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.