Economic stimulus package

I continued my personal program to stimulate the Cambodian economy this afternoon with some hard core shopping.  Item one was a brand new Honda Dream motorcycle - a 125cc present for Da - relatively inexpensive I thought at US$1570. Logically justified as she is currently spending $3 a day on moto taxi rides so it will pay for itself in only what 524 days - LOL.  Then I hit the DVD store - complete sets of all series of Seinfeld, South Park, Weeds, Curb Your Enthusiasm along with some old BBC shows and 40 assorted movies on BluRay - all for US$60.  I am sure more DVDs will follow.  That takes care of all those hours of "job searching" when I get back to Seattle.

Being eaten

Here are a couple of shots of my feet being eaten by fish - as mentioned previously I have never been tickled this much...

 

 

Catchup

We all survived the five day trip to Siem Reap and Poipet - we were all in turns suffering from a nasty chest cold - there was vast consumption of tissues between the 5 of us. Thge last night in Poipet we went to the casino on the Thai borderr - there are multiple casinos in a strip that would look right at home in Vegas (off the Strip) - I rapidly lost $50 playing Blackjack - Da then took over using 3000 Thai Baht that I had - the baht being the currency of choice on the border - she of course went on a winning albeit with odds advice from me - she ended up winning $100 - of course my initial stake didnt get returned so she was flush with cash - which translated into jewellry the next day. Having seen the bus go flying past our hotel at 8am we then watched as it reversed against traffic for a quarter mile to pick us up - good service. Three days of chilling followed - we were all tired from a 5 day road trip. Much shopping was involved - not by me of course - Beth and her friend jetted off to LA this morning - thence to SEA. Having lugged a 12 pack of Coke from the Thai border (liter bottles) I insisted we set up a bling taste test as I refused to believe that Thai Coke was/is sufficiently superior to Khmer Coke to justify what seems to be a family obligation whenever anyone visits the border regions - four out of four of us in a blind test verified that the Thai bottle was indeed vastly superior - never let anyone tell you Coke is the same the world over. Celebrated Thanksgiving the traditional way (well at least I would like it to be traditional) with a 4 cheese pizza made with the special herbal ingredient - Very Happy Thanksgiving. I need to find some more excuses to celebrate before I leave here.

One incident I keep on forgetting to document is the great monkey caper.  Unfortunately I was not personally a witness to this but I have video.  Beth, her friend and Da went for a walk to Wat Phnom - one of PP's tourist attractions - there is something of which you ned to be aware when visiting - the thieving monkeys.  Theories vary on why thyey are such kleptos - faster than a bullet - one ran at da - grabbed the plastic bag she was carying - it didnt contain food - only her mobile phone and other women's stuff - the monkey went up a tree pursued by a screaming Da and other crowds of people - the monkey started to unpack the bag looking for food - dropping things as he went - untill all he had was the phone in his mouth - someone tried calling the phone in the hope that the obnoxious musical ringtone would scare it - it would certainly have worked on me - no luck - after about 15 minutes he finally gave up chewing on it and gravity prevailed = she now had a toothmarked phone - now to me thats a story and a trophy but to her it was tragedy - her new phone is now marred - guess we are buying a new screen ($30).

Things now back to some semblance of normality for the next two and a half weeks until I leave here for UK - my god the time has gone so quickly.

Poipet not such an armpit

Chilling in Poipet on the Thai border - this was a dusty shithole back in 2005 when I passed through but seems to have cleaned up. Da grew up here - we are staying at a decent hotel ($12 per night) with A/C, elevator and hot water - what more could we want - basically across the street from where she used to live and where her sister and husband have a metal fabrication business. Da went into Thail;and to the market this morning but as it cost her fifty cents for a day pass whereas we would have had to pass through immigration and then pay $20 for another Cambodian visa we gave it a pass. The road from Siem Reap which was a potholed dirt track in 2005 and which took 8 hours to go 65 miles is now a perfect straight high class road which correspondingly has a nice high speed to it. Wes stopped off at another of her sisters in Sisophon for lunch and visited the family shrine to their parents and the wat where they were cremated - poignant even to a cynical bastard like me.

Tomorrow an 8 hour bus ride ($6) back to Phnom Penh. Maybe then i can get pictures and/or video uploaded.

Temple Legs.

