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.

Siem Reap, Soapboxes, and Sappy Sentimental Sayings

Since my last post I finally made the requisite “Cambodian tourist” trip to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat. For those of you not in the know, Angkor was the former capital of Cambodia and is a massive area covered by all sorts of temples built by different Khmer rulers from 800AD to 1400AD. It’s essentially the leftovers of a 600 year pissing contest between all the rulers as they each strove to leave a more impressive legacy than the others. The result is a series of ruins that remain incredibly impressive centuries later to history lovers and generic tourists alike. The gem is of course Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in th world.

After a bus ride from Phnom Penh, I got settled into my guesthouse and grabbed a tuk tuk into Siem Reap. It’s a pretty awesome little town; much smaller (obviously) than Phnom Penh, but bustling with bars, restaurants, and tourists from every corner of the Western hemisphere. There’s an area called Pub Street that is closed off to automobile traffic so people can walk around; it reminded me a bit of Bourbon Street in New Orleans in that regard. Since I was going solo, I didn’t stay too long and, after dinner and a couple drinks, retreated to my guesthouse where I enjoyed the rare comforts of strong air conditioning and hot water.

It was good that I went home early too, because I had decided to get up at 4:30 to catch the much-recommended sunrise at Angkor Wat. Because Angkor Wat faces west, it’s considered a prime place to take in a sunset. Despite the insanely early hour, the place was mobbed with other tourists. The sunset was kind of disappointing, but I ended up being glad I got there early, if only to keep me out of the heat for most of the day.

I’m not going to go into all the details of the temples I saw; both because I don’t have my guidebook in front of me and because unless you’re standing in front of these ruins, the details of their construction are only interesting to history buffs (sorry Dad). I’ll try to add the details onto my Picasa page when I load it, but suffice it to say that all of Angkor is amazing, whether or not you’re huge into history. The reason for this is not that you’re seeing things you can’t see in the U.S.; I’m sure there are many museums all over the country that have relics from these times and places. The difference is that in these museums you have to look at a few samples from behind a velvet rope; it’s interesting to see but very sanitary and removed from its original environs. But here you can reach out and touch these carvings that were made centuries ago, you can climb all over them, you can stand in the middle of them just like the people who made and used them did. It’s incredible to take such a distant and exotic history and have a tactile interaction with it.

My first day I went all over the place. I hit up the big three “must sees”; Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm, as well as a few smaller temples and a long trip out of the area to do a three mile hike at Kbal Spean. Combine all of this with the heat and the fact that I’d been up since 4:30, and I was pretty much as tired and sweaty as I’ve ever been in my entire life. I managed to get back to the guesthouse to shower then grab dinner in Siem Reap.

The next morning I took a trip to tour the floating village; this is a fishing village just south of Siem Reap; the entire village floats to accommodate for the varying water levels between the wet and dry seasons. Although I was there when the wet season had begun, it’s takes a good deal of time for the water level to really reach its apex. As a result, the water levels were very low. I took a boat tour led by a 22 year old guy who was born and raised in the village. He spoke perhaps the best English I’ve heard a Cambodian speak, and he was really cool. He told me about how he has 9 siblings that he provides for because his father lost both legs to a landmine, and how he hopes one day to be a tour guide at Angkor Wat. This village clearly had a good deal of poverty that was tough to see. The boat ride went through the village and out onto the Tonle Sap lake, then back through the village.

*SOAPBOX WARNING; IF YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR ME PROSELYTIZE ABOUT DEVELOPMENT, SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH* Some of you may know that I’m doing my big graduate project on Community Based Tourism. In brief, this is the practice of ensuring that tourism practices A) are sustainable in a way that allows them to continue indefinitely (i.e. don’t pollute it so badly you can’t use it in 10 years) and B) that allows the communities that live there to benefit from the tourist dollars. Many developing countries are emerging as great tourist destinations, and effectively using tourism for economic development is very important. I have already had an academic interest in this subject, but this weekend has made me officially pissed off about it. To get into Angkor Wat, you have to pay $20 a day. This $20 goes straight to a Vietnamese oil company that runs the place. Yes, you read that right. Forget all the poor Cambodians who have Angkor Wat as their legacy, they’re relegated to trying to sell souvenirs and cold drinks while a freaking oil company from a developed country gets the admittance fees. Also, plans are underway for Angkor Wat to be outfitted with electric cars run by a Korean company. Why let the local moto and tuk tuk drivers make money off tourists when we can let those poor Koreans make a quick buck? And the icing on the cake; that quick little boat ride in the floating village cost an absurd $25. Did this money go to my tour guide supporting nine siblings and crippled father? No, it goes straight to the Cambodian government, a fiscal black hole if ever there was one. There was, however, one moment of useful tourism for me. My tour guide asked if I’d like to visit one of the schools at the floating village. I of course said yes, and he asked only that we stop by a market quickly to buy some school supplies to bring with us because the school needs them. So I dropped $10 and bought a bunch of notebooks and pens, and visited the school. It was fantastic, the kids were adorable and the teacher very nice. It’s where I managed to get what, so far, is my favorite picture of this summer:

See, this is smart tourism. They let me hop on the floating school and check things out, and as a sort of admission price, I bring donations. That was money that I was downright elated to spend, because I knew it went somewhere it should. I would have happily paid twice as much to get into Angkor Wat if I knew that it went towards helping locals to achieve economic development. Ostensibly it could or should; the money goes to the government of Cambodia who, I’m sure, has a lucrative deal with these companies. If they then turned around and spent the money for the locals then it would be fine. But again…fiscal black hole. OK, the rant is over.

