the analog kid

Blog End

2011-12-06T09:20:00.004-05:00

Ok, let's get this out of the way right off the bat: Yes, it's a geeky Lord of the Rings reference. More to the point, it's the end of the blog.

It's been fun. Thanks for reading.

The taste of home

2011-09-14T10:31:00.007-04:00

No matter where you go in the world there are certain American products you will always find. I have never been anywhere where you can't buy a Coke. I have had discussions with other travelers about whether there is anywhere Coke isn't sold. Our best guess was North Korea. We were wrong. I met someone who travelled to Pyongyang as a tourist. He was able to buy a Coke there.

Maybe we should put the CEO of Coca-Cola in charge of international relations.

Pringles are everywhere. And Snickers bars. When I was traveling by train through Russia there were several stops long enough for us to get off the train and walk around. There were always women there with carts selling Coke, Snickers and Pringles. In Siberia. At 4 a.m.

One big surprise was finding Snyder's pretzels on the road. When I was growing up you could only buy them within close proximity to the factory in Hanover, PA. I did see Snyder's while I was traveling. I have been in some of the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Where did I find my favorite pretzels from home?

Vientiane, Laos.

The pace of life in Laos is the slowest I've ever seen, and I mean that as a strong compliment. Vientiane is the capital of the country, but it's hard to believe it's the capital of anything. It's a sleepy city of about 200,000 people. If I were more ambitious I would prove my guess that it's among the smallest capital cities in the world.

There isn't much there. But you can buy Snyder's pretzels there. I was flabbergasted. I found them again in Vietnam. Not in Saigon or Hanoi (although it's possible they're there), but in Mui Ne, a tiny little beach town with literally one road.

I have see McCormick spices for sale in various places. It is the biggest spice manufacturer in the US. They are produced almost literally across the street from my last job in the US. When the wind was right we could smell the spices on the wind. Prices here are exorbitant -- $4.50 for a small container of garlic salt -- so I have never bought any.

Last year my parents sent me a care package. One thing they included was a tin of the iconic Chesapeake Bay seasoning concoction, Old Bay. While I do shop at local markets, there are some things I always buy at western-style supermarkets.

I was flabbergasted to find this at Pencil, a big supermarket near my school.

Old Bay.

In Cambodia.

I didn't think it was sold anywhere outside the Bay region. I would have thought it more likely that I'd see a herd of unicorns in Cambodia than find Old Bay on a supermarket shelf. (Sorry for the poor picture lighting. I used my phone in bright supermarket fluorescent lighting.)

Home Sweet Home

2011-05-24T02:36:00.003-04:00

Through the magic of Google Earth -- one of the coolest things ever -- I can show you where I live. This is Phnom Penh.

The turquoise circle in the bottom left is where I live now. The circle in the far opposite corner is where my first apartment was. The big box beneath it is the Royal Palace. I could see it from my kitchen window. The circle in the center is where I work. It's easy to see my commute. I drive parallel to the bottom of the picture on Mao Tse Toung Blvd, make a left onto Monivong Blvd, make a right onto Street 214 and I'm there. It usually takes about 10 minutes.

The smaller box on the right of the image is the Koh Pich footbridge. This is where the stampede happened during the Water Festival, during which nearly 400 people lost their lives. I started a post about that, but every time I try to go back to it I quickly lose interest. It's just not a fun thing to write about.

The yellow circle at the top is where I hope to move next month.

The river closest to the Royal Palace is the Tonle Sap River, which I've written about before because it's the only river in the world that changes direction. You can see the tip of a peninsula in the top right corner. The river on the other side is the Upper Mekong, which joins the Tonle Sap River and the Bassac River (which isn't visible in the photo but comes in from the right side) to form the Lower Mekong, which curves around to the bottom of the photo.

Nice gym, bad location

2011-05-03T03:29:00.005-04:00

I've been looking into joining a gym. Someone mentioned a club I didn't know about so I looked it up on the yellow pages.

Here it is

You don't have to live in Cambodia to know something is wrong with the map.

Those clearly aren't Cambodian place names. They clearly aren't even Asian. They're Swedish! Oops.

I want exercise but it can be so time consuming. If I want to work out for an hour I have to factor in time for showering and changing clothes. Then there's the the 40-hour roundtrip flight to Sweden...

Not a Baltimore address

2011-04-24T04:53:00.003-04:00

I recently moved into a new apartment. For reasons I won't bore you with the details, but I only plan on staying there for three months. It's a nice enough place, but a bit out of the way by Phnom Penh standards. One day traffic was particularly bad and it took me almost fifteen minutes to get to work!

One my American colleagues who lives in the same building pointed out the irony in our address. Most of the streets here have a number and a name. The street number is 245. The street name is Mao Tse-Toung.

I am living on a street named after Chairman Mao.

You know, the guy who starved 60 million of his own people to death during the Great Leap Forward? I know we're all big fans. It was another one of those moments when I took a mental step back and realized how things that are so different from home have become normal.

It could be worse. I could be living on Kim Il-Sung (Street 289). I don't think there is a Stalin Street.

The street names are vestiges of Cambodia's fairly recent communist past. My street is one of the biggest thoroughfares in the city. (For the folks back home, think of Charles Street or Pratt Street.) This makes sense since you can make a convincing argument that, due to the amount of development and financial aid, China owns Cambodia.

The city is almost completely flat. It tickles me to no end that the highest point in town, Wat Phnom is a 30-meter high hill. And it's man-made. When they paved the streets here they give exactly zero thought to grading. Maybe they don't worry about it because they assume it's not a problem given the flat terrain. What's more likely is they just don't think about it at all.

A friend of mine told me about how when he first moved here he got what he thought was a great deal on a house. He signed the lease in the dry season. When the rainy season rolled around the street was always under a foot of water. It was a great house. He just couldn't get in or out. I had been warned, then, that one thing to ask about when renting a new place was flooding. Surely this wouldn't be a problem on one of the city's main streets...

Last night I had plans for my usual Saturday night out. A big storm rolled through, so I had to wait out the rain. I also had to wait for the floods to subside. I'm living on one of the biggest streets in the city and there was over a foot of water.

Here's the kicker: It was just my block! From the balcony I could see in both directions. I could see the street past the traffic lights on each corner. Past the traffic lights? No water. In front of my apartment? The Amazon. It would have taken just a few truckloads of dirt to bring the block up to grade, had anyone bothered to think about it.

I had to roll up my pants, ride my moto in flip-flops and then change into grown-up shoes when I got to the night club, all just to drive through one flooded block. Ah, life in Southeast Asia...

I certainly don't mean to imply that this is a catastrophe or major hardship. You know if you live in Southeast Asia that you will have to deal with rain and flooding. Cambodia doesn't have to deal with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, or tornadoes. Every once in a while I'm mildly inconvenienced when I want to go out. I can live with that. On Mao Tse Toung Street.

Me no want massah

2011-04-08T02:32:00.004-04:00

I've written a lot about one of the love/hate features of Sihanoukville, the beach town here: the army of people selling on the beach, mostly children. I usually go to the beach alone so I enjoy talking to the kids. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much. With most of them I can say, "I want quiet now. Come see me later, OK?" Most of them respond to kindness in kind.

The ones I simply can't bear are the older women who give massages and manicures. Or "massah" as they say here. There are dozens of them. Their rate of success is very close to zero. They simply will not leave you alone or take no for an answer. I have been to the beach so many times that the people who work there know me. I'm not bragging. It's simple math. You spend a hundred days on the beach or whatever and people learn your face.

I can generally get rid of the people selling fruit or bracelets or sunglasses or whatever with a smile and a simple "ottay awkun" (literally "no, thank you"). However, every day I'm on the beach I have the following conversation literally dozens of times. I see the woman walking towards me so I smile and shake my head no. This should be enough. But no.

You want massah?
Ottay awkun.
Massah very good.
Ottay awkun.
Cut nail?
Ottay.
Cut nail very nice?
Ottay.
Ooh, your nail so long.
No.
Why you no want cut nail?
I am trying to be nice here.
I do foot massah very good.
Why are we still having this conversation?
I come back later?
No?
Later I cut nail.
No.
I come back later you get massah.
No.
You help me. Today no business.

And so on. The reason "today no business" is always the same. There are more massah ladies than tourists! I always cut my nails before going to the beach in a vain attempt to avoid these conversations. Maybe next time I will take a pair of pliers and rip them out at the root. It wouldn't help.

You want me massah your raw, bleeding toe pads? Massah raw bleeding toe pads very nice.

I am single, heterosexual man of somewhat advanced age. Why on God's Green Earth would I pay someone to cut my nails?! As for massah... I don't like massah. Because my back problems are structural and not muscular massah actually makes me feel worse. Plus, these women aren't masseuses. All they do is apply various ointments from the local convenience store. Having someone rub skin lotion and SAND into my skin in the blazing tropical heat sounds absolutely awful to me. I don't know why anyone would want that.

As a western man I have quite a bit of hair on my body except, of course, on the one place where I actually want it, on my head. The massah ladies also remove hair. That's fine if you're a lady.

Here they do it by twisting a piece of string into a sort of figure-eight and rubbing it over the skin. The string literally rips the hair out. It hurts like hell. They use talcum powder to lessen the discomfort but it doesn't help much. Here my friend To is having this done to her legs. Phear, the girl in the bottom left corner, is the one officially doing it. But whenever someone on the beach makes a score it inevitably draws a crowd. A group of young girls gathered to help and watch.

There are an equal number of kids watching from behind To. The little girl in the headband is Srey Oun, one of the three little girls who gave me the Christmas present. Behind her and Phear are two sisters who I believe are identical twins. Their names are Beyonce and Rihanna. Or so they say... I honestly don't know which is which. They both answer to both names. They both sell fruit. If you buy from one you have to buy from the other. Not a good business model.

One quick side note: I met Phear on my first trip here, about two years ago (!!). When I met her she was severely cross-eyed. Then she wasn't. Then she was. I asked the other girls and they said that she has "bad days" when she wakes up cross-eyed and "good days" when she does not. I would have thought they were joking but I have seen it for myself.

So how does this procedure feel? Look at To's face as Phear works on her armpit.

Why would anyone pay for this? Here is To looking slightly less pained but still praying for the ordeal to end.

Fail!

2011-04-06T10:37:00.001-04:00

If you are looking for a funny website to waste half a day look here. Hilarious. I submitted some photos to them. Here's the story:

At my school they installed a privacy partition in the men's room. There are two urinals so I guess someone was concerned about someone else watching them pee. This wouldn't be high on my list of changes to make at the school, but whatever. However, the maintenance guys were apparently a little unclear on the concept. Someone told them to put a partition on the wall next to the urinal and, dadgumit, they did it.

What makes it even funnier is that the bathroom is quite small and is off a hallway. A classroom is directly opposite. There is a door, but when the door is open this is what you see.

I took this photo from the hallway. The door in the back is the toilet. There's another one on the other side of the sink. The locks are broken on both doors if you're sitting there you have to be vigilant and make sure no one rips open the door while you're doing your business. Otherwise, people (students) in the hallway can see you.

So, to recap, one guy watching another guy pee is a problem. What is not a problem, apparently, is that little girls in the hallway have a straight line of sight into the both toilets and both urinals. Note that the partition does nothing to help this particular issue, either.

Trouble maker

2011-04-04T10:25:00.002-04:00

Let's play a game. Which of these is not like the other one?

This is one of my classes taking their final exam. One of my students was a Buddhist monk. How cool is that. It was my second class with him.

He was such a pain in the ass. Always talking on his celphone, flirting with the girls, picking fights with other boys in the hallway and talking back to me.

I am joking of course. He's a Buddhist monk. It's difficult to describe him without falling into cliche, but he truly was the most pleasant, nicest and hardest working student. An absolute joy to have in the classroom.

I will miss this class. It's a class for students who failed grammar and/or writing and/or reading in the previous term. Some of them are here because they're spoiled, lazy knuckleheads who don't give a crap. I will no doubt see some of them next term. One girl in this class failed it for the third time. This term she missed 17 of 20 classes. Last term she missed 14 of 20. This isn't math class, but the numbers make it pretty clear what the problem is.

As you can see most of the other students were teenagers. Most of them are not knuckleheads. They are good students with poor test-taking skills. I drill them mercilessly on how to take a test. Anyone who knew me as a child knew that I was something of a savant when it came to taking tests. My scores on the GRE were so high I actually called Princeton to make sure they were right. I am an inexperienced teacher and my grammar knowledge is weak but one thing I can teach is how to take a test.

The monk's name is Korng Kheourng. In Cambodia the family name comes first, so his given name is Kheourng. The spelling might seem a bit, well, overdone to an English speaker, but there are 60 distinct vowel sounds in Khmer, more than any other language. I would spell it Kung, but that doesn't give a sense of the little nooks and crannies of the vowel sound. Most transliterations are British English, not American, so the 'r' is the soft British 'r'. The American spelling would be more like Kheouhng. There. Now you still can't pronounce it!

(One more example of the complexities of the language: Behind Kheourng is a boy named Ly Hour. Behind him are two girls, Kaneka and Kannika. To me the names look the same but apparently they are pronounced differently. Luckily, Kaneka asked me to called her Ka, thus saving us all a bit of confusion.)

I was hoping to get a photo with Kheourng on the last day of class. His attendance was perfect. The only day he missed was the last day! That's why I am using this surreptitious photo I took during the exam. He sent me an email thanking me for helping him pass. I assured him that he didn't need to thank me, that he passed because he did the work. But I still got a little verklempt.

I should note that I get emails and facebook messages from other students as well. One of the many reasons I like my job. In Baltimore, by way of contrast, students thank you by not shooting you.

Overcrowding of classrooms is a problem in virtually any school. Here you can see we have 23 students crammed into a space big enough for a hamster. This led to a cultural lesson for me. At the beginning of the term I had them do an exercise where they had to walk around and interview their classmates.

Kheourng was enthusiastic and diligent, as always, but he stayed on the fringes of the group. I understood that this was because monks are not allowed to touch women (and vice versa, of course). If a woman gives an offering to a monk, for example, he will hold out his scarf and she will put it on the scarf. He was standing off to the side to avoid contact with the girls in the class. This much I knew. The girls interacted with him but at distance as respectful as the confined space would allow.

One day a student arrived late to class. Naomi is a typical teenage girl so of course she always sat by her friends. On this day, though, there was only one seat left, which happened to be next to Kheourng. I motioned for her to take the seat but she shook her head no and stayed put. The look on her face said no effing way!

Without a word Ly Hour (who was sitting with his friends) got up and took the seat next to Kheourng. Naomi took the seat Ly Hour vacated. The students understood that Naomi would not sit next to Kheourng out of respect. The students in this class were respectful to me but I was constantly struck by the deference they showed to Kheourng. When they did the interview activity they had to write down each other's names. Those who spoke to the monk wrote his name as "Mr. Kheourng".

The little boy in the front of the photo is Vathna. If you try to say that 100 times I assure you you will not pronounce it correctly. (I still can't!) He was the youngest student in the class (14) but one of the best, a whipsmart, sweet, funny kid who is always, always smiling. He's a tiny kid, but he has the deep, husky voice of a man three times his age and size.

One of the practice writing assignments I gave them was to write about a childhood friend. We had spent a lot of time talking about adjectives to describe personality. I tell my students I want to see the vocabulary we discuss used correctly. Vatha wrote "My friend is generous. After class he alway give me snakes." Snacks. We all had a little laugh over that one.

I teach more classes than most of the other teachers (for the money, of course) which means I have hundreds of essays to mark during exam week. You can only read 15-20 before your brain turns to mush and you have to walk away for a few minutes to recharge. In the staffroom you can hear teachers periodically bursting into laughter at something they've read in an essay. We're not being mean. Some of the mistakes and turns of phrase are genuinely funny. I remarked that when my students' writing can't make me laugh I'll know it's time to move on.

On the exam for this class the students had to write about their best friend. A girl named Sothea, who you can't see in this photo, wrote at the end. "I love her so much. People think we are lesbian. But I say no she just my friend."

Still, my favorite is the student who started an essay on the advantages and disadvantages of traveling abroad by writing "Traveling abroad is one of the best ways to visit another country." Can't argue with that.

Saigon kiss

2011-04-01T10:27:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow I am taking the bus to Saigon to visit friends for a few days. Believe it or not, as of April 13 I will have been living in Cambodia for a year! I can't believe how fast it went. So in honor of my triumphant return to Saigon I thought I'd write about my first Saigon kiss.

I never got one while I was in Vietnam. I've gotten two in Phnom Penh. Motorbikes are the primary mode of transportation in both countries. Motorbike mufflers get hot. Eventually you will get careless when you get off your bike and the muffler will burn your leg.

It looks like hell but actually -- no, actually it hurts like hell too. Hydrocortisone cream helps the itching but there's no avoiding the elliptical scar that results.

Of course, girls ride motos too. I am working on a post on footwear fashions in Southeast Asia. Long story short, many girls here wear high heels all the time. My friend To, who I am writing about in another post, does not own a pair of flat shoes. There is nothing sexier than a pretty young girl wearing short shorts and high heels on a scooter. One of the many joys of life in Southeast Asia...

As a result you see shockingly pretty girls wearing the least amount of clothing allowed by law and sexy shoes to show off their long slender legs, legs which happen to have constellations of scars from muffler burns and moto accidents. And yes, as you have probably guessed, I find this sexy too.

Your friend the gecko

2011-03-07T00:38:00.000-05:00

When I went to Belize in 2006 I stayed with a friend of a friend in Belize City. I remember getting freaked out when I saw something streak across the wall out of the corner of my eye. At least I thought I did. It was gone. But there it was! It was a lizard! In my room! I asked Monique about it. She just laughed. Geckos, as it turns out, are more common than houseflies.

If you travel in tropical regions you will see geckos everywhere. Walls, ceilings, but rarely floors, strangely enough. They're small enough to get into just about anything. In that regard they're like mice. One of the many joys of living in Baltimore -- did my sarcasm come through? -- was the constant battle against mice. And rats. You would see the telltale pellets and then go to Home Depot to buy more traps, poison, etc.

When I moved into my apartment in Phnom Penh I noticed pellets. I thought, Oh no, here we go again. Then I noticed pellets on the wall... I realized I didn't have mice, I had geckos. I'm ok with that.

Geckos don't make noise, which is nice, but they eat bugs, which is great! There is another type of lizard. I don't know what it's called in English, but it looks like a giant gecko. Maybe it is a giant gecko. They're several inches long and they do make noise. The sound is somewhere between a honk and the sound a frog makes.

Big geckos are bad, though, because they eat little geckos. The worst gecko, of course, is the one in the Geico commercials. Why does an ad for an American insurance company speak with an Australian accent?

Brown brownout

2011-03-06T01:09:00.006-05:00

I had a funny conversation with a co-worker. He started working at my school in September, when the weather was gorgeous. Yesterday he came in around lunchtime looking a bit sweaty and disheveled. As he was mopping his brow he asked, "How long will it stay this hot?" I said, "It hasn't started to get hot yet..."

I was being a bit facetious, but not by much. After a few months of the most pleasant weather, the hot season is creeping back. Every day the temperature gets noticeably warmer. The mornings and evenings are still comfortable, but by the end of the month it will be suffocatingly hot 24/7.

I thought it only fair to warn my friend that the worst is yet to come. About three months' worth.

More and more Cambodians are using air conditioners. Unfortunately, the power grid isn't being updated to accomodate the increased demand. Brownouts are common on days when the temperature soars. Like today.

I teach six days a week so I don't go out a lot. Saturday is my big night. Sunday is Recuperation Day. I usually spend the afternoon at my favorite coffee shop, Brown, catching up on email and surfing the internet. And recuperating.

I have been here for 90 minutes. The electricity has shut down about every 10 minutes. Back home they would call BGE. Here they take a more direct approach.

Every time the power crashes one of the waiters climbs up the pole just outside my window. I can't see what he's doing but it looks like he's flipping a breaker. I could go out and look. Or I could sit inside and watch in air-conditioned comfort. Wasn't it Abraham Lincoln who said "'Tis better to sit in cool comfort and remain ignorant than step into the heat and remove all doubt?"

Service with a smile

2011-03-05T07:09:00.000-05:00

One of the myriad differences you encounter while traveling is what passes for customer service in other cultures. I'll address restaurant service here in a different post but in the meantime I thought I'd share a funny sign I saw at a market here.

Psar Toul Tom Pong is still known to foreigners as the Russian Market, as it was known during the French colonial days. It's an enormous market where you can buy almost literally anything. It's a popular spot on the tourist trail, but also popular with locals.