My god my thighs are killing me after 2 days of climbing temple steps - steps about 2 feet tall and 3 inches deep going up 50 feet at impossible angles. I am so happy I came to Cambodia back in 2005 and saw Angkor before it became so popular. While it remains one of my favorite places in the world it has been overrun by mass tourism - back in 2005 it was busy but only a tenth of what it is now - the mass explosion of tourism from Korea and China has overewhelmed it - many of the places I was able to visit are now closed off for fear of damage by so many people - I feel very fortunate to have experienced it when I did - dont get me wrong - I would still highly recommend a visit - it is truly breathtaking. This morning we took a boat trip out to the floating village on the Tonle Sap lake - amazing how people live. Pictures and video to folow when I get the time to organze things. Tomorrow we are off to Sisophon and to Poipet on the Thai border to visit two of Da's sisters and family. Closing note - yesterday I saw a motorcycle carying two fully grown live pigs = yes live - they were trussed and on their backs across the moto behind the rider squealing loudly - obviously they dont appreciate the Cambodian traffic either - but I suspect their disquiet was to be short lived...

Angkor What?

Two great days in Siem Reap visiting the temples of the Angkor complex and the floating village of Tonle Sap. After the first temple day I was persuaded to have a fish foot massage - imersing ones feet in a tank of water containing hundreds of tiny toothless fish which consume dead skin cells with a scking action - there were 6 people with their feet in the tank and 90% of the fish ade immediately for my feet - I guess all those years of not wering shoes and refusing to even consider such a thing as a pedicure have made my feet a plentiful fod source for these little blighters - I wasnt really too embarrassed by that fact but me reaction to the "massage" was almost certainly embarrassing - I have never been so tickled in my life and that is the one area of my body that is ticklish - thank god I had am empty bladder - I seriously thought I was going to either wet myself or have a heart attack right there. Of course it was all captured on pictures and vdeo which I promise to share some day. I highly reccommend it if you ever get the chance - my feet felt fabulous afterwards

Ahhh Beach Days in November

Returned today from 2 great days in Sihanoukville on the Cambodian coast - warm sunny perfect water slight waves fresh steamed crab and barbequed squid - who could want for better? My daughter made quite a spectacle of herself on the beach - we were for the most part on Khmer dominated beaches rather than with the Euro-trash and backpacker hippies - white girls in bikinis are few and far between. Hotel was 10 meters from the sand - 2 month old hotel - very nice - sea view from the room - $18 per night - only drawback was the late night music from the beach discos - went on until sunrise - next time maybe we will sacrifice the beach view and go with the landward side. Sent my passport off today to get the visa extended for an additional month - was very tempting when the guy asked how long of an extension I wanted - up to 6 months is available - but I did promise my Mom I would be there for Christmas. WE will head up to Siem Reap on Thursday for 3 nights visiting the Angkor Wat temple complex and then over to the west of Cambodia to the Thai border to visit Da's sister and brother-in-law. Sitting at a riverfront cafe right now - unfortunately Beth and her friend have gone for a massage so they are missing the largest elephant I have ever been near who is eating all of the stale bead and leftover fruit from the restaurant - about 6 feet from me.

Steamy...

We had a great view of the King the other day - it was the last day of the anual Independence Celebration and we happened to be in the right place at the right time to see him leaving the palace - open window waving (Beth claimed he was waving specifically at her and based upon the reaction of Khmer men in general to pasty skinned American woman in the non tourist areas I tend to believe her). She had just finished posing with his personal motorcycle guards who were waiting outside the palace. We then got to see him again returning towards the palace - this time standing up in his Mercedes (through the sunroof - he isnt actually short enough to stand up in a car although it's close) waving to hundreds of school kids who had been assembled along the streets - I of course didnt have a camera on this occasion but daughter did. Contrast this public appearance with the Prime Minister who was inside darkened car with army guards everywhere. Both Beth and Jandy (her friend) were very popular with all of the soldiers and sailors who were leaving the parade/function - I guess military boys the world over are no different.

90 degress today with 52% humidity making it feel like 94 apparently. Headed down to Sihanoukville on the coast tomorrow - 4 hour bus ride - 2 nights and two days down there - I will be spending my time stuffing my face with fresh crab and shrimp and just bobing around like a soon to be beached whale - the "kids" (Da, my daughter and her friend) have ideas of discos and shopping in the evenings but I foresee air conditioned bar-stools.

