Sunny Scenicville

Cambodia is a complete mindf*ck. Everything, from how poor the people are, to the beautiful countryside, to the crazy barangs (foreigners) you meet, (seriously, why and how do people find themselves in Cambodia, of all places? The stories are usually fairly interesting), to the extremely f*cked up history of the country, to my dad and his 'girlfriend' and I sharing a hotel here in Scenicville (that's how Shianoukville is pronounced)...collective shudder. 'He really loves you' My told me, in reference to my dad. What would she know, anyways? He seems a little lonely, although he's got a pretty sweet life out here in Cambodia, as far as fixed-income lifes can be. He does seem to want me to come live here, but a 2-bedroom apartment sounds a bit...crazy. I like Cambodia, and for as hard as it would be for a single barang lady to live here (as 2 English-speaking dudes at the Freebird were discussing the other night), I could totally rock it. I think. It's the most different place I've ever been in my traveling, and the people are so nice, and the countryside is so beautiful, and my dad's here (which I'm trying to convince myself is a point in it's favor...support network?), and it would be an adventure, and a challenge. It's already been very challenging, and I've been numb most of the time as a self-defence mechanism, but most of that was related to my dad and his dirty ol' lifestyle (but to be fair, he is a dirty ol' man, so it's not like it's anything out of character or unexpected or anything).

We got a flyer last night for a bar on the beach with sweet drink deals and a dancefloor (we didn't check it out...maybe tonight?), and on the back it said they're looking to hire Western staff...hey hey! And today I met a German guy and a French girl who are living the sweet life of Emma: divemastering it up in amazingly beautiful, tropical locales. The bitches. Note to self: get divemaster certification. First get SCUBA certified. But the point is, it's possible. It's possible to live the dream and lead a most amazing and adventurous life, out and about in the world.

So the body of water I was floating in earlier today is the Gulf of Thailand. Yesterday we took a bus from Phnom Penh to Shianoukville, a beach town in the SW of the country. I ate some BBQ squid today and it was good! I've been eating lots of good weird fruit ('greens' which are oranges but completely lime green on the outside, and my favorite so far has got to be the dragonfruit, pink on the outside and white with black spots on the inside), but trying to stay away from the street food (at one bus stop they had trays of cooked tarantulas, and buckets of live ones...no thanks). We've eaten a lot of Mexican food, but whatevs, it's good! Khmer food is pretty good...lots of rice, veggies, meat, coconut...once my meal even came in a coconut! Last night I drank beer, (sometimes as cheap as 25 cents!), a banana daquiri, a mango daquiri, a shot of tequila, a margarita...the good life. I got a ride on the back of a Khmai's scooter to a sweet club where they actually played good dance music (even if they weren't actually dancing to it as they should), but shortly after we arrived a live band started playing Cambodian music. Ugh. It's not that good. In fact, it's awful. 5 songs. 5 songs later, just as I was getting ready to dance some more, the dude had to take me home because he had had a total of TWO Heinekens and was drunk. Sigh, little Asians...

...And that isn't even the HALF of it!...

The day after I fly into Portland, I hit the road to California, Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Florida, and the places inbetween for what promises to be a truly awesome roadtrip with my brother and 2 of his good friends. Actually, I couldn't have planned a better way to come back to the US after a year abroad, the last few weeks of which were in Cambodia. Might as well hit the ground running into the Heartland...if I've learned anything it's that I am capable of anything. Bring. It. ON!

Water buffalo, landmines, massages-the highlights!

OMG! The temples have been great (the last 2 days I've been jetting around on the back of Long Seng's motorbike)...I can't believe how old and amazing they are. So intricate, so advanced, and some of them were made in the 900s! Riding through the rice paddied countryside is an amazing experience...I can TOTALLY see why my dad has been coming here to motorcycle around for the past 10 or so years. It's hot, beautiful, with cheap food, friendly people, and water buffalo! At one point yesterday, driving back from one of the temples, some water buffalo ran full speed across the road! Cars and motorbikes (including us) had to screech to a halt and I was just thankful we weren't a few seconds ahead and in their way! I have no idea if they were running to or from something...crazy!

Yesterday was September 11th. I noticed this fact while I was at a landmine museum. I got to see all sorts of landmines and anti-personnel devices. There are still millions out there, and thousands of people are maimed and killed every year. I learned that the US hasn't signed the landmine treaty (sing me a new song! The Kyoto Protocols, the Equal Rights Amendment...we suck at being cool), because we want to reserve the right to use these effective tools at the DMZ (de-militarized zone) between N. and S. Korea. We are ridiculous. So on a day when I should have been (and was) thinking about a terrible atrocity inflicted on the US, I was learning about the horrible things we have a hand in.