After touring the village I headed back to Angkor to hit up a few more temples and take in a sunset. I ended up catching the sunset at Pre Rup, one of the more popular places to do so. Apparently it wasn’t THE place to do it, but THE place to do it is overrun with tourists, and I preferred my choice. Although the sunset wasn’t spectacular, it was a nice quiet way to end the day around a handful of other friendly tourists and a local who carried up cans of beer that he sold to us. Sitting on centuries-old ruins, drinking a can of Angkor beer, and watching the sunset; there are worse ways to end a day.

Not much more to mention after that; I caught a bus home the next day. I really liked Siem Reap, but quickly tired of how tenacious they were towards tourists. Any time you’re a Westerner people treat you like a big bag of money, but in Phnom Penh you only get that at the markets and big tourist spots. Since all Siem Reap is nothing but a big tourist spot, it’s pretty rough. Every driver asks if he can be your driver to go all around Angkor, the driver I did get gave me his card and repeatedly (and I do mean repeatedly, to the point of annoyance) asked me to please give it to my friends who were planning to visit. Kids are perpetually trying to sell you stuff at the temples. This isn’t different from Phnom Penh, except that in PP when you say no they stop trying, but at Angkor no apparently means “Why don’t you ask me 14 more times and we’ll see”. I remember thinking “please let me make it through the day without screaming at a little Cambodian girl.” You know in cartoons when a character is really hungry, and when they see another cartoon character that character suddenly transforms into a giant turkey leg? Well it’s like that, except white people become a huge dollar sign. Anytime a waitress chases you down with a menu asking you to eat at their place, it’s annoying. But I also understand that we’re their cash cow; it’s how it is. Maybe that would change if the tourist practices improve. Here’s hoping…

This weekend I’m going to Bangkok to see the city and visit my friend Alicia, next weekend is Ho Chi Minh City. Then my friend Diana visits Phnom Penh, and then Stephanie shows up and we take a vacation for a couple weeks. And then I go home. Man…really??? When I first got here I remember thinking, as I saw Phnom Penh for the first time and fought off a panic attack, that three and a half months was FOREVER. Now I’ve fallen in love with this country and it just doesn’t feel long enough. At the same time, I’m really excited to get home, to see all my family/friends, and to move into my new house and summarily drive Mike and Jessie (my new roomies) slowly insane. But I know the second I get home and rest up, I’m going to miss being here. Be here, miss home. Be home, miss here. Until I figure out a way to transport everyone I love and miss overseas with me, this will be a juxtaposition (that’s our word of the summer!!! AHHHHHH!!!!! ) I’ll have to deal with. I’m always missing something, no matter where I am. But I’m also starting to learn that having things to miss means that you’re doing something right with your life. And on that note so sappy and sweet every ant in my apartment (of which there are many) would swarm me, I’ll end it.

Apollo says...

Happy July 4th everyone!

4 Things

1. There is a big national election gearing up over here, just like in the U.S. The two big parties are the San Ramsey (spelling?) Party and the CCP. The CCP sends trucks all over town loaded up with people and blaring music and speeches over loudspeakers. It's pretty crazy, and I'd like it more if it weren't for the fact that one of the CCP offices is right near my apartment, so I often get to hear the stuff whether I like it or not. Another truck was loaded with people playing bongos and dancing (editors note: Senator McCain, if for some unknown reason you're reading my blog, THIS is what you have to do to get me to jump the Obama ship. Pick up a bongo and play it like you mean it.)


2. Cambodian kids are the most adorable kids I've ever seen; I totally understand Angelina Jolie's decision to adopt a child from here. While most people over here quietly (yet often overtly) notice that you're a Westerner, they don't make a big deal out of it. But the kids will run up and say "hello! hello!" One time when I replied in both English and Cambodian, they started dancing around yelling "Hello! Hello!" over and over. It was awesome.


3. I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields this past weekend. I don't plan to write about it.


4. If anybody is curious about what the traffic is like in Phnom Penh, I suggest listening to the song "I Love A Magician" by the Dismemberment Plan (those classmates of mine new to DC should take note, as this is the best band to ever come out of DC). The song is frenetic and chaotic, abnormal and atonal, yet at the same time the musicians know what they're doing and beneath the chaos is a musical pulse with a very deliberate direction. You have to get used to it to see the method to the madness, and you have to listen to it a lot to appreciate it. Yep, that's Cambodia.