Tourists love markets. I don't get it. For starters, as I've mentioned before. I hate haggling. Hate hate hate it. No matter what country you go to you see the same knockoff crap. I usually don't like the atmosphere, either. Too pushy, too high pressure. In Morocco stall owners will literally drag you into their stalls. Cambodians are more low-key. You walk through the markets and most sellers don't even acknowledge you, let alone try to block your way as they do in other countries.

Even so, it cracked me up to see the sign on this stall.

"How is our staff service?" I was tempted to call the number listed just to see who answered. Needless to say, this sort of Western touch is not common. I wonder what the Khmer writing above it says. Does it say "How is our staff service?" in Khmer? Or does it say "We put up this stupid sign because someone told us foreigners like to see this sort of thing"?

Tet

2011-03-03T23:29:00.002-05:00

This is a post I started last year but never finished because I was gearing up for the move to Cambodia. Oh heck, I'll admit it -- I was just being lazy. I'm dusting it off because, incredibly, it's Chinese New Year again. In Vietnam it's called Tet. Actually, in English it's called Tet. In Vietnamese it's called Tết! (That's actually short for Nguyên Đán Tết, "Feast of the "First Morning".)

If Americans know anything the holiday it's because of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. On January 31, 1968, on the first day of Tet, the North Vietnamese unleashed a massive, coordinated attack on more than 100 towns and cities. The US and its allies were caught by surprise but were able to regroup and respond. Although a military defeat for the North Vietnamese the Tet Offensive did much to turn public opinion against the war in the US. You know, because before that it was going so well... It was the beginning of the end.

I have always found it fascinating that the US was caught by surprise. What sort of man would lead his troops into battle on a holiday?

This is Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's famous painting on "Washington Crossing the Delaware" to attack Trenton. He crossed the river on ... wait for it ... Christmas. Of course, you wouldn't expect the US military command to remember George Washington's first victory in the Revolutionary War...

(The flag in the painting is an anachronism. The Stars and Stripes didn't appear until 1777. Critics of the painting also like to point out that it is unlikely that Washington would have been standing in the boat, and that he is depicted as doing so merely to make him look more heroic. The eminent historian David Hackett Fischer, who I had the honor of interviewing when I was a reporter, turned that argument on its head. He said because it was so cold, and because its likely the boats weren't entirely watertight, everyone in the boat would have been standing, to avoid sitting in the icy water. What does all this have to do with this blog post? Absolutely nothing. I just wanted to namedrop. Aren't you impressed?)

Tet is the biggest holiday in Vietnam. That it is a reminder of their victory over the US is merely a happy footnote. Many (in China, Vietnam and Cambodia) celebrate the holiday by returning to their "homeland" to perform "ancestor worship", which means praying to family members who have passed away.

In Vietnam there is also a massive reverse migration, as people from the countryside pour into the cities to sell ceremonial plants. Hundreds of people invaded the park by my home and lived there for the week. I lived next to park 23/9 in Saigon. It was a beautiful park, a shockingly pleasant oasis smack bang in the middle of the crazy Phạm Ngũ Lão tourist district. It has perhaps the worst name of any park in the world, since it's just the address. I suppose it's better than, say, Adolph Hitler Memorial Park or Poop Park, but come on, you couldn't do better than that?

My adorable friend Nhan took me on a tour of the park and did her very best to explain the significance of each type of tree. A year ago when I started this post I knew the difference, but now all I can seem to remember is that each is supposed to bring some sort of luck. Nhan is a tiny girl but even so you can tell these flowers are enormous.

I am glad I made the move from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I don't miss much but I do miss my friends. I got to know her because she waited tables at the restaurant where I went for my bi-weekly pizza fix. Some of my fondest memories from Vietnam are my movie outings with Nhan.

These, I believe are lime trees.

There were literally acres of trees and flowers for sale.

The colors mean different things. I've forgotten and am too lazy to do a Google search... Some of these plants are enormous.

How on earth do you get one of these giants home? This is Vietnam. You carry it the way you carry everything else, on a motorbike.

This might look crazy to Western eyes, until you consider that I saw guys who had strapped wooden platforms across the back of their moto seats and were carrying four of these. Also for sale were various types of sculptures, made of plants. These dragons were made of some sort of gourd-like thingy.

Dragon fruits grow on trees, but not like this.

It's another sort of sculpture, with the plants and fruits all tied together. The park is always busy, but was even more so during Tet. I've said it before, I'll say it again: I think it's great how Asians (and Russians) enjoy taking photos. In the west we consider a chore. Come on, take the picture already! I love watching the elaborate choreography.

Now this is crazy

2011-02-22T02:29:00.006-05:00

One of the downsides to living abroad is it dulls your sense of wonder. Try as you might, you become jaded. Things that were once new, unusual or just plain crazy become commonplace. I remember thinking "Holy crap, was that four people on one motorbike?" Now anything less than six people on a moto doesn't warrant so much as a glance.

Still, just about every day I see something crazy, funny, different or just plain wrong enough to remind me I'm not in Kansas anymore. Heck, I sometimes wonder if I'm still on Planet Earth. I see people doing and carrying the craziest things on motorbikes but, as I've expressed in previous posts, I rarely have the opportunity to get a picture. Even having a camera on my phone isn't enough. By the time I realize "that would make a good picture" the moment is gone.

I literally went out of my way to get this next photo. I was getting ready to turn when I saw one of the craziest things I've yet seen in Southeast Asia. I sped ahead on my motorbike, pulled over, got out my phone and waited to snap a pick. I barely made it in time.

One scam tuk-tuk drivers try to pull on tourists is charging per person. They will try to charge me $2 for a trip that would cost a Cambodian 2000 riel (50 cents). If I am with someone they will try to charge us $2 each. This is particularly funny/infuriating because it's common to see tuk-tuks carrying entire families of locals, and you known darned well they aren't paying per person. By families I mean 10, 12 or 15 people in one tuk-tuk.

How do you transport a family by tuk-tuk when one of the boys is in a wheelchair?

He is holding onto the back of the tuk-tuk as it pulls him along. If there is ever a time when this doesn't shock and horrify me, tap me on the shoulder and tell me it's time to go home.

The less jaded of you might look at the motorbike next to the tuk-tuk and wonder why the father is wearing a helmet but the mother and infant are not? I stopped wondering that a long time ago...

I am in the process of finding a new apartment, for reasons which I will detail in a future post. As you know, finding a new apartment is a time-consuming and joyless chore. Try doing it in a city where you don't speak the language! I will update the blog when the search is over. Wish me luck.

As I was saying...

2011-02-05T21:58:00.003-05:00

In my last post I mentioned that Thailand and Cambodia occasionally exchange gunfire over a disputed temple on their shared border and that this tends to end up with a person or two lying dead on the ground.

Like this poor guy

What makes this soldier's death so outrageous is that the temple was awarded to Cambodia by an international court. There is no dispute. Why then do the Thais keep insisting that it's theirs? Allow me to honor the time-honored American tradition of greatly oversimplifying unimaginably complex issues:

It's because of rich people in Thailand with too much free time.

An article I quoted in 2008 explained Thai politics: "[M]ake no mistake that this is class warfare. But forget the usual categories of left and right. This is class war in a consumerist Theravada [Buddhist] technocracy ruled by an uneasy mish-mosh of divine kingship, a shadowy military, business interests and inherited money. It is outside Western categories."

Allow me to rehash some previous posts. There is a political group commonly referred to as the Yellow Shirts (guess why) but officially the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). These people are ultra-nationalist, fanatically loyal to the king and, almost by definition, rich. They're like the radical right fringe dominating American politics now: People who sit around thinking of reasons to be pissed off.

One of my colleagues, who lived in Thailand for many years, said the Yellow Shirts regularly find something to protest simply to remind the government who really runs the country. They are the ones who shut down the airport in Bangkok for two weeks when I was there in November and December 2008. The protest was a ringing success. No planes left or landed at the biggest airport in Southeast Asia for two weeks. The protestors went home for one reason and one reason only: It was the king's birthday.

As I've written before the People's Alliance for Democracy's stated purpose is to take away the voting rights of poor people. I am not paraphrasing, reading between the lines or inferring sinister motives. I quoted a Yellow Shirt supporter at the time who said "Rural people have good hearts but they don't know the truth like we do in Bangkok. It is our duty to re-educate them." Yellow Shirt supporters will cheerfully express this sentiment in casual conversation with complete strangers. Like me. All you can do is smile and nod and make a graceful exit from the conversation as quickly as possible.

That the Preah Vihear temple was awarded to Cambodia drives the Yellow Shirts absolutely bonkers. Thais think of the Khmer as little better than animals. I know this because I have had conversations in Thailand with complete strangers who have told me as much. (I have had the same conversations in Vietnam.)

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is a fascinating character. I will write about him when he leaves office, which will most likely be when he dies. You see where I'm going with this...

However, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya may have crossed the lines of civil political discourse when he said he would "use Hun Sen‘s blood to wash my feet". Usually, speaking of a foreign leader in such terms would warrant dismissal, or at least a public reprimand. But the minister was truly speaking for his people.

This poor Cambodian soldier had to die so the Thai government could appease a group of bored nouveau riche.

I realize that it appears I am putting a pro-Cambodian spin on this because I happen to live here, but I started writing about this situation before I ever came to Thailand. I was in Bangkok during the airport protest. I spent a week resting there because I seriously &%$#ed up my back while scuba diving and was in no condition to travel. When I write of conversations I had with Thais in which they talked about the protests, Cambodia, etc., I am referring to conversations I had before my first visit to Cambodia.

Chinese New Year

2011-01-29T22:04:00.004-05:00

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

2011-01-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-19T03:02:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-18T16:09:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-17T16:11:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-15T07:14:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-14T04:49:00.003-05:00

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

2011-01-13T07:11:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-12T04:24:00.006-05:00

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

2011-01-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-07T04:38:00.004-05:00

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!

2011-01-07T04:30:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-01-07T03:54:00.007-05:00

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...

My first rainy season

2010-12-26T08:42:00.001-05:00

The rainy season in Cambodia wasn't all that rainy. Occasionally we'd get a storm and I'd have to drive my motorbike through knee-deep water to get home, but all in all it was mild. I considered myself lucky after seeing what happened in China and Pakistan.

Other parts of Southeast Asia weren't so fortunate. Super Typhoon Megi crushed the Phillipines on the the way to the mainland. It was the most powerful storm in this area in two decades and that, my friends, is saying something. A super-typhoon is like a monster category five hurricane. I expected to get rain from the edges of the storm but aside from a light shower here and there we got nothing. Meanwhile, a town in central Vietnam got three feet of rain. From one storm.

But when it rains here, boy, does it ever rain. When it rains the classrooms are empty. You can't blame the students for not coming when the water is two feet deep in the streets. There was a big storm before my 6 pm class one night. Only three of 22 students arrived. I had planned a group activity. We still did it, but there was only one group! Here are intrepid students Samrith (white shirt), Gueak Ly (pink) and Huy Sreang (black).

You can see what look like stains on the back wall. It's water coming through the wall. It was raining so hard that water was seeping through the walls and puddling on the floor. Water seeped in behind the map, soaked through the cardboard backing and ruined it. There are water droplets on the inside of the glass. Here's a closeup of the back wall.

Now the weather is quite cool and pleasant. It gets hot during the day but not oppressively so. On some mornings and evenings when I'm riding my motorbike I actually get a little chilly. It's such a nice change. I remember what it was like when I arrived in April, which is the hottest month. Locals and longterm expats said it was the hottest April they could remember. And again, my friends, that is saying something. I am not looking forward to April...

Merry Christmas, Khmer style

2010-12-25T08:26:00.001-05:00

The main roads in Phnom Penh are named after kings: Sihanouk, Norodom, Monivong, etc. Sihanouk and Norodom intersect at the roundabout which encircles the Independence Monument, which is modeled after the towers of Angkor Wat. All of the main thoroughfares and the monument are decorated with Christmas lights.

Shops and restaurants that cater to foreigners are decorated and some even have Christmas trees. Supermarkets sell Christmas decorations. Even businesses which are owned by and cater to Cambodians get into the spirit.

I noticed it in Thailand too. One of the main reasons people go to Bangkok is to shop in their swanky malls. The Christmas decor in the malls is over the top in a way that would shame their American counterparts. It got me thinking...

In America we like to wring our hands about the commercialization of Christmas but it seems everyone loves Christmas, which is (or is supposed to be) a Christian holiday. Which makes the Christmas overload all the more extraordinary in this part of the world. According to the CIA website this is the breakdown of the Cambodian population by religion:

Buddhist 96.4%, Muslim 2.1%, other 1.3%, unspecified 0.2% (1998 census)

Notice anyone missing? People are bonkers for Christmas in a country where, for all intents and purposes, there are no Christians! The numbers are similar for Thailand:

Buddhist 94.6%, Muslim 4.6%, Christian 0.7%, other 0.1% (2000 census)

I think part of the reason is that, whatever complaints we might have about Christmas overload, it really is a fun time of year. Who doesn't like getting gifts? I believe the Buddhist culture of tolerance has much to do with it. I hope I don't step on any toes by pointing out that other religions aren't quite so willing to embrace or even allow other traditions.

The end of war

2010-12-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

I don't follow the news as much as I should, so I missed this one. One of the longest-running, bitterly-fought wars in recent memory has apparently come to an end. In a move that will affect virtually every man, woman and child in the world, mortal enemies have made peace.

I bought this at a local supermarket. I'm not sure how this could have happened. I can't imagine Coke and Pepsi both using the same canning plant. You know you're living off the radar, though, when you see things like this.

There isn't a McDonald's in Cambodia. My students have never even heard of it. There are copycat fastfood places like Lucky Burger and BBWorld but the only American fast food chain here is KFC, although there are rumors Burger King is coming.

There isn't a Starbucks here. In fact, it was big news when a Gloria Jean's opened here a few months ago. There are coffee shops aplenty -- I'm sitting in one now! -- but Gloria Jean's is the first American company to set up shop here. In Bangkok, by way of example, there is a Starbuck's approximately every eight feet.

My abiding impression of Bangkok, though, is how many 7-11's there are. You have to see it to believe it. Far more than in any US city. There is an intersection in Silom, the financial district -- where the protests were centered a few months ago -- where there is a 7-11 on all four corners.

There are no copyright laws in Cambodia so shops can freely sell bootleg CDs. Kids walk the streets selling books to tourists that have been photocopied. These are actually impressive operations. Even the color maps and photos inside the books are faithfully reproduced. A Lonely Planet travel guide that would cost you $25 in a bookstore can be bought on the street for three or four dollars.

As I mentioned, KFC is popular here, so popular that it's spawned its own copycats. Someone had the clever idea of opening a Louisiana Fried Chicken here. KFC's lawyers would have the place shut down in about five minutes if they tried to open in the US!

One of the benefits of living in a relatively out-of-the-way country is being relatively beyond the reach of corporate America. In a previous post I wrote about the famous YakDonald's in Kagbeni, Nepal.

You know you're in a remote location when the McDonald's legal machine leaves you alone! While in Nepal you will see North Face gear literally everywhere. Except it's not North Face. There is an official North Face store in Kathmandu, which sells the genuine articles at genuine prices, but the vast majority of it is knockoffs. You can walk down the streets in Kathmandu or Pokhara and see people sitting at sewing machines embroidering the logo onto cheap fleeces, gloves, hats, etc.

On the Annapurna Circuit I spent a night in the North Face lodge in Jagat, which has no affiliation with North Face aside from the faithfully reproduced logo. Which begs the question, why is North Face the knock-off brand of choice? My theory is it's partly name recognition but mostly the simplicity of the logo.

The sans serif font is simple and easy to copy. The geometric design is simple and easy to copy.

I am a dork

2010-12-21T19:50:00.000-05:00

The Saturday before Halloween was a big night out in Phnom Penh. Bars and clubs that cater to an expat clientele had parties but few people went out in costume. The girls at my favorite restaurant, Metro, all wore wigs. So did the guys...

Here I am with Ponlok. Normally he is breaking the hearts of tourist girls because he's a fit, good-looking guy who is also happily married with two adorable kids. He didn't break any hearts this night. Except mine, when I saw this photo on facebook!

Afterwards I joined the Metro crew at St Tropez, one of the the more upscale nightclubs in town. One girl showed up in costume. Sort of. She was wearing traditional áo dài, the traditional silk clothes Vietnamese women wear, and a nón lá, the traditional Vietnamese bamboo hat. I don't think a Vietnamese girl wearing Vietnamese clothing qualifies as a costume but, hey, give her points for at least making an effort.

One of my Cambodian friends, Sokim, was modeling the Vietnamese girl's hat for a photo. Kunika and Hengsuch decided they wanted to get in on the action.

You may remember Sokim from a previous post, in which I said she's the most gorgeous girl I have ever seen with my own eyes. Photos don't do her justice. Sure, you can see her perfect bone structure, but you can't get a sense of her poise and elegance.

She's not looking so elegant here. But at least she comes off better than I do. I was sending a text message to a friend making arrangements to meet at another club. Two gorgeous women are pretending to bite the boobs of my dreamgirl and there I am in the background with my nose buried in my celphone.

I am a dork.

ho ho ho

2010-12-19T06:02:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in the airport in Phnom Penh as I type this, waiting for my flight to start boarding. I fly to Seoul, where I will have a 12-hour layover. I've had entire vacations that didn't last that long. Ugh. Part of me thinks it would be fun to take a taxi into the city and explore for a few hours. But more likely I'll find a corner to curl up with a book and watch the minutes crawl by.

I arrive at BWI late Monday night. I'll be in the Balmer area for the holidays. I fly out of Dulles on January 5. I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends, although it will be a bit of a challenge since I will have neither car nor celphone. If you want to see me contact me through email, facebook or call me at my parents' house.

Your eyes do not deceive you

2010-12-07T18:53:00.003-05:00

This is an actual photo of nine, count 'em, nine Cambodians on a motorbike. Gotta love the Cambodian child safety seat -- a bucket! I didn't take this photo. The most I have seen is six. I guess I need to look harder.

It was pointed out to me that we can't see what's on the other side, so there could be a whole batch o'baby buckets. I think it's more fun to imagine them holding grandpa like a rolled-up carpet.

Sad day in Cambodia

2010-11-23T07:44:00.002-05:00

I'll write more about the Water Festival in another post but I did want to write a short post to let everyone know that I'm OK. I went to the beach for four days so I wasn't even in the city when this happened:

Sad story

The latest tally is 375 dead, trampled or suffocated to death. What a way to go. There was little rescuers could do, so onlookers were forced to watch as people died right in front of their eyes. I expect a somber mood at school tomorrow. To those of you who wrote to check on me, thanks for your concern.

Oktoberfrat

2010-10-25T08:46:00.004-04:00

Last weekend I went to an Oktoberfest celebration at the Cambodiana, one of the more luxurious riverfront hotels here. It sounded like fun, a departure from the normal nightlife scene and an opportunity to consume some animal parts. As much as I love the food here I do miss sinking my teeth into a big ol' hunk of cow or pig. I knew there would be German sausages aplenty.

I think every German and Austrian expat was there, as well as most of the older foreign crowd. Translation: Lots of sloppy, old men with bewildered looking young Khmer girls in tow. There are plenty of expat bars here, but you're always aware that you're in a foreign country and different rules apply. I think because there was such a large group of foreigners together in a European-themed setting it meant whatever inhibitions people might normally have were left at the door. It was like 25-year reunion frat party.

The buffet spread was indeed impressive. I figured I would go for a while, mingle, drink my two free beers, eat until I exploded and escape before people started dancing on the tables. No such luck. People were dancing on the tables at 8:30!

I apologize for the poor photo quality. I didn't think to take my camera so I had to use my phone.

One thing I do miss from home is a choice when it comes to beer. There's plenty of beer here but it's mostly standard pale lagers, comparable to Budweiser or Miller Lite. I couldn't bear to watch all the fat, drunken foreigners stumbling into each other, or listen to the ear-splitting music, but at least I could enjoy some good German beer, right?

Here is the beer list, in its entirety:

1) Tiger

Tiger was one of the sponsors. The $18 ticket entitled me to two free drafts. I drink Tiger all the time. It's a perfectly decent beer. Shouldn't there be some real beer at a German Oktoberfest party, though? No hefeweizen, no pils, no doppelbock... sigh.

There was a (cough) German band. Luckily they had a captive audience hellbent on getting trashed and making fools of themselves. The band was bad in a way I've never seen a band be bad before. I think there were a few German songs in there, but it was mostly the same crappy songs you'd hear at a wedding, but set to a "German beat". For those of you with a musical background, this means every song was played to thumping quarter notes on the bass drum. It was historically awful. I knew it was time to go when they broke out the Chicken Dance at 8 pm.