I also got to witness some good ol' Cambodian corruption: the police pulled us over and I just stood there by the bike while I watched Long Seng slip a few dollars into the guy's hand. 'What was that all about?' I hadn't noticed before, but his motorbike didn't have lights like it was supposed to. Cool.

After I got back to Siem Reap yesterday, I found a massage parlor I had read about in Lonely Planet (I am such a yuppy). Seeing Hands trains blind people to be masseurs and masseuses. I got a great massage (I was 75% asleep throughout), and got to feel good about helping out blind people. I felt like Mira Sorvino in At First Sight with Val Kilmer, except I'm not about to fall in love with my blind Cambodian masseur! I only dealt with blind people there, and it was funny...it was $5 and I gave her a $10 and asked for change...I could have given her a $1 bill and told her it was a tenner, but I'm not so evil as to rip off blind people! C'mon!

Last night I went out drinking and dancing with my dad. We went to Pub Street, and the drinks must have been watered down, because I had 2 margaritas with dinner, a tequila sunrise, an 'Oh my Buddha!', 2 Long Island Iced Teas, and at least 3-5 beers after that. We went to a Mexican place for dinner, hopped over to a Khmer place for 2 drinks (happy hour special), back to Temple Bar for drinking and dancing (where we met some cool Americans I'm hoping to see again in a few days in Phnom Penh...she's doing the Peace Corps in Thailand, and her boyfriend is visiting her...they thankfully rescued me when they were the only white non-prostitutes dancing and my dad was getting talked up by...well, you know). My dad left, they left, and then I crossed the street to Angkor What? which was playing some great music and was full of 'barong' ('white' people, or at least tourists), and a few Khmer drinking mixed drinks out of buckets (they shared!). Then I caught a touk-touk home at 1-something.

Tomorrow we're busing back to Phnom Penh. And the adventure continues!

Angkor What?

(Okay, totally stole that title from a restaurant somewhere here in Siem Reap...it's in the guidebooks. We have two, one of which was written by my dad's friend. I feel in the know)

Scrambling around really ancient ruins today, (pretty much the inspiration for Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, etc.), I was thinking of all the fantastic things I've seen this past year. Amazing mozaics and a whole Roman city's worth of ruins in Tunisia, cool carvings in English churches, the Bayeux tapestry, er, embroidery, the Stonehenge-all this really neat, really old stuff. It's amazing it's all survived, to some extent, at least enough to tell the tales of ancient awesomeness today. I love it! It's inspiring, amazing, and reminds me of how much of a history nerd I really am. But I wouldn't want to be an archaeologist for a living, no way! One of the temples I saw today had been taken apart piece by piece, to be put back together again perfectly. Unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge took over and the meticulously catalogued plans went missing! Now some Frenchies and Cambodians are putting all the stones back without a guide...in really intense moist jungle heat! Not for me. (BTW Erin, you'd love this place! It's like the Amazon, with temples! I feel like a half-assed Indiana Jones in my Cambodia hat!)

Monkeys, though. They're amazing! I did the tourist thing and bought bananas on the side of the road just to feed to the cute little things. One of them took one bite and dropped it on the ground. Well exCUSE me! As we were leaving, I saw the kids who were hawking bananas and cactus to the tourists scaring the monkeys back up into the trees before they had finished...so more tourists would come along and buy more bananas...oh well, the monkeys were fat and looked happy!

Angkor Wat was stellar, and Steve, I can totally see what you're talking about...I saw the part of the bas-reliefs with the army of monkeys, and I'd support anyone getting a tattoo of something so cool.

The plan is to go to some 'nice' joints for dinner and drinks tonight...and by 'nice' I don't mean fancy, I just mean anything that's not a strip club. Not that that's all we've been doing-last night we saw traditional dancing and had a sweet buffet; felt like I was in Hawaii! SE Asia: so far, so good!

Hanging with Hookers

Disassociation. When you can’t even believe what is going on around you, and to cope you pretend to remove yourself from your body as you go along for the ride. That was last night for me.

