Hey everyone we’re back from Thailand! We just got back on Sunday night, and we’ve been having a busy week so far, so I'm sorry for the delay in posting. I hope everyone has been doing well!!
We left for Thailand on Friday (6/17). Our flight wasn’t until four, but we showed up at two since it was an international flight- even though the Phnom Penh airport generally has an average of about one plane at a time. We started off our vacation week strong with Dairy Queen in the airport while we killed time.
We had no plan once we got to Thailand. We landed in Bangkok and a random guy in the airport told us that most tourists head to Khao San, one of the main sections in Bangkok with lots of restaurants and guesthouses. He also informed us that we couldn’t use US dollars in Bangkok- which wouldn’t normally seem surprising except that everywhere in Cambodia accepts US dollars, so for some reason we just assumed that Thailand would be the same way. So thankfully we knew to exchange some money at the airport before venturing out. We walked outside and found a taxi driver who automatically assumed that we were heading to Khao San, so we knew we were getting ourselves in to the majorly touristy area.
The entire street was filled with foreigners when we arrived. We finally found out where Southeast Asia has been hiding them all, because it’s definitely not in Phnom Penh. We fit in immediately- it was both good and bad. I think we had become accustomed to standing out during our time spent in Phnom Penh, especially since we’re the only foreigners who live in our section of town, or at least if we aren’t, the others don’t ever come out. So it was both nice to fit in and a little sad that people didn’t shout hello at us from every side as we walked down the street.
Still, it was nice to be in a vacation spot for once. We checked in to a guesthouse pretty easily, unpacked our stuff, I won rock paper scissors for not having to sleep on the cot (I happen to be pretty skilled at rock paper scissors and haven’t had to sleep on a cot yet), and then we went exploring. We got dinner in a place right down the street with every kind of food you could ever want- pizza, breakfast, thai food, dessert, sandwiches, everything. It was kind of awesome. We all ordered Thai food, eager to celebrate our first night in Thailand, and complemented it with wine. After that, we explored our street. Vendors took over the sidewalks at night, and brightly colored sundresses, jewelry, and shoes flashed out at us as we walked through the crowded streets and dodged hundreds of other tourists also out for a late night stroll.
We packed it in pretty early that night- for us, anyway. After the flight that day, we all wanted a little rest before facing a full day in Bangkok on Saturday. As we were getting ready for bed, we had a deep discussion, as usually happens between girls right before bed, about the fact that it isn’t fair that I always win rock paper scissors. I agreed and offered to take the cot, but this just wasn’t enough fun for us. So Jessi and I bet on the weather the next day- if it thunderstormed, I would get the bed, but if it didn’t, we would rock paper scissors for it again. On that enlightening note, we went to bed.
The next day we saw the sights of Bangkok- as many of them as we could cram in to daylight hours. We grabbed breakfast at the same place we had eaten dinner- which had a specific breakfast called American breakfast that we all proceeded to get, even though we knew how stereotypical that made us. We went to three different wats, or temples, and took tons of pictures- I’ll try to post some of them. We’re experts at visiting temples at this point. We know all of the unspoken rules about when to take off your shoes and when to be quiet and when to stop taking pictures so we don’t look like ridiculous tourists. We perused the temples for awhile, found a place to get a late lunch (ok I can’t hide it, that place was Subway), and then attempted to visit the Royal Palace. It was closed. Apparently one of the king’s relatives died in the tsunami a few years ago so the royal family was there to commemorate his death. The temple was scheduled to reopen later that afternoon, so we went back to our guesthouse. There was a pool on the roof so we went swimming for awhile, then showered and headed back to the Royal Palace. Still closed- this time we had apparently missed its visiting hours by about half an hour.
We gave up on the Royal Palace and headed a bit early to the night market. We have a history of showing up way too early for night markets. But we hung out and got dinner and waited for the stalls to open. The place was hopping later that night. Lots of tourists, but tons of locals too, came to wander the long aisles of temporary shops and explore. The theme was firmly focused on clothes- I’ve never seen so many dresses in my life. We held off on shopping- we had to live out of backpacks for the next week and none of us had room to carry around purchases yet.
After the night market, we headed back to Khao San and sat at a café for awhile, watching the diverse crowds wandering by and trying to guess at their accents while we sipped at smoothies with exotic fruits. It didn’t storm. Jessi and I played rock paper scissors again for the bed. I won. They complained about the fact that I always win for about twenty minutes, I offered to take the cot yet again and Jessi refused, and then we wandered back to our little rented room and fell asleep.
