The taste of home

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 seen 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

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 curls under the bottom of the photo. The Lower Mekong splits off around the tip of the peninsula.

Not a Baltimore address

I recently moved into a new apartment. For reasons I won't bore you with, 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

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 Ato is having this done to her legs. Phea, 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 Ato. The little girl in the headband is Srey Oun, one of the three little girls who gave me the Christmas present. Behind her and Phea 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 Phea 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 Ato's face as Phea 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!

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, so 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.

Oktoberfrat

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

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?

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

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.

Free food!

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

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Happy New Year, Part 3

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.

Happy happy, joy joy

At the far end, behind the two tourists, is a sign for a restaurant called Happy Herb Pizza. 'Happy' is a code word for cuisine favored by a particular type of traveler in Southeast Asia. A happy pizza has marijuana on it. You know, just like at Pizza Hut.

A happy shake is a fruit shake with marijuana blended in. I've never tried either, but even those who partake of them say they taste terrible. Of course, it's not the taste they're interested in...

In the foreground is a competing establishment. They don't serve happy pizza. Oh no. What's better than happy pizza?

Ecstatic Pizza!

I wonder if I check back in a year whether I'll find Jubilant Pizza, Rapturous Pizza, Orgasmic Pizza, etc.