November 22, 2008

Finally :)

New photos are up! Honestly, this internet cafe is running a heist. They charge by the hour, but the internet is so slow and the computers have so many virus files (I just cleaned off 254 from my jump drive and 18 that spread to my laptop the other day)that you can't even check your email in under an hour. It's a brilliant plan - but brutal when you're trying to upload photos. Anyway, these are some shots of Pursat, my trip to the floating village and the lotus lake. I haven't uploaded any from Water Festival yet because my friend has them on his computer and I won't be able to get them until the next time I'm in PP, but I'll post them as soon as I can! Enjoy :)

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November 15, 2008

More to come soon. Cross my heart!

Day one - at the airport! So clean ... so so clean.
Just after swear-in. The only things holding us back from full out celebration were those tight Khmai skirts!

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November 14, 2008

Water Festival!!

Well, it looks like I arrived back at site just in time after my month-long hiatus. Water festival is basically a week long excuse not to work guised as a holiday honoring the moon. At first, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do with myself for a full week. All the major offices in town are closed, there’s obviously no school, and I was beginning to wonder how I was going to reintegrate back into site after being gone so long without leaning on my automatic status symbol of being the “neak-crew” or teacher. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wonder very long!

I arrived on Saturday, and my host family invited me to go to gut-tun with them on Sunday. During gut-tuns, everyone gets dressed up and heads to the local temple where the monks are praying and collecting money … which is cool, but what’s really fun are the surrounding festivities. It’s like a local fair, except instead of games and funnel cakes, there are rice cakes and young boys wearing Khmai scarf-diapers wrestling each other while a ring of sketchy old men and toddlers cheer for their favorite competitors. Of course, there are also tons of teenagers throwing makeshift water balloons made from sandwich bags and a gridlock of motos near the temple entrance that puts New York City traffic to shame. We waited two hours for our neighbor to pick us up in his car … that was parked 100 yards away. The concept of two lanes was totally lost on the mob, causing out-and-out chaos on the tiny dirt road (which was almost more entertaining to watch than the temple games). The police eventually showed up to direct the cars and motos into a more orderly mess, but the results were minimal. It was awesome.

Colin, Conor and Tyler decided to come visit on Monday so we spent the day wandering around Pursat, eating burgers, and drinking beer by the river. Talk about a perfect afternoon. Not to mention using the guys as an excuse to be a tourist in my own town was a great way to re-acclimate myself with Pursat. We hit all my favorite hot spots: K-Da, Malina Burger, Tela and the Coconut Shade Restaurant within a span of 24 hours. By the end of their visit, it didn’t take much for Colin and Conor to convince me to continue on their road-trip to see a few of the other volunteers up North.

The next day, we met up wit Edna, Bob, Zack and Kevin in Battambang for a repeat performance of what I can only imagine I missed over Halloween. Battambang is one of my favorite places in Cambodia. In fairness, I haven’t seen much of the country yet, but I love how the city manages to remain totally Cambodian (unlike Phnom Penh or Siam Reip that have been taken over by tourism), while still integrating enough Western elements to make it feel like I’m on vacation. It was great to see everyone and catch up on what projects we’re all working on … never mind the latest gossip.

After dinner and our requisite banana splits, we all turned in for the evening. The following morning, Colin, Bob, Edna, Zack and I decided to get up and hike to the top of a small mountain were there were some beautiful temples and the Killing Caves. The Killing Caves are deep natural caverns that the Khmer Rouge used during their reign to dispose of people. They would tie their prisoners’ hands together and push them over to the lip of the caves to the rocks below. Today, you can tour the caves and pay your respects at the nearby monuments honoring the people who died. It’s ironic (as I’m finding much of Cambodia is) that these sobering memories are right next door to some of the most beautiful golden temples I have seen to date.

When we finished touring the caves – you can actually climb all the way down into the very depths of them – we wandered farther up to a Buddhist temple to have a picnic. Little did we know there were monkeys up there! As Bob was wandering around, we saw a huge monkey walking towards him. At first we were excited to see it, until we realized it was eyeing the fruit hanging on Bob’s backpack. Monkeys may be small, but you do not want to stand between one of them and their food! It was almost comic how quickly we scrambled to get out of the way so Bob could throw the fruit on the ground. Our new friend untied the plastic bag like a pro, grabbed the goods and sat happily munching on some dragon fruit as we watched.