The next morning we checked out promptly at 9:30 and caught a cab back to the airport. We boarded our flight right on time (which we would later learn does not usually happen with Air Asia). We were on our way to the islands. We caught a tempting glimpse of the jade waters below us as the plane cruised in to Surat Thani, the in between stop for buses, trains, and generally everyone attempting to travel to the islands who can’t afford the abominable prices of direct flights.
A one hour bus ride, two hour ferry ride, and half hour cab ride later, we understood why people suck it up and pay for a direct flight. But we didn’t care. We were finally in Koh Samui.
We decided on Koh Samui the week before we left. Mostly because Jessi wanted to go to Koh Samui and Alisa wanted to go to Phuket, and Jessi won the coin toss. I didn’t care where we went- I just wanted to see a beach somewhere in Thailand. We checked in to a small bungalow, one of several belonging to the business Lucky Mother, changed clothes, and went exploring. By that point, night had fallen and it was too late to go swimming, but we made our way to the beach up the narrow sandy path from our bungalow. At night, the beaches on Koh Samui become restaurants, and all of the beachfront places had tables and lounge chairs set up for guests to wait for their food. We chose one of the closest ones and ordered food. Then we stretched out and listened to the sound of the surf, and let ourselves unwind after traveling all day. I wish I could always unwind that way.
After dinner, we explored the small town a little more. Koh Samui is a big honeymoon destination, and there were couples everywhere holding hands, and even more with kids running ahead of them. Shops stay open nearly all night, and street vendors sell the best pancakes on the planet- crepe style with bananas and nutella.
We crashed early that night and the next day we hit the beach only a few hours after sunrise- we were on vacation and thus did not have children waking us up at five a.m. every morning, so we’d been sleeping later. A few hours after sunrise was pretty good for us. We stayed on the beach until early afternoon- long enough for me to get bright red. Before you lecture (Mom), I did wear sunscreen and lots of it. But apparently the sun in Thailand is a bit hotter than the sun at home. And we actually hadn’t been getting much sun at Palm Tree because we’d been staying out of direct sunlight as much as possible due to the heat.
We grabbed lunch and wandered around the beach a little more, taking long walks and exploring stretches of white sand. The water was like bathwater- we could have swam at night and not been cold. We took that first day at the beach to just relax and not worry about taking trips and sightseeing and the stress of travel. That evening, we found another restaurant on the beach and got seafood. We got to pick out our crabs, and I got the biggest oyster I’ve ever seen in my life. They brought out a plate with this oyster and five different sauces to dip it in- it was quite the production. The seafood was probably some of the best I've ever had. It really doesn’t get fresher.
After dinner, we walked around a bit, found a bar that was showing Angels and Demons and watched that for awhile, and talked to some Australians who happened to be traveling through Southeast Asia on vacation. During our stay in the islands, we had also noticed that a lot of people walk around with monkeys through restaurants and bars, and try to get tourists to hold them for money. We usually just decline. I was sitting there, minding my own business and talking to Jessi, and this guy came up and put a monkey in my lap. I just stared at it, like "What the heck am I supposed to do with this thing?" It reached up and put its arms around me. I think the guy could tell that I wasn’t into it because he picked the monkey back up after ten seconds. Jessi and Alisa thought it was hilarious of course. I have to admit that the monkey was pretty cute.
That night we went to bed at a fairly decent hour and rolled out of bed the next morning in time to check out of our bungalow at Lucky Mother and catch the 10:00 ferry to Koh Pha Ngan. We ended up there at about eleven after a rainstorm that seriously threatened to unseat us the entire way. The reason we wanted to go to Koh Pha Ngan was because of the Black Moon Party. Koh Pha Ngan is famous for its parties. Every month, the island holds a Full Moon party, and several thousand people show up for it. But apparently this wasn’t enough because the island also holds a Half Moon party and a Black Moon party. Since the Black Moon party was the one we could catch, we were eager to go and check it out. Upon landing in Koh Pha Ngan, we headed straight for the area where the Black Moon party was going to be held- then realized that there is literally nothing else there but the Black Moon party. We high-tailed it out of there pretty quickly and headed for Haad Rin.
I loved the little street of Haad Rin. We stayed in the tourist section of town (as we have a habit of doing), found a nice yet cheap guesthouse on the beach, and proceeded to explore. The street seemed isolated, tucked away along the side of the island, surrounded on both sides by shops and open restaurants with televisions that played Friends almost twenty-four seven. No wonder I loved this place.