Cambodian cuisine

2010-10-17T08:44:00.005-04:00

One question people from home ask me is what do I do for food. Do I cook? Do I eat local food or western food? And so on. I have a small kitchen in my apartment with a single gas burner, but I only use it to heat water for noodles or coffee. Food here is so cheap and so good that it doesn't make sense for me to cook. Back home it's far cheaper to eat at home than go out. Here it's the opposite!

Even at the tourist restaurants on the riverfront it's possible to have a meal and a cocktail for $5 or so. Get away from the tourist areas and go to one of the little sidewalk restaurants and you can eat well for less than a dollar.

People think I'm exaggerating to make a point but I can get an honest-to-goodness meal for less than a dollar here. There's a sidewalk cafe around the corner from my school that I frequent. The owner cooks up a few big pots of soup. You lift the lids, look at what's inside and (if you don't speak Khmer) point at what you want.

This is my favorite soup there. It's a sweet-and-sour sort of affair, with pineapple, tomato, melon, fish and an okra-like vegetable. I get it often but because I use the point-and-smile method of ordering I have no idea what it's called! (Hopefully this will change soon. I start taking Khmer language lessons this week.)

As you can see I get a bowl of soup, rice, a little bag of chili sauce, a cup of jasmine tea and even a plastic spoon for 4,000 riel. That's about 95 cents at the usual conversion rate. It's possible to eat for half that.

Teacher, what mean coprophilia?

2010-08-07T01:36:00.008-04:00

I tell my students to tell me if there are topics they'd like to discuss that aren't covered in class. One class wanted to know the meanings of FBI, CIA, NASA, etc. This led to a short discussion of acronyms. One student wanted to know "which is worse": crazy, stupid or idiot.

One student wanted to know the difference between shit and damn.

I said cursing is a surprisingly complicated subject and that I couldn't give a short explanation. I said that in Khmer there are probably things you can say to a friend that you can't say to a teacher or a stranger, right? This is an intermediate class so I said it probably wasn't an appropriate topic for their level. How's that for ducking the issue?

At higher levels it's not necessarily inappropriate. If you're teaching advanced students who are planning on working or studying overseas it might be worthwhile to give them some pointers on how and when to curse or, perhaps more importantly, to know when someone else is cursing at them in jest or in anger.

Last week I had all of my students write a practice essay. In one class it was to write a funny story from their childhood. One student gave me an otherwise decent essay which the word "shit" was used about 20 times.

Whenever I mention this people immediately assume it was a boy who wrote it, a punk kid with a bad attitude. The author was actually a sweet young girl talking about a time when one of her classmates came to class with a shoe caked in doggie doodoo.

I guess I'll have to give a short lesson on the s-word after all. I'll give them the same advice I gave when a student asked how to use a semi-colon. I said "This is the rule for using a semi-colon: Don't."

Maybe I'll play for them the famous George Carlin routine about the seven words you can't say on TV!

A different world

2010-07-28T21:36:00.001-04:00

It took me a while to warm up to Southeast Asia. Part of the problem was timing. I arrived here after seven weeks in Nepal. I love Nepal. I was sad to leave. As excited as I was to visit Thailand for the first time, I had mixed feelings.

I wrote at the time how I was vaguely disappointed in Bangkok. I had read so much about the "exotic" and "mysterious" city that I must have expected something out of a science fiction movie. Instead it was Starbucks and Burger King and 7-11 on literally every street corner. It looked like just any other big city. With an unusually large number of transvestites...

I've been in Southeast Asia long enough now that it seems normal to me. I first arrived in Bangkok in November 2008 (!) and for a while I was in full tourist mode. I was skimming over the surface of the culture, moving quickly and visiting the tourist attractions. After all this time I still feel like a tourist, but the strangeness of the culture doesn't smack me in the face on a daily basis the way it once did.

The cultural influences here so alien that it's difficult for westerners to assimilate into, embrace or even understand the culture. Your mind unconsciously looks for common points of reference, but there are often are none. The predominant cultural influence here is Buddhism, a system of thought which is very nearly opposite to everything those of us of European descent are taught. Things are just different here.

Something I hear tourists mention, and I've even seen in guidebooks, is the sight of monks begging. This bugs me. I have only the most cursory knowledge of Buddhism so I freely admit that what I'm about to write is inaccurate or just plain wrong, but I do know that monks do not beg. (If you encounter a begging monk he's probably an impostor scamming tourists.) It's the best example I can think of to illustrate how viewing even the simplest act through a cultural prism can distort its meaning.

Every morning Buddhist monks leave their temple and make their rounds of the neighborhood. They go to each house and storefront. They don't need to speak. Everyone knows why they are there. They will stand there for a few moments and wait for someone to bring them money or food. Offerings are repaid with a short blessing. If no one makes an offering, they move on to the next door.

They don't do this for themselves. They do this for you.

Most westerners are vaguely familiar with the idea of karma. Buddhists believe that we after we die we are reincarnated. Our incarnation in the next life will be determined by how well we live this one. What the monks are doing is allowing you to "acquire merit", to improve your karma so that in the next life you won't be reborn as a cockroach. They are not asking for anything. They are giving you the opportunity to make an offering. The distinction is at once tiny and enormous.

I witnessed a funny little scene while I was having breakfast at a beach restaurant in Sihanoukville. There was a large family eating at the next restaurant. A monk was making the rounds when a woman gave her little son some money to give to the monk.

(Sorry for the poor quality of the pic but I had to take it quickly with my phone.)

The little boy started to walk back his mother. She and the other ladies at the table yelled and waved their hands for him to go back for his blessing. The little boy knelt in front of the monk and put his hands together in the nearly universal gesture of praying, here called som pia. The table was blocking my view so I couldn't get a pic. Trust me, it was very cute.

The monk began reciting his prayer, which was apparently a bit too long for the boy. Before the monk could finish he hopped up and walked back to his family as they yelled and waved again in an attempt to get him to go back for the remainder of the blessing. But he was done.

The monk just smiled and moved on.

Ham sandwiched

2010-07-27T20:39:00.002-04:00

I had a bit of an accident. I got hit by a motorbike. Actually, it wasn't the motorbike that hit me, it was the cargo. I didn't get hurt, but I smell delicious.

Traffic in Phnom Penh is chaotic by American standards, but I came from Saigon, so to me it seems positively sane. Seriously, looking back on my time living in Vietnam, the one thing that sticks in my mind is how stressful the simple act of walking down the street was.

I was walking by the Central Market. Just by the name you can guess that traffic in those parts is pretty frenetic. As I was crossing an intersection a motorbike turned onto the street, passing just in front of me. I paced my steps so that I would walk just behind it, but I didn't notice that it was carrying a Wide Load. The cargo clipped me on the hip.

The cargo was a pig. An entire, cooked pig. Its head bonked off me, not hard enough to hurt, but definitely hard enough to make me laugh. I imagined the news getting home:

Mrs. Staggs, we're sorry to have to inform you that your son was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He was hit by a pig. Death was instantaneous. He didn't suffer, although he does smell like bacon. We would have notified you sooner but we were tracking down the perpetrator. We found him at a restaurant around the corner. He was being served with fried noodles and mushrooms. He was quite tasty.

Even my mother would have to laugh.

Try this at home

2010-07-22T01:43:00.000-04:00

This is how people in Southeast Asia sit. Try it. Go ahead.

I took this from a bus seat in Saigon. This guy was sitting on a concrete wall perhaps four inches wide eating. Seriously. Try it.

People here sit in this squatting position for hours. Not only do they sit like this but they bend over while they work. You'll see women cutting food in this position or men working on motorbike engines. For them it's comfortable and easy. For foreigners it's impossible!

Free food!

2010-07-20T01:47:00.002-04:00

I went to visit a friend of mine, who recently started working at a new bar. The bar is fairly swanky. Big, comfy leather chairs. Pricey, frou-frou cocktails. Lots of pretty girls to make conversation with customers.

Unfortunately it's on the notorious Street 136, where all of the quote-unquote hostess bars are. These are the bars where male tourists go to find young ladies to take home. We'll see how long a bar with more legitimate intentions and non-working girls can last surrounded by sleaze.

It must have been happy hour because there was a complimentary pile of fresh fruit. In the bathroom.

Why buy urinal cakes when you can use a couple pieces of fruit for the same effect?

In a previous blog post I wrote about a German professional photographer named Michael Riehle that I traveled with in Chiang Mai. One of the reasons I liked Michael so much is because even though he has seen more of the world than anyone I've ever met -- including some of the worst parts -- for him travel was still fun and exciting. He was delighted to find lemon slices in the urinals in a bathroom in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was struck how someone who has seen so much could be so amused by something so small.

So many travelers get jaded. For some their unwillingness to enjoy travel is almost a badge of honor. No matter what they do or see it only reminds them of something they've already done or seen.

Oh yeah, you see them everywhere in Indonesia. The best ones are on a little island in Malaysia. You've probably never heard of it. But that was 10 years ago before tourists ruined the place.

That kind of nonsense. I will never see or do as much as Michael has, but I hope I retain his ability to be surprised and entertained by the little things.

Adventures in transliteration

2010-07-18T03:31:00.001-04:00

In a previous post I talked about the difficulties transliterating Khmer words into English. The Khmer alphabet has more letters than any other language. There are 60 distinct vowel sounds. There are sounds in Khmer that simply can't be spelled in English. As a result you will see multiple English spellings of even the simplest Khmer words.

When it comes to more difficult words the possibilities are nearly endless, as the entrance to this hotel shows.

The main tourist beach in Sihanoukville is pronounced -- for foreigners, at least -- OH-cha-teal. The sign in front says Hotel Nokor Samreit Oucheurteal. The sign in back says Nokorsamreth Ochorteal.

Two signs for the same building with different spellings for both the beach and the hotel!

2, 4, 6, 8! Everybody ...

2010-07-16T01:39:00.001-04:00

One of the things I love about SE Asia is how cheap and easy it is to get around. The tourist buses are generally pretty comfortable, or would be if the drivers weren't lunatics. My personal theory is that the guys behind the wheel learned how to drive on a motorbike. They graduated up to luxury buses, but they still drive like they're on motorbikes.

Swerving into oncoming traffic to passes rows of cars. Honking the horn compulsively for no apparent reason at 4 a.m. while the passengers are trying to sleep. Slamming on the accelerator then slamming on the brakes. You'll get there safely unless you look out the front window. Then you'll have a heart attack.

Tourist buses have toilets on them. About half the times these are locked. It's probably for the best because the toilets on buses look like they should adjoin the torture room in "Hostel". Pretty grim stuff.

I love the sign on the door to the toilet on a bus I took from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh.

Translation: You can do Number One in here but you can't do Number Two. Considering the door was designed for leprechauns and you have to be a contortionist to get inside, I recommend holding it in until the bus stops.

One of the true joys of traveling is seeing signs in mangled English. Some tourists get really snarky about it. Look at this! The grammar is all wrong. Whoever wrote this is an idiot. I personally am grateful for any efforts made to make my traveling experience easier. I'd rather try to decode bad English than try to read Khmer. Usually the meaning is clear no matter how badly scrambled the translation is.

But sometimes you see a sign like this one, which I saw in the bathroom of a tourist bus.

My best guess "Please put your rubbish in the trash bin". It does provide entertainment value to what would otherwise be a fairly routine toilet break.

A dog's life

2010-07-14T03:17:00.001-04:00

My friend Thong and I went to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Some of the outdoor restaurants were already opened when we arrived. We sat and had coffee and breakfast. The woman at our restaurant told us she started at 4:30 in the morning and finished at 6 p.m. As sad as that is, it was heartbreaking to see how many children were already at the temple working. It's bad enough that these kids spend all day pestering tourists to buy cheap bracelets and postcards. It's sickening to think they start before sunrise.

Here are three little girls playing with a dog. Shortly after this photo was taken they gave him some food. He stretched out on his belly in the cool dirt and enjoyed his breakfast.

Then the dog's owner, presumably the mother of one of the girls, came over, took the dog and told the girls to get back to work. The dog's white fur is puffy and clean. It's wearing a matching pink leash and collar. The children, on the other hand, are wearing filthy, torn clothes. One of the the girls, you will notice, has no shoes.

The government here needs to realize how badly this reflects on their country. People come from all over the world to see the magnificent temples and learn about the golden age of the mighty Angkor empire, but what they also end up taking home with them is the painful and tedious experience of dealing with hundreds of dirty, poorly-clothed, poorly-fed children who are begging when they should be in school.

First-time tour guide

2010-07-12T02:11:00.001-04:00

Shortly before I left Saigon I was sitting in a coffee shop doing internet nerd stuff. Two gorgeous young Vietnamese girls were sitting next to me. I tried not to stare so I locked in on my laptop and hammered away. I was successful blocking them out. I know this because the waitress got my attention and asked me if I would talk to the girls. Apparently they had been trying to get my attention. They saw me working and rightly assumed I was an English teacher. They wanted to practice speaking English.

I talked to them for about two hours. We swapped email addresses and phone numbers. Shortly thereafter I moved to Cambodia. I never saw either of them again.

Imagine my surprise, then, when one of them contacted me and asked if I would be willing to show her around Cambodia. She was coming to visit for the first time and needed a tour guide. It just so happened she would be in town during my term break so I agreed. I wasn't sure it was such a great idea. I don't actually know the girl after all. Four days with a complete stranger could be a long time.

Her name is Thong, which she discovered is an unfortunate spelling when dealing with English speakers. It's pronounced Tawm but when written it looks like she was named after provocative women's undergarments. (The hotel where I lived in Saigon was named after the owner, an elegant woman whose name is pronounced Yoom but is spelled Dung.)

She would only have three full days for sightseeing. She wanted to see Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. I explained that it could be done but we would have to move quickly. She seemed game.

We spent the first day touring the city. She was late getting started so we didn't get to see everything, but we did see what I consider to be the most important sights. We started at the Royal Palace. She was keen to see the Silver Pagoda. On the way out we heard someone playing a traditional instrument like a marimba. We walked up the stairs of a small wooden building to check it out. The weather-worn, toothless old man seemed thrilled when the pretty young girl asked if she could jam with him.

After we went to the Killing Fields. I had been there before and honestly had no desire to go back. It's something you want to see once and only once. I realized though that if people come to visit me they will want to go there, so I should just accept that I will likely be making multiple trips there.

The rainy season has started here. One effect of this is that, as the rain washes away the soil there, it exposes fragments of bone and teeth from the victims.

As we walked along the trail we encountered scraps of victims' clothing that had been exposed by the rain. Almost 8,000 people were murdered here between 1975 and 1979. Here we are in the year 2010 and nature is still revealing evidence.

On my two visits tourists have been suitably respectful, but apparently not all visitors are so well behaved. How sad that a sign like this is necessary.

You can see more victims' clothing in the path to the right. After we went to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I really didn't want to go back there. The creepy, funereal atmosphere of the place was enhanced by the hordes of bats that had taken up residence in the stairwells.

I walked through most of the museum with her but by the time we got to the last building I'd had enough. I sat outside and waited while she toured the last few exhibits.

I was happy to accompany her to Siem Reap. I had spent a total of six days visiting the the temples of Angkor on two previous visits, but it had been more than a year since my last visit. In order to have enough time we had to take an overnight bus from Phnom Penh. Thong is one of those fortunate people who can sleep anywhere. I rarely get a good night's sleep even under the most advantageous conditions. When we arrived she was feeling fresh and excited. I was tired and grumpy.

We went to a cheapie hotel I had scouted on the internet, checked in and immediately took off for the temples. We started at Bayon, the second-most popular temple, famous for its towers featuring the face of King Jayavarman VII, seen here in a staring contest with Thong. (He won.)

One of the few negative aspects about visiting Angkor is the mobs of people selling, well, crap. In the course of a day you will be attacked by literally hundreds of people all selling the same books, the same cheap bracelets, the same refrigerator magnets, and so on. Most of them are children who should be in school. The government is clearly unaware of how poorly it reflects on the country for visitors to the country's main tourist attraction to be constantly harassed by begging children.

One of the few things I actually buy is fresh fruit. We bought a pineapple and green mango with chili from this woman on the bicycle. We paid $2, twice as much as we should have. I don't mind paying extra to a woman who pushes around a bike laden with fruit in the hot Cambodian sun all day.

She hit the jackpot with a large Korean tour group that came just after us. She was making a killing when a security guy came along and told her to move on.

Wait a minute: It's OK for children five years old to sell me bracelets but not for this woman to sell me fruit? I've noticed that in Cambodia their enforcement of the law can be arbitrary or hypocritical. Recently it was decreed that prostitutes in Phnom Penh can't wear short shorts or miniskirts or dye their hair blonde. But they can still be prostitutes!

We stopped for an early lunch. Since we were the only ones at the restaurant we were besieged by kids selling baskets of worthless junk. The best way to make friends with kids abroad is with a digital camera. Here Thong is reviewing her photos from the morning as an enthralled little boy watches.

I wanted to visit a small, secluded temple called Ta Nei. Our driver didn't know where it was -- even though he takes tourists to the temples every day -- and I got lost. We stumbled upon this forgotten rampart in the forest. In virtually any other place in the world this would be on the tourist trail, but because there are so many magnificent temples in Angkor, this tiny structure doesn't even appear on the map.

We had decided to save the best for last and visit Angkor Wat at the end of the day. If you start there the rest of the temples look ordinary. By the afternoon we were hot and tired and temple-d out. Visiting so many temples overloads your brain. They all start to look alike. Thong perked up when we stopped at Sras Srang reservoir on the east side of Angkor Wat. Something different!

Here is my friend in the obligatory shot in front of the reflecting pool at Angkor Wat.

On my previous visits I could not go up into the temple. I was thrilled to find that the main concourse was open. This was taken inside the temple, looking out towards the entrance.

As impressive as the temples are, the color palette is dull. It's all browns and greys. It's always a joy to see monks in their colorful robes, but in the temples they add a vivid and welcome dash of color.

Additional color is added by large tour groups who wear identical shirts so their guides can keep track of them. Here two monks pass by the tail end of a huge group all wearing garish pink tshirts. Yet another reason to travel alone: You don't have to wear ridiculous, matching shirts!

I try to be discreet about photographing them. I am appalled at the way tourists walk up to them without asking and jam giant camera lenses in their faces, then walk away without offering them money or even a simple thank you. The monks don't get upset. They're Buddhist monks after all.

We went to a temple called Bakheng to watch the sunset. The builders did not consider the needs of elderly tourist when they built the staircases.

The steps are high and narrow. These women literally crawled up the steps. There was a large group of monks there. Thong's camera battery had run out so she was using mine. She took about a bazillion photos of the monks. Tourists were jockeying for the spots with the best view of the sunset. The monks congregated in the shade...

Most of Cambodia is flat. There are few even small hills in the area around Angkor. Bakheng offers the only view of Angkor Wat from above.

The only other way to get a bird's-eye view is to go up in a hot air balloon about a kilometer away from the temple.

Watching the sun set over nearly featureless farmland from Bakheng was a disappointment.

The next morning we got up early to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, which was infinitely better. The temple was packed leading up to the sunrise. Then everyone left! We had the place almost completely to ourselves. It's hard to get good photos of it during the day because of the lack of color. The fierce sunlight washes out any detail.

The early morning light cast the temples in softer shades of light and shadow. Photographs show details that vanish in the afternoon sun. It was quiet. It was peaceful. It was cool. It was heaven.

We just sat there for the longest time, enjoying the tranquility. I have visited the temple perhaps a dozen times but this was the first time it felt like a temple.

Angkor Wat is considered one of the world's great architectural achievements. It's design and mathematical proportions are said by those smarter than me to perfectly represent the Hindu view of the universe.

Nonsense.

I discovered a design flaw. The courtyard enclosing the temple is too small. I squeezed myself as far as I could into the corner but found it is impossible to take a photo with three towers in it.

Amateurs.

Note the moon is still visible on the right side of the photo. After Angkor Wat we took the 23-mile trip to visit Banteay Srei. It's quite a long ride, especially in a tuk-tuk, but it's worth it. Most temples in Angkor were built by the kings and are massive. This temple, on the other hand, was built privately, and is almost miniature in scale. It looks like it was built for children. The detail in the stone carvings is astonishing, considering it was consecrated in the year 967! Imagine what this lintel looked like before enduring over a thousand years of Cambodian rain!

Thong loves to take photos of people taking photos. Here's a shot she took of a man taking a picture of his wife with three Khmer kids at the temple.

I got in the spirit and took a photo of her taking a photo of people taking a photo of the temple.

