a quick update on my brief and limited tour of vietnam.

saturday was a travel day. glad i wasn't hungover. we rode a few hundred km, stopped off in a few towns - not too much to get excited about until we stopped for the night.

we went to dinner at a local barbeque joint, where we feasted on wild deer, mountain goat and weasel. all of it was delicious. the weasel tasted like a cross between rabbit and pork. if you ever see weasel on the menu, do yourself a favor and order it. same for wild goat.

the hotel we stayed at doubled as a brothel under the guise of having a spa and offering massages. its not fun to be sharing a room with your sister in this situation.

today we headed up the ho chi min trail. truly beautful and we continue to be the only white people everywhere we go.

so this post was going to detail the first 3 days of my trip through the central highlands, but instead i got drunk on banana-rice wine with my tour guides. i'll try to do my best, but i'm wasted so no promises.

while drinking all that rice wine, i also ate a bunch of organ meat and cow brains. the brains were quite tasty, and very delicate. of course the last time i ate organ meat in southeast asia i got dysentary and a doctor removed my appendix shortly thereafter. good thing i don't have to worry about that anymore.

so we started the tour in da lat. da lat is like a ski-town in switzerland. It sits on a picturesque lake and is situated high in the mountains. the main difference being that there is no ski slope. however, it's witner here, so everyone bundles up, hats, coats, gloves, scarves, etc and that only add to the feeling of being in the alps. then of course i remember that the temperature at night only dips to 65. in their defense, when i my flight landed in da lat, it was 78 and i was freezing. apparently spending 6 months in weather that never dips below 85 will do that to you.

From da lat, we headed to Lak Lake. Vietnam is one of the most beautiful countries i've ever seen. however, it is a bit emasculating riding on the back of a motorcycle, but thats how things are done around here, so what am i gonna do?

we checked out a few minority villages, watched some traditional minority dances, etc. My sister then insisted (read: whined incessetantly)that we go on an elephant ride this morning. elephant rides are really really fun - when you're 8. after that though, elephants are a slow form of transportation, they're constantly getting whipped and poked by their riders because all elephants want to do is eat and its fucking uncomfortable.

this afternoon we rode to a fairly large town - the name escapes me - and checked out a few waterfalls. tomorrow its up north for a few hundred kilometers.

i just spent the past 22 hours in Saigon, aka Ho Chi Min City. The best way to describe it is Phnom Penh on steriods, or bangkok on estrogen. There are lots of cultural things to do and see here: i walked past the Notre Dame Cathedral, quickly glanced at the Reunification (Independence) Palace - which is closer to a state college administration building than a palace and breezed through the market in about 10 minutes. I did however go to the War Remnants Museum. It used to be called "The Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes," but oddly enough that name discouraged a lot of american tourists. so they changed the name, but kept the content and now americans and chinese go there en masse. I don't think I've ever seen such a stinging indictment of U.S. foreign policy.

This afternoon I'm flying up to De Lat, a city at the southern tip of the Central Highlands. Wednesday morning I start a 6-day motorcycle tour.

my last day of work was friday - the whole office left at 2:00pm and we all went to a bar on the riverfront for afternoon cocktails. friday happy-hour is big thing in my old office. i need to find similar offices for any future employment i may have.

my sister arrived on thursday night and tomorrow the two of us head to vietnam, possibly laos and a couple choice places in cambodia for 2 weeks. i'll update my travels as they happen. wish me luck.

An anonymous reader wrote, "Faithful blog readers are curious to learn about the Cambodian dating scene for giant white foreigners. Please indulge." As I am a man of the people, I will indulge.

the dating scene here is essentially split - you have the barong (foreigner) dating scene and the khmer-barong dating scene.

the khmer-barong dating scene is less of a dating scene and more of a "business" scene. 90% of all "massage" parlors, 99% of all Kareoke bars and literally hundreds of "girly bars" offer more than just massages, kareoke or drinks. Usually $5-$500 will get you all sorts of dates, depending on the establishment, the girl and the type of date a barong is looking for. Moto drivers will often say "bong chom s'rei s'ah?" which means, "do you want a beautiful girl?" if you say yes, they'll take you to one of the aforementioned establishments and they'll get a cut of the money. The odd thing is that most of the dating women are vietnamese or of vietnamese descent. Khmers don't really think that khmers are pretty - they have an interesting concept of beauty. so that's generally the dating scene. it's easy, very user friendly and being a serial dater is encouraged. sometimes however, these dates stretch into the morning and even beyond. some in fact "find true love," but the motto of the khmer-barong dating scene remains - "no money, no honey."

actually funny story. i joined a rugby team here and we had a big tournament about 3 weeks ago. teams from vietnam, thailand, singapore and even dubai came into town. the tournament was sponsored by a few girly bars and so at about 2:00pm one of the bars brought in a bus full of girls. the girls were all no taller than 5'1" and ran over to all the enormous disgusting rugby players and started massaging them, toweling them down, etc. there's really nothing like a 5' 100lbs girl who looks no older than 19, trying to hug a 6'3" man who wieghs 250 lbs thanks to booze. her arms generally wouldn't fit around his legs, let alone his torso. after the tourney, the rugby players bombarded the girly bars.

the barong-barong dating scene in phnom penh is a free-for-all. to fully understand it, you have to know a few premises of this city. first, 95% of the people come here for fun and because they have few, if any, attachments to the real world. second, most of the people here work for ngo's or other semi-volunteer jobs, so most of the barong are pretty young. third, there is very little to do in phnom penh except drink and hangout. and fourth, the girls outnumber the guys here. combine these three principles together and you've got a recipe for an orgy to end all orgies.

so dating here really doesn't exist too much. it's a lot of hooking up, then hooking up with someone, then hooking up with someone else and repeat. some people date people for a while, and then they usually end up hooking up with their ex's friend. its quite funny, yet awesome. the only bad part of barong-barong dating is that phnom penh is really small so rumors fly around faster than they do at boarding schools. for example, according to the word on the street, a friend of mine had 5 girlfriends at the same time. his response was "i fucking wish, but really i've only been able to pull off 3 girlfriends here at a time - but one was just a tourist."