Again we went straight to the beach after checking in. We hung out in the warm tropical waters until dusk began to fall and we had to force ourselves to trudge back to our hotel and shower and get ready for dinner. We found one of the best sushi places ever and had amazing sushi. We also saw some of the cutest puppies I’ve seen this whole trip- and believe me I have seen a lot of dogs. Dogs run all over Southeast Asia, and we’ve learned to steer clear of them because most of them don’t have their shots or even people looking after them. But these puppies were so cute it was almost too hard to resist petting them.
After dinner, we met up with the Belgians we had met in Siam Reap. Jessi and Jeff (can’t spell his real name sorry) had been talking on Facebook for awhile, so we knew where they would be. We all met up at a restaurant on the beach and talked for awhile. Then we wandered over to another restaurant on the beach where they were doing flame throwing tricks. We watched the guys tossing fire in the air like it was nothing, like it wasn’t hot at all and they were invincible. The problem is, I think after we watched them do it long enough we started to believe that it was easy.
They got out a huge rope, covered it with whatever the Thailand equivalent of gasoline is (probably still gasoline), and set it on fire. Two men on platforms ten feet in the air started to turn the rope like a jump rope. A few of the other men started jumping. Some of them made it. Some of them fell. But everyone seemed okay when they got up. Then the crowd of tourists that had formed started getting involved.
I think you know where this is leading. One of the Belgians we were with dared me to jump. I said I would if he would- my standard response to dares. I never thought he would do it. Five minutes later he stumbles over fresh from the flaming jump rope and wants to know when I’m going to do it. So I got up and stood at the edge, preparing to run in. I probably would have prepared for awhile, a flaming jump rope is a bit daunting, but Alisa grabbed me and pulled me in with her. We both jumped… for about five seconds, and then we fell. It’s really hard to jump rope on sand. We both got up and ran away, even though the men stopped turning the jump rope whenever anyone fell anyway. I’m not going to lie- when I was jumping over it, it was hot. It definitely wasn’t fake fire. But the whole experience was exhilarating- a week later and we’re still talking about it.
After the whole jump rope event, we all hung out on the beach and talked for awhile longer, then made our way back to our respective bungalows. The Belgians had rented a motorbike and took off on that, and the three of us collapsed on our beds and fell instantly asleep.
The next morning, we opened the curtains to pouring rain. It was bound to happen, we reminded ourselves as we groaned and tugged on clothes instead of bathing suits. It was the rainy season in Thailand after all, and the weather in the islands was supposed to be terrible all week. We were lucky we had two sunny days in there.
Unfortunately it poured all day. It was hard to be optimistic at ten at night when it was still pouring.
We got breakfast (the American breakfast of course, what else?) in a café down the street. And watched Friends. For an hour. It was glorious. After that, Jessi met up with the Belgians again and Alisa and I opted to go to the tip of the island and try out kayaking. It was drizzling a bit, but the weather was much better for kayaking than snorkeling, so we dragged our kayak in to the ocean and paddled around for awhile. Neither of us being seasoned kayakers, we paddled a little too far away from the lodge. We went around a smaller island and ended up on a beach that was connected to the beach we had started out at- basically we did a big loop and landed on the wrong side. By that time, we were exhausted and our kayak rental time was up. We made a feeble effort to carry the kayak. We couldn’t even get it off the ground, but we gave some other tourists a good laugh.
With our heads pretty low, we dragged ourselves back to the lodge and informed them that our kayak was on the other side of the beach. It took them awhile to understand, and I’m not sure if it’s because no one has ever done that before or because of the language barrier. Eventually they burst out laughing and then someone ran and got the kayak, and pushed it back to the lodge.
We grabbed a taxi back to Haad Rin. The rain had momentarily subsided, so we showered and, along with Jessi, found a restaurant on the beach and ordered seafood again. The crabs all over the islands are amazing- I can vouch for it. After that Jessi decided to stay in Haad Rin and Alisa and I took off for the Black Moon party.
The party was about as hopping as an island party during the rainy season can get. There were probably five or six hundred people there, loud techno music blasted in the background, and everything was under blacklights. We got flowers painted on our legs so that they glowed under the blacklights and made our way on to the beach. We ended up meeting some interesting people, but we mostly kept out of the way and watched the festivities. More flame throwers. We stayed away this time. Our flight back was early the next morning, so we had to call it a night early on. We grabbed a cab back to Haad Rin and packed up for the next day.