Our last stop was at Neak Pean, a unique site at Angkor. It's a circular monument surrounded by a series of reservoirs. When I was here last these pools were full, but during the dry season they are empty. Archaeologists were taking advantage of the dry conditions to excavate. They won't have much longer...

Even with tarps over the trenches digging in the dirt in the Cambodian sun is hot work. When the sun is at its highest and most merciless the workers take to the shade of the trees for a well-deserved nap.

I think Thong had a good time. I hope she did. For me it was fun to play tour guide. I hope it's not the last time!

Final grade

2010-07-10T01:49:00.004-04:00

Last week I completed my first full term as a teacher. I was more nervous than my students about the exams. I was so worried that they would do poorly because I failed to teach them properly. None of my students failed -- even those that should have! So maybe I did do something wrong.

This is not including the students who didn't show up for the exams. Classes at my school cost $180 to $220 for a 10-week term. This is a fortune in Cambodia. Yet there are students who pay the tuition and then don't attend. Baffling.

(To put this figure in perspective, I just returned from Siem Reap. The guys who worked in the hotel where I worked have one or two days off per month. They start work at about 4 a.m., to serve breakfast to guests who are going to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. After working all day and all night they sleep on cots in the lobby so they can get up to unlock the door whenever guests stagger home drunk from the bars. They make $50 per month.)

Back to school... I am a stressful person under the best of conditions. I actively seek out things to worry about. Teaching has been nervewracking because, let's face it, I have no idea what I'm doing. Every time I teach a lesson it's the first time. I have to teach grammar that I haven't studied since elementary school to teenagers who know it chapter and verse.

I was stressed out but I genuinely enjoyed the experience. Most of my classes were fantastic. In Vietnam I felt more like a zookeeper than a teacher. Here behavioral problems were nearly non-existent.

This was my Tuesday/Thursday morning intermediate class.

They were a joy to teach. Bright, friendly, hard-working kids. Oddly enough, I took this photo on one of the few days Chetra, the boy on the far right, showed up. He attended a half-dozen classes and missed the exams. What photo of a group of Asians would be complete without at least one of them making the obligatory V-sign with her fingers? Thanks, Raingsey!

In Vietnam I found it impossible to memorize the names of the students. Maybe it was because I spent the majority of class trying to get them to shut their stinkin' pieholes instead of actually teaching. Actually, it was probably because of the similarity in their names. All Vietnamese words and names are one syllable. There were so many girls named Thu, Thuy, Thy, etc. that it was hard to come up with mnemonic devices for remembering them.

Cambodian names are more varied. Some of the girls' names are pleasantly musical and roll off them tongue, like Molika (printed tshirt) and Chanmarie (black tshirt). Some of the names are long and difficult for foreigners to say. There are two girls in my class tonight named Sochanmoninit and Sopheakleap. Then there's the girl in the black and red plaid above. The English spelling of her name is E, pronounced like the letter.

This variety may be why I was able to memorize them in just two or three weeks. I was quite proud of this, since I taught six different classes. I was even prouder when I discovered that some of my fellow teachers, some of whom have been in Cambodia for years, don't even try to learn their students' names. I found it a bit sad to see classrooms in the final weeks of class where students still had name tags on their desks.

This is my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon intermediate class.

I should mention the boy in the pink shirt because he's a whipsmart student. Oh, and because his name is Rambo. Today I start my second term. Let's hope it goes as well as the first.

Dare to dream

2010-07-08T01:58:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons that Cambodia intrigues me so much is because things are changing here so quickly. Vietnam is an exciting and often intense place to live, but it's stable. Next year or even in five years Saigon will look and feel very much the same as it does now. The city is changing but at a steady, predictable pace. Phnom Penh is a city with no skyscrapers, but look around the skyline and you'll see high-rise construction cranes in every direction. Even next year the city may be unrecognizable.

Hopefully these changes portend increasing prosperity for the country. The Pol Pot years constituted one of the worst episodes in world history, but that period was part of the larger pattern of Cambodian history. For 1,000 years or so Cambodia has been struggling to maintain its very existence as Thailand and Vietnam, its bigger and more populous neighbors, chip away at its territory. Thais and Vietnamese openly despise and look down upon Cambodians and speak about them as if they barely more than animals. Siem Reap province, where Angkor Wat is located, was captured by Thailand in 1431 and only returned to Cambodia in 1946.

Even though the country is lurching forward into the modern world, every day there are reminders that I am living in a third world country that is decades behind its neighbors terms of technology and infrastructure. People here carry multiple celphones, for example, because not all of the networks are compatible.

I enjoyed a little chuckle when I read about the Phnom Penh's newest addition: a highway overpass. The first highway overpass in the nation. For the folks back home, think about that the next time you're driving around the Beltway or up I-95. Cambodia now has one overpass.

Cambodia's crafty Prime Minister Hun Sen attended the opening of the overpass. He is a man who thinks big:

"Now that we have the first, there should be a second, third, fourth and so on."

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

2010-07-06T02:01:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine from Saigon came to visit me. It was her first time in Cambodia so of course she wanted to see the temples at Angkor. She didn't know much about the place, but she had seen her friend's pictures of sunrise at Angkor Wat. The one thing she wanted to do was get those same photos.

She was on limited time so there was only one morning we could go. We were unbelievably fortunate with the weather, considering we are officially in the rainy season. We had two hot, sunny days for sightseeing. The guys working at the hotel said we would have to wake up at 4:30 and leave by 5 a.m. to see the sunrise. They arranged a tuk-tuk driver for us. He agreed to meet us at 5 a.m.

There was a knock on my hotel door at 4:36 a.m. It was the tuk-tuk driver. We were supposed to leave at 5, I said. He said, no, we were supposed to leave at 4:30. There was no point in arguing. I said I would be ready as soon as possible. I showered quickly, which is easy when you have no hair, threw on some clothes and went downstairs.

I asked where my friend was. What friend, he asked? He woke me up but he didn't wake her up. I knocked on her door. She too was confused but she got ready in record time. We were on the road by 4:50 a.m.

Unfortunately the sun was already coming up as we were leaving. We were late before we had even left. I was &%$#ing furious. I had made it abundantly clear that the one thing my friend came all the way from Vietnam to see was sunrise at Angkor Wat, and we missed it. She handled it much better than I did. (She's a much nicer person than I am.) We got there for the tail end of the sunrise, but we missed the best part.

How on earth could the guys at the hotel screw this up? They only make these arrangements every single day of the year! Even if we had left at 4:30, as our driver wrongly said we had agreed to do, we still would have been late! We would have gotten up at 2 a.m. if necessary to be there on time.

Hard to believe, but we weren't the only ones there.

There was a steady stream of tourists, many of whom were suffering from sunrise sickness. This is my phrase for people who are so obsessed with seeing and getting photos of a sunrise that they revert to a barbaric, pre-human state. I had first noticed this phenomenon on Poon Hill in Nepal. Civility, courtesy and basic human decency vanish. It's as if all the boys in "Lord of the Flies" were given cameras, loaded on a bus and dumped off at the temple.

By the time we got to the reflecting pool it was light out. This is the number one spot for taking pictures of Angkor Wat. Everyone who visits here has their photo taken here with the temple in the background and reflected in the water. Good luck getting a decent shot at sunrise!

The time mixup was just the beginning of a series of mishaps with our tuk-tuk driver. The previous day we had a similarly bad experience with another driver. If you go to Siem Reap, I don't stay at the King Angkor Villa hotel. If you do stay there, don't use their drivers. Find your own.

More on my experience as a first-time tour guide in later, longer post.

They're so cute at that age

2010-07-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

When I was teaching my intermediate students the second conditional (things that can't or won't happen) I put them in groups and asked them to imagine they were all-powerful beings from another planet. What would they do if they took over the planet? The results were enlightening, funny and a little scary.

In the center you can see where one group, consisting of three boys and one traumatized girl who obviously had no say in the matter, said "I would kill all the people". There's a group I was careful not to turn my back on.

In the bottom right corner you can see where one group wrote "I would make men to replace the women duty like the men is give birth not women anymore". Not surprisingly, this group was comprised of four girls.

My bad

2010-07-02T01:32:00.004-04:00

I'll use this photo from Pokhara, Nepal to introduce this post. If anyone is still reading my blog I apologize. I haven't written anything for a long, long time. There are a couple of reasons. Internet access isn't as cheap or easy to find in Cambodia as it was in Vietnam. I would have to pay out the wazoo to have it in my apartment, which isn't such a big deal because I spend so much time at school. I have internet access at school, but I'm usually too busy to take advantage of it. And there is the problem of simple laziness.

I'm on a 10-day break from classes. It sounds really great and sexy and all until you realize that 10 days without classes means 10 days without pay. As much as I'd like to take the time to travel and party, I need to budget very carefully. What a buzzkill.

It does leave me time to get caught up on the blog. Now that I have developed a routine here I should be able to find time to update the blog on a more regular basis.

Year of the Volcano

2010-05-30T02:17:00.009-04:00

It's always satisfying when you visit something you've wanted to see your entire life and it lives up to your expectations. The Great Wall was everything that I expected. Angkor Wat, too. Occasionally you're disappointed.

The truly magical moments happen when you stumble across something unexpectedly wonderful. When you go you don't expect much but when you leave your mind is thoroughly blown.

In 2006 I spent two weeks in Belize and Guatemala. Near the Guatemalan tourist hub of Antigua I had my favorite unexpected travel surprise. I did a one-day trip to hike up an active volcano. In Costa Rica I had visited an active volcano called Arenal. There minivans take you to a viewpoint a few miles away. You go there at night so you can see the red lava against the night sky. I enjoyed it. I had never seen lava before.

I expected a similar deal in Guatemala. We hiked through a thick fog that obscured views of the mountainside. I began to get a little grumpy since it seemed we were going to hike all day and not see anything.

Suddenly we were in the clear. We could see the mountain.

In Costa Rica I was miles away. Now I was on the mountain itself. In Costa Rica the lava was visible as thin, red ribbons glowing in the darkness. Here there was a river of lava rolling down the side of the mountain. There were no safety precautions whatsoever. I could have walked up and jumped in.

First we had to hike through a fantastic landscape like something out of the movie "Alien". Previous lava flows had cooled into bizarre shapes and patterns. Thick fog added to the creepy atmosphere.

We walked across a cooled lava field that crumbled beneath our feet. Veins of molten lava ran through the rock directly beneath our feet.

I got as close as I could to the lava flow but it was unimaginably hot. How hot? Look at my face.

For the love of God, take the @#%&ing picture already!

This was about as close as I could get. (You can see the river of lava over my left shoulder.) The thick Vibram soles of my hiking shoes were no match for the mountain. The ground was so hot the rubber soles started getting gummy. As we left we could look back at other tourists inching close to the lava flow, which is flowing straight down through the center of the photo.

While we were hiking the other hikers and I wondered what would happen if the volcano erupted in earnest. Last week Volcan Pacaya erupted.

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=357691&CategoryId=12394

A volcano also erupted in Ecuador, not far from where I hiked in 2004. And we all remember the volcano in Iceland which tied up air travel for weeks.

The death and casualty tolls are pretty low. At least 9 children are missing. More than 20 people have been injured. Thousands have fled their homes or were evacuated. Sad news, but this is literally a disaster waiting to happen. Small villages dot the side of the mountain. It is close to Antigua, the second most popular tourist destination in Guatemala, after the Mayan ruins at Tikal. I'm glad I saw it when I did!

Barang

2010-05-02T02:22:00.002-04:00

I'm a barang. So are you.

It's a Khmer word which means foreigner, especially someone of European origin. It is not considered an insult. Usually... The origin of the word is a bit convoluted. In Thailand the word for foreigner is farang. The two words are obviously related. Farang came first. The Khmer word is different for the simple reason there is no F sound in the language. I know this first hand. Often people here struggle with my name. There are people here who know me as Jepp or Jess.

On a similar note, in Asia the R and L sounds are often confused or interchangeable. The word should probably be transliterated as balang. I have seen the Thai word spelled falang.

The explanation for the word farang is that it is a corruption of the word français. The word became part of the language through interaction with French traders. This is the most popular explanation and seems to make sense. It is also almost certainly incorrect.

Not only did other European traders (Dutch and Portuguese) arrive before the French, other non-Europeans did as well. Persians arrived before Europeans. The Persian word for foreigner is farangi. There are other explanations but this seems the most obvious.

Why, then, the common belief that the word comes from the French? To me it seems to appeal to a typically white/European-centric view of the world.

Persian is the language of Iran. Most westerners think of Iran as an Arab country but it is most definitely not. Only three percent of Iranians are Arabs. Even less speak Arabic. It is a huge pet peeve of Iranians that travelers who believe themselves to be worldly and educated show up in Tehran and try speaking to the locals in Arabic. Imagine someone getting off a plane in New York or San Francisco assuming the people there speak Arabic and you get the idea.

The majority of Iranians are ethnically Persian and speak Persian. Do white tourists from Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand want to be referred to a word from Iran, of all places? It's bad enough being called French!

Today's weather: Same as yesterday's

2010-05-01T00:50:00.007-04:00

My decision to move to Phnom Penh was the right one. However, my timing could have been better. April is the hottest month here. For the folks back home, you know how every summer there's a stretch of a week or two where it gets so hot it's hard to breathe? Days when the weather is so miserable that just walking from your house to your car is enough to sap your will to live? Cambodia in April is like that every day. And every night, for that matter.

It's always hot here, although it does cool off a bit in December and January. I was teaching a lesson about weather vocabulary. I asked the students how cold it gets. They said 23 degrees Celsius, or about 74 degrees Fahrenheit. I suppose I should start storing provisions for the brutal Cambodian winter.

Here's a chart showing the average temperatures and number of rainy days for each month:

	Avg max temp C/F	Avg min temp C/F	Rainy days
Nov	30/86	22/72	9
Dec	30/86	21/70	3
Jan	31/88	20/68	1
Feb	32/90	21/70	2
Mar	34/93	24/75	4
Apr	35/95	25/77	6
May	35/95	25/77	16
Jun	33/91	24/75	18
Jul	33/91	24/75	19
Aug	32/90	25/77	19
Sep	31/88	25/77	19
Oct	31/88	24/75	17

The average high temperature never gets lower than 86 degrees, but in January it can get down to a frosty 68 degrees. Glad I saved that yak wool sweater I bought in Nepal!

There are two seasons here, the dry season and the wet season. It's pretty obvious from the chart which months fall into which season. As hot as it is here now it's a dry heat, which is surprising considering this is Southeast Asia. That's starting to change. Soon it will be the rainy season. For half the year there is a downpour just about every day. Last night I had plans to go out but stayed in because it was raining. It was the type of storm that chews up and spits out umbrellas. It was so loud I couldn't hear my television.

Note that the average temperatures are the same for April and May. It might be stinking hot now, but next month it will be just as hot and rainy and humid. If anyone is planning to visit me here, next month is not the time to do it.

Khmer primer

2010-04-22T00:07:00.001-04:00

The name Cambodia is derived from Khmer, the name of the people and the language. The word is best known because of the Khmer Rouge, the communist group which took control of the country in the 1970s and managed to kill off perhaps as much as a quarter of the nation's population before being expelled by the Vietnamese in 1979.

Rouge is the French word for red. The term simply means Communist Cambodia. Even within Cambodia the term is mispronounced as kuh-MARE when referring to the Khmer Rouge. Most foreigners pronounce it this way when referring to the people and the language, as well. And why not. That's the way it looks like it should be pronounced. Hold that thought.

Khmer is a tricky language to transliterate because it has more characters than any other alphabet. It has sixty distinct vowel sounds. There are sounds in Khmer that simply can not be written in English.

The language is closely related to Thai and Lao. The scripts look similar as well. Khmer characters are more dense and hard to read in my admittedly uneducated opinion. Thai and Lao scripts are more delicate and pleasing to the eye. For instance, this is the full name of Bangkok in Thai:

กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยามหาดิลก ภพนพรัตน์ ราชธานีบุรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์ มหาสถาน อมรพิมาน อวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยะ วิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์

This is a random bit of text in Khmer:

ក្រុមមន្រ្តីសុខាភិបាលនៃប្រទេសកម្ពុជា បានថ្លែងឱ្យដឹងកាលពីពេលថ្មីនេះថា ខ្លួននឹងចាប់ផ្តើមធ្វើការវ៉ាក់សាំងជំងឺរលាកសួតនិងរលាកស្រោម ខួរដល់ទារកនៅដំណាច់ខែមេសានេះជាអ្វីដែលខ្លួនអះអាងថា នឹងមានកុមារប្រមាណ៤០ម៉ឺននាក់ទទួលបានការចាក់នៅទូទាំងប្រទេស នេះ។

The latter just looks more cluttered to me. Note that there are no punctuation marks in Thai (or Khmer or Lao). The words all run together. This is a marked difference to what I've seen for the past few months. All words in Vietnamese are one syllable. The longest Vietnamese word I can think of is seven characters long. It uses Western-style punctuation. Here is a random bit of text in Vietnamese:

Luật Hiện đại hoá an toàn thực phẩm được giới thiệu tại Thượng viện, Luật này sẽ cải thiện những nổ lực của Chính phủ nhằm đảm bảo an toàn thực phẩm nhập khẩu và sản xuất trong nước.

None of this is to say I prefer Thai or Lao over Khmer (or Vietnamese). Quite the opposite. For some reason, even though they are closely related, Thai and Lao are tonal languages but Khmer is not. I am baffled by this. And yes, this is definitely another entry in the "Things That May Interest Only Me".

In tonal languages words that are spelled the same have different meanings depending on the tone of voice in which they are pronounced. Thai has four tones. Chinese has five. Vietnamese has six.

For example, "The new wood was not burnt, silk burnt," is translated in Thai as, "Mai mai mai mai mai mai." To say it properly you would say "Mai (with high tone), mai (with low tone), mai (with falling tone), mai (with falling tone), mai (with rising tone), mai (with falling tone)."

If you don't get the tones right, locals honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Here is a two-letter word with the six Vietnamese tones and their meanings.

mà but
má cheek
mả tomb
mã code
ma ghost
mạ rice seedling

If someone said in English "My house is haunted by a rice seedling" or "I planted a ghost" it would sound like gibberish. Vietnamese would experience the same confusion if you said ma instead of mạ. As one phrasebook I read said, it is difficult for Westerners to even hear the tones, let alone speak them correctly. It's incredibly frustrating.

I went off on this tangent to point out that this problem doesn't exist in Khmer. There are no tones. Although there are subtleties to pronunciation that are difficult for foreigners to pick up on, if you get close they are more likely to understand than they would be in Vietnam, for example.

It's in the transliteration that it becomes tricky. The best example is the word Khmer itself. It is not pronounced kuh-MARE. Whoever decided to spell it this way should be exhumed and beaten with a rubber hose. It is pronounced kh-ma-eh. Spoken quickly it sounds like kh-MY. Officially it's one syllable.

I don't understand why so many foreigners, and especially expats who have been in the country for years, persist in mispronouncing it. It's not hard to say it properly. Sometimes it's nearly impossible for non-native speakers to pronounce a foreign word. A common Vietnamese name is Nguyễn. If you're not Vietnamese it's unlikely you will ever say it properly. Is there a non-French speaker who can say trompe l'oeil (fool the eye) correctly?

Khmer is easy to say. Just say it correctly. It isn't pronounced the way it's spelled, but neither is Arkansas, Gloucester or Brisbane. I'm even more baffled by the mangling of Phnom Penh. It's pronounced p-NUM pen. Not hard. No one gets the second word wrong, but the first word is mispronounced more often than not. I can understand f-NOM since ph is pronounced as the letter f in English (and Vietnamese).

The most common mangling mystifies me. How does Phnom become Nom? The silent ph? This is particularly common among Brits and Aussies, but also among other foreigners and even Vietnamese.

Foreigners will always mispronounce the Vietnamese beach town of Nha Trang, which is not pronounced the way you might think just by looking at it. I was able to get around in Russian pretty well but I could never say Novosibirsk correctly. And so on. But saying Phnom Penh is not hard. If you say it incorrectly you are doing so deliberately. I find that somewhat disrespectful.

Welcoming party

2010-04-21T00:17:00.001-04:00

I arrived in Phnom Penh during the Khmer New Year. I knew the city would be empty. I decided to take advantage of the lack of distractions to find an apartment. Starting a new job would be stressful enough. I wanted to have my living arrangements sorted out first.

I arrived by bus from Vietnam, checked into my hotel, and headed to my usual watering hole, Metro. The first time I went there, well over a year ago, I was walking along the riverfront on a typically scorching Cambodian afternoon. Most of the riverfront restaurants are open to the street and thus not air conditioned. I just wanted a place to cool off.

