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.