Thursday was worse than any of us probably imagined. We were up at 5:30 a.m. With the sun. Literally. We took a half hour cab ride down to the docks. We took a four hour ferry ride to Surat Thani. We took an hour bus ride to a random bus station in the middle of nowhere that had the best ham sandwiches I think I’ve ever tasted. Then we took another hour bus ride to the actual airport in Surat Thani. By the time we got there, we threw our stuff on a few chairs and collapsed outside of check in for a few hours till it opened.
Our flight was delayed an hour and a half, so we had plenty of time to kill as we hung out in the tiny airport. I read half a book. We all slept a little bit. Air Asia finally let us check in a half hour before our flight was supposed to leave, and then hustled us through security. We waited another hour, and our flight finally left. We landed in Bangkok a few hours behind schedule and all but dragging our luggage behind us, exhausted. Our hearts were not in the haggle for taxi prices and we just took the first one who said "Five hundred baht" (that’s about fifteen dollars). For the half hour ride into the city, five dollars apiece was the best deal we would get.
Once we checked in to a guesthouse in Khao San (not the same guesthouse as before), we all showered and threw on clean clothes. Not fancy, going out clothes because none of us were prepared for a crazy night, but clothes that all the same felt just as good because they didn’t smell like other people’s sweat and airplanes.
That night I got to meet up with Jen Ryder, one of my friends from Pitt, which was awesome. She’s volunteering at APCA, one of the farm sites that’s distantly related to Palm Tree (we aren’t really sure how because there haven’t been a whole lot of details provided on that front). She flew into Bangkok and was staying with friends for a few days, but when we found out that we would be in Bangkok at the same time, we decided to meet up and she stayed with us at the guesthouse Thursday and Friday nights. We had an adventure finding each other. "I’m at the 7-11!" she yelled in to the phone. "No you aren’t because I’m at the 7-11!" I yelled back. Later we found out that there are approximately 30,000 7-11s in Bangkok.
Eventually we met up and the four of us went out in search of food. We ate on Khao San street (a mixture of Thai and American food that we all sort of shared with each other), and then we found the jazz club down the street. The jazz club was ritzy and classy, and the music was beautiful- and we lasted about five minutes there before realizing that the place was way out of our price range even for a bottle of water. We made our way upstairs to Gazebo, the hip hop club set up on the roof. That was more our speed. They played tons of songs that we knew from the States, and everyone sang along.
We turned in early (I promise we didn’t do that every night, I feel like it sounds as if we did), exhausted from traveling all day. Jen and I stayed up late and talked for awhile, catching up since we hadn’t seen each other since graduation, which was way too long ago.
The next day (Friday) we spent the full day exploring Bangkok. Recovered from our flight, we grabbed breakfast at the oh so early hour of ten a.m. After breakfast, we headed up the street a little ways and found a massage place. We all got one hour oil massages (for five dollars might I add), and they were amazing. My first professional massage. Though I have to say it was a little uncomfortable at times and I’m pretty sure my masseuse was somewhere between first and second base with me. I know, my life is clearly so difficult.
After our massages, we showered and then headed to Platinum, one of the biggest markets I have seen in my time in Southeast Asia. We spent three or four hours there and I still don’t think I saw even a fraction of the place. And they had everything you could haggle over. Anything you could think of. It was a bargainer’s paradise. We tried to stay away from spending too much (one carry on limit with Air Asia) and we just explored and enjoyed the different fashion trends we observed. So far we had stayed in mostly tourist areas- at Platinum, we only saw one or two other foreigners, and everyone else was locals. And haggled with a vengeance. It was a nice contrast.
After Platinum, we indulged in ice cream sundaes. I have gained so much weight from this trip. I thought I was losing weight in Cambodia, and then I went to Thailand. Anyway, the sundaes were amazing. We got back to Khao San a little later, changed, and headed to the night market for dinner and last minute purchases. Dinner was a mixture of pad thai, spring rolls, fried rice, and a few other dishes that looked good at the time. The four of us split everything and then wandered over to the night market. It was just as chaotic as I remembered- we walked around for awhile, got a few last minute Thailand purchases, and then made our way back to our guesthouse.
By this point it was about ten and we had planned to go out, but Jessi and Jen weren’t feeling well, so we decided to stay in and make it an early and relaxing night. Alisa and I ordered a pizza- yes you can do that in Bangkok, it was sweet- and then we went to bed.