I went to a khmer wedding on sunday. Cambodians are very superstitious, certain numbers and certain days of the week are lucky. Apparently 11/11/07 is really lucky number because there were about 300 weddings taking place on sunday. The wedding was held at the "Mondial Center" which can be described as a large giant wedding complex. the complex takes up an entire block and only weddings take place there. There must be a few hundred rooms, which i imagine all look the same - exact replications of the sets in "the wedding singer."

My friend's cousin was the lucky bride, so I showed up with my friend and part of her family. (i'm not sure where the rest of her family was, but they weren't at the wedding. I don't know if there was a family feud ongoing or if the absent family members just had really good excuses.) We finally found the right room; the entrance was decked out with giant statutes, flags, bright yellow and orange banners, hundreds of flowers and a couple neon signs. Before we could enter we had to take pictures with the bride and groom and their family. Cambodians don't just take one picture, they take 20. So here i am, in a suit (the only other people in suits were the groom and his father), towering above complete strangers, i.e. the wedding party and my friends, smiling constantly for like 20 minutes. (i'm a giant in this country and i'm going to miss this height advantage so much when i leave. but at least i've experienced life as a basketball player). Finally the pictures end and we head inside. Tables everywhere. The only open space is directly in front of the stage, which is the in the middle of the room. But even the open space has a table, but at least there's a wedding cake on it and not a bunch of people stuffing their faces.

we head to our table. no one has touched anything yet, because at weddings no one can start to eat or drink until the whole table is full. luckily we fill the table. The table is full of various types of drinks, sodas, water, juices, beers, etc. There's even a bottle of black label, black-market black label, but black label nonetheless. I start eyeing the bottle; it would be very rude of me to drink anything before someone else has. One of the guys at the table offers me the bottle. Jackpot! I promptly open it, fill my glass up with ice and start pouring. I offer the bottle around, sadly there are no other takers. So now, the only white man in the place, who's far overdressed has decided to drink scotch alone. awesome. I tell myself it's ok; i can always make up for it on the dance floor.

The food starts comes out. there's like 8 courses. all very good, except for the black stew made from innards (i'm not sure which animal). I thought i was eating a mushroom - it turned out to be intestines.

Its time for the bride and groom to "come down the aisle." This exercise consists of the couple walking about 20 feet - from the back of the room to the table in front of the stage, while people form tunnel and throw flower buds onto them. and they don't just toss these flower buds, they wind up and throw them, right at the bride's head too. there are no noticeable injuries, and the bride and groom dive into the cake.

after the cake, which isn't shared, the dancing starts. There are two things you should know about khmer dancing. first, nobody can dance, at all. not even a little. i look like a pro out there, and I lack rhythm like cambodia lacks paved roads. second, all the dances seem to go in a giant circle. you take a step or two forward and then a step or two back. you're always moving forward in a large circle. The table which displayed the wedding cake remains in the middle of the dance floor. Everyone starts dancing around the table. it looks like a giant donut, the dough being the dancers and the table the jelly filling. now this is where all that lack of rhythm comes into play. because no one can keep a beat, groups start to form. One group will move forward while another group is moving backwards. its total chaos. and to make matters worse, the band will randomly speed up the song and then slow it down, without warning and without a reason. luckily i'm a good dancer by cambodian standards, so i hold my own. of course by this time, there are like 50 people left at the wedding. its not late or anything and i've only been at the wedding for like 2 hours at this point, but cambodians simply eat and leave - thats it. i don't know why this is the case, but it is and no one seems to mind.

so that was my khmer wedding experience. I haven't seen any pictures yet, but i'm sure they will be priceless. stay tuned for tomorrow when i detail the story of the cambodian killer cow.

At work, in the restrooms, they installed "Suggestion Boxes." These boxes are abbnormally large for their purpose and are made from plexi-glass. I don't know if these boxes are for any and all suggestions related to my place of slave employment or if they are for suggestions related only to the facilities. Either way no paper is supplied, so if you need to make a suggestion, you have to scribble it on some toilet paper, or at least that's what i did. My first suggestion: "get a sewer system that allows for the flushing of toilet paper."

Also at work, they put in boxes of condoms with a "memo" urging the workers to use condoms, prevent stds, etc. (Cambodia didn't have a problem with stds until UNTAC rolled through in the early 1990s). Within a day, all the condoms were gone. They have not been replaced. Apparently condom use is no longer important.

I know my posts have been slow of late, but its not entirely my fault - they blocked blogger at work. normally this wouldn't be a huge problem, but internet access outside of work in cambodia is like a slice of pizza in cleveland - you can find it, but you're gonna pay far too much money for it and you're going to be disappointed.

I drove for the first time in Cambodia. I chose a Nissan Pathfinder for its versatility, its size (the only traffic law here, if your vehicle is bigger, you win) and it was the only car my friend was willing to lend me. It's a bit like playing a video game, you're constantly dodging a variety of obstacles, such as chickens, cows, people, sink-holes, ox carts, and just about anything else you can imagine, with little to no visibility - especially at night. As if avoiding all those hazards wasn't enough, you also have to contend with other vehicles. The roads in the provinces are barely paved and are not wide enough to accomodate 2 lanes of traffic. So every time a car or truck is travelling in the opposite direction, you have to pull half-way off the road so that the both cars can pass. I quickly tired of the constant speeding up, swerving, slowing down, etc, so I went with the cambodian approach - anytime I saw (or thought I saw) a car, truck, moto, person, chicken, whatever I laid on my horn and hoped for the best. It seemed to work, except I did accidently drench an elderly man with muddy water. I felt really bad about that, but seriously how was I supposed to know that the puddle would produce such an expansive splash.

This past weekend I travelled up to the top of Bokor mountain. It was so eerie to spend the night in the middle of deserted mountain-top resort town in the middle of the jungle. I rode in the back of a pick-up truck for almost 3 hours to reach the top - i dont think my back will ever be aligned properly again. Bokor is so high that we were literally in the clouds - I stood outside and watched as a cloud rolled over the ridge, into the plateau, passing over me, and then off to the sea.