The food is a little pricey by Cambodian standards but excellent. They make a great mojito, my summer cocktail of choice. A few men work there but most of the staff is young, friendly Khmer girls. A lot of tourists go there, of course, but it's also the place where young Cambodians with money to spend go. I go there just about every night I'm in Phnom Penh. They always make me feel welcome.

I knew the place was going to be closed the next day for a Khmer New Year party. The restaurant is owned by an American ex-pat named Paul. His staff absolutely loves him. He pays them well by local standards and treats them incredibly well by any standards.

I've become friends with Raksmey, the manager there. She asked me what I was doing the next day. I told her I was planning to look for an apartment and asked her if she knew of anyone with a place to rent. She said she didn't know of anyone renting an apartment but she did ask me if I wanted to go to the party.

Hmm. Tough choice.

I thought that the restaurant would be closed and the party would be there but, as I said, Paul treats his staff well. The party actually turned out to be an entire day of activities. We met at the restaurant in the morning and walked down to the river. We hopped on a boat where I was promptly offered a beer. 8:30 a.m. is a little too early even for me, so I opted for a Coke.

I had been on one of these boats on my first visit to Phnom Penh. I had taken a sunset cruise, just puttering around the river for two hours, drinking beer with another tourist I had been hanging out with that day. On the other side of the Mekong is a small village of fishermen. Next to the cluster of shacks and houseboats are two mansions.

We wondered who lived there. Now I know! We didn't go to this house. We went to the one next to it, the one I don't have a picture of from the boat. It's actually set further back so you can't see it all that well from the river. Paul rented the house for the day from a doctor friend of his. Dude, this place is schweet....

This is the view looking from the river towards the house.

This is the view in the other direction.

This is the inside.

After lugging all of the gear from the boat from the river to the house the party began. It turns out a Khmer New Year party looks a whole lot like an American summer cookout. Here is Paul overseeing the grill.

The adorable girl in the foreground is my friend Raksmey.

The girl sitting in the white tank top is her sister Aka. The guy next to her is Ponlok, and sitting in back in the blue shirt is So Kim. It's kinda hard to tell because she is sticking her tongue out at me, but So Kim is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen with my own two eyes.

Back home I rarely spent time with people I work with because all they ever wanted to do is bitch about work. It didn't matter where I worked, it was always the same. I would try to steer the conversation to movies or the Orioles or anything else but conversation inevitably kept getting sucked back into the black hole of how much everyone hated their jobs and/or boss.

I was struck, then, by how much everyone at the party was enjoying themselves. There was no talk of work but there was a lot of laughing. What is wrong with these people... Bear in mind that a Cambodian work schedule is different than in America. People here work 10 to 12 hours per day and get two or three days off per month. You would think they would get sick of each other, that the last thing they'd want to do on a holiday is hang out with their co-workers. Not so.

It also bears mentioning that even at the good jobs people here make as much in a month as Americans make in a day. I have a friend who works in Sihanoukville. She moved there from Koh Kong, on the Thai border, where she worked at a posh resort for a few years. She speaks English as well as anyone I've met in Cambodia.

She took a job working at a small hotel in Sihanoukville. She works 10 hours per day. She gets three days off per month. She's a pretty young girl, with years of hotel experience and excellent English, working almost every day, and she makes 80 dollars a month. And this is a good job! I'll make more than that in a day as a teacher here.

Back to the party.

I am proud to say I felt a little out of place. Raksmey told me everyone was allowed to bring a guest. As most of the staff are young women, I had a terrible premonition that I would spend the day hanging out with a bunch of sleazy old sexpats. I was shocked to discover I was the only foreigner there!

The guys who carried the gear up from the boat jumped into the pool immediately but it took a while for the girls to get bold enough to get in. Women throughout Asia value light-colored skin. It's a cultural belief that goes back literally thousands of years: People with dark skin work in the sun, and thus are poor. Khmer people have generally darker skin than most Asians. Women here are obsessed with light skin. Because of that, combined with a general cultural modesty, women swim fully clothed.

In the rear you can see Raksmey sitting on the edge of the pool. She was going to wear her bikini but her co-workers told her they didn't think she should. If she were in a pool with mostly foreigners it would have been okay but since she was in a pool with mostly Cambodians it would have been in poor taste. So she wore a tshirt over top.

In the foreground is a girl in a sun hat, a men's long-sleeved shirt and black leggings. It's So Kim. Just my luck: I spend the day in the pool with the most beautiful girl in the world and she's covered up like a mummy...

A few bottles of wine loosened up the crowd. Aside from Paul I was the only foreigner there so I was a bit hesitant to join in the mix. Soon, though, I had everyone playing chicken, where the girls sit on the guys' shoulders and try to wrestle each other into the water. I hadn't played the game in, oh, 20 years.

On the downside, it's a terrible activity for someone who has had two back surgeries. It's been a week since the party and I am still feeling creaky. On the upside, I was in a pool with beautiful Cambodian girls clamped on my shoulders. No pain, no gain.

When I go to the beach I always sit under an umbrella. I didn't realize how much the sun was wearing me out. We took the boat back to the city. But the party wasn't over. There was still dinner and karaoke! We met back at the restaurant a few hours later. I was completely wiped out. I even thought about calling Raksmey and bailing out. I decided it would be rude.

We all hopped on a bus and went to a buffet restaurant. There were more people this time, but there was only one other foreigner, an Australian who sat next to me at dinner and spent half his time playing with his Blackberry. He spent the other half, in typical ex-pat fashion, impressing me with how long he's been in Southeast Asia and how much he knows about the region. I began wishing one of us would have a heart attack.

The conversation at my end of the table wasn't very lively. Normally I would have done what I could to stir the pot but I was just too tired. Plus, I was sitting opposite a television with running updates on the earthquake in China and the volcano in Iceland. It was easy to get distracted.

We took the bus to a big karaoke place in the center of town. I decided to pass on karaoke. I thought it would be bad for me to go and be a wet blanket. I might not get invited out again! Paul, the owner, bailed too, so I didn't feel too bad.

It was quite an auspicious beginning to my life as an expat in Cambodia.

Brushes? We don't need no stinkin' brushes

2010-04-20T03:12:00.001-04:00

I still have not gotten used to the typical Southeast Asian bathroom arrangement, where the shower is in the same area and often directly over the toilet. One bathroom arrangement I have warmed up to is the toilet hose.

Who wants to buy a toilet bowl brush? Who wants to touch it? Where the heck do you put it? (Or hide it?)

Here most of the toilets have a small hose and nozzle next to the toilet. You don't have to use a toilet bowl brush to scrub away any lingering ... stuff. You use the hose and blast it away. It's sanitary, easy to clean and, heck, I'll say it: more fun!

The bootleg channel

2010-04-19T01:04:00.001-04:00

I was watching a movie on television in Phnom Penh. It finished and the end credits were rolling when it suddenly stopped. After a short commercial I was looking at the menu screen for a DVD movie. It took a second for it to register what I was looking at. It's a broadcast television channel showing DVD movies! Here's a crappy photo of my TV just before the new "Twilight" movie started. You can see the orange cursor on the "play movie" menu option.

Funnier still, they show illegal DVD movies. Some of the movies are bootlegs! One night I watched "Precious", which was still in theaters in the US at the time. Today "Avatar" was on.

There goes the neighborhood

2010-04-18T00:06:00.001-04:00

My apartment is just around the corner from the hotel where I always stay. One of the many reasons I love the hotel is its location. This is the view out my kitchen window. The green patch just beyond the building in front is the Plough Field. Walk a block to the right and you come to the National Museum. Walk a block to the left and you come to the river, where all the action is. In the center of the picture you can see a golden spire in the distance. This is part of the Royal Palace.

The king and I are neighbors!

Happy New Year, Part 3

2010-04-16T23:26:00.006-04:00

First there was the New Year on December 31. Then there was lunar new year, widely known as the Chinese New Year but called Tet in Vietnam. Now there is Chaul Chnam Thmey, the Khmer New Year. It's also the Thai New Year, or Songkran. Got it? Yeah, me neither.

I start my new job on Monday. I wanted to get to Phnom Penh and get settled. I knew it would be a ghost town because of the holiday. Folks here either go home to visit family or go to the beach.

(Fun fact: In Vietnam when people talk about visiting family they say they are "going to the countryside". Here they say they are "going to the province". )

I had an admittedly crazy idea that I would show arrive in the city and then head to the beach in Sihanoukville the next day. Everyone I talked to just laughed when I mentioned my plan. I would be lucky to find a hotel room, they said. A friend here took his children and indeed did have trouble. I'll wait a week and go when the hotels are empty and the rates are back down to normal.

In the meantime I'm laying low and resting. My last week in Saigon completely wore me out. I was making the rounds to see all my friends before I left. I was going out every night, which I normally don't do. And after months of not getting enough hours at my school they decided to pile extra classes on me before I left. Amazingly I was paid in full for all my classes before I left.

My first day in Phnom Penh was exhausting. More on that in a separate post. My poor old body just conked out. I spent the past two days vegetating, watching whatever crap movies happen to be on TV and sleeping whenever the mood hit me.

I wanted to find an apartment before I started classes, too. Ideally I'd like to find a place close to my school but I really don't know where to start looking. And because of the holiday it's also a bad time to look for an apartment.

I asked one of the girls at the hotel where I always stay if she knew anyone who has an apartment for rent. Her aunt! The hotel is on a small alley street which ends in a sort of cul de sac. Apparently her family owns the whole neighborhood. I had an idea of what I should expect to pay. The price was right. The place is like a hotel room with a small kitchen. Jackpot.

All you really need to know

2010-04-02T00:08:00.003-04:00

I haven't been pleased with the school where I've been teaching in Vietnam. I had misgivings about taking the job. At the time I must admit I was a bit desperate. It was just before the lunar new year, the biggest holiday in Asia, and schools just weren't hiring. I didn't want to go into the holiday without a job so I took it. I knew the job came with a certain amount of baggage, but it turned out much worse than I had anticipated.

I didn't want to slag the place while I was still working there and I really don't want to now. I was trying to think of the "telling detail" to describe the place. This is a term from my days as journalism student. Rather than describe something in detail, you find the one thing that best sums it up.

For instance, as I write this I see a couple tourists walking down the sidewalk. Of one I would say "he's the kind of guy who walks around with a cigarette behind his ear". From that one detail you get a pretty good idea of what kind of guy I'm talking about. Then again, I could just say he's a douchebag.

The problem with the finding the telling detail about my school is that there are so many of them! I wanted to write a post that began "All you really need to know about my school is ..." but there were too many candidates. Here are some of the contenders.

* I wanted to submit my resignation as soon as possible. I made the decision on the weekend. No one I might need to talk to was in the office so I sent an email. I asked that they call me so we could work out the details.

All you really need to know about where I work is that I sent my resignation email on Saturday morning but they didn't call me until Wednesday afternoon.

* Teachers are not allowed to use the photocopier. Often you'll want to print out song lyrics, crossword puzzles, etc. You have to fill out a sheet explaining how many copies you are making. This I can understand. They don't want teachers using the photocopier for personal use. I get it.

However, I can not understand why they put the security guard, of all people, in charge of the photocopier. This is usually an otherwise unemployable young man who knows as much about operating a photocopier as he does about flying a fighter jet.

Photocopiers are temperamental creatures. They need to be regularly maintained and lovingly cared for. This one has been treated as well as Michael Vick's dogs. It simply never works. It's operated by men who truly, honestly have no idea whatsoever of how it works or how to fix it. They can't let me help. If they did they would "lose face", which really is a big deal.

One particularly comical/infuriating episode occurred when, after 20 minutes of watching a young guy randomly opening and closing doors on the machine without success (go figure) an older man stepped in to help.

Mr. Frying Pan, meet Mr. Fire.

The new guy's solution to the problem was to take out the stack of paper and, with an ostentatious flourish, shuffle the paper like playing cards. This, of course, would be on the short list of "Worst Things to Do With a Malfunctioning Photocopier".

He couldn't get the paper to back into a neat pile (again, go figure) so he mashed it into the paper drawer and tried again. Whaddayaknow, it still didn't work.

The rule officially applies to all teachers but Vietnamese teachers, of course, don't have to go through all this. They can use the machine whenever they want and copy the entire phone book if they so desire.

Most of my classes are with kids and three hours long. It's hard enough to plan a lesson for that length of time. It's even harder when you have to have a Plan A (if the copier works) and a Plan B (if it doesn't). I should also mention that there is a computer.

One.

The computer looks like it predates the apple. I don't mean the apple, the computer, I mean apple, the life form. It's reliable, however. You can bet the eternal souls of your children that the day you need to print it will have fallen prey to the computer virus du jour. Then there's the printer itself...

All you really need to know about my school, then, is that if you need materials for class you can use a computer that doesn't work to send files to a printer that doesn't work to copy on photocopier that doesn't work.

* Ok, I've been rambling. Or venting, I must admit. So here it is, the telling detail about my school.

I am not a pushy tourist who expects and demands everyone I encounter to speak English. This is a business, however, with one purpose, to teach English. Virtually every Vietnamese employee there speaks English well. There is one notable exception.

I should have known what to expect after my first visit. The school has several campuses but if you are applying to be an English you need to deliver your resume to the HR office at a particular building. Just so we're clear, this is the building where all foreign, English-speaking teachers are told to apply.

The receptionist there does not speak English!

That's really all you need to know.

Not, I repeat NOT, an April Fool's joke

2010-03-30T00:01:00.001-04:00

When I finished my TEFL course in October I took some time to do a little traveling. The timing was perfect to hike the Annapurna Circuit but I also wanted to use the time to do some serious thinking. I was getting ready to live in a foreign country for the first time. I wanted to make sure I picked the right one.

I have said all along that I would prefer to work in Cambodia. However, Cambodia is smaller and poorer than Vietnam. Cambodia is about half the size of Vietnam with about one-sixth of the population. (Cambodia is about the size of Washington state. Vietnam would fit neatly inside California.)

There aren't as many opportunities in Cambodia, and the jobs don't pay as well. My decision to live in Vietnam was made for mostly practical reasons. Don't get me wrong, I love Vietnam. I wouldn't choose to live there if I didn't like it. I have spent by far more time here than in any other country except the US.

The decision to live here was pretty easy when I discovered the ratio of teacher pay to cost of living is as good as anywhere in the world. You can live comfortably and even save money as a teacher there. If you land a job at a swanky international school you can live like a king here. In most countries, including Cambodia, you're lucky to scrape by on a teacher's pay.

I did, however, try to find a job in Phnom Penh. I applied at the big schools. Didn't even get a nibble. I did get a very nice rejection email from the woman who runs the best school in the city. She and I have exchanged emails a few times. She offered some good advice.

Last week she offered me a job! I thought that even if I was offered a job in Cambodia I would turn it down because I simply couldn't justify taking a pay cut of up to 50 percent. Imagine my surprise when she offered me more than I am making in Vietnam! I took a day to mull it over but I honestly couldn't think of one reason not to take it. Soon I will take the bus from Vietnam to Cambodia again, but this time it will be for good. I am going to work in Phnom Penh.

I was pretty sad when I had to start working again. In fairness to myself, anyone would be bummed out after living in a fantasy travel dream world for two years. I am genuinely excited about this, though.

It won't be hard to leave Vietnam. I was actually getting ready to start job hunting again because my job just wasn't working out very well. I talked to other teachers enough to know that I wasn't just experiencing the stress or growing pains of a rookie teacher. I was dealing with systematic dysfunction ingrained in the culture of my particular school.

I liken it to my days working in restaurants to pay my way through school. There are so many restaurants that if you don't like your current situation there's no reason to stay when you can easily find work somewhere else. The same goes for schools in Saigon. There are so many that there's no reason to stay at a place which encourages and rewards laziness and apathy in both teachers and students.

So the timing was perfect. Just when I had decided to start pounding the pavement and looking for a new job I was offered a job at the best school in the country where I most want to live.

I'm still working out the details for my departure. It looks as though I'll teach my last class on Monday, April 12, go in Tuesday morning to get paid, then hop on the bus to Phnom Penh.

I still have quite a few posts about Vietnam to publish. I have a couple about Tet, which ended more than a month ago. My bad...

The Holy Grail

2010-03-29T22:32:00.003-04:00

One of the joys of traveling in Vietnam is seeing the ingenious ways people here put their motorbikes to good use. Motos are the primary mode of transportation for Vietnamese. If they have to move or haul something they have to make do. Moto-watching never gets old.

Most motos here are what the folks back home would call a scooter. You see motorcycles, but it's usually expats riding them. My guess is that it's a Freudian sort of overcompensation for insecure men. Men ride big motorcycles here for the reason guys back home drive giant SUVs.

Yesterday I was on the back of a moto taxi when I passed a guy hauling plywood on a motorbike. Traffic was swerving around him crazily because it took a moment for other riders to calculate that yes, he's on a motorbike, but because of the plywood he was taking up as much space as a minivan.

How does one secure plywood while riding a motorbike alone? He sat on it. One end was under his butt with the bulk of the wood hanging off the back of the bike and flopping wildly up and down with every bump in the road. I didn't see any chain, rope, bungee cord or scotch tape holding it in place.

I also thought I saw a guy riding with what appeared to be a twin mattress standing on the seat behind him. I was wrong. It was the entire bed. The bed frame was made of metal tubing. His friend was sitting inside the bed frame and holding the mattress and frame together.

Just so we're clear, I saw both of these sights in about 10 minutes.

On another trip was a guy on a broken-down moto being pushed by a guy on another moto. The guy on the working one drove with his left foot on the back of the broken moto. His buddy sat on the broken one and steered.

I think the craziest moto sight I've seen was the woman breastfeeding. She was steering with one hand and holding her baby to her boob with the other. Even people here don't believe I saw this but this isn't something I would (or could) make up. Horrifying stuff.

A few times I've gone out with my camera hoping to get some good moto sightings on camera. Of course, when I take my camera I never see anything worth a photo. If I was more clever I'd make an analogy to the watched pot never boiling. You get the idea. By the time I realize I'm seeing something worth photographing it's too late.

When families go on outings they don't pile in the SUV or minivan, they get on the moto. Seeing families of four on a single moto is so common here I hesitate to mention it. I've seen four teenagers on a motorbike. Heck, I've seen four teenagers on a single bicycle.

I had seen five people on a moto several times. Usually it's dad driving with a child standing or sitting between his legs, mom sitting behind him with a child in her lap and a child on the back of the moto hanging onto mom.

Yesterday I saw the Holy Grail of Vietnamese moto sightings. People go to Scotland hoping to see the Loch Ness Monster. People go to Nepal hoping to see a Yeti. People go to Saigon hoping to see six people on a motorbike. It's essentially the same arrangement as the family of five, except mom sits with a kid on each knee. To western eyes this might seem a dangerous arrangement but it's actually worse than it seems.

Not long ago Vietnam passed a law requiring motorbike riders to wear helmets. Adult riders, that is. Helmets are mandatory for adults but not for children! I get a sick feeling in my stomach every time I see someone on a motorbike plow through a busy intersection with a helmetless child on board. I always give them a wide berth. I want to avoid any incident in which a child ends up splattered on the pavement. It would be no consolation knowing that it was the idiot parent's fault.

You can't really understand how crazy and chaotic the traffic here is until you experience it. I've been working on a blog post but I must humbly admit my powers of description are not up to the task.

I was amazed to learn, then, that last year there were only 1,123 traffic accidents in Saigon! I should say there were that many reported accidents. I see accidents every day. Moto drivers will bump into each other, or a moto will bump into a taxi.

If the drivers here were all American the whole country would quickly descend into a road rage bloodbath. People would be arguing and fighting and shooting each other. Intersections would be clogged with police responding to accidents. City workers would be hauling away dead bodies and body parts in dump trucks and using squeegees to clean the blood off the streets. Insurance agents, however, would be in heaven.

My personal theory is that it's the Buddhist influence, but whatever the reason, people don't get upset here. There's definitely an aggressiveness in the traffic. You take what you can get. But there's rarely any hostility.

The vast majority of collisions aren't reported because usually two vehicles will bump into each other, the drivers will quickly look over their vehicles, see that no damage was done, shrug at each other and drive away.

I was surprised by how few accidents were reported. I was floored to learn that last year there were only 649 traffic deaths in Saigon, a city with almost 10 million people and six million motorbikes. The reason for the shockingly low death total is probably that most people are moving relatively slowly on lightweight vehicles. Even if they do collide they don't do much damage.

