Homeward Bound

I'm writing what looks to be my last post from a restaurant a few doors down from the guesthouse I stayed at when I arrived here. It's funny to think about how disoriented and semi-freaked out I was the first time I turned onto this street. Now it's probably my favorite place in the city to hang out. At least it will be until tomorrow morning when I get a cab to the airport, fly to Bangkok for an 8 hour layover, then hop a plane to LAX and a redeye to Dulles. Then the insanity of a summer in Southeast Asia ends, and the insanity of my second year of grad school begins.

The rest of my trip with Stephanie went quite well. It killed us to leave Hat Rai Leh, but we did it nonetheless and got on our plane to Kuala Lumpur. We got set up in a totally decent hotel in Chinatown and spent two days seeing the city. It was an insane clash of cultures like nothing else I've seen all summer. Malaysia is a Muslim country with massive Indian and Chinese populations. I sat in a Malay cab listening to Starland Vocal Band, I watched women in full burquas shopping in malls with Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks, and I had a conversation about Obama with an Indian Muslim passing out coupons for a massage parlor. Kind of makes DC feel like vanilla ice cream.

One thing that really bowled me over was how insanely nice everyone in KL was. Don't get me wrong, I've met great people in every single country I've been in this summer. But this was out of your way, big-smile-with-no-hidden-motive friendliness. A big part of that could be the low language barrier; everyone spoke fantastic English. Or maybe their level of development (Malaysia has been VERY successful), helps them to relate to us in a way that your typical rural Laotian/Cambodian can't. Either way, we had a great time and ate some fantastic food. It was a blast.

At least until the flight home. After checking our bags and waiting at the gate, Stephanie asked if I had the keys to my apartment (which also has the keys to the locked closet in the apartment holding our valuables) in my checked bag or in my carry-on. I admitted that I left it in the checked bag, and realized it was a dumb move of me. But I haven't lost a single bag yet over here, what are the odds of it happening NOW?

An introduction is in order. Meet my friend Murphy, he's well known for a law he invented.

I stood at the baggage pickup until I realized that my bag was not there. This was bad, not so much because I was flying out in two days, but because Stephanie was flying out the next morning and had to have the things in my locked closet that was in my locked apartment. Thus led to what, so far, has been my worst night in Phnom Penh. Luckily we were able to track down my landlord and he had an extra key so that we could get inside. But that didn't solve the closet problem. After many unsuccessful attempts to pick what turned out to be an impressively thief-proof lock, we gave up. I decided I'd try to find a locksmith the next day; if I couldn't then I'd break into it and watch my security deposit evaporate before my eyes.

It turns out there are loads of locksmiths in this town. I got a guy right outside my place; he walked right up and in 30 seconds had the door open. So Steph got packed, we ate breakfast, and headed to the airport to drop her off. After seeing her off, I swung by the lost luggage desk hoping against hope that I'd get good news. I got better; my luggage was sitting there waiting for me. When I realized my luggage wasn't showing up the day before, I noticed that there was a bag leftover that looked a bit like mine. My suspicions were correct; some extremely extremely idiotic excuse for a human being grabbed my bag thinking it was theirs and walked off with it. To top it off, they apparently didn't notice this mistake until the next day (or they didn't do anything about it until then, which is even worse). The similarities between the two bags were not nearly enough for this to be even close to an honest mistake; and after the grief this mouth-breather put me through I was glad they weren't there when I arrived at the airport because I probably would have screamed at them. Anyway, it all worked out. I got my stuff, got moved out of my apartment, and I'm settled in for my last night.

I was expecting I'd have some sort of cool final post prepared, but this recent insanity really threw me a curveball. I'm just going to list a ton of stuff I'd like to say:

1) Thanks for reading. Seriously. It was a lot of fun, and often very cathartic, to rave about what I'm seeing and doing and know that my family/friends were actually reading this.

2) Asia and home have one thing in common; there's no place like them. I can't wait to get back to the states.