After Bokor, we went to a small island off the coast of a little villiage town called Kep. The island is completely deserted except to a small patch of coastline which has about 20 bamboo huts. I spent the night in one of the huts, and I have to say that it wasn't too bad, except that the floor, which was about 4 feet above the ground (in case of flooding), was broken in many places. One wrong step and I'd have a large piece of bamboo piercing my leg. The only other drawback of the huts was that tree branches and leaves composed the roof. This wouldn't be a problem except that it rains everyday here. And of course it poored all night. Constantly repositioning yourself so that you can sleep without getting wet isn't the best way to spend a night.

This was my thursday:

Went to burmese embassy for visa, no pages left on my passport - 9:00 am, up to US embassy, american citizens can only do visa/passport stuff from 1 - 4 (now embassíes are the only place in the world, where you can be as racist/xenophobic, nationalistic as you want and no one can say a fucking word. so why the fuck don't they americans do their visa shit all the time and just let non-citizens do it for part of the day?! if i was secretary of state that would be job number 1.) so cant go into work, have brunch, at 1 go back to US embassy and at 3pm, i get my extra pages. then I go back down to the burmese embassy and reapply for the visa. (the burmese guys indicated that me and all my friends would have no problem getting the visas, but i think that was before they realized the burmese army started firing automatic weapons at monks.) that was my day, at least I was eating formaggio and drinking for most of it.

I find out on tuesday if my visa application was approved - lets hope it is.

and i'm back. sorry its been a while, i know everyone has been worried about me. unfortunately i have neither been sold into white slavery nor holed up in an opium den with 70 virgins, although I do have a vacation coming up.

It turns out that there is one micro-brewery in Phnom Penh. It also turns out that the micro-brewery is 50 meters from my house. why it took me 3 months to realize this fact is beyond me. what matters though is that I found it, that its awesome and that everything is buy one, get one free for the whole month. The best part about the brewery is that it's a chinese restaurant, which means you can order dim sum while 1 beer turns into 4 and 4 beers quickly become 8. The beers are the best beers in town too - real german-style lagers and ales. They actually give you that comforting beer buzz, which none of the other beers here do. And the proximity to my house is unbelievable - I could grab a freshly brewed beer before i catch the bus to work everyday and not wake up any earlier. what really puts this restaurant over the top is that the 3 times i've been there, all within the past 10 days, is their uncanny ability to recognize when you're getting to leave. As soon as they sense someone asking for the bill, they bring over free beers. I hope I always live within 50 meters of brewery.

AK-47s are the weapons of choice for "freedom fighters" everywhere. But what makes them so popular? I went to the headquarters of the cambodian special forces to find out. (and by "find out" I mean shoot an Ak-47, because what else am I gonna do on a sunday afternoon.)
The shooting range in cambodia is on the base of the special forces. It's the general's side business. For a fee, you can fire pretty much any weapon in the cambodian arsenal from handguns to grenades to rocket-launchers. you can even drive a tank if you've got an extra $1000.
My friends and I arrived at the base around 3 pm, its about 15 km outside the city center, just past my office and up a dirt road. We arrive and the guy working the range hands us a menu of guns that are available to shoot. it's a little expensive, like $30 for 30 rounds of an Ak-47. handguns are bit cheaper, like $10 for 15 rounds. I've never shot a gun before and neither had one of my friends, so we started out with a 9mm. There's no safety training or anything. he hands you the gun, you walk over to the targets, he hands you the bullets and you get to fire away. the 9mm was smooth, really easy to fire. turns out that hitting targets with a handgun isn't a strength of mine.
After emptying a clip, it was time for the real gun. the AK-47 is in this special bunker. We head over to it, and as the guy is loading it up, he turns to me and says "do you want to shoot at chickens?" (for an extra fee, you can shoot, and preseumably kill, chickens. You can also shoot cows, but i hear a cow costs at least an extra $100.) I opted for the inanimate targets. firing that gun was ridiculous, so powerful yet so easy. I started with single shots, then switched it to automatic. I barely tapped the trigger and i rattled off like 5 or 6 rounds. i may not be able to hit the side of a bus with a handgun, but put an AK-47 in my hand and i can turn that target into swiss cheese. No wonder AK-47s are used all the time - they're fucking awesome. I've got a couple pictures from this excursion, i'll try to post them. and if anyone gets the chance to shoot an AK-47, do it.

My parents visited me last week. They were more enamored with the traffic in cambodia than anything else, especially me. We went to Siem Reap and visited the temples at Angkor Wat. They were cool, beautiful, etc but they were in really bad shape and nobody has any real idea about what the artifacts and carvings mean. Truthfully, I wasn't blown away like expected. Perhaps my expectations were too high, perhaps i needed a tour guide, i'm not sure. But I'm returning this weekend, will be seeing some of the lesser-known temples and hopefully when I again wake up at 4:30am to catch the sunrise over angkor wat i'll actually be able to see the sun.

This was my monday (It should be noted that his day wasnt completely normal, but it wasn't ridiculously atypical either.):

5:30am - wake up (i almost feel cambodian), and throw on my suit. Thankfully I actually brought a suit from the states. It's been sitting in my closet collecting dust since I got here. at least I get to use it.

5:45am - breakfast is on the table, waiting for me. This generally isn't a big deal anymore, but my cleaning and i didn't go through our normal morning routine, which consists of me walking downstairs in my towel, saying hi to her, and dropping off my pile of laundry. It was so early, i just took a shower and got dressed. She must've sensed my presence or something.

6:10am - the taxi, with 3 of my colleagues picks me up. The 4 of us have to get to work early b/c the British Ambassador is coming to the Court to check out my office. I get to show him around. Hence the suit and waking up before sunrise.

7:00am - 4:30pm - work. I show the Ambassador around a bit; he's inaugurating a week-long training session for my office, everyone tries to talk to him. Everytime i walk by any of my friend's they all point, giggle and make a comment about me being all dressed up. i love maturity. I also meet and greet the presenters whil will be lecturing us for the next week.

4:30pm - I convince my boss that I need to escort the presenters to their hotel, which is conveniently the same hotel that our "happy hour" will be taking place. Free drinks from 6 - 8, and I'm get to the hotel bar at 5:15, so for me it's free drinks from 5:15-8. The Elephant bar is probably the nicest bar in phnom penh, and because I can't really afford to go there (drinks are between $4 and $6, and beers cost about $2.50 - cambodia is amazing) I'm taking full advantage of the open bar. This is probably a good time to mention my new fascination with exotic cocktails. They're loaded with booze, are always cheap and are rather refreshing. Because of this, I generally drink a couple everytime I go out and tonight is no exception.