As for those unfortunate fatalities, one of my fellow teachers here put a cynical spin on it: "They had it coming." As in any other country the most dangerous drivers here are young men. Most riders move at a reasonable pace and switch lanes with some degree of control. It's the knucklehead boys who drive too fast, zip back and forth and squeeze their motos through narrow spaces.

What century is this?

2010-03-27T05:35:00.000-04:00

My school in Vietnam set up a bank account for me. I went there to apply for an ATM card and to wire money to my bank account in the US. I knew one convenience from home I'd miss online banking. I didn't realize I would be banking with technology slightly more recent than the invention of the wheel.

I thought it would be easy. My bank actually does have a website in English. I found out the information I would need for an electronic transfer. There's a big bank branch just around the corner from where I live. By big I mean a ten-storey building. Surely they could provide any banking service I might require.

The woman at the information desk spoke enough English to tell me which floor to go to for an electronic transfer. A woman on that floor who spoke English directed me to yet another woman at the end of the counter. This woman cheerfully explained that, no, they don't do wire transfers at that branch and that I would have to go to the main branch a few blocks away.

You can see where this is going...

One trick I've learned while traveling is that if you want to find someone who speaks English look lost. Wander around like you have no idea where to go. People who speak English generally welcome the opportunity to practice and will flag you down. I didn't have to worry about looking lost. I actually was. A woman took pity on me and offered to help.

I thought the language barrier was getting in the way. I had to have her explain the process to me three times because I either had no idea what she was talking about or I was the butt of a huge practical joke.

The bank doesn't do wire transfers from their bank accounts to accounts in US banks.

How does a bank survive in the year 2010 if it doesn't provide this service?

I thought that was strange. Then it got crazy. I was told I would have to withdraw the money in local currency, change it to dollars, then wire it. That didn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me but sure, just tell me which counter.

The bank does not sell US dollars.

Allow me to repeat that.

My bank, one of the biggest in Vietnam, does not sell US dollars.

Ok, I understand that the Vietnamese currency has been unstable. I understand that currency markets in general have been fluctuating. I don't mean to sound like a pushy American. But this is the US dollar, the currency of international business.

I asked where the closest place was to do currency exchange. I was told to go to a jewelry store at the local market.

I swear I am not making this up. A woman at one of the biggest banks in Vietnam told me if I wanted US dollars I would have to buy them on the black market!

Jewelry stores will exchange money but the rates are terrible. There's a currency exchange office half a block from where I live with good rates. I had to withdraw money from my bank, leave the building, exchange currency and physically carry US dollars back into the bank. What's next, restaurants where you have to bring your own ingredients?

When I went to do the transfer it was as if it had never been done before. They seemed to genuinely not understand the concept of an electronic transfer. I had all the necessary routing information. It should have taken five minutes. Not thirty-five.

They hadn't heard of my bank. My bank is M & T, which bought "my" bank, Provident, some time ago. I have no idea where M & T is based but I know it's pretty doggoned big. They didn't want to do the transfer because they said my bank is "too small". They suggested I use Bank of America, because that's a big bank that they've heard of. And hey, we all know how easy it is to instantly open a bank account when you're literally on the other side of the world with an 11-hour time difference.

I didn't want them to "lose face" (which really is a big deal) so I kept my best fake smile frozen in place and told them, "Gee, I'm so sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the size of the bank doesn't matter as long as you have the correct routing information, which, as luck would have it, I happen to have right here!"

Then they asked for the home address of my bank. Smile still frozen in place I said, "Gee, so sorry, I really don't know, but since we're sending the money electronically and not to a physical address you probably don't need the mailing address, just the routing information which, hey, I still happen to have right here."

I noticed that they all had terminals running Windows. I suggested if they wanted to know the address they could look it up online. Suddenly it wasn't so important.

It took the entire morning but eventually the money was sent. Ah, the glamorous life of an expat...

Irony, Cambodia style

2010-03-25T23:30:00.002-04:00

I was in a "hostess bar" in Phnom Penh. These are bars that cater to tourists and ex-pats. The concept is simple since the clientele isn't concerned about atmosphere or decor: Beer, whiskey and dozens of young girls to flirt with customers. If there's a girl you fancy you can pay the "bar fine" and leave with her, if she is so inclined.

These places can be fun every once in a while, if you're in the right mood. Even then the conversation gets old pretty quickly.

Where you from? You have girlfren? Why you no have girlfren? You so handsome! Etc. Etc.

Every bar has its share of ladyboys. I'm working on a blog post on this quintessential SE Asia phenomenon, but for now all you need to know is that a ladyboy can be anything from a man who dresses like a woman to a man who has undergone a full sex change. Sometimes they're easy to spot. Sometimes they're not...

This particular bar had a larger than usual contingent of ladyboys. They all have the same favorite song. When it came on they would all stop whatever they were doing and belt it out.

The song: Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy".

A roomful of men who want to be women singing a song by a woman wondering what it would be like to be a man...

Ben Thanh

2010-03-24T00:32:00.000-04:00

This photo was taken by Chợ Bến Thành, the famous Ben Thanh Market. It's a five-minute walk from my hotel. It's also smack bang between the two main tourist areas, so it's lousy with tourists, as Holden Caulfield might say. It's also an actual market for actual Vietnamese, so it is a busy market indeed.

If you walk in through the front you have to wind your way through narrow passages lined with stalls selling clothes and souvenirs. It's such a competitive environment that merchants will literally grab you by the arm or shirt and try to pull you into their stall. Fun stuff.

The smart thing to do is go through the back entrance. Here is where the food stalls are. It's not quite as crowded and aggressive.

One of the joys of Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia is street food. When you see a woman pushing a metal cart down the street what you're looking at is a restaurant on wheels. She'll go to her usual spot and unpack the cart. Little metal tables and tiny plastic stools are arranged on the sidewalk. By tiny I mean the seat itself is the size of a napkin and maybe eight inches high.

The kitchen is unpacked. Most vendors sell one thing: fried rice, noodle soup, etc. It normally takes me forever to decide what to order in a restaurant so I actually like the lack of choices. You get fried noodles with beef ... or you go somewhere else.

Tourists and locals have concerns about the sanitary conditions, and understandably so. Glasses and dishes are washed in plastic tubs right there on the sidewalk. I've never gotten sick (knock on wood) but I know I'm taking my chances.

People who work at surrounding businesses will order from these sidewalk vendors or from nearby restaurants. The women will whip up a batch and deliver it. When finished diners will sometimes return the dishes. Usually they don't. They'll stack the dishes on the sidewalk or, as seen in this photo, in the gutter. Eventually someone will come around and pick them up.

Also in this photo are a tourists buying nước dừa, fresh coconut water. It's yet another example of how the locals put their motorbikes to clever use, in this case by running a drink stand from the back seat.

Wow, do I ever love fresh coconut water. Here you can see where someone has gone to the trouble of whittling it down so that it's easy to handle. They even cut the bottoms flat so they can be stacked, and to make them easier to drink. The price for one of these on the street is usually 5,000 dong, or about 25 cents. Consider all the labor involved in getting these things to market. They have to be collected, transported, sold to vendors and carved. Somehow they can do all that, sell them for a quarter and still make money!

They're not always whittled down to manageable size. Often you'll get the whole coconut. It's like drinking from a bowling ball. But tastier.

Depending on the size of the coconut there might be as much as a quart of water inside. It tastes like coconut, of course, but the flavor is fairly mild. It's coconut water, not coconut milk. It's not like drinking a Mounds bar. There is nothing more refreshing on a hot day. And in this part of the world every day is a hot day!

It's also a great hangover remedy. Not that I've ever needed it for that. People tell me these things. You know how it is.

If you order a coconut at a restaurant they'll usually serve it with a long spoon, too. You use it to scrape the meat off the inside. It's not the hard, chunky coconut meat we're accustomed to back in the US. It has a jelly-like consistency. You drink the water with your meal then eat the meat for dessert! However, if you order coconut in a restaurant it will usually set you back at least 20,000 dong which is -- gasp! -- more than a dollar.

Not a bad problem to have

2010-03-23T00:10:00.004-04:00

Last year I had to go to the US embassy in Bangkok to have pages added to my passport. For years my poor lonely passport sat on a dark cabinet shelf, wondering if it would expire with its pristine pages unmarked by stamps or visas. Then, in less than a year, it was full!

Getting pages added is free and takes less than an hour. A new passport costs $75 and takes two weeks. I'm no financial expert but it seems pretty clear which is the better deal. Basically what they do is stitch in a new passport, sans cover.

Today I had to go to the US consulate in Saigon to have pages added again! This time I can blame it on Cambodia, since most of the new pages, ten of them, in fact, have Cambodia visas on them. (I also have three Vietnam visas, and will be applying for a fourth next month). It's still pretty cool to think that in two years I have essentially filled two passports.

I was informed, however, that I can not have anymore pages added to my passport. Maybe there's a limit on the number of pages. Or maybe they just don't want me carrying around a passport that's as thick as "War and Peace". The next time I run out of pages I'll have to buy a new passport. It expires in a year anyway.

The Big Questions

2010-03-22T01:25:00.001-04:00

When you travel alone you have far too much time to think. One thought I keep returning to is how sad it is that there is so much beauty in this world, and yet so few people get to see even a tiny fraction of it. Everyone should get to see Machu Picchu. Everyone should get to enjoy tapas and wine in San Sebastian. Everyone should get to dip their toes in Lake Baikal.

Inevitably thoughts stray to the timeless questions that have tormented thinkers since the dawn of time. Why do billions of people live in desperate poverty with no hope of escape? Why do governments inevitably turn corrupt? Why is it human nature to fear and hate those who are different?

There is one question that keeps me up late at night though, makes me question whether there is any logic or justice in the fabric of the universe.

Do I really want to live in a world where Sandra Bullock wins an Oscar?

All in all I thought the Academy Awards winners were deserving. Avatar should have won more, of course. My personal theory, based as all my theories are on no evidence whatsoever, is that Avatar was snubbed because Hollywood hates James Cameron. He's legendarily difficult to work with.

I was shocked when I read that Titanic came out 12 years ago. The guy made the most successful movie of all time then took a dozen years off to pursue other interests and count his money. When he decided to return he made the new most successful movie of all time and, oh, by the way, invented a whole new way of making movies. I can see where the mere mortals in Hollywood might be a wee bit jealous.

Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson might have been able to make Avatar. Everyone else in the movie industry watched it and, just like the rest of us, thought How the hell did he do that?

The Hurt Locker is a fine film. I was a bit disappointed by its lack of a plot, something I generally consider important in a film. It was a long overdue recognition for director Kathryn Bigelow and a well-deserved coming-out party for Jeremy Renner. (As I watched I kept flashing to Russell Crowe in Gladiator.)

One storyline regarding the movie I didn't see explored is the possibility that Hollywood finally wanted to give credit to a film about the war in the Middle East. Dozens of films have been made about Bush's Folly but most have been financial and critical flops. The Hurt Locker gave the industry an opportunity to give credit to the brave souls serving overseas without having to take a political stand. The movie avoids politics altogether. It's about dedicated soldiers doing their job as best they can and, except for Renner's character, trying to get back home alive. No one can argue with that.

Another angle I thought didn't get the play it deserved is that Cameron and Bigelow were formerly married! Could it be that voters twisted the knife a little by not only snubbing Cameron but giving the award to his ex-wife? To his credit Cameron seemed genuinely happy for her. (Of the many things Cameron is famous for, wearing a fake smile is not one of them.)

In years to come people will watch The Hurt Locker and enjoy it, but 50 years from now people will remember Avatar as a seminal moment in cinema. The movie it most reminds me of is Star Wars, not just because it's a sci-fi blockbuster, but because it will forever change the way movies are made.

Star Wars did not win Best Picture at the Oscars. Annie Hall did. I love Annie Hall. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. But it's safe to say Star Wars has aged better. The Hurt Locker will be to Avatar what Annie Hall is to Star Wars.

(Annie Hall contains one of my all-time favorite movie lines, when Alvy explains to Annie that his grandmother never gave him gifts because "she was too busy being raped by Cossacks". It's hilarious in the movie. Really.)

It's also worth noting that Citizen Kane, indisputably the greatest movie ever made and still fresh and fun to watch despite being almost 70 years old, did not win Best Picture either. Raise your hand if you knew that Citizen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley.

As for the other awards, you can't argue with Jeff Bridges. By all accounts his performance (which I have not seen) was great, and he was long overdue. He's had a long career of consistently top-notch performances. This wasn't a popularity prize, like Al Pacino winning for The Scent of a Woman, or Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich, or Denzel Washington for Training Day, three laugh-out-loud bad performances.

The Supporting Actor and Actress awards were complete no-brainers. I thought Inglourious Basterds would have been completely unwatchable without Christoph Waltz. If nothing else he deserved the award for acting in four languages! The guy was so cheerful and so dedicated that I found myself almost liking him, despite the fact that, oh yeah, he's a Nazi called the Jew Hunter.

Mo'nique's performance in the climactic scene in Precious was one of the most mesmerizing pieces of acting I've ever seen. For the bulk of the movie she's almost cartoonish, an hateful, crazy monster. But when she reveals her sad, sordid history she suddenly becomes almost sympathetic. Incredible.

Then there's Sandra Bullock. For crying out loud. This was clearly a case of the industry rewarding one of its cash cows. She couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag, but she makes Hollywood a ton of money. For some reason people like her and line up to see her crap fests.

This wouldn't be such a disgrace except for Precious. I think one way to judge a performance is to ask whether someone else could have done the role as well or better. For Christoph Waltz and Mo'nique the answer is an emphatic no. The same for Gabby Sidibe. She had to go into dark emotional places most of us fortunately will never know. And she did it in her first role.

Setting aside the physical aspects of her character, is it possible to imagine Sandra Bullock pulling off that part? It's funny to even consider. It was a once-in-a-lifetime performance that ended up losing to a role straight out of a bad TV movie of the week. How sad.

Crime pays

2010-03-04T23:29:00.002-05:00

I've been breaking the law. Repeatedly. Shh... I hope you don't think any less of me when you learn that I've been buying bootleg DVDs. Not only are there stores that sell illegally copied DVDs and CDs, there are entire blocks of stores.

The efficiency of the illegal movie industry is impressive. In Central America, South America and SE Asia I've seen films for sale on the street the week they are released in US theaters.

I've been cramming for the Oscars. I think it's sad that they doubled the number of Best Picture nominees and basically dumbed-down the choices in order to increase ratings for the show. On the one hand, it makes room for "Up!" and "District 9", brilliant films which would have never made the cut when there were only five nominees. On the other hand, it allows paint-by-numbers Hollywood fluff like "The Blind Side" and Quentin Tarantino's latest love letter to himself ("Inglourious Basterds") to squeeze in as well. (Was it just me or did Brad Pitt act like he was auditioning for "Sling Blade 2"?)

When you buy bootlegs you take your chances with the quality. I bought a bootleg of "The Hurt Locker" that is pristine. The first time I bought "District 9", however, I got a version shot in a theater on a camcorder by someone with shaky hands. The videographer was presumably Russian, since that's the language the subtitles are in. I had no idea what the aliens were saying.

I was not pleased. After all, I had paid the equivalent of about 60 cents for it. What to do when you've been ripped off? Buy another copy and take your chances again. The second copy was much better.

"Dexter" is my favorite show. I think it's one of the best shows ever made. You can buy seasons 1-3 of "Dexter" for $24 on iTunes, $36 in HD. List prices for the DVD boxed sets are about $40 per season. Amazon doesn't even have a release date for season four yet.

I bought season four at a shop here in Saigon. The quality is excellent. Someone copied it from Showtime and burned it to disk. I know this because the Showtime promos and ads were recorded, too. The packaging is impressive. The cost is even more so: 70,000 dong, or about $3.75. For the entire season.

My first visitor

2010-03-02T23:16:00.003-05:00

While I was traveling around the world several friends from home threatened to join me along the way. No one did, of course. I did have a friend from home contact me out of the clear blue and join me in Thailand, which turned out to be the worst 10-day stretch of the trip.

I had my first visitor from home here in Saigon just before Tet. Kellda wasn't here to visit me. She's Vietnamese and was here to visit family. It was just a happy coincidence that we happened to be in the same city at the same time.

She and her husband Duane joined me for dinner. Duane has visited the country several times with her, so it was fun sharing three very different perceptions of the country.

Kellda and I worked together, so I also got some good gossip from my former workplace. I hopped on a bus to Cambodia the next morning. They headed to the Mekong Delta to visit her family. Now we're all back out our respective workplaces. It was fun while it lasted.

Chúc mừng năm mới!

2010-02-13T01:58:00.006-05:00

Happy Chinese New Year! I went to Cambodia during the holiday to get away from the craziness of Saigon. Since I returned I have been working non-stop.

It's true.

After 2-plus years of goofing off I am now overworked! As a result of too much play in Cambodia and too much work in Vietnam I have been sick as a dog for the past few days. I think my body just conked out. Tomorrow I don't work at all so I plan to sleep, read and watch movies all day. I hope to catch up on the blog this week too.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to work. No, really. I mean it.

Super Monday

2010-02-07T22:17:00.003-05:00

The Saints just won the Super Bowl. I can't imagine how crazy Bourbon Street is going to be last night.

Here it's already tomorrow. Saigon is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, so I was getting ready for work in on Monday morning while the folks back home were tapping kegs and demolishing pans of nine-layer dip on Super Sunday. I'm typing this on break at the school where I'm substituting today.

It's tough to be a sports fan here because of the time difference. I saw a few NFL and college football games, but I was usually watching in my hotel bed at 6 a.m. It's not quite the same, somehow... There are plenty of expat bars that show sports, mostly soccer and cricket. Finding somewhere to watch NFL games is tough. Not many sports bars are open at dawn.

A friend of mine here found "the place to be" for Super Sunday/Monday. I was going to go, but then I was asked to substitute at the swanky international school. I couldn't turn that down. I missed the Super Bowl last year, which turned out to be a classic. What are the odds lightning would strike twice? Pretty good, unfortunately.

My buddy sent me score updates on my celphone. He left "the place to be" because he got there at 6 a.m. and there was nowhere to sit! Apparently I missed another great one.

Next year I'll be sure to catch the game. Which means the score will probably be 48-3.

The End of Indolence

2010-01-30T00:48:00.005-05:00

I have a job.

Thank you for your condolences.

I signed a 12-month contract to teach English at one of the biggest language schools in Saigon.

http://www.vus-etsc.edu.vn/?page=app_news&lang=en

The pay rate is good. I'll be teaching all my classes at the same building, rather than having to shuttle back and forth across town between different campuses. (In a city with 10 million people, 6 million motorbikes and a medieval public transportation system, this is a big deal. Note to self: Next time work in a city with a subway.)

I'm not thrilled about going back to work but I think this is a good gig. I will be working mostly nights and weekends, by choice as it turns out. This will keep my days free so I can pick up sweet substitute gigs at the international schools, tutor or maybe even do some freelance writing. I've met some people who may be able to help me get my name back in print.

I wasn't sure I was going to continue the blog now that I'm settling down. I am grateful for the emails I've received from folks back home asking me to keep writing. The subject matter will change, of course. I wish I could continue it in the "another day, another country" mode. Now it will be more of a "fish out of water" story as I dive into teaching and the life of an expat.

When I'm traveling I always have my camera with me. I honestly can't remember the last time I used it, though. I'll make a point to carry it to get some shots of Saigon city life. The size, the traffic, the pollution -- it's all a bit overwhelming to a country boy like me. I must admit, I'm not crazy about the place, but it's the right place for me to be for the near future.

The Lecture and The List

2010-01-21T07:48:00.002-05:00

I don't eat breakfast.

There. I said it.

Whenever I say this, I get The Lecture. It doesn't matter where the person to whom I am speaking lives. They could be American, German, Chinese or from Planet Zorkon. It's always the same.

What?! You don't eat breakfast? Don't you get hungry? How do you manage to make it five hours to lunch without starving to death?

Altogether now: It's the most important meal of the day.

I am baffled by the shock and bewilderment and even anger caused by this admission of mine. People would find it less shocking to learn that I'm a vampire or once killed a man just to watch him die.

I then try to explain that part of the reason I don't partake of breakfast foods is that I don't like any of them. Aside from bacon -- fried fat, and thus nature's perfect food -- I don't like any of it. This prompts The List, during which people mention every conceivable breakfast food trying to find something I might actually eat in the morning.

You don't like eggs? Everyone likes eggs. What about waffles? I've never met anyone who doesn't waffles. You must like pancakes. No? I LOVE pancakes. Seriously, I could eat pancakes every day. What about cereal?