Yesterday we went out to the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum - my second visit - it hasnt become any less humbling, upsetting and/or depressing - it certainly isnt a fun day but in my opinion a must-see if only to once again reinforce the ability of man to impose cruelty on man and also to reinforce my absolute hatred of Nixon and Kissinger and to highlight the irresponsibility of powerful countries where poor undeveloped countries are concerned. This was the first time Da had been to either location and naturally it affected her on a completely different level - her mother and father and her eldest brother had been part of the forced depopulation of Phnom Penh at the hands of the Khmer Rouge forced to march for many days out to a distant province where ther were then forced to work in the fields for one cup of rice per day - they were all separated for three years before reuniting in 1979 after the Vietnamese invasion - what, you dont know the history of this deplorable chapter of history? - welcome to the club - the "West" ignored the genocide completely - indeed the Khmer Rouge had the Cambodian seat at the UN (supported by the US as the KR opposed the Vietnamese) even as they killed 1.5million of their own countrymen - and they believed in complete slaughter of entire families - better not to leave a child alive to grow up to seek revenge - the slaughter tree at Choeng Ek shows where they simply beat the children to death while holding their feet and swinging their heads against the tree. I found Da in tears at least three times yesterday - not sure whether I should have taken her but she said she was glad she went. Sorry if this descended into a rant about distasteful subjects but I encourage people to read up on this period.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8350313.stm has a surprisingly topical story.

On a far more uplifting note I heard a great story on the BBC World Service today about a US Navy ship which docked in Vietnam today captained by a Vietnam born Captain - his father was CO of a South Vietnamese Naval base at the end of the war - on the fall of South Vietnam he escaped with his family on a fishing boat navigating it to the South China Sea where they were rescued by a USN ship - taken as refugees to US - now the son who was with him has returned home for the first time - pretty cool I thought.

Now we are three

My daughter and her friend from Seattle arrived yesterday for a few weeks visit - which meant giving up the air conditioned bedroom - ever the good host - fan sleeping I am not a fan - but will survive. Da has taken off with the two of them to go get their hair washed styled and cut - now it is pouring with rain - hopefully they dont get caught on the back of a moto in the rain. I had my first Cambodian haircut on Monday - is it really two months since I got my hair cut in Seattle? I was of course an object of great interest as I sat in the chair - of course first problem was that the guy could not reach my head - much slumping down and all was well - cut was all scissors and very carefully performed - my only complaint was that he really didnt take off enough and didnt thin it enough on the top - a constant problem wherever I et my hair cut - but for $2 for about 30 minutes work I could not complain - I was charged the premium "foreigner" rate - for a Khmer it would have been $1.

expenses

Discovered that my cable TV is $5 per month (with CNN, ESPN, HBO etc) and my garbage collection fee is $1 per month - no such thing as trash/garbage bins here - you simply bag the garbage and toss the bag on the heap at the end of the alley or in the street - the truck comes every night and picks it all up - a horde of speculators follows the truck splitting open the bags when they can and grabbing stuff that can be recycled for money (plastic aluminum etc). Power is expected to be about $30 per month and water about $5.

They aren't as superior as they may think they are.

I encountered a cockroach the size of a small puppy in the shower the other night - Da has a habit of doing the dishes in a bowl on the bathroom floor and draining the water through a sieve thingy to remove the food scraps which eventually go into the trash - eventually I say as they have been sitting a couple of days - hence the unwelcome visitors. So, of course, in order to protect that which I hold most valuable while I was showering, I attacked the three inch monster (no I mean the roach not THAT) with a toilet brush - I broke the handle of the brush - the roach merely smiled a roachy smile and chuckled as it moved a couple of feet away. I showered with one eye locked on my friend and then reported the whole incident to Da. She of course wss less than sympathetic - hell they eat the damned things - not in the shower and well fried. I told her I didnt want food left in the bathroom - I think my tone told her I was serious but I never expected any action (Barang Chgooat - Foreigner Crazy). Next day I found all signs of the food were gone and the sieve thingy was gone too and next to the bed I found an enormous aerosol which judging by the pictures on it was sufficient to kill an elephant. So last night I went to shower and sure enough there were 2 intruders presumably wondering where their snack had gone - I determined I was not going to be that snack - I know they don't eat humans but I have seen enough movies. I went to war with the aerosol - unbelievable - one squirt and they were on the floor on their backs doing a backstroke of Olympic standard. Two minutes later they were deader than a roach at a hippie rock festival. These bastards may be favorite to survive a nuclear apocalypse but if it comes to chemical warfare we have got it made. Postscript - this morning they were gone - I assume Da flushed them - I hope to god she didn't eat them (just kidding).