8:00pm - happy hour is over, so i can either stay at the bar and pay for my own drinks or go somewhere else. I plan to head home, meet up with my roomies and since i'm already a little tipsy, keep drinking. As I walk outside the hotel i see that phnom penh is in the midst of a monsoon. No problem, the tuk-tuks have canvas walls to keep the westerners dry. Unfortunately the canvas walls don't keep the driver dry. the 20 minute trip home takes almost an hour b/c half the roads are flooded. The driver is constantly driving up a street, stopping, looking to see if he can navigate the flooding, shaking his head and turning around. He does this literally 10 times. You would think that the tuk-tuk drivers would know either a) which roads flood first and avoid them or b) if all the roads are flooded, stick to the major raods b/c they tend to be more driveable. apparently my tuk-tuk driver never got that memo, b/c he keeps trying to drive on these side streets.

9:00pm - I get home, the water is up to my knees. My security guard, Hoa, opens the gate and I see that he is having a dinner party with his friends. He invites me to join them. I sit down and am immediately poured a glass of "Special Muscle Wine." They have billboards for this stuff everywhere and I've never had it. It's apparently made from rice (but it's not sake) and is chinese but produced in Cambodia. Hoa tells me that I need to be careful drinking it b/c its 30% alcohol. Then the table toasts something and everyone chugs their muscle wine and soda water. Not wanting to be culturally inappropriate, I do the same. As soon as my glass is on the table, its full again and within a few seconds there's another toast and the glasses are emptied. The cycle repeats itself. I'm also being served beef soup, which is very tasty. The only problem is that the meat they're using is stuff like the trachea, intestines, liver and other innards. Organ meats are pretty much the only things I don't eat here (actually the salted, dried eggs taste like leather, literally, and have hard areas that feel like bones. I don't eat them either). While at the table I get invited to bachelor's party and a wedding - of course i'm in. Turns out that they won't be taking place until March - this is the worst part of my day.

10:20 - Ok, now i'm hammered and still haven't really eaten dinner. I thank hoa and his friends and head inside. my aussie roommate is making some egg rolls and offers me one. "Yeah, thanks I say" and head into the kitchen ready to sink my teeth into fried goodness. however in australian "egg roll" means a sandwich with lots of salad ingredients, a ton of mayo and a chopped up hard-boiled egg. This is what i deal with on a constant basis. After that ordeal, I go out to the balconey drink some wine with my roommates until i pass out.

Movie theaters don't exist in cambodia. it's impossible to go to the movies. so when I needed to kill a day in bangkok before heading off on my scuba adventure my buddy and I decided to spend the day at the movies. We decided to see Transformers even though I saw it the day after it came out in america. Cambodia may not have movie theaters but it does have a fabulous black market where bootleg dvds cost a dollar and are sold in every market in Phnom Penh. The highlight of the thai movie experience is definitely being forced to stand and honor the King before the movie starts, while a video montage of the King posing in front of all sorts of wildlife scenes plays on the screen. I think we should implement that in America. but not with anyone of any importance, just random people. How great would it be to honor Mike the auto mechanic or Joanne the grocery store clerk? They would wear their uniforms complete with patches and name tags, and their images would be super imposed in front of the Rocky mountains while random music blared. If this happened, I'd feel like I was getting my $10 worth.

To get to Koh Tao from Bangkok, I had to take an 8 hour night bus and then a high speed catamaran. The bus trip was rather uneventful and we arrived at the port around 5:30 am and we all hop onto the catamaran. Within about 15 minutes the first passanger booted. About two minutes after that, a second person threw up. After the first 30 minutes the ride deteriorated into a cacophony of spew. The chorus of wretching continued for the next 2 hours, as I sat in my aisle seat praying that no one would puke on me. Luckily I made it to Koh Tao vomit free - unfortunately some other patrons weren't so lucky.

I aced my diving test and I'm now a certified scuba diver. According to the instructional video I watched as part of the course, I now have more fun than every other group of people in the world. Diving was incredible, a little indescribable and a lot of fun. There's really nothing like floating next to and between massive schools of fish. I saw a shark, a sting ray, a giant puffer fisch, a bunch of different types of fish (i can't remember any of the names) and i held a sea urchin. I can't wait to go diving again.

The rest of my time on the beach was spent relaxing. Even though you move as little as possible when diving it's extremely exhausting. I also spent a fair amount of time drinking heavily. There's really nothing like a $3 bucket of thai whiskey, red bull and coke. fantastic.

Vacationing to a beach in thailand after living in Cambodia is like living anywhere in America and vacationing to the Jersey Shore. The people look very similar, but really they're different. The language the natives speak sounds the same, but yet it's really hard to understand them. You eat foods unique to the place - in thailand its pad thai, in jersey it's fried cheese balls. The similarities are endless.

After spending tuesday night at the bangkok airport, I made it back to Cambodia without any problems.

I've stopped shaving in Cambodia. Instead I go to the barber every few days and have him shave me. It makes sense economically. I figure it takes me about 10 minutes to shave. It only costs $1 to get a shave. Since I value my time at more than $6/hour, it's cheaper to go to the barber shop and get a shave. (I have no idea why I value my time at more than $6/hour, especially since I don't get paid. But I do. I also have no idea how much my time is really worth or the exact price I think my time is worth, but I'm going with more than $6). So last night I headed to my barder for a shave. He normally just uses his buzzers and I'm out of there in about 15 minutes. Last night for some reason, I decided I wanted a real shave. When I told him, he eyed me curiously and looked a little scared. He asked if I was sure and undettered by his demeanor I said yes. Everything started out well, but by the time he got about half-way down my right cheek, he needed to change razors. A few more strokes and then another change of razors - this routine quickly became comical. It took him about 45 minutes and he went through at least 5 razors. Everyone else in the barber shop constantly looked over, laughing that he was still shaving me. By the end of it, I felt bad for the guy. I had no idea it was such a laborious process. I ended up paying him $3 and he did a pretty good job. Still, I think next time I'm going to just have him use the buzzers.

i just arrived in bangkok for my diving trip. i head down to the island tonight and with any luck i'll arrive around noon tomorrow and then i'll start my diving class on friday. i'll let everyone know how that goes, but according to the people running the dive shop, it's impossible to fail the test. I'm not sure if that's comforting.