We were just beginning to think we were in the clear when tons more monkeys started pouring down the temple walls. I have absolutely no idea where they came from, but within a matter of moments they had entirely taken over our picnic spot. We grabbed what little we could and high-tailed it out of there. No sense spending another month Phnom Penh because of a rabies scare!

We found another place to sit a little farther up where we could enjoy our feast. We had all our favorite Khmai snacks (and some caramel apple dip that is decidedly not Cambodian, but too picnic-worthy to resist). And wow, let me tell you, the view from the top was absolutely breath-taking. You can literally see for miles because Cambodia is so flat so the only things interrupting the patchwork of rice fields are a few renegade palm trees, lakes and village oases.

After our excruciatingly bumpy took took ride back to BB we all took a much needed nap before dinner. As if climbing hundreds of stairs and a steep incline to the top of the mountain wasn’t enough, the roads leading to and from the temples were flooded and bumpy. I think I actually got some air-time during a few of those bumps! And during the highlight of our return trip we all had to crawl out into a mud hole so the boys could push the took took out of a rut. Yeah, sometimes it really is nice to be a girl. As we have come to say: “only in Cambodia!”

The following day, I had tentatively planned on returning South, but I couldn’t resist Deidre’s offer to spend one last night a little over an hour away in the town of Svay where she, Dan, Kelsey and Anthony would be hanging for the night at a VSO volunteer’s house and cooking dinner. Let me tell you, VSOs have the hook up.

I finally made it back to site this afternoon, with plans this week to go swimming with my Spanish friend Anna at a local water hole and visit a near-by temple with some of my co-teachers. It’s great to be back and see everyone – and nothing can beat my host family’s home-coming meal of gnome bun chaw (a white noodle dish with peanut-oil, beef and basil that would blow your mind) and more smiles and giggles than I know what to do with!

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East Bound and Down ... with Dengue

Well, it finally happened. I was sure I’d loose it during one of my all-night Red Bull soaked frenzies while writing my two theses last year, but I actually managed to keep it together (more or less) for that. When I stepped out of the decaying elevator at the Rex Hotel, however, all bets were off. As I stood staring down the dark corridor that supposedly led to my room, taking note of the mildew stains on the walls, rows of chipped wooden doors and dark green carpet that looked about as bad as I felt, I had one thought: “So, this is where they filmed The Shining…”

About a week and a half prior to this episode, I was sent to Phnom Penh with a high fever. Honestly, I was pretty excited. I could get out of my province for a few days, eat some good food and be back in time for the Halloween extravaganza I had planned with some other volunteers. That was before I found out I had Dengue Fever and would need hospitalization in Thailand. Dengue Fever, also known as the “break bone disease,” is a tropical illness carried by the mosquitoes that live in my bathroom. It causes a fever ranging from 101-104 degrees, severe body aches (hence the nickname), increased liver function, internal bleeding due to low platelet count, and a relentlessly maddening rash.

Coincidentally, there were actually two of us in town with Dengue at the time. Jason had a much worse strain than I did, but I still felt like someone had just used my body as a punching bag. At first, I resisted hospitalization. There’s actually nothing to be done for Dengue, and I figured I’d be more comfortable feeling miserable in a hotel room than in a hospital ward. I eventually caved in after some particularly disturbing blood work results and agreed to check into the hospital in Thailand. Jason was a few days ahead of me, so I didn’t see much of him during the worst of the illness until we both ended up back in Phnom Penh for recovery.

Apparently, health care is pretty good in Thailand, but I wouldn’t know because no one spoke English. Sure, the Dengue was hard physically … but it was much harder emotionally. Being sick and alone in a strange country for any extended amount of time is all but asking to have an emotional breakdown. Left to my own devices, with nothing but the t.v. for company and a few nurses who came in to take my blood pressure every few hours and ask me when the last time I peed was, I began planning my escape. I imagined all sorts of reasons to go AWOL and exactly how I could get out of the country before anyone was the wiser. At the peak of these fantasies, (probably fueled by the excessive number of Au Bon Pain pastries I had sent up to my room daily), I decided I would fly to France before heading home just in time for Thanksgiving. Merde.

