all of the old instrumentation and replace it with newer and better material. So now the whole thing is about 6 or 7 inches long and has a rod the length of it to give it additional strength. Hopefully this will alleviate some of her pain and be the last one. Mom is home and doing well and getting plenty of rest."

Long story short: They took her neck apart and put it back together again.

I've received lots of nice comments and messages from people. Some said it was too bad I couldn't be there. Well, she was originally supposed to have the procedure in December, but purposely postponed it to after my return to Cambodia. She didn't want to be in the hospital during the holidays, especially with me home.

Needless to say I felt guilty. I certainly didn't want her to suffer more on my account! But she was feeling okay and in fine spirits while I was home. I questioned whether it was smart or safe to send her home early. My sister's response:

"Mom is unbelievable. The doctors went on and on to her and Dad about how strong and tough she is and remarkable. Everyone agreed it was better for her to be home because at the hospital they check vitals and all about every 2 hours and she needs sleep. She is well enough to move around on her own with Dad's help. You wouldn't believe it. I am so proud of her."

Kelly says she knows Mom is doing better because she wanted to talk about coupons :-)

Lank Thompson

Dear friends and family,

I am so disappointed in you. For years you have been keeping a secret from me. I had to move to the other side of the world to discover the depth of the conspiracy. I have finally discovered the secret.

I am a handsome man.


I know it's true because I hear it literally every day. I hear it a dozen times. Maybe more.

Why you no have girlfren? You so handsome!

If you are a foreigner and you go to the bars here -- and it may shock to learn that I have -- you will hear this over and over again. And little else. For girls who move to the city from the countryside it's one of the first things they learn to say in English. You will meet girls who can say little else. It's cute and charming at first but, believe it or not, it does get old.

One of my students emails me from time to time and always closes by writing "I wish you good luck and more handsome." Not quite sure what he means by that. Or maybe I do and I don't want to admit it.

The photo is from the classic Mike Myers SNL sketch Lank Thompson: I'm a Handsome Man, in which he is a self-help guru who teaches men how to be be handsome? He did a sequel with Tim Meadows called I'm a Handsome Black Man with Tim Meadows. In I'm a Handsome Actor with Alec Baldwin he offers advice like "In any scene where you have to sign documents, never look at what you're signing!"

I think the world is ready for Lank Thompson: I'm a Handsome Expat.

Not better than the average movie

There are no cinemas in Cambodia. Incredible. There are small places that show bootleg DVDs of Hollywood movies or badly dubbed Korean comedies, but there is no Western-style cinema officially showing first-run movies. I work until 7:30 or 8:00 every night. Most movie screenings start at 7:00. Do the math.

My plan to get rich here is to open a big Western-style cinema. The young folks here crave anything "modern", which is not necessarily the same as "Western". When I ride home from work it's full of rich kids hanging out -- at KFC. I dated a fashion model here -- honest -- and the first time we met it was at KFC.

The key to a successful cinema, then, would be to have a cafe/bar where the trendy young folks with money to spend could see and be seen. Heck, I wonder if anyone would actually watch the movie. All I need is a million dollars or so to get started...

One thing I looked forward to going home was going to a real, American movie theater. I was especially geeked to see the new "Tron" movie. The original wasn't quite "Star Wars" but it still had a profound effect on me when I saw it in 1982 (five years after SW). It was waaaayyyyy ahead of its time.

So of course the first movie I saw back in the US was the "Citizen Kane" of the new millenium ... um ... "Yogi Bear"?

It wasn't high on my list of movies to see. In fact, I would say it was high on my list of movies to not see. I took my sister's kids to see it to get them out of the house for a couple hours on Christmas Eve so she could "get the house ready for Santa".

I know the movie looks bad but trust me, it was much, much worse. It was in 3D so the cost of three tickets was more than most Cambodians make in a month, but the 3D was clearly done as an afterthought. Not very 3D-ish. Definitely not "Avatar". However, the kids loved it, and that's really all that matters.



I was flabbergasted to discover that the voice of Boo-Boo was done by Justin Timberlake. Between that and the Facebook movie he's having a quite a year. I always lumped him in with all the other boy band douchebags but now he's actually a guy I'd like to have a beer with. My opinion of him first changed, of course, when he did this.

I also saw "127 Hours". Lily loved it. I thought it was OK. Director Danny Boyle found the perfect subject for his gimmicky style in "Slumdog Millionaire", but I've never been a big fan. As for "Tron: Legacy"? Never saw it. Couldn't convince any of my sci-fi geek friends to go. And then I just ran out of time.

Did I mention I saw Yogi?

Good luck, Mom!

Normally I'd make a jesting complaint about suffering through three or four days of jet lag, but in about 90 minutes my mother will be leaving to go to the hospital for a massive reconstructive surgery on her neck vertebrae. Those of you who know my family know about my mother's considerable health issues. Even for her this is a big deal.

I'm sure she will be fine because my mother is the toughest person I've ever known. I have a similar condition in my back which has required two surgeries. My mother's condition is much worse and much more painful. (She is also, obviously, a bit older than I am!) There are days (like today) when my back acts up and my whole body aches. It's all I can do just to get out of bed. It's a tiny fraction of what my mother deals with every day.

Love you, Mom. Good luck!

Ho ho ho. Go go go.

I am back in Phnom Penh after almost three weeks in the US visiting friends and family. The trip home was a nightmare: 48 hours of travel, including 18 hours in the Seoul airport! The trip back was blessedly uneventful.

It was great to be home, although my blood has thinned somewhat after two years in Southeast Asia. It rarely gets down to 70 degrees here, so I was a little cold...

When I booked the trip I wondered how I would keep busy for 17 days. In the end their were things I didn't get done, projects I didn't get around to, people I didn't get to see enough of, or at all. I tried, but, as always, I am terrible when it comes to planning and managing my time. Hmm... sounds like a New Year's resolution in there somewhere.

Thanks especially to Mom and Dad. For everything.

Thanks to my sister Kelly and her family. Hanging out with her kids, Christopher and Sarah, is the one thing I miss the most from home. It was the one thing I looked forward to the most. Spending time with them was the highlight of the trip.

Thanks as always to Earl and Liz for taking such good care of my dog. They watched her for the year I spent traveling, and officially adopted her when I decided to move overseas. Now she is officially "their" dog but she will always be "my" dog. Oh, you know what I mean... Our best guess is that Scully is 18 years old. She's doing as well as an 18-year-old dog can do! I couldn't have found her a better home.



It was also a thrill seeing their little girl for the first time. Thalia was born just after I left after my last visit home. Now she's walking!

Thanks to Jim and Nicole for their hospitality. They let me crash with them for a couple days, even though they had hosted family for the holidays and were ready for some peace and quiet. I think they just wanted someone to help them get rid of their holiday leftovers, and I was all too happy to oblige!

Thanks to Sowmya for driving me to the airport. She lives five minutes from Dulles and was nice (crazy?) enough to let me stay the night and then wake up at 5 a.m. to get me there on time.

Apologies to Lily -- I still owe you a movie...