This past sunday I went on little bike trip with my roommate luke and our friend tom. We rode up to this place called Uodong mountain, its about 33 miles north of phnom penh. its more of hill than a mountain really, but there are couple buddhist temples on top and a few previous kings of cambodia have their remains up there. all in all the mountain was less than impressive, but the bike trip out and back was great. Literally every villager stopped what they were doing as we approached and waved to us, shouted "hello", etc. One kid, maybe around 16, even jumped on his bike and road with us for a few miles. i'm not quite sure why all the villagers were so thrilled to see us - my guess is they were really laughing at us for riding bicycles when we could spend $1 and take bus.

Time for an update:

the wedding i mentioned in my last post turned out to be just a birthday party for one of the residents on my street. I did however manage to share a couple drinks with the birthday boy and my security guard, who is apparently best friends with everyone on my street.

the day after the party, i caught a bus down to the beach for the weekend. The ticket cost $4 and of course i had sit next to a mother with her 8 year old child. The kid sat on her lap, which was great because its not like the seats are incredibly small.

the trip is going well, and by well i mean uneventful. We get about half-way there and then the bus pulls over. Now this isn't a big deal b/c the bus stops every so often to pick up/drop off people in random places. The problem this time is that the driver gets out. Soon everyone files out of the bus. I follow suit, get outside and realize that the bus won't be going anywhere for a while. All of the passengers head to a nearby house to sit under the shade of a porch and wait for another bus that is supposedly arriving imminently. Imminently in Cambodia means many things, however it doesn't mean fast-approaching. I grab my stuff, walk to the side of the road and throw up my thumb. Within a couple of minutes, an empty van pulls up, I jump in with a bunch of khmers. For $2 this guy agrees to take all of us to the beach. After that it was a great weekend consisting of swimming, drinking, reading, sleeping and eating.

The following weekend was my planned trip to bike ride up Bokor mountain. It got cancelled on account of me and my friends having to work. I am never going to plan another trip in this country. Although I do have plans to go to an island in Thailand for 5 days to get certified in Scuba diving. I guarantee something will get fucked up.

getting my cleaning lady to make me breakfast 3 days per week was by far the greatest decision i have made here. (side note: I don't know her name - she refers to herself as "bong srei." Bong srei means "elder sister" and khmers don't usually refer to each other by name, but they all have names and introduce themselves by their names. not bong srei though.) anyway, my morning routine is thus: i wake up, and bring my dirty laundry down to her. i jump in the shower, get dressed and waiting for me at the dining room table are two perfectly cooked eggs over-easy, a couple pieces of bacon, two pieces of lightly buttered toast and a big cup of coffee. I now dread waking up on the days she's not there. For all you single ladies out there, this is the best way to man's heart. get up early and silently make him breakfast every morning.

all of the meat here comes with the bones in it. you'll order a plate of chicken curry, and bite into a seemingly huge chunk of white meat only for your teeth to crack against a giant bone. it ruins the meal. the other day, while at my favorite khmer restaurant and the one i eat lunch at everyday, i ordered sweet and sour pork. then i asked "can you make without bones?" the waitress said "pork have bone."

This is cambodia.

I had to cancel my bike trip because I had to work all last weekend, it sucked, but my office filed the initial submission yestersay, naming 5 leaders of Khmer Rouge to be investigated for a bunch of heinous crimes. The whole office proceeded to get extremely drunk (on the boss's tab) and we were then given today off.

The bike I had planned has not been reschudeled, but next weekend a couple friends and I are loading an suv with bikes, driving to the beach, and then biking up Bokor Mountain. Bokor Mountain was a colonial village on top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle, just off the southern coast. When the Khmer Rouge took power, they evacuated everyone who lived there so now, while the french colonial buildings and their elaborate architecture remain intact, the jungle has literally swallowed the village. There's a ranger station at the top where you can spend the night and I hear the sunrise is amazing b/c you're in the clouds, but I don't think I'll be camping out up there this time. I'm planning to do that a bit later. Whenever I tell people I plan on biking up Bokor hill, they all kinda laugh. I'm not really sure why.

I bought a bike and it is by far the best mode of transportation in this city. I've been riding it everywhere. I get to see so much more of the city and I get there so much faster than via tuk-tuk and even motos. A couple things suck about riding around town: the stench of this city magnifies itself when you're on a bicycle and of course I think I'm going to get into a horrible accident at least once a day. Surprisingly though, drivers seem to be observant of cyclists, I cut them off frequently and they always slow down and don't say a word.

I've hired my cleaning lady to also make me coffee, eggs and bacon 3 days per week. I can't wait to wake up and just have breakfast waiting for me. It'll be like I'm 8 again.

A group of about 4 or moto drivers sit at the corner of my street. They hang out there all day. Every morning as soon as I open my gate, they start offering me rides. My bus stop is about 3 blocks away from my house - a ten minute walk, 8 if I'm in a rush. I only try to take the motos when I'm really late. About a week ago I was running a few minutes late and tried to get a moto. The first guy wanted to charge me 1000 riel (25 cents) which is far too much. For the distance I needed to go, it should cost 200 or 300 riel and I offered 100 you know b/c you have to bargain for everything here. he wouldn't budge from 1000 even when I offered 500. No big deal, as there are 3 other moto drivers. So I ask the second guy, and he will only do it for a 1000. I ask the third guy - same thing. They formed a fucking monopoly, bastards. so out of principle I walked. Well I was late again the other day and when i signal for a moto one of the drivers pulls up. I tell him where I'm going, and I offer 500 riel. he immediately accepts. He yells to his friends that I'm paying him 500 riel to go literally up the street. The fucker laughed the whole ride and when I paid him he laughed even more. fucking moto monopoly.

Weddings here take place on the streets. They erect elaborate bright orange tents and party till around 1 or 2am. They serve a ton of food, which is conveniently cooked in an adajecent tent and drink unhealthy amounts of alcohol. The tents generally take up 3/4 of the road, which causes horrible traffic jams, especially on the busy streets. I mention all this b/c someone is getting married in front of my house tonight. I'm going to try to crash it

I'm looking out my office window and at the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Headquarters (yes, our building is literally next door to the headquarters of the armed forces) and someone is urinating on a lone bush in the middle of an open field. I mention this to highlight the massive public urination epidemic plaguing phnom penh.