Ladies, let me ask you this: while getting all dolled up to go out drinking and dancing of an evening, have you ever had to think, “Maybe I shouldn’t whore it up too much, as I’ll be hanging with actual whores later on this evening?” Yep, my dad and I headed out on the wackiest ‘double date’ scenario I hope I ever go on in my life…his friend ‘My’ (the one who’s a few days younger than me) and her brother ‘Tongue’ (apparently spelled Tom, but pronounced like the body part) joined us to go to Martini, notorious Phnom Penh bar at which to pick up hookers, and where my dad and his friends have many times before, he overshared with me. If only that had been the only (and mildest!) overshare of the evening. Naturally, I had already drank 2 beers beforehand, and got another at the club. After downing it pretty quickly, I got a Singapore Sling for myself and offered to buy a drink for My. Although she demurred at first, she ended up ordering a B52 and drank it through a straw while it was on fire. Rock on. The dance floor was pretty quiet-the first thing out there was a cockroach, and then some hookers (still so weird to say seriously about women in this very real profession) checking themselves out in the mirror. We were in the disco part of the bar, and I had to periodically leave to breathe and convince myself that I could and would live through this strangest of experiences, under the auspices of buying more drinks, going to the bathroom, or rounding up a hair tie. As it turns out, hookers are really nice, showing me where to pee and even finding hair ties (I paid her 200 reil, or 1/22 of a dollar for the favor). Finally, the dance floor was hopping enough, (and I was drunk enough) to hit it. Hookers are also really fun to dance with, at least for the only ‘barong’ (white) woman in the building. They’re not the best dancers, but they’re friendly, and make me look better by comparison. One was almost as tall as me in my heels, and looked kind of like a man. A tranny! Later my dad told me that he was going to warn me to watch out for the ‘kitoy’ (tranny), but he didn’t get around to it. But I love trannies, and after all, cutting it up to the Black Eyed Peas with ‘whores’ and trannies isn’t really that different from my usual nights out!

And here’s where it gets really interesting (you thought you’d heard it all)! I’m the only one dancing at this point, (my dad’s old, My was hanging with him, and her brother was shy, could speak as much English as I can speak Khmer, and is half my size, so I forgive him for being intimidated), and I’m informed that the group is splitting up and peacing out shortly, My and her brother to the airport, and my dad and I to a traditional Cambodian club. A customer of My’s was flying in from Korea. What?!? This was a development I hadn’t expected. Am I a bad person if I was a tad bit relieved to find out that she’s just a hooker too, and not a potential future stepmom (which the Cambodian concierge of our hotel jokingly called her every time she and I walked by yesterday)? So my dad has no settling down plans after all (his vague reference to possible future children in an email turns out to have been an allusion to a condom breaking…classy…). A year or two ago, I thought I was being pretty forward-thinking and crazy when I went to a strip club with my brother and his friends. Little did I know I’d be hanging with hookers in Cambodia with my DAD! Good thing I didn’t have much of a relationship with him when I was younger…it’d be 100 times more awkward if this whole adventure was killing any admiration or respect I had had for him since childhood. Learning that the childhood hero who raised you was a womanizing dirty old bastard I’m sure would be quite traumatic. Learning that some dude I’ve barely known my whole life prefers Vietnamese to Khmer girls isn’t all that bad, relatively. I’m doing my best to laugh along with this (who but David Sedaris has as fucked up stories as these?), but even so, I think I’m going to get back to the states and have to curl up in a ball watching Disney movies in a semi-conscious stupor for a week.

As if learning that a ‘mamasan’ (or Madame) once offered my dad a 9 year old (which he was…gentleman enough? not to accept) wasn’t enough, we went to Touol Sleng today, the prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed thousands of men, women and children in the ‘70’s. Cheery and uplifting it wasn’t. It was shocking and numbing, but I don’t think it really hit me as much as it would have if I hadn’t already been so shocked and numbed by the events of the previous evening.

Tomorrow we’re headed to the fantastic Angkor Wat. I’m hoping and planning on seeing some incredible temples and riding an elephant or two, immersing myself in old old culture and not thinking about hookers or genocide for at least a few days (though we didn’t get to the Killing Fields today and will be hitting those up once we get back to Phnom Penh in 5 days). Breathe, relax, think about home in a few short days…Lord give me strength!

Cambodia!

I was sad to say good-bye to Normandy and the family where I was au pairing, but excited to see friends, Paris, and London! Damir (in Paris) is a great cook with an awesome apartment-it's in the 2nd arrondisement (a pretty snazzy address) and it came stocked with books, lots of classic French literature. I was drooling. Then I saw my godmother, my godfather, my cousins, one of their boyfriends (from Brazil) in Hampshire...one day we decided to hop over to Stonehenge, you know, as you do. Incredible. London was everything it always has been: gray, expensive, intelligent, classy. Simon, Ruth, Stacy and I flitted through museums, and met up with Lauren at the Ritz Club. Honest! A 12 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, a hop up to Phnom Penh, and here I am, in a completely different world! I'm eating and seeing and doing amazing things. Hopefully I will meet some cool people and get a read on the English teaching scene here. Gotta go, but a quick sampling of what I've done in just a day here: rode in some tuk tuks, ate some Mexican food, drank Thai and Cambodian beer, hung out with hookers at a bar, saw geckos, had a $7 hour-long Thai massage, slept! More later, but I'm off to the market and more adventures now!