This is followed by a sub-listing of every breakfast cereal known to man. And so on.

Because I've been meeting people from so many places they also have to ask me if I've tried their country's specialty.

Where I come from we eat mostly omelettes, but we only use the shell, not the white or the yolk. Perhaps you should try it.

Really? In my country we have no chickens so we eat goat brains baked in a dirty diaper. You'd love it.

I have never liked eating breakfast. This was the source of a running battle between my mother and me when I was growing up. God bless her, she tried everything. If I do eat anything in the morning it will be something I can eat on the go, like fruit or yogurt.

In Nepal eating breakfast can kill a day of hiking. If you're in a crowded lodge waiting for breakfast can easily take an hour or more away from the day. I'd much rather get up and get on the trail early. Sure, you can ask the lodge to have your breakfast ready at 6 a.m. You can also ask them to take off their clothes and jump blindfolded through a flaming hoop. The likelihood of either happening is about the same. Everyone else in the lodge wants their breakfast at the same time. It's the luck of the draw as to who gets served first.

I'll order a couple boiled eggs with dinner and save them for the morning. After hiking for an hour or so I'll rest for a few minutes and eat them then. It's a break I would have taken anyway so it doesn't cost me any time. Some days I'm at my destination while the people at my lodge are still waiting for breakfast.

That's your hiking tip for the day. You're welcome.

I think it's silly to eat breakfast. I would much rather spend that extra 15-30 minutes sleeping. Then again, I have always been a chronic imsomniac. You don't need to be a sleepologist or whatever to connect the dots between my difficulties sleeping and my lack of enthusiasm for early morning dining.

Don't get me started on Sunday brunch. On the one day of the week you can sleep in and enjoy a lazy day at home you get up early, get dressed and drive somewhere to eat scrambled eggs and toast? String theory makes more sense to me.

I feel much better now that we've had this talk.

Annapurna lodges: Shangri-la, Kagbeni

2010-01-20T00:12:00.005-05:00

My friends and I were using two different travel books on the Annapurna Circuit. Both mentioned the Shangri-la guest house in Kagbeni. My book, "Trekking in the Annapurna Region", published by Trailblazer, calls it an "eyesore". I think that's a bit unfair and fairly indicative of how crappy the book is in general.

I thought the facility was outstanding. It's big and clean. The downstairs common room is cavernous but surprisingly cozy at night.

There's a dining area upstairs as well, with a fantastic view of the Kali Gandaki valley and Nilgiri.

All of which is nice, but what makes the place so special is the people who work there. We had stopped for lunch at another restaurant in town. Kasia and I offered to find rooms for the group. We started here. I mentioned in a previous post how much it disgusts me to hear hikers haggling over room prices. Without any prompting from us the owner offered us a break on the room cost. Apparently business had been slow and she didn't want to pass up the chance to rent three rooms. For less than $2 I had my own room with an actual hot shower.

We didn't look any further. The owner is on the right.

My best guess at the English spelling of her name is Zindin. Her sister Kumari is in the center holding Zindin's daughter. Kumari's name I can spell because it's the name of the "living goddess" who lives in Kathmandu.

I won't even make a stab at Zindin's daughter's name. On the left is (again, best guess) Zundan, who, if I understood correctly, is a cousin. They all work nonstop from before sunrise to long after the tourists are asleep, and yet they are unfailingly cheerful and friendly. When she's cleaning up at night Zindin will strap her daughter to her back with a shawl. The child sleeps like a log with her body in the craziest positions as her mother bustles around the inn.

Take a look behind them. The kitchen is unusually large for Nepal, but, that aside, look how clean and orderly it is. I don't mean to criticize other lodges. It's miraculous how much food (and good food, at that) they can crank out of tiny kitchens, but it's not surprising that they always look in a state of disarray.

Zindin's kitchen is as busy as any of them but unlike other kitchens I've seen it doesn't look like burglars came through and trashed it. It's also well-stocked. One member of my hiking group is a Welshman named Tom who works as a chef in Paris. Zindin gave him a tour of the kitchen. He was impressed not just with how professional it looked. I'm willing to bet there aren't many kitchens on the trail with fenugreek on the shelf.

The food was amazing. I don't mean amazing by trail standards, I mean amazing, period. Tom said the chop suey was the best he ever had. The baby potatoes in sesame cream sauce are deservedly famous. I had gone to Kagbeni in part to visit the famous YakDonald's, but after trying the food at the lodge I had no desire to eat anywhere else.

Most lodges have gardens and raise chickens, so vegetable and egg items are cheap. Meat dishes are more expensive for them to make because they must buy the meat. Zindin asked us if we had any ideas for new dishes she could make using existing ingredients.

In Nepal they eat an unleavened flour bread called a chapati, essentially the same thing as a tortilla. I stumbled across the idea of a breakfast burrito. We were surprised when we realized we hadn't seen it on the menu anywhere. We pitched the idea to Zindin. She seemed interested. As I was the only one who was staying a second night she asked if I would show her how to make it.

The next day I wrote down the ingredients, instructions and even made a drawing of possible serving options: prewrapped, make-your-own, etc. That night I had dinner in the downstairs common room and, as usual, I chowed down. Yak steak and fresh apple pie with hot custard (pudding). There was a lively group of tourists so I got in the spirit and even had a big bottle of Everest beer.

I thought I was done for the night but as the rest of the hikers were heading off to bed Zindin asked me to join her in the kitchen to show her how to make a breakfast burrito. I felt wildly out of place and sorely wished Tom the chef was there to do the honors. I mostly tried to stay out of the way as she made the bread and sauteed all the ingredients together.

She tried it and seemed to like it. It's entirely likely that she was simply being polite, of course. I said it tasted the way it should but suggested that she could use her culinary skills to improve it. So there it was, a giant breakfast burrito sitting there on the plate... Hmm...

I had to eat it.

Don't get me wrong, it was excellent. But I had already eaten a huge meal. It would have been in incredibly poor taste to refuse. Normally I would have already been asleep. But there I was at 10:30 pm wolfing down yet another enormous plate of food.

The next morning she asked me if I wanted breakfast. She laughed when I told her I was still full from "breakfast" the night before. I mentioned that I don't eat breakfast. I made the mistake of saying that if I eat anything in the morning it's usually fruit. Zindin said she had apple trees, from which she made her otherworldly apple pie. Oh no, I couldn't -- but it was too late.

Great, I thought, I'll take an apple with me and eat it a little ways down the trail when I need an energy boost. Imagine my horror, then, when she handed me an entire shopping bag full of apples. She refused to accept any money for them.

I used this photo in a previous post but I'm using it again to illustrate the final bit of kindness guests at the Shangri-la guest house receive. Hotels in Nepal give guests a white scarf as a gift and blessing. It is not common for guests to receive these scarves on the trail. This was taken the morning my friends departed. They're all wearing the scarves they've just been given. I would receive mine the next day.

I've stayed in dozens of lodges on the trails in Nepal and this is the only one that has provided this courtesy. Most hikers stay one or, at most, two nights in Kagbeni. The owners have to pay for these scarves and receive nothing in return. In fact, they give them out after the bill is paid.

From what I gathered Kagbeni is becoming a casualty of the road building in the Annapurna region. It was a regular stop on the Circuit, but now that more and more tourists on this side of the trail are traveling by vehicle, they either pass through Kagbeni for a few hours, or not at all.

Though the village marks the southern boundary of the restricted Upper Mustang region, there's a road on the ridge above with a constant stream of vans and jeeps conveying tourists from Muktinath to Jomsom or vice versa.

Kagbeni is one of my favorite villages in Nepal. So many stops along the trail are there purely for the use of tourists, but here is a place that existed centuries before westerners invaded. It has personality, charm, and lots of nooks and crannies for hikers to explore. It is the jumping-off point for the day hike to the village of Tiri, perhaps the best day hike I've ever done.

It is also home to one of my favorite lodges in Nepal. If you go to Nepal and hike the Annapurna Circuit, do yourself a favor and spend some time in and around Kagbeni. While you're there, stay at Shangri-la, try the sesame potatoes and see if my breakfast burrito made it onto the menu after all.

Annapurna lodges: Mavis's Kitchen and Guest House, Manang

2010-01-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

I am continually amazed that in the Nepal Himalayas, of all places, you can hike for weeks without having to carry food or a tent. The most popular trails, in the Everest and Annapurna regions, are called 'teahouse treks' because there are small villages along the trail. You rarely have to hike more than an hour before coming to a place where you can eat and sleep.

The facilities can be primitive, especially at higher altitude, but you can usually count on sleeping on clean linen and eating homecooked meals in a warm dining room. (You can also count on pretty grim toilets.) Lodges make decent attempts at various types of international cuisine: spaghetti, pizza, rosti, chop suey, moussaka, etc.

The staff is usually friendly and efficient. It's astounding the way they can crank out meals for 20 to 40 guests using one or two burners. I'm impressed that they actually care, considering the vast majority of their guests arrive in the afternoon and leave early the next morning.

Every once in a while you stay at a lodge where the owners take pride in their lodge and kitchen. The food on the Annapurna Circuit was surprisingly good in general, but two lodges were really memorable.

The first was the Mavis's Kitchen and Guest House. Mavis an Indian woman who moved to Kathmandu to teach English. Her English is perfect, as in better than mine. She married a Nepalese man and moved with him to his village. Manang.

I spent my first night in Manang in another hotel. I switched hotels after having Mavis's yak steak for dinner. It was outrageously good. Fresh rosemary in the gravy! When I hike I eat as much as I want, because I know I'm going to burn off the calories when I hit the trail again. The lasagne serving was so big I could not finish it.

Mavis runs the place with help from two of her nieces. Chiri works as a teacher during the day and helps out at night. Mavis is cheerful and chatty. I don't know why she wouldn't smile when I took her picture.

You can see a younger version of her in the poster in the background. She's not smiling there either! Most lodges are set up like hotels, but Mavis has little cottages behind the restaurant. Mine is the one on the right.

It's basic, just a room with two beds, a lamp and small table. It's quite cozy, though, and the relative privacy was a blessing after staying in so many lodges where the rooms are separated by plywood partitions.

Cost: about $2 per night.

It's located on the side of town furthest from the river and mountains, but since the scenery here is 7,500 meters high you don't have to worry about the view being obstructed.

Just behind the blue roof is the "Wild West" main street of Manang. After I took this picture I spent the afternoon exploring on the ridge just below the snow line.

The toilets are located behind my cottage. They are spotless. I can not overstate how extraordinary this is. Most of the toilets on the trail look like something out of a horror movie. You are more likely to see a herd of unicorns on the trail than you are to find a clean toilet.

One western concept the Nepalese still don't quite have a handle on is the hot shower. Mavis's would be the perfect guest house if she worked out the kinks in the shower.

It's a bit disconcerting trying to bathe while wondering if the heating apparatus is going to explode. It doesn't work very well, and whatever heat it generates is canceled out by the cold air blowing through the cracks in the wall. That is the only quibble I have. I hasten to mention that this is a typical setup on the trail. It's not as if it's noticeably worse than anywhere else. It's just the only thing about the place where there's room for improvement!

Our next stop after Manang was Yak Kharka. Mavis's sister owns a guest house there. I mentioned this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. She called ahead and reserved cottages for us there and wrote notes for us to take just in case. Even the big-money tour groups have to send porters ahead to reserve rooms. To have a rooms waiting for you on the trail is an unheard-of luxury. I probably shouldn't be writing about this...

In my Manang post I said that the village itself is more than just a stop along the trail. It's a great destination. I can imagine going back to Manang for a week and using it as a base to do short hikes in the region. Mavis may not be there, though. She told me she doesn't enjoy running the hotel as much as she once did and is considering moving on.

The prices for lodging and meals are set by the village governments. This is to ensure all the lodges in a particular area can compete and make money. I had a cottage to myself for about $2 per night. You can get simple meals like fried rice for as little as $2. I ate as much as I wanted and treated myself to Snickers and Coke whenever I got the craving and still averaged less than $20 per day for the trek, and that includes the costs of permits and bus rides.

Yet there are still people who want to haggle! Manang is a busy town. The lodges do fill up. But people still try to get a "deal". The common scam is for tourists to promise to eat all their meals at the lodge if the owner will let them stay for free.

It's not as if you can go around the corner to Applebee's or call Domino's. The only restaurants are in the lodges. Of course they're going to eat there. And since most people only stay for a night, maybe two, they're only going to eat a few meals anyway.

Mavis, understandably, is tired of dealing with people like that. There is something seriously wrong when a woman who takes so much pride in her guest house and restaurant is considering getting out of the business because of cheapskate tourists.

I find it appalling. It baffles me that a tourist would expect free lodging anywhere, let alone in the Himalayas! Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world by western standards, with a per capita income of about $250 per year. Most people live on less than a dollar a day. If you can't afford $2 for a hotel room, seriously, stay home.

Annapurna Circuit Days 7, 8: Move over, Hoi An

2010-01-17T00:20:00.004-05:00

I was doing some housekeeping on the blog when I came across this post from the Annapurna trek. I thought I had published it. In fact, I've even received comments about it. Hmm... Anyway, it's about my new favorite place, Manang, so I'm republishing it.

I've mentioned that Hoi An, Vietnam is my favorite small town. That was before I visited Manang. I'll add a new category. Hoi An is my favorite small town. Manang is my favorite village. Consider the issue successfully ducked.

It's altitude is listed in my guidebook at 3,540 meters/11,614 feet, a height at which altitude sickness becomes a serious risk. The guidebooks recommend staying two nights there to acclimatize. After Manang the villages are smaller and the lodges more basic, so it's last place to stay in relative luxury before heading to higher altitude.

I stayed there for three nights. I didn't want to leave.

The setting for the town is breathtaking. It sits in a valley next to a small river. There are clear views up and down the valley of the two 7,500-meter peaks on the other side of the river. The creature comforts here are as good as on anywhere on the trail.

Fresh-baked apple pie washed down with real brewed coffee!

Travel books talk about Manang as a comfortable place to rest before heading to higher altitude. I think they should market the place as a destination. I could see myself going back to Nepal just to go to Manang. And eat pie.

There are perhaps a dozen nice side excursions from the village, from a few hours to the gompa (shrine) on the hill above or three days to Tilicho Lake, one of the highest lakes in the world. The food is great. There is internet access -- slow and expensive, but hey, you're online in the Himalayas! But the best of the creature comforts happens at night. Read on...

The altitude is over 3,500 meters, which is daunting, but it's easy to get there. If you don't feel like hiking for a week you don't have to. There is an airport in Ongre, just a few hours south. Someone who wants to visit the Himalayas but isn't a serious hiker, or doesn't enjoy roughing it, could fly into Ongre, hike up to Manang (slowly), spend a week there, eat pie, hike back down and fly out.

The village is Tibetan in style, with stacked stone buildings and narrow passageways. Here is a an intersection with wall of Buddhist prayer wheels and a monument called a chorten.

I ended up in this particular corner because I was looking for the post office. I wanted to mail postcards from here to see if they were ever delivered. The mail here is carried by porters down the valley and then delivered by trucks.

This is the post office.

The postmaster lives upstairs and comes down to the office when he hears someone walk in. The cost for a postcard stamp to the US was only 30 rupees, less than 50 cents, not bad considering where I was.

The alleys are so steep and narrow that they block out the spectacular surroundings, but not always. Here's looking down a path at Gangapurna. It's nearly 25,000 feet high, or about a mile higher than Denali (McKinley), the highest peak in the US.

If I were a better photographer I would have gotten a better shot of this child standing on the roof of her house in her school uniform with the Gangapurna Glacier in the background.

The entrance and main road through the village looks like something from the American Wild West, complete with horses tethered to hitching posts.

That illusion was enhanced on my third day, during the first day of the bi-annual Ni festival. Horsemen from all over the region came to town to put on a riding display. Some of the riders were young guys with fashionable clothes and slickbacked hair trying to impress the girls. Others were old-timers who looked like they could have ridden with the Golden Horde.

It was cool to watch them riding with no hands, controlling the horses using only their knees, something I have only ever seen in Mongolia. It was also fun watching the locals tailgating, Nepal style:

Everyone stopped to watch.

I was dining alone the first night when a gorgeous blonde girl sat down at the table next to me. I was eating yak steak, not pie. I thought she was flirting with me but that was just my ego tricking me. She's just an incredibly sweet and friendly person. How disappointing.

Kasia was traveling with her friend and housemate, Rob. They're both Polish but live in London. Rob has lived in England his whole life. He talks (and thinks) like a Brit. Kasia has only lived in England for a few years so she speaks with a lilting combination Polish-English accent. I would pay to listen to her read the phone book.

The three of us became fast friends and I spent the next few days hanging out with them and a young Welshman named Tom. He's a chef who, after his sojourn to Nepal, was heading back to his job in Paris. He was absolutely shocked at the quality of food on the trail. More on that in future posts.

Rob coined a phrase which makes me laugh every time I think about it. Nepalese use squat toilets, but every once in a while you'll encounter a western toilet. Rob's says the sensation of discovering a western toilet where you don't expect it is deja poo.

Usually I go to bed at 8 p.m. on the trail because I'm tired, it's cold and dark and, well, there's nothing to do. In Manang I could go to one of two "cinemas".

One night we watched "Hang the Over" ("The Hangover"). I've now seen it three times in three different countries, which must be some kind of record. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

I found it odd that two of the staple movies are "Touching the Void" and "Into Thin Air". Do I really want to watch a movie about a mountain climbing disaster before attempting the highest trekking pass in the world? And "Alive"?! Maybe I shouldn't have eaten the "yak" steak...

Cost for the movie is 250 rupees, a little more than $3. For that we got to sit on wooden benches lined with yak pelts and watch the movie with complimentary popcorn and tea.

In the center is a wood stove, so it was warm and cozy inside. The movie "screen" is an old TV. The next night we went to the cinema across the street and watched "Into the Wild" -- another movie about someone dying in the snow...

I desperately needed to rest my feet so the first day I didn't do anything except read. And eat pie. The next day I did a couple side hikes. And ate pie.

I got up early to climb up to Praken Gompa. Actually I got up early to eat pie, then hike. About an hour of slow walking above Manang takes you to a small shrine where there's a lama who will bless hikers for a small donation, to give them luck crossing the high mountain pass called Thorung La. Trekkers wear the twine bracelets he gives them as a badge of honor.

I arrived too early. The lama was asleep. Two of the nuns motioned that I should go in and they would wake him up.

NO NO NO, I said, shaking my head wildly. Let the man sleep! Don't wake him up for me!

He's 93 years old!

Even without the lama's blessing it was worth the walk to see the view of the village and the mountains beyond. In the afternoon I would climb the ridge in the center of the picture to the hill on the left.

Looking down the valley into the fierce early morning light washed out the view of the landscape, giving it an almost impressionistic look.

I didn't linger long for fear that the nuns would wake up the lama. I went down to recharge. And eat pie. In the afternoon Kasia and I walked up the other side of the valley and stopped for tea at the Chongkor Viewpoint Restaurant. Here she is enjoying the view and a glass of seabuckthorn juice. Mmm ... seabuckthorn juice.

Believe it or not, here I did not, repeat not eat pie. I could easily have spent an entire day wandering around the ridge. We saw trails going all the way up to the snow line. Looking across the valley we could look down at Manang and across at the gompa I had visited in the morning. It's a barely visible white speck on the side of the mountain.

The view back down the valley was awesome. The entire ridge was criss-crossed with prayer flags, which added an additional pinch of color.

It felt good to be alive.

When I could finally force myself to leave I would be heading up the valley to the right in the photo below. The mountain pass we would cross is just past the mountain in the distance.

The lake at the bottom gets its otherworldly blue color from the sediment in the runoff from the glacier. The mountain, glacier and lake are all called Gangapurna. Kasia and I found a trail down to the lake. She didn't have to tell me to smile when she took my picture.

The sun set behind Gangapurna, which made for great evening viewing. I love the lighting effects when the sun is blocked by the mountains but still hasn't set.

Mỹ

2010-01-14T07:06:00.003-05:00

This is perhaps my favorite word in Vietnamese, and not because I'm American. For some reason I find it funny that the Vietnamese word for "United States of America" is Mỹ.

That's it. Four words reduced to two letters.

It's my favorite word because it's so fun to say. Every day I am asked multiple times where I am from. It's one of the few words I can say in Vietnamese so I use it.

The "M" sound is exaggerated. To my ears it sounds more like a "b" than an "m", which is not terribly surprising since the letters are formed the same way by the lips. The "y" is pronounced like the "ee" sound in English.