Perhaps it's because of the rainy season, but i see literally tens of people each day urinating on fences, gates and walls on roadsides, and almost exclusively on the busiest boulevards. Cement walls and iron gates adorn the streets here and every few blocks i'll see a moto parked along the side of the road. Directly in front of the moto is usually a guy spray painting a wall with his amber liquid. Not one of these urinators seems to make any effort to conceal their primordial act of relief. They could simply walk into any restaurant and use the toilet free of charge, and if they really love peeing with they sun on their backs and wind in their hair they could urinate in the semi-privacy of one of the many alleys, but instead they choose to mark their territory in broad day light for everyone to see. I've heard that in NYC, you have to go to court and pay a fine for similar acts, but in Phnom Penh if its not encouraged, it's at least decriminalized.

The american embassy celebrated our nation's b-day in grand style with a thundering fireworks display. Although I was not invited to the private embassay party (my boss was though, and he's canadian!) I caught the fireworks from a moto on the way to a bar. I liked the fireworks, but the problem is that many cambodians ran into the homes to seek shelter when the display began. i guess living in a country entrenched in a 30+ year civil war will have the affect on you. Regardless, I think a big round of applause is in order for the embassy scaring people into thinking phnom penh was under attack (again).

This weekend I'm planning a bicycle trip 150km to the beach. Currently i have neither a bike nor a route nor a weather report, but i'm going anyway. I predict this is gonna go horribly wrong at some point.

cambodians wake up everyday at the ass-crack of dawn. i have no idea why they get this early, but they do everyday. this especially sucks for me because i have to wake up just after the ass-crack of dawn. so everyday, as i'm trying to squeeze in those extra 45 minutes of sleep, my neighbors decide bang pots and pans, pretending they're in some sort of band. I dont think they're making breakfast b/c traditional breakfasts consist of rice porridge and there's no need to bang on pots and pan when preparing that culinary masterpiece. its infuriating. i'd understand if they had jobs and needed to get up that early, but lets be serious they don't.


(I know this because when i leave my house each morning my neighbors are usually either sweeping their yards/gardens/driveways or standing on the street talking.)

The best way i can describe cambodian society is that they're at the level of functionality and sustenance. What i mean is they have appliances, lights, electricity, etc. but nothing is specialized or effecient. All everyone cares about is that the stuff works. for example, the lights on our balconey are just these huge flourescent lights; they provide light, but they suck b/c they attract bugs and b/c the light they emit is terrible- you go outside to get away from flouresscent lights and their constant buzzing. Here in cambodia they're just happy to have lights.
the food here is the same way. the only reason they have food is to provide sustenance. Eating here isn't necessarily an enjoyable experience. And actually a lot of cambodians look down right upset when they eat. Khmer food tastes good, although it generally doesn't have strong flavors and its the same everywhere - rice and a small portion of some type of minced meat. Eating is a necessity not an experience, which i find a little disappointing.

My housemates and I threw a party on friday night, about 60 people showed up, everyone got drunk, played a little beirut and generally had a good time. Since half my house is australian and half american, we were divided about what type of party to throw. Apparently australians like parites where everyone just sort of sits around (on the floor) and talks. On the other hand, Eric and i believe that a good party involves very little sitting, lots of drinking games and good loud music. After lots of discussion, we compromised - good loud music would be played, people could sit around (on the floor) on the 2nd floor and on the balconey and downstairs was reserved for beirut and other drinking games (side note: i had no idea, but nobody outside of america has ever heard of beer pong, let alone beirut. I had to explaing to everyone what the game entaled. I just don't understand how foriegners have fun without drinking games). finding ping-ping balls here was not a problem, however solo cups was a different story. Luke got assigned to buy cups- so he called me and asked what kind of cups were needed for beirut. "solo cups" i replied. "huh? solo what? what are they?" how do you explain what solo cups are? and why don't aussies know of solo cups, i thought australia was just a poor man's america. i told him to find plastic cups that had a wide mouth. He ended up getting plasitc cups with a wide mouths, but they were really small. not that i could complain b/c after all it is cambodia and even if Luke knew what solo cups were, i doubt they have them here. we made do though. A lot of the foriegners were very intrigued by the whole spectacle. One danish guy watched like 4 games, but refused to play - weirdo. people even started playing for money at the end of the night- good times. The worst about the party was that we ran out of beer at like 1:30, lucky for me i had a secret stash of beer lao. In cambodia you can tell how popular a place is by the number of motos and tuk-tuks that sit outside an establishment waiting to pounce on foreigners like sex-pat pounces on a 14 year-old lady boy. At various points through out the night we had 5-6 tuk-tuks and numerous motos. I think they were having their own party. At about 2am 3 pairs of girls decided it was high time to expres their true feelings towards each other. once the crying started, we kicked them out of the house and i went to bed.

I haven't left Phnom penh yet, and i'm getting a little antsy. I was suppsoed to go to the beach this weekend, but i had to work instead. its funny how i purposefully chose to not work at a law firm b/c i value my nights and weekends and yet this week, i've worked late almost every night and till 10:00 pm once. and I worked all day yesterday (Saturday) and have to go to my boss's house tonight (Sunday) at 6 for more work. I am planning on getting out of town next weekend - I think i'm going to a small village a few hours away, so i'll have more stories to share once i leave this bubble that is Phnom Penh.

Living here is very easy because there is very little to worry about. there aren't really any laws or rules and even if there were, the cops here don't do anything. the weather's the same everyday; its hot and then it rains for about an hour or two. I haven't yet checked the weather report - no need. The only thing you really have to worry about is accidently angering a rich cambodian teenager with a bodyguard. rich teenagers are above the law here, because money buys you eveyrthing here, and their bodyguards usually carry guns and are not afraid to use them. luckily rich khmer teenagers only hang out at this one really shitty club, which isn't a lot of fun unless you like watching 60 year old white guys dancing with and buying drinks for 18 year-old-ish prostiutes.