So Noone Told You Laos Was Gonna Be This Waaaayyyyyyy

It was your standard bar/dance party scene; tons of drunk college-aged kids dancing to popular rock music, cute girls dancing too hard from higher-up locales like tables and benches so that they could be sure everyone knows how cute they are, sketchy frat boy/hippy guys trying to dance up on them in a vain attempt to curry favor, and me standing in the corner with my friends, drinking a beer and watching the scene unfold like I'm some sort of sociology professor (some things are far more entertaining to watch than participate in). "Livin' On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi comes on, and everyone flips out and dances harder and more drunkenly. This is taking place in a big sheltered area around a fire. Outside of the shelter is a field, the field runs along the Nam Som river located in Veng Vieng, in Northern Laos. I'm surrounded by white people dancing to Bon Jovi in the middle of a jungle in a devastatingly poor and still-Communist country.

Maybe I should back up.

Pete and I met Wednesday at the airport and caught our flight to Vientiane, the capitol of Laos. We landed in late afternoon, got a room booked, and went to check out the city. The first thing we noticed is how insanely quiet Vientiane is; people don't drive with their horns and nobody screams at us for moto rides. It was like the city had been evacuated. It was eerie, but a welcome change from the chaos of Phnom Penh. We stopped at a bar on the Mekong and had a drink. You can look across the river to Thailand, which itself is a weird concept to me. We walked around a bit more then got dinner at a French restaurant near That Dam Wat.

Early the next day we caught a "minibus" to Veng Vieng. I call it a "minibus" because the actual bus we bought a ticket for was full, so they put us in a minivan packed to the brim with people. They stuck all our bags on top, and I shared the front seat with the driver and an English/Australian girl. Every time he changed gears it would hit my leg; and I had almost nothing to brace myself against for all the sharp turns that made up this 2-3 hour ride. Not fun.

We got into Veng Vieng, got settled in a room, and set out to explore the city on a very rainy afternoon. I have to admit I enjoyed the novelty of having moisture cover my body that didn't come out of my pores. Although stunningly beautiful, Veng Vieng is a notorious backpacker haven. Very popular are the television bars, which are essentially open air bars with tables you can lounge around with several tv's blaring American television. By "American television" I mean Friends. Literally, at every single bar (save one that showed Family Guy), Friends. All day. Every day. Into the night. Friends. After our brains had been sufficiently numbed by inexpensive Beerlao and the comedy stylings of Matt LeBlanc, Pete and I called it a night.

Seriously though...Friends? Everywhere??? In Laos?!?

The next day we each went on a separate adventure tour through an ecotourism company called Green Discovery Laos. Ecotourism is based upon the principle that tourism should be sustainable (i.e. don't ruin the environment because it is a precious commodity that should be maintained for the community to benefit from) and its profits should be reaped by the people who make up the community. Many of you will hear me talk much more about this, because my capstone project for my degree is based on ecotourism. Without dragging out my soapbox, it is a very important trend and an important tool to help such crushingly impoverished countries like Laos harness the valuable assets they have to improve their lives.

Pete, the avid-rock climber, decided to spend a day climbing the ridiculously cool and vertical mountains you can see on my Picasa page. I, the avid acro-phobic, opted for a more serene and ground-friendly caving/kayaking trip. My group consisted of me and a family of seven Californians who had come to visit one of their 5 brothers/sons who was finishing up his semester abroad in Thailand. They were nice enough, and often reminded me of my brothers and I (especially when their unending movie quotes pestered the crap out of their mother). But I definitely felt like an outsider when they started talking all about college wrestling (many of them were on a scholarship), friends of theirs who got boob jobs (a conversation they casually had in front of their parents), and gossiped about friends of theirs (they apparently know a girl they call "Fat Jen" who walks with a waddle).

Despite this, the trip was quite amazing. All of the mountains were shrouded in clouds from the recent rains, and I found myself getting the theme song to "Jurassic Park" stuck in my head. I shared a kayak with our guide, and I talked to him a lot about ecotourism, the current state of Laos, and all sorts of other SE Asian affairs. We toured a couple caves which were quite cool, and even stopped off at one of the many innertubing bars along the river for a drink and to use an awesome swing they had set up over the river (which you can check out here).

I got back earlier than Pete, and waited for him by getting drunk on Beerlao and watching...that's right...Friends. We got cleaned up, then met a couple Norweigan guys Pete climbed with (Dag and Bjorn) for dinner. These guys are immensely cool; they're supposed to be coming to Cambodia soon so hopefully we'll see more of them. They were also the ones that knew about a cluster of bars in a field across the river run by a bunch of Americans, and that's where this messy story started.

The next day we got a bus (a real one) back to Vientiane. We spent another afternoon/evening walking around the city, and enjoyed a very cool sunset over the Mekong. Next day was an early flight back to Phnom Penh. It was an odd contrast to be absolutely surrounded by Westerners, but to be in such a foreign/exotic location. I found myself looking around and being disgusted, but then looking out to the horizon and being awed. I never expected I would need to use the word "juxtaposition" so much, but that's just the kind of summer this is turning out to be. I'm learning to accept that.

Still...FRIENDS?!?!?!?