3) This site will hopefully continue to be updated some time in the future. I hope to do a lot of travel for my career, and I hope that I'll take the time to update this for anyone interested in what else I get myself into.

4) And in the places you go, you'll see the place where you're from
And in the faces you meet, you'll see the place where you'll die
And on the day that you die you'll see the people you met
And in the faces you see, you'll see just who you've been
-Modest Mouse

5) I'm going to post pictures of the last leg of my summer at some point, hopefully soon. Stay posted.

6) This world is cruel and ugly

7) This world is beautiful and amazing

8) There's a sign on the way to the airport that says "Bon Voyage, see you next time." I really hope they're right.



-Jarrett

Malaysia here I come.

I'm writing this post from the airport in Krabi, Thailand. Steph and I just finished a fabulous four days at the island of Hat Rai Leh (aka the most beautiful place I've ever been). It was fantastic, a very chill atmosphere with not that many people and absolutely no cars or roads. The food was great and the beaches were gorgeous. It was extremely hard to leave.

But leave we did, and we're now waiting for our flight to the last leg of our trip; Kuala Lumpur. I'm really stoked to finally see this town/country that I've heard so much about. We'll be there for a couple days; hopefully enough time to see some sites and take in the crazy Malay/Chinese/Indian environment. Then we hop a plane back to Cambodia on Tuesday. Steph flies out Wednesday morning and I move out of my apartment and fly back Thursday morning after an 8 hour layover in Bangkok.

On the van ride to the airport I started to feel a real desire to head home. Maybe it's because I'm getting more emails in advance of my upcoming school year and I'm starting to wish I was home to handle them in the same time zone and prepare myself mentally/physically/spiritually. Maybe I'm just ready to get out of here. Either way, I can't wait to get back to the U.S., though I'll try to stifle that excitement long enough to enjoy a couple days in Malaysia as well as my final day in Phnom Penh. I know the second I get home I'm going to miss all of this as well.

Quick update

I'm in a computer cafe in Bangkok, and have 7 minutes left before I have to add more money. Since I'm feeling frugal I'll try and keep it brief.

1) I continued to forget that I needed to let everyone know I got my Macrock shirt back. I went to the laundry and showed them the picture of me wearing it, along with a request that they get it back (written by my coworker) and a few days later there it was. I also got a very awesome picture of the random Cambodian guy wearing the shirt, which I will post when I get back to the US.

2) I finished my internship. The staff threw a small party for me and gave me a really nice coffee table book of Angkor Wat. I'm excited to move on, but will certainly miss it. My coworkers presented me with a printout of one of my blogs, which made me realize they had found my blog sometime this summer. It was pretty funny. In case any of my IDE coworkers are still checking for blog updates, let me say to them "thank you again for such a great summer, I wish you all the very best!"

3) Today is our last day in Bangkok. We fly out to Krabi for four days of enjoying the beaches and islands, then two full days in Kuala Lumpur, and fly back to Phnom Penh where I move out of my apartment and fly home. It's crazy that it's the end of the summer.

OK, two minutes left. I better go. See everyone soon!

The final push...

On the back of a motorbike

With your arms outstretched, trying to take flight

Leaving everything behind

But even at our swiftest speed, we couldn't break from the concrete

In the city where we still reside

-Death Cab for Cutie

It's so weird. I get it, but I don't get it.

-Jason Dembski, a fellow traveler

I'm on my last week of the internship here in Cambodia. My friend Stephanie landed safely this morning. After I show her around town, giving her a couple days to tour Siem Reap, and wrapping up things at IDE, we will leave Saturday morning. We're flying to Bangkok for two days, then down to Krabi in central Thailand to take in Hat Rai Leh (go ahead and google it, then hate me forever), then down to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to tour the town and reenact Entrapment (I'll be Catherine Zeta Jones, and Stephanie will just have to adopt a Scottish accent). Then we fly back to Phnom Penh, I take a day to move out of my apartment, and I head for the US the morning of the 28th. I'm very excited to do all of these things, except maybe dance through lasers in black tights to steel some silly mask.