My housemates and I have a cleaning lady. she comes 3 times a week, cleans our entire house and does all of our laundry. having my laundry done is the best thiung about living here. It's so convenient - i leave for work in the morning, dirty clothes littering my room and when I come home all my laundry is done, my bed is made, and the cleaning lady even re-folds and re-organizes all the clothes in my wardrobe. amazing. and what does she charge? $20 per month, which equals $5 for me. I don't know how i'm going to handle having to do my own laundry again. can i bring a cleaning lady back to america?

i find it remarkable that here in cambodia i can go to a restaurant and order a bacon egg and cheese, and yet in cleveland i can't.

sorry it's taken me a full week to post again. I've been working far too much and far too hard, therefore my life has been relatively monotonous - at least by cambodian standards.

The rainy season finally began - I think. It rained for about 6 hours friday and the city flooded within 30 minutes. (apparently it rains like this at the same time everyday from now until the end of october). All the trash blocks up the few sewers that actually exist. The water is pure brown filth and yet little kids swim and play in it as if its evian. I'm gonna need to buy some bleach. I can't fathom how phnom penh will flood everyday for the next few months. i just can't believe that that actually happens. I'm convinced something changes, i just don't know what.

I finally found a place to live. On thursday I moved into a house with 2 Australians and an American. (there might be a 3rd aussie who's lives there. she studies monkeys in the jungle for weeks at a time, and I think she's swinging on vines for a bit.) The house is pretty big, the rent is super cheap and everyone has their own bathroom. so far it's a lot of fun, my roommates are cool, etc. The only thing that kinda sucks about it is the location. It's located a little south of central phenom penh, so moto rides are a bit longer than usual, but the upside is i live in very khmer area; we're the only foreigners. Of course the downside to living in a khmer area is the fact that our neighbors are very close to us - we share one of our patios - and some of them like to watch tv with the volume at an insanely high level starting at 6am in the morning. Not the best thing to wake up to after a friday night that ended around 4am.

As for work, after spending 3 days working on footnotes (for some reason I got assigned 150, while most everyone got assigned 50-100) all the interns got moved back to our teams to work on completing individual sections of the initial submission. At this point, all the footnotes (800 or so in all) are supposed to be the proper form. Of course, as soon as I look at one of the sections assigned to my team, I realize that one of the interns refused to follow the formula. good times.

Ok, enough about work and onto some of the more interesting aspects of Phnom Penh. They sell gas everywhere. They have gas stations, but they also have people who sit with huge drums of gas on the side of the road and sell the gas out of old pepsi bottles. The gas looks utterly disgusting and the people who sell it look even worse. no wonder i feel like i've lost a portion of my lung after every moto ride. I should just start smoking ciagarettes instead of riding motos, it's probably healthier. Trivia night was the highlight of my week. Every thursday, a bar in the lake district (the backpacker haven that I am forbidden to live) has trivia night. My team consisted of me, my roommates and about half of the dc-cam staff - the other half of dc-cam were on another team and talked so much shit. It costs a dollar for each member of the team to play - winning team takes all. My team won and as if that wasn't sweet enough, we won the side raffle for a bottle of jim beam (promptly finished within 15 minutes of winning) and we also won the "bucket of booze" for being the first team to correctly name the high school attended by Zack Morris and friends in "Saved by the Bell." It was a clean sweep, and made waking up for work on friday really enjoyable. I'll be back this thursday to defend the title.

On a side note: while reading the Poughkeepsie Journal (a bastion of top-notch journalism)online today, I saw that Bob Barker is retiring from the Price is Right. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for entertaining me on all those days I skipped or stayed home "sick" from school. I'll most remember him for his uncanny ability to make 70 year-old housewives from Missouri scream like preteens at an n'sync concert. Bravo Bob, Bravo. I'm sad to see him leave; he was the only constant in my pre-adolescent chaos. Perhaps if they aired his famous "help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered" in this country there wouldn't be so many stray dogs and cats in this city. Of course the dumplings sold at all those street vendors probably wouldn't be so tasty either.

Last night a bunch of us from the office went to the only North Korean restaurant in Phnom Penh. The restaurant is appropriately named Pyongyang. It's owned by the North Korean embassy and is used purely as a way for the bankrupt nation to keep its embassy afloat. The waitstaff consists solely of North Korean ladies. They are all dressed in perfectly tailored traditional dresses and they put on musical performances throughout dinner. One plays the violin, they all sing and and they even have a traditional dance routine. They are all quite talented but the service sucks (although if you praise "the dear leader" they might crack a smile); they all seem genuinely upset when you ask for anything. I guess that will happen when you've been beaten and trained since your were 2 in the various musical disciplines and are forced to live in Phnom Penh in dormitories without your passport while your family and children are kept in North Korea to prevent you from defecting. Isn't communism great?

After the restaurant we went to a large club/concert hall, called the Rock. Apparently it's the place to be if you're cambodian, however it sucks if you're not. highlights including a live band that started every song with 2 or 3 chords from various Guns'n Roses songs, only to quickly change into Khmer rock songs. It took me about 5 songs before I realized that they weren't gonna play Guns'n Roses, but for the first 3 seconds of those 5 songs I was excited. They didn't seem to have a lead singer. Instead about 30 seconds into each song, a different singer emerged from backstage under the cover of a large fog machine. the only thing more ridiculous than the entrance were the outfits they wore - lots of hot pink, tight pants and more hair gel than guidos at the jersey shore. And I learned that cambodian rock n roll consists only of power ballads. you feel the music deep in your heart and you aren't quite the same afterwards.

work is going well. right now the whole office is working hard to get our initial submission (kinda like an indictment - it's a civil law system here, so the process is all screwed up). Once we get that finalized, I'll be on the 4-person team in charge of writing response motions. that should actually be pretty interesting, although it'll probably mean I'm gonna have a lot of responsibility, which, as we all know, isn't something I strive to have. oh yeah, they moved me into my new office, which is located on the 4th floor. it however conveniently won't have air conditioning for another week or so. if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because i will have drowned in my own sweat.