Stuff

Ended up in a Khmer disco club the other night some time around midnight after way to much beer - when will these Cambodian guys ever realize that getting into a beer chugging contest with someone with my body mass is never going to be a winning proposition for them - same resdult with the General in Beijing - I am always going to be the more sober one. No, of course I didn't dance - did you really need to ask? The surreal efect was completed by the huge video screen above the dance floor showing 1970's Benny Hill Show sketches - whoever thought that was a good idea? About 2am we were fishing for cooked noodles - the noodle cart comes along the street below - customers yell - lower cash on the end of a length of rope - a delicious bag of noodle soup comes back on the end of your rope about 2 minutes later - now that is service. I discovered that the Happy Pizza restaurant delivers - now THAT I must check out - not determined yet whether Da approves of pizza with "extra happy" but as she has never tried pizza maybe she will just assume that all pizza comes with that magic oregano replacement herb. The other day Da asked me whether they have Coca Cola in America - I managed to suppress my laughter - it is funny the Khmer are fiercely loyal in their choices of food and drink - they typically do not stray from what they consider their own country's products - for all I know she really thinks that Coke is a Khmer thing. I tried to offer her a piece of bread with peanut butter the other day - you would have thought I had offered her poison - she eats peanuts just fine but peanut butter is way too foreign. This existence is really fabulous - not having a schedule for anything - rehearsal for eventual retirement - I am as relaxed as an overcooked noodle - speaking of noodles had a fabulous fried noodle with egg pork and ham for lunch - 4 people with freshly squeezed sugar-cane drink - $7 for the whole thing - gotta love it here. Wow is it really Friday - English football tomorrow and Da at work to give me the peace and quiet to watch it - next week my daughter and her friend arrive for a stay just lessd than a month - already planning trips to the coast and to the Angkor temples. I cannot imagine how hard it will be to eventually go back to the real world and all that it "offers" - come to think of it this is the real world with real people with real problems and a real way of dealing with them.

Giggling Khmers

Da's neice and her best friend in some kind of hysterics probably a joke at my cost.

Tropical Storm Mirinae - Phnom Penh

The remnants of tropical storm Mirinae approaching Phnom Penh Tuesday afternoon - fortunately greatly weakened since it crossed Vietnam where it killed 50 in flash floods. An hour later while we were watching the King arrive at the end of the boat race festival we were hit with wind and rain unlike anything I have felt in a long time - we were drenched to the bone - no point sheltering we couldnt get any wetter so we walked home the kids enjoying showering under the rooftop downspouts - for obvious reasons no video is available. The only victim was Da's brand new mobile phone which managed to get wet. Opinions differ on how this occurred - her account is that I didnt hold the plastic bag closed tightly enough - my version is that it was already wet before she got it out of her pocket and into the bag - it is obvious which account wins. She was distraught all night - I was the hero this time by assuring her that removing the battery - leaving it in front of the airconditioner and then an hour in the sun and all would be well - it now works perfectly. One has to understand - here having the latest coolest phone is vital for status among your peers - I am using a 10 year old Motorola that I saved for just this purpose - my status is nil and I am the butt of many jokes - but of course I am accustomed to that.

Bon Om Touk Day 3

A short video of the longboat racing

Blog weirdness

The software seems to be formatting pictures weirdly - cropping the edges - the pictures show more than I am seeing.

Bonn Om Touk - Khmer Water Festival

Spent Sunday afternoon wandering the crowds and watching some of the awesome race boats hurtling down the Tonle Sap.  There were an immense number of people - estimates are that the ciy population increases by 2 million for the weekend - seems to be the traditional time for people from the provinces to come visit their relatives in the big city - we spent the evening drinking and eating with Da's relatives who had made the 8 hour car ride from Poipet on the Thai border - as usual wonderful friendly generous people.  These are just a few of the many pictures I took - today we are going back with her relatives and I plan on getting some video.  The event lasts 3 days - I guess the finals are tomorrow.  It is kind of humorous wandering around the crowd - obviously people living in PP and the various tourist cities around the country are accustomed to seeing tall white Barang but the groups of people from remote farm villages stop and stare in amazement.  The visitors are all dressed up in their best clothes and seem to be having a great time - I suspect among the teen/20s this is when a considerable number of potential matches are made however this being Cambodia no such activity would be admitted to. It is refreshing to have so much of the city closed off to traffic and to be able to walk the riverfront safe from maniacal motos - one has still to be wary of the VIP cars which hurtle unabated through pedestrian crowds believing that a blaring horn will part the seas - this being Cambodia there continues to be a separate set of rules for the privileged class.