The tilde over the vowel indicates that it is pronounced with the "tumbling tone". The symbol is actually a pretty decent illustration of how to pronounce it. The tone starts normally, dips and then rises sharply to finish at a tone higher than where it started. It's spoken almost as if it's a question.

(This is not to be confused with the "asking tone", which would be Mỷ. This starts lower than normal, then rises back to normal. Understand? No, neither do I. To western ears they sound very much the same. Vietnamese is the hardest language I have tried to learn, mostly because of the six tones, one more than Chinese, two more than Thai.)

The question I get, then, is "Where you from?"

The answer, if I were to spell it in phonetic English, is "Me?!" As if someone has accused me of a particularly heinous crime and I am responding in surprise and alarm.

My first taste of communism

2010-01-13T03:16:00.004-05:00

I've been to four countries on the SE Asian mainland. Two (Thailand and Cambodia) are kingdoms. Two (Laos and Vietnam) are communist. From the street level it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes.

Even though Vietnam is officially communist the Vietnamese people are the most ruthlessly capitalist people I have ever encountered. I don't mean that as insult. I think they are very clever about finding ways to make money, especially when it comes to tourists.

For example: A lot of restaurants provide small moist towels or pre-packaged wetnaps when you sit. This would be a nice convenience except that if you use it you have to pay 2,000 to 3,000 dong for it. That's only about 15 cents, but still...

Vietnam was ruled by China for 1,000 years, so Vietnamese culture bears the unmistakable imprint of its northern neighbor. China is notorious for cracking down on dissidents and protest movements. Vietnam is doing the same. One way China stifles dissent is by blocking an exhaustive list of websites that might be used by protestors to disseminate information. Vietnam seems to be building it's own version of the Great Firewall of China.

In September eight bloggers were convicted on charges of spreading "anti-government propaganda" and sentenced to up to six years in jail.

I deactivated my facebook account because it is virtually impossible to log on in Vietnam now.

The government is cracking down on social networking sites.

Government spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga said at a December 3 news conference: "[A] number of social Web sites have been misused to convey information with contents that oppose the Democratic Socialist Republic of Vietnam," she said. "...threatening information security and causing a bad influence on Internet users."

If I can't use it there's no reason to keep my account active. I'm not going to leave Vietnam because I can't log onto facebook. Shutting down websites isn't the only thing that's happened recently to make life more difficult for ex-pats. The government is more restrictive about issuing visas. Of the five countries I've traveled in SE Asia, Vietnam is the only one that does not issue visas on arrival. You have to arrange one in advance. That much hasn't changed.

I bought a six-month, multi-entry visa before I left the US. It expires in a few days, so I looked into getting a new visa or an extension. Now the longest visa you can get is three months. The length has changed but the price has not: $150, more than twice the cost of a single-entry visa.

One reason I chose to work in Saigon is because I love how easy and cheap it is to get around here. If you have a long weekend it's easy to get to Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur -- a short, inexpensive flight will get you to any number of cities all over Asia or even Australia.

The Tet holiday is next month. The entire country shuts down for at least a week so there's a good chance I'll want to spend a few days somewhere else. For that reason I decided to buy a multi-entry visa. (If I have a single-entry visa and leave the country, I'd have to buy for new visa, so it makes sense to spend the extra money now.)

Neither the internet clampdown or the visa restrictions are enough to make me leave the country, but I will keep my eyes open to see if these are just the beginning of an emerging pattern.

A sad day

2010-01-09T03:00:00.003-05:00

I went to work yesterday.

I resigned from my last job on December 31, 2007, so it's been more than two years since I had to get up and go to work.

I know it's childish, but I wish I never had to work again. I've been living in a fantasy world for the past 18 months and I don't want it to end. I haven't actually found a job, though. I was full-day substitute at an international school on the outskirts of Saigon.

There are basically three places where someone like me can hope to teach. I did my teaching practice in a public school. Working conditions there were chaotic, like in a city school in the US. The big difference here is that kids, while rambunctious and chatty, are generally respectful of teachers. Public school jobs are easy to get but don't pay as well.

Language centers are the best bet for a new teacher like me. These are private, modern facilities where students pay to learn English. Pay is usually better and -- for me this is a big "and" -- they're air-conditioned.

Both public schools and language centers pay by the hour, literally by the amount of hours taught. If you are on campus for six hours but you only teach two hours, you get paid for two hours.

Where you want to end up is at an international school. These are usually fairly impressive campuses where rich local students go to school with children of foreigners. Teachers are paid extremely well.

Because families pay out the wazoo to send their kids to these schools the standards for teachers are high. It's something to work towards. You pay your dues in the public schools and language centers and hope to get your foot in the door at an international school.

My foot is in the door.

Miss Kim, the woman who runs the travel desk at my hotel, put me in touch with a fellow American named Gabriel, who has been teaching in Vietnam for five years. Without even meeting me, Gabriel arranged for me to visit his school and meet the principal. They asked me if I would be willing to substitute as needed.

Heck yes!

I had six classes, but the teachers provided lessons and material. All I needed to do is get through the day without the kids burning the building down. Mission accomplished!

I was terrified, but I had a great time. The kids were well-behaved, the staff was incredibly welcoming and supportive. I made it very clear that I would be happy to pinch hit in the future. This is the school's website. Check out the facilities! Check out the pool!

http://vietnam.acgedu.com/

I really needed this experience. It reminded me of why I wanted to work in Vietnam. You can make a comfortable living and save money working as a teacher here. Gabriel and I stopped by his house. He has a house, an actual free-standing house, with a maid. He dresses well and has a brand-new motorcycle. He's living extremely well, but he's not even certified. He's almost finished earning a teaching certification. Then he'll get bumped into the next pay bracket.

Now I know what I'm working towards.

That's the good news.

I've been submitting resumes at language centers, especially who have advertised online that they need teachers. I want to exhaust that avenue before I apply at public schools. I haven't heard from any of them. Not a peep. It could be that my resume isn't very good or that they want people with more experience.

Or it could be that this is a really lousy time to look for a job. A classmate of mine, who's been teaching in Saigon for years, said this time of year schools are gearing down for Tet. That's the lunar new year celebration, by far the biggest holiday of the year in these parts. Most of the country completely shuts down for at least a week, even two, as most people travel home to spend the week with their families.

Even schools that are open during Tet have a drastically reduced schedule. Tet starts on Valentine's Day. I may have to take a job, any job, to get me through Tet, and then start looking again after.

However, I may not be quite done with traveling yet. My visa is almost expired. I could apply for an extension, but, without going into details, it would probably make more sense to leave the country and apply for a new visa. I may have to spend a few days in Bangkok or Phnom Penh. Wouldn't that be awful...

Annapurna Circuit Day 15: I fought Nepal and Nepal won

2009-12-29T00:18:00.006-05:00

One reason I decided to part ways with my hiking partners was because I wanted to do a side hike to the village of Lupra. In that tiny village, tucked away in a narrow side canyon, are two working monasteries of the Bon religion. It is the earliest surviving Bon community in Nepal and the only village of the faith in the Mustang region.

Bon predates Buddhism by hundreds or even thousands of years. The Buddha was born in Nepal about 500 years before Christ was born. I wanted to see a working place of worship for a religion which predated Christianity by centuries.

That's right, it's yet another thing that may interest only me!

I started south from Kagbeni. Immediately I got stuck in the morning rush hour.

I continued through the small village of Eklhaibhatti, crazily located in the Kali Gandaki river bed.

There are a couple stone walls to divert high water, but this place strikes me as a minor disaster waiting to happen.

I posted a picture of the YacDonald's in Kagbeni in a previous post. I thought it fitting that a restaurant which blatantly rips off an American corporate icon is also the only one I saw that advertised on the trail.

Then I made a left up the narrow Panda Valley. The walk was miserable. There wasn't a trail. It was a river bed literally covered with smooth rocks, most the size of bowling balls. It only took about an hour to get from the main trail to the village but it was tiring and hard on my ankles.

The sun was rising just behind the village which made getting a photo next to impossible for a pointer-and-clicker like me. This shot gives an idea of the treacherous walking conditions, as well as how tiny the village is.

This tiny enclave of 16 homes has managed to keep alive a religion that has disappeared or been absorbed by Buddhism virtually everywhere else.

I had seen signs of the religion in Kagbeni. There were fetishes above doorways.

Just outside the gompa in Kagbeni is a carved human figurine embedded in a wall.

As I noted in a previous post the swastika, long before it became known in the western world as a symbol of Nazism, was a Buddhist and Hindu symbol. It was also a Bon symbol. With a slight twist. Literally.

I saw this on the prayer wall at the gompa in Kagbeni.

The swastika at the bottom "turns" to the right as it does in Buddhism (and Nazism). The one at the top, however, turns to the left, as in Bon. It was the only Bon swastika I saw there. I asked a young monk why this one particular swastika was different from the rest. He didn't know about it! It really is something that interests only me!

The stupa at the entrance to Lupra is unlike any I've seen in Nepal, or anywhere else for that matter.

I could tell by the way people stopped and stared the village doesn't get a lot of tourists. I asked where the gompa was. Of course it was at the top of the hill.

When I got there it was closed. Word had gotten around so soon a woman came to unlock it for me.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures, which wasn't a big deal, as it turned out. I have to admit I was disappointed. To my admittedly untrained Western eyes the Bon temple, called Yungdrung Phuntshakling, was virtually indistinguishable from a Buddhist temple. It's not surprising, considering Buddhism more or less absorbed Bon. The two religions have co-existed for thousands of years. My side trip sounded a lot more interesting on paper than it actually was.

I headed back down the boulder-strewn valley and headed towards Jomsom, the main hub of the western leg of the Annapurna Circuit. I was hiking down the Kali Gandaki river valley. I saw children playing and families picnicking in the riverbed. I have no idea why or where they came from.

Jomsom sits in the distance, with Dhaulagiri, the seventh-highest mountain in the world, looming overhead. Off camera to the left is Annapurna, the 10th-highest. Because the river runs between these two peaks this valley is considered to be the deepest in the world.

As I walked I was debating what to do. I wasn't sure I wanted to continue hiking on the trail. On this side of the circuit the trail is an actual road. I was constantly having to step out of the way of vans, jeeps and motorcycles. It really sucked the romance out of an otherwise perfect day for hiking.

I saw very few hikers. Most people were in a vehicle or on mountain bikes or, like these folks, on horseback.

I was feeling strong and fresh for the first time in days. Why not keep walking?

Then again, I could also avoid a lot of the road traffic by taking a bus from Jomsom to Tatopani and then continuing on foot. Maybe I could visit Annapurna Base Camp again? Or maybe not. The trail out of Tatopani ascends a sadistic 1,900 meters, the longest climb on the Annapurna Circuit. That's nearly a mile and a quarter of vertical distance, not walking distance.

I was hiking on the flattest, widest section of trail I had ever seen in Nepal, which made what happened next all the more bizarre. One second was cruising along. Then I was lying face down in the dirt with a badly sprained ankle.

I have no idea what happened. I completely wiped out. My guess is that all the boulder hopping in the morning had weakened my ankles. Whatever the reason, I could barely put any weight on my left foot.

Here is a picture of my ankle.

I sprained it on October 30. This picture was taken on December 27. It's still swollen two months later. Luckily I had my trusty hiking pole to lean on. Even more luckily my next stop was a village with an airport.

All things considered I was incredibly fortunate the mishap occurred where it did, which was right about here.

I didn't have far to walk. I hobbled into Jomsom, found the first available hotel room, booked a flight out for the next morning, and took a few obligatory photos before hopping into bed to rest my ankle.

Jomsom is a soulless place. I didn't mind that it's "modern". It just has no personality.

It does have, however, perhaps the best setting for an airport in the world.

I hope the guy who painted this advertisement for rock climbing was paid well.

If I had been in a village I liked, such as Manang or Kagbeni, I might have rested for a few days and continued hiking. I had no desire to stay in Jomsom.

I was glad I decided to leave when I checked out in the morning. I had spent two weeks sleeping in lodges owned by the most gracious and welcoming people. The owner of my hotel in Jomsom tried to overcharge me for my room, even though the prices are printed in the menu.

I had seen everything I wanted to see on the trail. I had been trying to convince myself to hike the entire circuit, just to say I had done it, but I wasn't at all enthusiastic about dodging traffic for the next few days. I had already been to Annapurna Base Camp. I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I was as content as I could be with a sprained ankle.

Annapurna Circuit Day 14: Mustang sally

2009-12-28T00:24:00.003-05:00

I wanted to spend another day exploring Kagbeni and the surrounding area, but my friends wanted to move on. The morning got off to a sad start as we said goodbye. From right to left: Kasia, yours truly, Tom, Rob and Josh.

They headed south. I headed north.

I wanted to visit Tiri, the only village in the Upper Mustang region tourists are allowed to visit without a permit. You can visit the region if you want, but it will cost you. A hiking permit for the Annapurna region costs 2000 rupees, about $25. A permit for the Upper Mustang region costs $700 for 10 days and additional $70 per day after that.

The similarity of the name of that to that of the horse (and the car) is purely coincidental. The horse gets its name from the Spanish. The place name is a corruption of a Tibetan name. Upper Mustang was formerly the independent Kingdom of Lo Monthang.

In 1960 the borders of Lo Monthang were closed. Foreigners were not allowed until 1991. There are no more kings or kingdoms in Nepal, however. The Kingdom of Lo Monthang officially ceased to exit on October 7, 2008.

From Kagbeni I had to cross the Kali Gandaki river bed and head north. There was some sort of festival going on. Locals were stringing flowers across the river. Nepalese love festivals. I had been hiking for less than two weeks and I had already seen three.

I was a little surprised to note this was a Hindu festival. Nepal is a primarily Hindu country. However, in terms of culture, language and religion, Mustang is more Tibetan than Nepali, for reasons that are obvious from this map.

Upper Mustang looks like it was carved out of Tibet. The people of the region are primarily Buddhist. However, as I'd seen repeatedly throughout Nepal, the cultures and traditions of Buddhists and Hindus are closely intertwined.

This is the view of Kagbeni from the other side of the river. The red gompa is the most prominent feature. Nilgiri towers in the distance.

There were disconcerting signs of civilization, like these power lines that hung so low over the trail I had to duck to get past them.

At the bottom of this photo is the existing path, with a reminder of the Sisyphean road building looming above.

I passed all this quickly. And then I had Mustang to myself. It was one of the best day hikes I've ever done. Sometimes I thought it would have been nice if my friends had been there to see it. Other times I was happy for the solitude. Every once in a while I would see or hear a jeep in the distance. Aside from that it the silence was nearly complete. Bliss.

The landscape is evocative of the American West, as is the name Mustang. A pair of horsemen trotting up the river valley added to the similitude.

I walked through Tiri without seeing a single person. The silence was eerie. I ascended the ridge behind the village. And then I just sat there and took it all in.

That's Tiri in the foreground. Thorung La is visible in the distance. I used the camera timer to take this self portrait looking north into Upper Mustang.

I thought I was alone, but I wasn't. I was being watched. There was a single horse silhouetted against the blue sky near the top of the bump in the ridgeline.

I had been incredibly fortunate with the weather. I went days without seeing a single cloud. Some clouds appeared on this day, but they actually enhanced the view. I had never seen clouds quite like these. It looked like someone had used a sponge to blot the sky with white paint.

I could have sat there all day.

At this time of year the Kali Gandaki river isn't really a river this far north. It's a series of streams that eventually meet further downstream. I had the brilliant idea of walking across the river bed. The streams were wider and deeper than I thought...

It wasn't so bad. I had to wade through a couple nearly knee-deep streams that were nearly. It was worth getting a little wet to get some really cool pix, like this one looking north towards Tiri.

This self-portrait is looking south towards Kagbeni.

I loved the crazy cloudscapes that day.

I wanted to visit the gompa during the afternoon to take some photos, so I reluctantly headed back to the lodge to change into dry clothes. As I was wandering through the labyrinthine streets I made a new friend.

This is the exterior of the gompa.

The overhang visible on the left is part of the monks' quarters. A wall of prayer wheels goes nearly the entire way around the outside of the building. Walk down the corridor, turn the corner, and there's the valley.

Young monks were playing in the courtyard. Boys will be boys, even in a Buddhist monastery.

The monks were kind enough to let me take photos inside. Here's a wall painting of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. The amount of detail is amazing. Every tiny piece has a meaning. Please don't ask me what those meanings are. Just enjoy the pretty colors like I do.

It was an exhilarating day.

Annapurna Circuit Day 13: Fugitives in a forbidden land

2009-12-27T00:23:00.006-05:00

We departed Muktinath with a new member of our fellowship, an Aussie named Josh. We arrived in Kagbeni after one of the best days of hiking any of us had ever done. We had the trail to ourselves for hours at a time.

The main path to Kagbeni runs through the village of Jharkot. We decided to cross the valley into Dzong and head down from there. We had a hard time just getting to Dzong. We had to wind through the back alleys of Ranipauwa and ask for directions several times. We still didn't find the best path.

The name of the village is transliterated as Dzong or Jhong and simply means 'fort'. From this viewpoint it's obvious why.

The remains of the actual fort, a sand-colored tower, are visible on the right of the plateau. It's called Rab-rgyal-rse, which translates to the rather florid "Peak of Supreme Victory". Next to it is is a guesthouse where we stopped for tea. The view looking back towards Muktinath and Thorung La was awesome, but I couldn't get a decent photo looking into the fierce morning sunlight. You'll have to go and see for yourself.

We saw two tourists in Dzong. Then we hit the trail. From that point on we literally saw one person until we arrived in Kagbeni -- a farmer plowing a field with a buffalo in the valley below. On the other side of the valley, on the main road through Jharkot, we saw a steady stream of jeeps and minivans. We chose our path wisely.

As magnificent as the scenery is in Nepal it is often lacking in color, which makes the view looking back to Dzong and Thorung La all the more startling.

From this vantage point it is obvious why Tibetan traders from centuries past chose Thorung La as a mountain pass. It doesn't look so high from here...

Popular souvenirs on this part of the trail are fossilized sea critters called ammonites. You can buy them or you can find your own. We found dozens. Most are smaller than a plum, but Kasia found this monster.

If you want it you can probably still find it on the trail. She and Rob had another two weeks of hiking so it didn't make sense to add a giant rock to her pack.

We were hiking at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, within sight of mountains nearly three times that high, and yet we were finding remains of critters that lived on the sea floor. The extreme terrain of the Himalayas forces you to rethink your conception of space and distance. These fossils forced me to rethink my conception of time. My mind clanked to a screeching halt as I tried to process the knowledge that these animals lived before the Himalayas even started to form, when the land I was walking on was at the bottom of an ocean.

Part of the appeal of the Annapurna Circuit is the chance to hike in the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest desert. It's a stark landscape unlike anything I had seen in Nepal. Here are my hiking homeys on the way to Kagbeni.

We finally arrived at the river valley and this mind-boggling view.

The village is not our intended destination of Kagbeni. It's Tiri, the only village in the Upper Mustang region that tourists are allowed to visit without a permit. The region is restricted, which meant we were probably breaking the law!

Granted, this is Nepal. Here they would point wayward hikers in the right direction with a friendly smile, not throw them in a rat-infested hole and start lopping off body parts. Still, I did experience a mild frisson knowing I was doing something illegal.

Or maybe it was the wind making me shiver. We were standing above the deepest river valley in the world, a natural wind tunnel. The wind was blowing so hard on the ridge we had to lean into it to walk.

Kagbeni was just behind us.

The peak of Nilgiri, over 7,000 meters high, dominates the landscape. As we entered town on the road at the bottom of the picture we passed a sign informing us of our transgression.

I loved the village. Most villages on the trail crowd around the main path, but Kagbeni is a maze of back alleys that were fun to explore.

The most prominent building in town is the red, cube-shaped Thupten Samphel Ling gompa. This combination monastery, fort and university was built in 1429. Kasia went to check it out that afternoon. I love the cozy feel of Buddhist temples.

At sunset monks go onto the roof to play music.

The gompa is the main attraction in town, but every tourist who passes through gets a photo of this place as well.

Hilarious. Even though McDonald's is everywhere, this restaurant is so remote that apparently it's not worth it for their lawyers to shut it down. There was a constant stream of tourists taking photos but I never saw anyone inside!

We didn't eat there because we ate all our meals at our lodge. More on that in a separate post.

After Kagbeni the itineraries of my friends diverged from mine, so we enjoyed one last meal at the lodge that night. I normally don't drink on the trail, but this was a bit of an occasion, so I bought a small bottle of Mustang apple brandy, which was surprisingly palatable. When that was gone Rob broke out a his "medicine", a bottle of mint vodka. Good times.