Since I last gave a decent post I've had a friend visit and I've gone to Vietnam. A few weeks ago my friend/former coworker Diana came into town for "work" and we ran around the city the whole weekend. It was really fun, and easily one of the more social weekends I've had in a while. Since she came in with a government per diem, I got a glimpse at how the other side of Cambodia lives. OK, so there really isn't another side. But there's a small edge of foreigners with decent expense accounts, and I got to hang out where they did. Diana treated me to a ridiculous French dinner, and showed me that my haggling in Cambodian with tuk tuk drivers is no match for a smiling female as she cut my records for cheapest rides in half (while leaving a 5 star hotel as well). She mentioned being excited to be referenced in my blog, saying that she wishes more interesting things popped up when her name was googled. Diana, here's my thank you for the excellent dinner and all-around fun weekend:

Diana Beck Rossiter is a wonderful person. She's fun, generous, and easier to make laugh than a hyena on nitrous oxide. She lovingly pets stray Cambodian cats and doesn't even get rabies or anything!!! And she knows her way around Asia, even giving me cards to all these cool places in Ho Chi Minh City (that I wish I had remembered to bring). She can be identified by her Cambodian cowbell and a piece of red string on her wrist. Yep, Diana Rossiter is pretty freaking awesome.

I got back yesterday from Vietnam, which was a lot of fun. I ended up going around town with an American guy (quoted above) who had spent the summer in Beijing. It was nice to have someone to travel with, talk to, and split all the hotel/taxi costs with. It amazes me how a 6 hour bus ride can put you in a new country with a new culture and a totally different vibe. Although Phnom Penh is still my #1 city here, I really enjoyed seeing Vietnam. I took some good pictures, but will need to wait until I can get my hands on a camera cord. I had been borrowing one from my roommate, but he's gone now.

Actually, everyone is gone now. All that's left is a couple Cambodian friends and my friend Stephanie who just arrived. I think I'm ready to go too, just a few more days and a bit of traveling, then home. I think I love the sound of that.

Another Mekong, Please

Work is getting slow again (although it's been busy lately). My internet connection is slow, so I'm currently both bored and frustrated. Yet I have no desire to put up a real post. So for no good reason here are the country flags for all the nationalities I've drank with this summer. So far.

Little Things

Today started off relatively normal. I went downstairs to get my ride to work, this time accompanied by my roommate and his girlfriend who were headed over to the embassy to get visas for their trip to Vietnam. Normal busy day on Sothearos Blvd., cars and bikes speeding by, and people milling about. This included a random Cambodian man sitting by the entrance to our apartment in a tshirt, khakis, and bare feet.

My ride hadn't arrived yet, which was unusual considering how prompt he is, and Pete and Emily sped off on a moto. I decided, in case he couldn't make it for some reason, to run upstairs and grab my moto helmet. That would give him a couple more minutes as well as give me a cheaper option of getting to work. I headed towards my apartment, then stopped...

That random man was wearing my tshirt.

No coincidence here. That's my MACROCK 2003 shirt, which was a big music festival thrown by my college in Virginia. Yep, definitely my shirt. As I stared with a look of what had to be shock on my face, I realized that I actually hadn't seen the shirt since I dropped it off at the laundry place around the corner a couple weeks ago. This is the same laundry place that often gives me clothes that belong to someone else. It became clear pretty quickly what happened, and I ultimately didn't need the Cambodian guy to point towards the laundry place when I pointed at the tshirt and then pointed to myself. These shopworkers, due to the fact that they suck at their job, get left with clothes that they can't remember what to do with. So they probably just give/sell them to neighborhood people. I had also been missing a pair of jogging shorts, as well as another tshirt. I'll keep my eye out when I go walking around...