Polo shirts cost $4 here, so i'll be channeling my inner Wheeler for the next few months. I don't know why they bother to have lane markings on the road here, nobody even comes remotely close to following them. While on a moto recently, the driver seriously drove the opposite way down one of the busiest avenues for about a mile. you haven't lived until you're on a 50cc scooter squeezing between speeding dump trucks and ox carts both coming at you head on.

Sunday night it was this kid Sam's birthday. (he's one of the dc-cam interns). to celebrate we took an hour long boat tour of the mekong river. We bought a bunch of beers and set sail a few minutes before sunset. Phnom Penh is situated right on the river. Because it's the beginning of the wet season the river is low and you literally have to descend down the bank of the river carefully avoided that vast amounts of trash, used condoms, broken glass etc, to get to the boat. The boat was small, but comfortably sat the ten of us. Once on the river we enjoyed some formaggio, cracked open the beer and chilled out. We sailed out for about 30 mintes, passing a couple floating slum villages. The villages were bizarre. They were basically a a bunch of rafts situated together, although some were much nicer than others and few had tvs and stereos. After we turned around, Phnom Penh sparkled. It was just past sunset and all the buildings that line the river bank were lit, you could see the lights from cars passing and the reflection on the river glowed. What you couldn't see was the garbage, the stench seemed to disappear and it was like looking at a completely different city than the one I departed from. Of course, walking up the river bank the details of Phnom Penh returned in all their glory. For $1 it was a great time. This friday we're all going out for a longer river cruise on a much larger boat - i'm looking forward to that.

Monday I started work. I don't want to talk about work too much, but somethings are just too ridiculous not to share, plus it's becoming obvious that work will be comsuming a fair amount of my life, so if I don't talk about it then what am I gonna talk about?
My office is about 10km (that's 6 miles for those patriots who refuse to acknowldge the metric system) outside of Phnom Penh. They bus everyone to and from the offices everyday. It takes about an hour to get there, so I have to be at the bus stop at 7am. The worst thing about the trip, aside from it taking so long because of the traffic and complete lack of traffic laws, is that i'm stuck with all my co-workers for an extra 2 hours everyday. And once we all get to the office, we're stuck there. It's kinda like forced labor.
So 8 interns started when I did. 3 others at the office of the co-prosecutor (OCP), 3 at the Defence office (DSS) and 1 at the office of co-investigative judge (OCIJ). As I mentioned before, we had a 3 day induction course. Thank god I finished that today. All we did was sit in a conference room all day and have various employees come in and lecture us about some aspect of the trial or history of cambodia. some of it was interesting, but after the 2nd hour of the first day it got really repetitive and being in a room with that many law students for that many hours is similar to cruel and unusual punishment. For example, today the interns all got bussed to UNDP headquarters for a security briefing (which was mostly pointless b/c we're not technically "ëmployees" and therefore don't qualify for most of the services). For the entire hour of the bus trip two female interns had a conversation about a professor at Georgetown. Apparently one of the interns had the prof and the other is the niece of the prof. The conversation was horrible but the worst part was the way they conducted the conversation. They giggled after meaningless sentence. normally giggling is bad enough, but both of these interns have sort of low voices for girls, which makes the giggling grating. It sounded like...i can't even come up with a haflway decent analogy. It sounded like shit and I'm a worse person for having to hear it.

Despite all of this, I can't wait to actually get started on real work. And the other people at the Court all seem to be really cool. We're all just keeping our fingers crossed that the internal rules of the court get approved by the 13th or else I'll be coming home early.

Some random items before I grab some dinner: I've started looking for an apartment. Haven't settled on one yet, but should by this weekend. I found a place to take muy thai lessons - i'm gonna start Monday. I have my own tuk-tuk and moto driver. whenever i want a ride, i give him a call (assuming he's not waiting outside my hotel). every guide book says how every bar that you go into has hookers who throw themselves at you. now, i'm not looking for a hooker, but i've been to a bar every night since i've been here (not b/c i'm an alcoholic, but b/c its what everyone does, plus beer lao is great and cheaper than water) and I have yet to have any girl throw themselves at me. I'd just like a look.

The best thing about Cambodia is the beer. They import Beer Lao here and it is delicious-light refreshing with a hint of citrus. I must've drank about 10 yesterday. I hear they can't import the beer into the US because Laos doesn't have adequate health regulations. And by adequate I mean none. It's odd that Laos can't figure out democracy or freedom, but they brew beer with the best of them. I think this just goes to show that you can away with a lot so long as you have a good beer.

The worst thing about Cambodia are the tuk-tuk drivers. For those who don't know, tuk-tuks are like taxis, except they're just carriages hooked up to the back of motos. It's a great way to get around town, but everywhere I go I get asked if I want a ride by at leat 3 or 4 different tuk-tuk drivers. This all started the first night I got here as I walked the ten feet from my cab to my hotel with all my luggage. I couldn't believe it. "You want tuk-tuk?" "No, I don't want a tuk-tuk. I'm going into my hotel." If they wanted to be helpful they could've offered to carry my bags.

Phnom Phen is an enormous playground. You can get/find anything you want at anytime. It's amazing. There are also a lot of interns here, though not necessarily at my place of employment. A bunch of interns from dc-cam and I want to this huge ex-pat party at some bar last night. The bar was an outside lounge complete with a pool in the middle. Needless to say, after a few drinks the idea of jumping in the unchlorinated pool with your clothes on seems like a great idea. good times. The DC-Cam kids really make this place feel like I'm on the Real-World. Why don't they have a Real-World Cambodia? Everything legitimately costs a dollar and you can do whatever you want.

I start work on Monday and we apparently have 3 days of orientation. What they're going to tell us for 3 days is beyond me, but I'm sure I'll find it amusing. oh yeah, and as I was telling some people before I left, my job has restricted me from living in certain areas of the city. At first I thought this wasn't a big deal, and chalked it up to sketchy areas of Phnom Phen. Well, it turns out that one of the areas is where all the backpackers stay and hang out. The area is cheap, laid-back and sits on the shore of a huge lake. I'm not happy about this and unless they have some really good reasons for restricting my movements, I might be breaking this "suggested" rule rather soon.

So I'm leaving my house in less than 12 hours and I have not started to pack. Pretty standard really. I fly out of JFK and both my parents have refused to take me to the aiport, but I think they still love me. I'll post again once I survive the 20 hour trip. See everyone in about 6 months.