Reason #324526 to stay out of the water in Cambodia

One interesting aspect of Cambodia is that, for whatever reason, the craziest news stories come out on a frequent basis. Recently two people, an old woman and a food vendor, had over $20,000 stolen from them in a mugging. Mugging is a normal enough crime, but what in the holy hell were these people doing with that much cash on them? There's also the not-so-funny but kind of outrageous story of the guy who killed a hooker, tried to burn her to destroy the evidence, lit his apartment on fire, and broke both legs jumping to safety (he's now enjoying a well-earned stay in Cambodian prison).

All good examples, but here is the most recent and, I think, the best:

Puffer fish mauls Cambodian boy's groin June 17, 2008

A Cambodian teenager was recovering in hospital after an angry puffer fish attacked him in the groin, local media reported.
The Khmer-language Koh Santepheap daily ran a picture of the unnamed 13-year-old in a hospital bed with heavy strapping around his testicles, saying he was lucky to be alive.
The paper quoted the boy's father, Sok Ly, as saying the fish had become enraged when it was accidentally trapped in the boy's net and, when it was freed, had attacked the boy's scrotum.
Cambodian legend has it that the bite of the fish is even more dangerous than its poisonous spines, especially for boys, and Cambodian boys are traditionally advised not to swim in waters where the fish is common.
The victim, from Prek Pneuv commune outside Phnom Penh, was expected to recover from Monday's attack, the paper said, but the extent of the damage had yet to be determined.
© 2008 AAP

No country for cold men.

The juxtaposition of amazing Asian culture and an inordinate amount of sweatiness makes this my "pictures says 1000 words" shot of the summer.

So since I last posted I've finally made some trips out to the Cambodian countryside. The most recent was a trip to Kampang Chhnang to visit the factory that my NGO started to build our ceramic water purifiers. It was a pretty incredible experience, and I blogged about it here: www.idssummer08.blogspot.com. This blog is being shared by all of GWU development classmates, in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. What I was writing about felt more at home under the rubric of development issues, but I'd encourage all of you to check the blog out, both for my stories and the stories of all my friends that are out in some very interesting places.

So last weekend Pete and I took an overnight trip to Kep, in the Kampot Province. It's a beachtown in southern Cambodia; Sihanoukeville is the most well-known beach town, but we'd heard it was dirty and loud (even though the beaches are nice) so we opted for the quiet/sleepy beach town instead. For those of you familiar with, or from, the South, you might say we chose the Outer Banks over Myrtle Beach.

So we took a bus early Saturday morning, me with either a stomach bug or adverse reaction to my malaria medication, and Pete sleep deprived and hungover. I'm glad we forged on though. The ride out was amazing; it was my first glimpse at life in rural Cambodia. Lots of farms, small houses, and malnourished cows everywhere. We got to Kep in about 4.5 hours (compared to the advertised 2-3), got settled into the bungalow we were staying at, and made our way out to a pier where we chartered a boat to take us out to Rabbit Island. This is a small island off the coast of Kep inhabited by a couple small restaurants, a slew of hammocks/wooden mats, lots of livestock, and a bunch of Westerners laying out. It was quiet and gorgeous. We stayed there a few hours then headed back to our hotel, where we sat in the restaurant, drank beers, and watched the most awesome sunset I've ever seen.

The next day we headed down to the waterfront to hang out and wait for our bus. I had heard that Cambodians are notorious picnic-lovers, and this proved to be very true. All along the sidewalks on the road above the water were these shelters that had wooden mats and hammocks that families would rent out. They'd drive into Kep from out of town and have these enormous picnics; it was an extremely social event. People were playing in the shallow water, or just sitting up by the road eating crab. It was great to see an activity so endemic to Cambodian culture, but removed from Phnom Penh. After an even longer bus ride in an almost air-conditionless bus, we were back home.

I'm probably getting backed up with stuff to talk about. My friend Alicia came into town this weekend, which involved an inordinate amount of shopping and eating delicious food (Alicia, your new nickname is Bag Lady). We just got back from a trip to Wat Phnom, an awesome Wat on a hill in northern Phnom Penh where we got to see monkeys and an elephant, as well as of course touring the Wat. And I'm headed to Laos on Wednesday, so there should be some stories coming from that as well.

Where in the World is Jarrett?

So I've finally got some pictures online of my last few weeks over here. They're on my picassa page, which you can access here. More to come I'm sure, including my planned trips to Vientiane in Laos, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Bangkok, Kampong province, Kampang Chhnang province, and a massive end-of-summer extravaganza reaching from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur.

Not a lot else to add at this point, I'm getting even more comfortable with the city and getting into some semblance of a routine. Work is still frustratingly slow, so I may need to have a talk with my director when he gets back in the office Friday. Otherwise I'll leave you with this thought: on the way to work today I saw a guy on a moto with at least a dozen ducks tied down on it. Fine, whatever, except the ducks were still alive, one on the top was even looking around a bit. So I'll ask you, my family/friends/loyal readers the question that pops into my head at least once a day; where the hell am I???