Eventually, the “powers that be” agreed I was well enough to stay in a hotel for a few days before heading back to Cambodia after I reminded them that I was in a hospital, not a prison several times. Not one of my finest hours, I admit. None the less, this idea seemed promising because I was under the impression Jason was already there and that the hotel wouldn’t be … well … what it was. When I arrived, the squat, irritated receptionist informed me that the other volunteer had already left and briskly ushered me off to my room before I could ask any further questions. The Rex Hotel is like nothing I have ever seen. Apparently, they used to send G.I.s there to pick up prostitutes during the Vietnam War, and it doesn’t look like the place has changed much since. I’m not kidding when I say it looked like something out of a horror movie. Think: isolated location along a highway, dilapidated pool with greenish-brown water out back, view of a barbed wire fence from my window, and a thin layer of dust on everything from my sheets to the shower curtains. Sweeeet.

I was on the phone with my parents in roughly two point three minutes flat (courtesy of Peace Corps’ 10 minute complimentary call to the States “in case of emergencies”). I was hysterical. During training, we spent weeks discussing the importance of communication and safety for females – namely not to go anywhere too removed or alone for too long. Yet, there I was with no money, nothing but the clothes on my back and a piece of paper with the name and number of the PC Thailand admin office. I was pretty sure we hadn’t gone over this scenario during technical training, and I just couldn’t deal anymore. Thank God for telephones. Within minutes, Steve was cracking umpa-lumpa jokes and mom and dad were standing by as on-call life coaches: yeah, I could do this. I just needed to pull it together.

The next morning, I called my one and only contact and explained that I needed to return to Cambodia. Pronto. I didn’t feel safe, I was isolated, and I definitely didn’t have enough resources to get me through an entire weekend in Thailand. After a three hour delay during which she told me I couldn’t go back because she didn’t have the proper paperwork, yet another hysterical call to the States, and some sweet talking, I was sitting in the airport eating Dairy Queen (although it must be said that an XL cup is the size of a small at home, and that’s just wrong. You really can’t have too much soft-serve, even if you are a pint-sized Asian. Let’s get serious.).

My flight was slated to leave at 7 p.m., and since I had no money and no map, sight-seeing was out of the question. I decided it would be much nicer to wander around the airport during my 6 hours of downtime than to sit and contemplate where all the bodies were hidden at the Rex. International airports are truly phenomenal. When you step inside, it’s as if you have entered a glossed up version of whatever destination you currently find yourself at. The Thai airport is no exception. There are exotic gold statues, tropical plants and flowers to accompany the lurid posters advertising tourism in the country, restaurants for every pallet, delicate fabrics draped along endless rows of souvenir shops squeezed between high-end luxury stores. Why would you ever leave?? I felt a sense of calm wash over me as a stood outside the window at Dior – really, nothing bad could ever happen in an airport like this.

When I finally arrived back in Cambodia, I called Jason to give him Hell for “abandoning” me and then met up with him and some other PCVs to watch The Devil Wears Prada and eat chocolate cake in celebration of Erica’s birthday. Ahh comme c’est bon. I guess I didn’t need to run away to France after all. Who would have ever thought I’d be so happy to return to Cambodia? Jason and I were in town for observation and recovery for yet another week, so we decided to make the most of it. Mexican food, bar-trivia night, live election coverage. Heart be still.

After almost three solid weeks, I’m finally back at site. I would say back to the grind, but Cambodia is celebrating yet another holiday that I don’t fully understand, which means I won’t be teaching until the 17th of this month (mind you, they just had 4 days off a week and a half ago for the King’s bday). Typical. It really is nice to be back at site and feeling like myself again. My teaching buddies, Ratha, Monny have already started planning our next cooking session and coffee date so I’m sure I won’t have too much down time in the days to come. Plus, Colin and Conor are coming to visit this week, which will be awesome. But that’s another post.

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