Changi is my new favorite word

Here I am blogging at a public (free!) internet terminal in the Singapore Changi Airport Transit Hall. How very weirdly-cheery-final-scene-of-"The Beach." I might next take in a movie or exciting cable TV on one of the lounges' LCD projection screens or find some Asian kids to play XBox with, also advertised as free and open 24 hours in my handy airport guide. Well, the kids might not be free, given as it's after 11pm. My next flight is at 7am and I've already passed my first layover of the multi-airport tour of Asia in Bangkok.



Leaving Cambodia from Siem Reap this afternoon was a little weird, and not without some heartstring-tugging regret. Even though it has been a week since I left Phnom Penh and my "life" there it was still sad to bid my final "sua s'dey!" to the goofball riverside moppets and my final "aw kuhn" to the customs officials at the departure gate. I've gotten used to some things, and been privileged with some special experiences that I won't get in the States. I have more debriefing to do and a backlog of travel stories to post so never fear, dear HiC readers, I'll keep filling in the blanks from my mother's kitchen table in Atherton.

For more details on my Thailand trip, as well as the somewhat more drunken companion piece to "Liveblogging Koh Samet" please click "Paige in Doha" at the top of my links list.

I might come back later and sleepblog and/or loveblog once I've lorazepamed, depending on my serotonin levels.

Liveblogging Koh Samet

On an island in the Gulf of Thailand with Paige.

After some excellent shopping, sightseeing and non-sensual massage in Bangkok we are now doing the margaritas on the beach thing at Thai springbreak headquarters, Koh Samet.

Paige lives in Doha and we both are from Atherton, CA, went to boarding school and Yale, studied in Morocco, etc. So conversation is peppered with "yaani, mish muhtaram," "no no, I mean the Vietnamese place on University," and "dude, Josh Drimmer was the naked guy on a cell phone in the West Village!" We are also both experiencing an onslaught of culture after the drought of living in the Gulf and Phnom Penh, respectively. Paige thrills at seeing alcohol freely available and I rhapsodize over the joy of locally sourced products, functioning infrastructure, sharing leisure activities with locals, etc. It's a good time. Except for when we saw The Kingdom at the movie theatre. Peter Berg, I love you for Friday Night Lights and bringing more Kyle Chandler into my life but I don't need to see Jennifer Garner stifle her weepiness beneath the steely resolve of a government counter-terrorism agent. It's been done.

Right now the fire-throwing show on the beach has wrapped up and we're searching for another watering hole before trekking home to our bungalow up the jungly slope.

Also, I found a purple leather bag!

Debriefing

Top 5 Work Moments:

5. "Date night"my first week on the job in Sihanoukville. The "show" was young men pummeling each other during 5 hours of kickboxing (interspersed with 'hey! don't torture monkeys!' public messaging). The dinner was candlelit, beachside, pepper fried prawns for 4: my boss, her boyfriend and Swifty (my age, male coworker) and me. My boss is the one who made the double-date joke. Just the first of many instances of borderline (and often prosecutable) sexual harrassment in the workplace.

4. After reviewing tons of resumes, interviews, and reference checks I make the call on which candidates are hired for 3 key managerial positions. Lump the two or three other moments when I accomplished actual work and contributed in some way in with this one.

3. Sharing the big room with Sathy and Saven and occasionally Samal, especially when they trashtalk each other about their upcoming snooker games: "So far I have fattened him like a chicken and tonight I will make the slaughter" - Samal re: Sathy.

2. Spending the day with Nick and Cheata at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center, meeting the lady elephants and Baby Chhou, meaningful eye contact with Mr Macaque, etc.

1. My sojourn at CADP, a.k.a. religious experiences on a farm. Motorcycle lessons and being pseudo-courted by 2 20 year old Israeli youths among the careful tracts of cucumbers and ground nuts.

Top 5 Cambodia Slices of Life:

5. The ferry at Sre Ambel, i.e. canoes tied together, covered in planks, powered by a couple outboards, loaded with trucks and people, puttering across the river next to the bridge that is 99% constructed but not in service unless your car has Armed Forces "special" plates.

4. The time Kimhour, our nightguard, had his brothers and friends over for a fishhead soup and rice wine party in the front of our house. 8 men drunk in under 10 minutes. Fi brought out fruit and I held off the Dengue another day to toast with them.

3. Wandering Sorya Mall - where you can rollerskate on the top floor, eat Swensen's ice cream on the ground floor and nowhere buy branded goods that aren't fake.

2. Walking the three blocks home from work to the big house, past the open field of drug use to the little lane that leads to my street, where the construction worker families live. Literally being greeted by joyful children yelling hello! every day.