Something Like a Phnom-enon

I keep thinking that I'm going to get into a banal enough routine in Phnom Penh where I'll stop having interesting things to blog about, but it seems like that may not be the case. Saturday night is a good example. It started off at dinner with Chris, Pete, Erica, and Chris' Cambodian friend Sreay Neng. We ate at a place called Freebirds which is essentially a TGI Fridays type place. I know I know, but I was craving a burger. Plus I think sometimes the most interesting way to see a city is to see their attempts at recreating other cultures/atmospheres/food. For example, I ordered a chicken burrito at one place out of morbid curiousity, and for the first few minutes I literally thought they had accidentally brought me lasagna.

After Freebirds we went down to a bar called Pontoon. This is a bar on a boat that is floating on the Mekong. As we sat there drinking, the stereo was playing the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I can't say I ever expected to be sitting on the Mekong River drinking beer and listening to the Kingston Trio. Thank you, globalization.

Some of my friends had received a mass email from a few expats who were advertising this party far and wide to the Phnom Penh expat community. These guys had rented out a mansion in the city and hired a DJ. So we head over there and sure enough it's a massive mansion with expats all over the place and a DJ with a stage/lights/etc. spinning. There was a pool and massive containers of beer. There was also live music; a few Khmer hip hop groups got up and performed, as well as a Khmer pop singer. So we all drank too much and then ended up back at the Heart of Darkness for the end of the night.

It was extremely awesome to be at an expat mansion party in the middle of Asia, drinking Angkor beer and watching Cambodian rappers perform. It really is one of those stories that I get to tell for the rest of my life. Still, it kind of blows the whole "development internship" out of the water for me. Part of me feels like I should be in some backwoods village swatting mosquitoes and inoculating babies or something. But, realistically, experiences like this party may be more representative of the development community writ large than those of us who stay in the middle of nowhere living in huts.

The Washington Post recently ran this article about the swank aid environment in Liberia. I have mixed opinions about the juxtaposition of Western luxury and poverty. On the one hand I think any money that comes into a developing country, even if it's to allow expats to buy sushi and U.S. beers, is good for the economy. And I can certainly empathize with having comforts from home, and I think these things in many ways can help us to adjust to foreign settings and relieve stress so that we're better able to do our job and make a difference in people's lives. But I think there's a line, and it's often the bottom line of development. That's why you're here, and everything you do should answer to it. You aren't here for affordable housing, cheap maids, or to introduce the mojito to Djibouti. You're here to reduce poverty, and those luxuries should be peripheral. Once an expat community becomes a social class within the country's society, you've stepped over the line. I imagine that's easy to do, and I also imagine it's one of the big reasons towns like Monrovia and Phnom Penh can be so saturated with NGOs and still fail to make significant strides in development.

I'm not sure where that puts me. I came over here because Cambodia has serious development needs, and I want to be a part of the solution. Still, I have cable and air conditioning. I work in an office with an internet connection, and Saturday night I drank and danced at a mansion with a bunch of white people, all the while aware that in other parts of the country there are people who can't even afford to educate their children or provide them clean water. The sad truth is you can always do more, but everyone has a limit. I guess the best thing to do is to push yourself to your personal limit, then do everything you can to make sure that your actions on that edge are true to your mission. I'm still searching for my edge, but I'm happy to see it probably reaches further than a Cambodian mansion party. Still, I have to get some Cambodian rap before I leave Asia.

"I'll take the Yunnus Burger with cheese, please"

Last night I went to a restaurant near the National Museum called Friends. It's not just a restaurant, it's an NGO. The purpose of Friends is to take children off the streets of Cambodia and train them in the food service industry so they have a marketable skill with which to make a living. All of the staff are either teachers or students in this program; apparently many of the former students have gone on to found new restaurants.

This restaurant was fantastic. It was all tapas (small dishes that are shared by everyone at the table, for those of you not inundated with Spanish restaurants in DC), and had all different types of food. As an added bonus, they ensure that their ice and vegetables are bacteria free. Anywhere else I'd be avoiding ice and any vegetables that aren't cooked or peeled, but here I got to just pig out on all the stuff I've been missing at other places. Any of my friends who are familiar with my hummus obsession won't be surprised to hear I ate the entire hummus plate I ordered without sharing. It was selfish, but I've missed hummus something fierce.

By Cambodian standards this place was definitely expensive. But I should point out that expensive meant that after a massive incredible meal and a pretty elaborate drink, it cost me $14 (including a tip). But the great thing is, of course, that not only are you paying more for high quality food you can't/shouldn't get elsewhere, but you are funding an extremely good cause. I love the concept of mixing gluttony with altruism. It seems like a business model that has "America" written all over it. I'm not sure if it would be possible to replicate something like this in the U.S. in a sustainable way, but there certainly are a lot of enterprises over here that operate along the social business model that I'm such a fan of. It's probably more a result of Phnom Penh being saturated with NGOs, but it's still great to see. Places like Friends are out there telling people what I want to spend a career telling them; that it's entirely possible to build businesses and markets in a way that earns a healthy profit AND helps the poor.