This isn't a huge deal, and I can guarantee that in a month or so the idea of walking past a guy wearing my tshirt, a guy with a pleasant uncomprehending grin who would ocassionally turn to spit, will be hilarious. It was one of those moments that you really feel like you're in a comedy movie. That being said, this is another thing as well; a constant reminder that while living in a developing country is certainly easier than I thought it'd be when it comes to the big stuff, there's all sorts of smaller things that eat at you and piss you off until you forget all your economic theories and wonder angrily why they can't get their damn act together. I loved that tshirt, it was a gift from one of my best friends, and the man didn't give it back to me. I'm going to take a picture of me wearing a tshirt to the laundry place today, but the details of this problem are far too intricate for my broken Khmer and their broken English to hop the language barrier. Even if they understood what I was saying, they probably wouldn't do anything about it but flash me a quasi-apologetic grin.

You come over here so prepared for the big differences that you find yourself completely blindsided by the small ones. "What do you mean you won't refund my lost clothes? What do you mean you can't break $10 for a $2 bottle of water? Why, exactly, are we driving this moto against traffic?" But it's important to remember they matter too. The big stuff is what you have to surmount when visiting another culture, but the little stuff is the challenge for when you want to actually live there. I'm honestly not sure I'm at that point yet.

JARRETT'S MACROCK SHIRT
2003-2008

"Gone but not forgotten"

Esoteric Song Reference

I've gotten somewhat blasé about posting recently. Partly this is because I've written about/reported most of what I found interesting in Phnom Penh. But that's not all of it; I spent a cool weekend in Bangkok that I've been too lazy to write about.

At this point I'm kind of just going through the motions. I'm officially ready for my internship, of which I have three more weeks, to be over. I want to go on my 10 day end-of-summer trip through Thailand and Malaysia, and I want to get the hell out of here. That's not to suggest that I've had a bad time, far from it. This has been absolutely amazing. But...I'm just done. Ready to jetset for a couple weeks and then head home. Still, I'll try to muster the energy for some updates:

• We just got done with the national elections in Cambodia, and the winner is...the Cambodian People's Party!!! What a surprising upset!!! Here are some other "surprises"; the sky is up, water is wet, and cows say "moo". Election day, which is held on a Sunday, meant that most of the shops and restaurants were closed. It was weird to be in such a normally bustling city on such a quiet day; walking down the street reminded me of those moments in Western movies when the gunslingers are about to duel and the whole town shuts itself up and Main Street becomes suddenly, drastically, and eerily quiet. Another interesting fact is that, just like in Iraq, they use indelible ink to mark the fingers of people who have voted over here. It looks like everyone over here now has frostbite on the end of their index fingers. It got me thinking about how this could help with our low voter turnout problem, because anybody too lazy to vote is inadvertently letting the world know it. If we used ink in the US, you can bet that those people would catch some grief (or at least angry stares) when walking around with clean fingers.


• I went to a local tailor yesterday to get a nice suit made for cheap. The most inexpensive way to do this is to pick up a fabric at a nearby market, then bring it to them to sew for you. I decided to fork over extra money and use a material they had on site, mainly due to my massive ignorance of fabrics and desire not to get ripped off at the market and end up having a suit made of tablecloth material, or carpeting (though my roommate and I decided that a shag suit would rock). As cheap as I've gotten, I can't turn down getting a tailored cashmere suit for under $200. I'm enough of a DC sellout that I'm sure it will come in handy.


• Like I mentioned, I made my first of three visits to Bangkok a couple weeks ago. It was a lot of fun, and it blew my mind that a 30 minute flight could transport me between two areas so different. I got to ride on metro trains, walk around massive air conditioned malls, and see the new Batman movie on an IMAX theater (which may have ranked up there with seeing Angkor).


• There's a bar in Phnom Penh called Pontoon; as the name implies, it's a pontoon boat on the river that has been turned into a bar. They often have DJs come and spin. Apparently their most recent DJ was rather popular because a lot of people ended up on the boat. You might even say too many people. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this:

FAIL

I'm glad I wasn't a big fan of this place. Don't worry, it apparently sank slow enough for all the party-people to disembark before their night got crappier (pun intended for anyone who has smelled the waterways in Cambodia).

That's all for now. Stay in touch, and I'll see you all soon.