1. Mixing with the local scene at the Red Cow beer garden (appropriating the Laughing Cow cheese label), where the uniformed representatives of Tiger, Anchor and Angkor serve their brews on ice, accompanying the spicy eel, chicken larb and sweet and sour fish. Mmm.

Oh wait

This is fun. I have friends. This is an interesting opportunity. Work is not so bad when I actually have things to do. Exactly 3 months in and the corner is finally turned. How much of my current good mood is because I'm going home and how much is truly a settled in good-feeling from life in Phnom Penh is impossible to know. I'm leaving, though, and that won't be changing. I guess I am leaving on a high note, still looking forward to my next attempt, glad I was here. Truly glad I came and a little wistful at leaving.

Too long a time to be a blip, too short to be a stint.

More adventures with Uncle Ho

We got our pho fix on Thursday, though my 100% veggie travel buddies were not thrilled when I suggested all pho in Asia is made with beef stock. Duh. Friday night we took our new layered Asian hipster haricuts to the upscale downtown area, Dong Khoi. We ate tasty fusion cuisine (you know, like wasabi mashed potatoes and mango margaritas), and found ourselves digesting and sipping our first 6 dollar drinks (no guff!) at the swank gay club down the street. Like any straight, underdressed gal in boyztown I could only justify my presence by dancing up a storm. To my great joy they played the dance version of Yes' "Owner of a Lonely Heart."
We shut the bar down there and headed to the famous/infamous HCMC nightclub Apocalypse Now. Did you really think there wasn't a cheesy backpacker/local/expat dancefloor makeout club in S. Vietnam called Apocalypse Now? You're so naive! It was all silly and fun until the inexplicably popular "I Will Survive" with all the lo-los and the line dancing at the end came on. I'm sorry, it's not seven years ago in Ibiza and I cannot take that shit anymore and it was bedtime.

In addition to the glories of orderliness, world-class cuisine, and expat/local mixing, Ho Chi Minh City has some fascinating touristy places on offer. I considered my responsibility as an American to go to the War Crimes Museum (to be honest, Vietnam's major beef continues to be with the Chinese; French and American atrocities are less resented, I guess because the West was eventually whupped.). I think my companions were less keen for more atrocity tourism, however, so we opted for the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City instead. Pictures will be posted as soon as I am able- of everything from a terrifying, poorly taxidermied tiger corpse, to a GI Joe-sized mock-up of the tunnels of Cu Chi, to a 2' model of the American Embassy in 1975 (nothing's going on in the replica, it's just the building...?) to the MiG parked in the front garden. Not to mention all the 80% scaled size mannequin protesters everywhere.

Just walking around was refreshing, despite the heat. Saigon has public parks and sidewalks (both lacking in PP) and a coconut vendor is never far if you get low on electrolytes. While enjoying crepes chocolats and veggie spring rolls one afternoon we were talked into some purchases from a book vendor (5 foot tall woman + 5 foot tall stack of illegally printed Lonely Planets and Life of Pi's on her shoulder). So now, naturally, I'm reading The Quiet American for the first time. I figure Graham Greene doesn't need my royalty dollars cause he's dead.

The reason I'm so bursting with happiness after the Vietnam trip is I finally felt like I was having an adventure. I was reaffirmed in my love of travel and my ability to be flexible and enjoy new things. I felt immediately like I could have a life in Saigon, like I could find a segment of the local scene to fit into. The brief smile I shared with a Vietnamese woman when I was almost killed by an onslaught of motorbikes as I crossed the road felt like a more significant cross-cultrual connection than I have experienced in 3 months in Phnom Penh. It's truly a bummer- the weird halfway between familiar and foreign, comfortable and uncomfortable that is life as an expat in PP - and I think it's unique to this city.

Speaking of the contrast between the comfortable and the hugely awkward, tonight I am being feted by my boss for working at WildAid for 3 months and quitting. I think she's still really excited that I figured out she almost screwed up her tax return. I don't think I deserve a party but cases of beer have been ordered and a Khmer party is happening on the far side of the river. I suppose I'll be asked to give a speech.

Coming soon - Best/Worst of, Top 5s, Highs/Lows and further debriefing.

Saigon is the answer

Sometime in the pm on Monday my roommate Briony and I decided to go to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam instead of the Cambodian beach town Sihanoukville. Miraculously, visas were arranged in under an hour the next morning (the last day before a 3 day public holiday, Pchum Benh) and good ol Bri secured us bus tickets for Thursday morning by greasing a few palms. The rest of Phnom Penh had already bought up every other ticket out of town. And let me tell you why... it's because Vietnam is awesome!