And, apparently, makes a delicious mango and nectar margarita. My heart was as full as my stomach.

http://www.streetfriends.org/

maybe it's the third world, maybe it's his first time around

One thing I love about my new apartment is that it has a balcony; this affords a great view of both Sothearos Boulevard as well as the Phnom Penh skyline, but what I really like about it is that it gives me a chance to watch the city while being removed from it at the same time. It's true that the most accurate impressions of Phnom Penh come as you're fighting your way through the streets on foot or careening around corners on a tuk tuk, but as a white Westerner, even in a town as Western-friendly as Phnom Penh, I still feel like an anomaly. Sitting four floors up and watching the city move along somehow makes me feel like I can spectate what it's really like without interfering.

Sitting up there and watching the city also makes me more introspective; I remember saying in an earlier post that I was going to wait until I had adjusted and gotten more comfortable before I related my impressions of Phnom Penh. I'm both adjusted and comfortable (relatively speaking), but I'm still at a loss for a description of this country that would come off as anything but rambling and counterintuitive.

Before I left, my friend Alicia tried to prepare me for all the contradictions and inconsistencies that somehow seem to coexist, even to thrive, at the same time in Phnom Penh. She was completely right; I'm in a town where English is often spoken poorly if at all, but dollar bills come out of the ATM machines. Even then, you get your change in Cambodian riel; if you handed someone a quarter they'd hand it right back to you. This is a country that has just recovered from a civil war and a genocide that eradicated one third of the population, yet the people show a kindness that extends far beyond basic pleasantries or the requisite good manners of a customer service employee. A city where the most amazing Thai food is only a couple of dollars, but people are still so poor that barefoot children will beg for money when you leave a restaurant or supermarket. I consider myself decent at describing things in writing, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to put this city into words that do it justice.

The other day I had just finished signing the lease with my roommate and two people that spoke little to no English, and I was kind of flustered. I told Pete that I was starting to get sick of this language barrier, to which Pete replied "Eh, it is what it is." I found that phrase popping back in my head as I stood on the balcony; as of now it's the best description of Phnom Penh I can muster, and I'll be genuinely surprised if I'll find a better one between now and August. This city mixes a million contradictions together and makes it work, all the while not even acknowledging how crazy or impossible it appears to someone the likes of me.

As I was staring down at the city I heard a crashing sound, and looked over to see a Cambodian biker who, for reasons that had nothing to do with traffic, had fallen off his moto as he was driving down the street. The bike went skidding down the road, sending sparks flying everywhere, and the the driver went rolling onto the pavement. He got up in the non-chalant way a football player might after a tackle, and walked over to his bike. He got back on it and rode off as if nothing had happened, leaving a piece of his bike in the middle of the street. About 15 seconds later a couple guys on another moto drove by, looped around, and picked up the bike piece as if they had been sent by some third party and expected a random piece of moto to be sitting in the street. They drove off and casually as the guy who crashed, and the city moved on as if nothing abnormal had occurred. And I suppose nothing had by Cambodian standards; only the white guy on the balcony four floors up, standing there with his jaw wide open, was any evidence that something had just happened that could be construed as out of the ordinary. I guess it is what it is.

Get out of my dreams, get into my tuk tuk

Monsoon season my ass, it's barely rained since I got here. And it's hot, miserably hot. I hear all these stories about it raining so much that the streets flood and you practically have to swim home, but aside from some random freak showers there hasn't been much. And I do mean freak showers, yesterday it rained for a good 20 minutes in broad daylight. It was sunny, bright, and hot, and rain was pouring down. Considering how relatively windless this town is, I don't really get where the rain was coming from.

The reason I had to deal with the heat so much more than usual yesterday was that I finally moved into an apartment. I got a place with Pete, the aforementioned boyfriend of my classmate Emily. It's a pretty sweet place; not too far from where we were before and still located in the area known as "NGO-ville". We're above a Korean barbecue that I'm stoked to try out, and very close to a very cheap and very tasty Thai restaurant. I must say doing a leased contract signing was less than fun with the language barrier, even with Pete being a law student. We also had to pay the first month's rent and security deposit in cash, which is of course an amount of money that we don't usually have on us. I'm sure my bank is wondering if my identity has been stolen since it's probably not normal to see over $400 withdrawn from an ATM at a convenience store in the middle of Phnom Penh. Still, the apartment is nice. My coworker wasn't lying about how hooked up this town is with cable; we get the freaking Disney Channel for crying out loud. Any town where I can sit and watch MythBusters without using a satellite that I power by pedaling a bike isn't entirely Third World in my book.

I also visited a couple places that were on my list; the Foreign Correspondents Club and the Heart of Darkness (best bar name ever). The FCC is the expat hangout for Phnom Penh; it's on the riverfront and is very comfortable/casual and just a cool looking place to grab a drink (which, unfortunately, is a bit expensive for PP). From there my friends and I went to Heart of Darkness, which is the most notorious bar in Phnom Penh. It supposedly was, or is, frequented by Cambodian mafia, and a number of shootings have occured in its past. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I was even less sure when they patted us down just to get through the door. It turned out to be ridiculous; it the nicest bar I've been to in Cambodia. Nice decor, indoor with lots of air conditioning, plus a dancefloor and plenty of tables. I'm pretty tuned in to avoiding dangerous situations, and this wasn't one at all. Besides, one guy getting shot years ago isn't exactly sketchy. Those are better odds than DC.