Even though we stayed in a backpacker ghetto and I was mysteriously parted from my $100 bill at our hotel I had the best weekend ever. Everything was exciting, wonderful, and beautiful. And HCMC is meant to be the uglier, noisier sister to Hanoi. If that's true then Hanoi is a dreamland of flowers and sausages and I will die of joy if I go there. From our PP-skewered perspectives HCMC was glamourous, cosmopolitan, clean, organized, orderly, accessible, full of things to do and tasty, varied food. We were country bumpkins all weekend, awed by the modernity and functionality around us.

First stop: Diamond Plaza - a department store whose cosmetics and accessories ground floor is indistinguishable from any Nordstrom or Bloomingdale's in the States. On the top floor, after getting soaked in a particularly nasty rainstorm (the rainstorms in this part of the world are usually short bursts of torrential downpour that lighten up after a half hour or so. On Thursday it was Hollywood rain for hours and we had to wade through knee deep water in the streets to get to a restaurant, then into a cab to Diamond. Yes, a metered taxi!) we took in a film in a real movie theatre! The film we treated ourselves to? Hell yea we paid to see Evan Almighty! It was so cold in there I had to buy golf socks in the men's shoe department!

More tomorrow!

The past week

The internet connection, along with the barking dogs, the recurrent funeral next door, the heat and the many noises interrupting my sleep, has been making me a little crazy. It's also prevented me from posting about my adventures, and oh they have been multitudinous.

I've been running errands - like buying plane tickets and finally hemming the jeans I've owned for 10 months. I started Christmas shopping and I went to the monthly Euro rave at Elsewhere - where every white expat and fancy gay Khmer dude in Phnom Penh comes to get naked in the pool or lounge and lecherize. The house music leaned more toward Pink Floyd dance remix than spoken word drum and bass, thank god. At least there was no cover.

Mom's birthday was Friday and she was so excited about it she called me when it was still Thursday in California (to remind me?). Living in the future is so cool.

Also on Friday I got my first "Chinese" massage. It involved some violent pummeling, some forced stretching of my limbs over my head, and me in old man pyjamas the whole time. My massage therapist was I think Chinese or perhaps Vietnamese . Her ringtone was a popsong in an Eastern Asian language. While Master Kang's Health Center certainly caters to a certain Asian businessman elite and I'm sure a happy ending could have been requested, the facilities seemed fancy enough that hopefully my masseuse was not a victim of trafficking or exploitation. I gave her a 10% tip which amounted to one dollar.

I planned my trip to Bangkok with one Ms. Paige Austin and my trip to Siem Reap with my periodically enraging father. Now there also may be a plan afoot to see a circus in Vietnam instead of going to the beach on Wednesday? I'm getting out of this city within 48 hours or I'm acquiring a dependancy on painkillers and Cornettos and that's not healthy.

It is inappropriate to ROFL

Rabia and I went to the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek Genocide Center) on Saturday morning. The site is about 13km from Phnom Penh in the midst of farms, open green space, and factories. There is a tall glass and concrete stupa and a small information pavilion and the rest is open pits, pieces of people, and painted signs pointing out which tree was used for beating children's skulls in and which was used to slice open people's throats. I didn't realize the experience of thirty-year old murder would be so immediate. The stupa has nine stories of skulls from the 9000 odd people who have been exhumed from the mass graves since the early 80s but many thousands of bodies were left in the graves and bones are still visible all around you, sticking out of the mud, collected in a pile near a tree. Not buried, not behind glass or barricades of any kind. Even weirder is the half buried clothing that's everywhere. You don't know if it's just the sleeve of a shirt, or the shirtsleeve plus the ulna, if it leads to another skull just under the dirt.

Our guide, Sol, expertly rattled off the highlights: here is the steel bar used to bind people into a line so they could wait to be bludgeoned one by one; here is a skull with a machete fracture; here is where all the naked women's bodies were found together with their young children; this is where the loudspeaker was hung so the screams of the victims could be drowned out by louder noises.

Though we were too shy to ask him about his own experience from the Khmer Rouge period, we gleaned some of the local perspective on the genocide from Sol's comments. He expressed bewilderment that such a thing could happen, that a people would kill themselves instead of an outside enemy in a "normal" war. It sounded as though he felt shame that this regime could come to power in Cambodia and frequently explained why people did not think to escape or fight back. I asked if people in Cambodia studied genocides in other countries as part of their history classes and he seemed vague on the relevance. It was as though the Nazi genocide campaign could be explained because it was against an "other," while Cambodia's killing was brother on brother and wholly less rational.

The pictures will go up someday.