Another hallmark moment came for me on Saturday night when I broke my record for seeing the most people on a moto-bike (basically a small motorcycle) so far. Five people. Five freaking people. Three adults, an infant and a baby. Sure, what the hell, pile 'em on! It's amazing what people will transport with these little bikes; they think nothing of hanging on to 15 feet of piping and just scooting off down the road.

OK, I'm rambling now so I'll stop. Me and some of my UN friends are planning a trip to Kampot this weekend; which is supposed to be a quiet little beach town with national parks and old French buildings. There are these bungalows up in the mountains a few minutes walk from the beach that we can get for cheap, so we're organizing a quick weekend out there. You can check it out at:
http://veranda-resort.com/Index.html

By the way, Happy Memorial Day everyone. Turns out that's not a Cambodian holiday (who would have thought), so I get to work. Have a beer for me and remind an immigrant that These Colors Don't Run.

Say what?

Steven has suggested I blog about the language barrier in Cambodia. It sounds like a great idea, and not only because I have absolutely no work to do today. My week here so far has shown me the difference between speaking in English and saying English words. It seems like an unimportant differentiation, and it often is when all you're doing is ordering a meal or saying hello. But whenever any sort of basic comprehension is needed, or anytime you're forced to communicate using less-than-common English words, you're most likely screwed. For example, I needed to find a plug converter so I could use my three-pronged plug in the two-pronged wall sockets that plague this country. I went to a couple stores and had no luck conveying what I meant; I guess "prong" gets spoken less than "dollar" over here. Once I explained what I was looking for to an employee at my hotel (often the best English speakers around) they helped direct me to a computer shop that was able to understand what I was looking for. Also, I had to buy a cell phone and I went to a Nokia store. Let's just say "SIM card", "add minutes", and other phone speak don't translate well. I had no idea what they were trying to tell me; thankfully Pete was with me and was better able to comprehend them.

People at work can speak English to varying degrees. Our IT guy, who had to learn a good bit of English to get his computer science degree, is one of the most fluent people I've met here. Even then, when I asked for bottled water at lunch the other day he apparently asked the waiter to bring me a pot of tea.

I think that this town's English is well-equipped for the average tourist to get by fine with little to no trouble. The problem is I'm not a tourist, I'm an expat NGO worker, so I find myself running into the language barrier from time to time. But it's not a huge barrier, it's just tall enough for me to trip over from time to time. And to be fair the only words I've learned in Cambodian are "hello", "yes", "no", "thank you", and "instant noodle", and all that qualifies me to do is be a tourist or run around like a raving lunatic screaming "Hello instant noodle! Thank you!". The next test will be apartment hunting this weekened with Pete. Maybe I should learn to say "rat"in Cambodian...

My new national anthem:

"North American Scum" by LCD Soundsystem

Oh, I don't know
I don't know, oh, where to begin.
We are North Americans.

And for those of you,
Who still think we're from England. We're not, no.

We've been on planes, been on trains
Till we think we might die,
Far from North America.

Where the buildings are old
And you might have lots of mimes.

I hate that feeling,
When you're looking at me that way,
Cause we're North Americans.

But if we're acting all shy,
It will make it okay, makes it go away.

Oh, I don't know,
I don't know, oh, where to begin
When we're North American.
But in the end, make all the same mistakes again.
Come on North America.

We are North America scum.
We're from North America.

And all the kids, all the kids they want to make a scene
Here in North America
Well now your kids get to read it your magazines
We don't have those.

So where's the love, where's the love, where's the love, where's the love,
Where's the love, tonight?
But there's no love, man,
There's no love and the kids are uptight.

So throw a party,
till the cops come in and bust it up.
Let's go, North America.

Oh, are you planning it?
I didn't mean to interrupt,
Sorry.

I did it once, and my parents got pretty upset.
Freaked out, in North America.
But then I said, "The more I do it the better it gets."
Let's rock, North America.

We are North American scum.
We're from North America.
We are North American scum.
We're from North America.

New York's the greatest,
If you get someone to pay the rent.
Wahoo, North America.
And it's the furthest you can live from the government.

Some proud American Christians might disagree
Here in North America.
But New York's the only place we're keeping them off the streets, boohoo

Now we can't have parties
Like in Spain where they go all night.
Shut down in North America.
Or like Berlin,
Where they go another night, alright.

You see, I love this place that I have grown to know,
Alright, North America.
And yeah, I know you wouldn't touch us with a ten-foot-pole
Cause we're North Americans.

We are North American scum.
We're North Americans.
We are North American scum.
We're North American.

Take me back to the states, man.
North American scum.
Where can we be, one of a billion.
North American.
Where the dj gigs aren't as fun.
Here in North American scum.
Don't blame the Canadians.
Let's go, North America

Start of the internship

So I've officially started my internship. For those of you I haven't told about it I'm working with the Cambodian office of International Development Enterprises, an NGO that helps provide productivity improvements and enhanced market access to rural farmers to help lift them out of poverty. IDE's two big focuses are water potability and irrigation, which it approaches through market-driven solutions (hence my interest as a student of private-sector led development). You can check them out at http://www.ide-cambodia.org/.

The office is a bit of a haul from the central part of town where I'm staying. This would be less of an annoyance if it weren't for the fact that streets are poorly marked (if at all), taxi drivers don't know maps, and you basically have to guide them by your own impression of where you are (easier said than done on day 5 in a country). Still, I'm learning. The office is in a modified colonial house/villa, which is pretty awesome. Everyone is really nice; they bring up coffee and tea several times a day and I have good internet access as well as my friend/fellow intern Chris to share a room with.

Things are starting off slow; our director Mike is out of the country for the week and left me perhaps a day's worth of reading to cover my first four days here. I'm hoping to get tasked with something more substantive when he gets back in the office; for now I'm just getting settled and taking my time on the readings.

The more exciting news is that I think I've finally beat this jetlag. I passed out at 8pm, woke up at 2:30am for a little over half an hour, then fell back asleep until the morning. Hopefully tonight will bring normality to my body clock, and I'll be sleeping through the alarm like I used to in DC. At this point, being grumpy and groggy in the morning may actually make me homesick.

I'm beginning to apartment hunt this week/weekend, so hopefully I'll be moved into some more permanent digs soon. I'm trying to stay near the central part of town, rather than get a place close to work that would be near absolutely nothing. As a DC resident I can stomach a bit of a commute, and it will be worth it to be near all the bars/restaurants/etc.

That's all for now; everyone feel free to let me know what's going on in your lives...

Bring Me Two of Every Animal:

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/CBXX0001?from=36hr_topnav_business

Laika

For those of you back home, you should know that I'm not just there with you in spirit, apparently my body clock is with you as well. I managed to fall asleep and wake up at a normal time my first night, but after being up for a few hours I passed out for most of the day. I've been up all night watching TV (which is surpisingly good and American) and reading. I got maybe an hour of sleep; I feel fine now (9AM my time) but expect I will pass out unexpectadly at any moment.

Things here are going well. Yesterday took a walk around town, but not too far since I don't yet know the town well and it would be easy to get lost. I walked up the street to Lucky Supermarket, a Western style grocery store that has just about anything I would need or could get back home. I then took my first moto ride up the street to my hotel, filled up on plantains and peanut butter from Lucky, and promptly went unconcious.

Later on I met up with Chris; a fellow IDE intern and all around awesome guy, and Pete who is the boyfriend of my classmate Emily (and, oddly enough, at a hotel right across the street from me). We grabbed some Khmer food and Cambodian beer which, as I've been told, was tasty and cheap.

So far everything is fine. I start the internship on Tuesday, and my two biggest concerns are finding a place to live and a power converter so I can use my laptop without fear of frying it (if any of you techies out there can assure me a HP laptop can take 240 volts the way Apple laptops can, let me know). I'm headed with Pete out to a couple markets in a little while, hopefully to see more of the city and solve at least one of those "problems".

It's weird to be in a place so foreign, so clearly developing, but at the same time with so many amenities. I have trouble knowing how to react, and I'm curious to see how I continue to take things as I get more comfortable here. I guess we'll see...

Touchdown...

I've been in Phnom Penh for probably a little over an hour. I'm set up in my hotel room (aka my home for the next 2 weeks at least) and I've got an internet connection for as long as my battery lasts (I still need to purchase an adapter for these crazy Cambodian plugs). The flight went quite well considering how long it took, and everything has been relatively uneventful. It's been a long day and I'm at that point where jetlag runs right into sensory overload and I wouldn't want to make any comments yet about my impressions of the city. I'm just going to leave it at that and put in some posts after I've been able to get some rest and meet up with a couple of friends to see the city.

Back when I did my semester in London I spent a weekend by myself in Nice, France. I remember thinking how crazy it felt that I didn't know a single other person in the entire country. It kind of makes me laugh considering the current situation, just like it will make me laugh in a few weeks when I think about how I experienced "culture shock" in London (oooohhhh, she said 'cheers' instead of 'thanks', brave new world!). Anyway, more to come as I have something more coherent to say.

I'll leave you with this last comment. My hotel room has cable and HBO; when I came in Gigli was on (or a clip of it), and promptly after that the Wayans' Bros. abomination "Little Man" came on. Don't ever think Bush/Iraq is the only reason the rest of the world has the opinion of us they do. That would certainly make for an interesting masters thesis: the relationship between horrendous movies and international conflict resolution...

Four days and counting...

I wouldn't be a stereotypical "world traveler" if I didn't create a blog to relay stories of my summer in Cambodia. So here you go; I'll try to keep this updated regularly so everyone knows shenanigans what I get myself into this summer. Hmmm, I wonder if there's a word in Khmer for shenanigans.....