Saturday was our last full day in Bangkok and we wanted to make it the best we could. Jessi hung out with Jeff most of the day- the Belgians had traveled to Bangkok the night before. Alisa, Jen, and I hit up the floating market in Bangkok. Apparently there is a floating market an hour and a half outside of Bangkok that is much better, and our cab driver didn’t even want to take us to the one in Bangkok, but we insisted. We decided that an hour and a half one way trip was too long to spend driving on our last day. The market in Bangkok was cool enough- we got seafood that had been caught in the river and took a three hour boat tour. There were a lot of people living along the river- at one point, we saw kids bathing in it. I’m not sure I would go that far. I was a little leery even eating things that were caught in it because it wasn’t the cleanest river I’ve ever seen. But it was entertaining to see how much life revolved around the water nonetheless.
After the market and the boat ride, we headed back to our guesthouse to freshen up. We thought about our options- we had had a late lunch and we still had some time to kill before dinner. And what’s the best way to kill time in Thailand? We went and got another massage. Oil again. This one was more interesting because my masseuse talked to me the whole time about teaching English and what she liked about living in Thailand. I’ve been not so secretly looking in to teaching jobs in Thailand so it was interesting to hear her thoughts on living in Bangkok. And the massage felt pretty good too.
I had to say goodbye to Jen afterwards. She had to take the bus early the next morning in to Cambodia, and since the ride was so long, she needed to get back to the friends she was staying with and make it an early night. It was sad to say goodbye so quickly, but I’m going to try to visit her later this week at APCA.
Alisa and I grabbed dinner at a sushi restaurant- we went all out on our last night in Bangkok. It was awesome because all out in Bangkok is half the price of a casual night out in the States. We hung out at the sushi place and ate leisurely and just talked about future plans. It was starting to dawn on me at the end of the Thailand trip that I would be going back to the States soon, and it had been awhile since I seriously thought about future job plans. I needed to get back in the swing of it and start thinking about my options again, and it was interesting to talk to somebody else who doesn’t have a set life plan. It’s always reassuring to find those people in life, and to realize that there are other people who have no idea what they want to do.
After that enlightening conversation, we walked along the busy, bumping streets of Khao San and joined in the nightlife. We did a little last minute shopping and roamed different stores and dance clubs. We went back to the hip hop club Gazebo and stayed for an hour or two, singing along to the songs we knew and enjoying the ones we didn’t. I met a guy from Dubai who talked to me for awhile about how to find teaching jobs in Thailand, which was interesting. It’s always interesting to meet foreigners who have settled in Bangkok because I feel like I would go through the same experience if I decided to teach there. Sometime in the hopefully not so distant future.
We made it back to our guesthouse at the terribly late hour of two a.m.
The next morning we rolled out of bed at about nine, grabbed breakfast and packed up, did a last tour around Khao San and the surrounding area to say farewell, and then got a cab to the airport. Our flight was delayed three hours (big shock there), so we hung out for way too long before finally returning to Phnom Penh.
The kids were so happy to see us when we walked through the gates. It had been forever, all but a lifetime for all of us, and we kind of all rushed in to each others’ arms. It was one of those movie moments where everything comes together at the end. The travelers returned. And it really has become a home to me, living at the orphanage. I didn’t realize how much until the moment we returned after having been away for over a week. I am really going to miss this place.
So that was our Thailand adventure- to sum it up in oh about seven pages. I'm going to post again before I leave next week, so I'll give you the update on my last week at the orphanage! Right now they're keeping us busy- we have exams this weekend, so we're scrambling to meet with the teachers and put the test questions together. It's been a chaotic week, more so because I know that I'm leaving soon, but I've enjoyed every second of being with the kids again.
I'm excited to see you all soon! I hope everyone is doing well at home and I miss you!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Fortune Tellers and Foreigners
Hey everyone :) I hope everyone's doing well! I'm going to let you know right off the bat that this will be a short post. We're heading to Thailand later today (yay) so I'll post a lot more when I get back. I just wanted to keep you guys updated with our plans.
So first off, this past week has gone basically as normally as any week here in lovely Phnom Penh can. We had two visitors to the orphanage this weekend- Doug and his son Michael from Ohio (I think I mentioned them in my last post). They threw a party Saturday night that started off with fried chicken and sodas for dinner. And when I say fried chicken I mean it looked like someone had taken a whole chicken and put it in a fryer- every part of the chicken was still there. It was a little awkward to eat, but we managed. Then the older kids set up speakers and we had music all night- well until about nine p.m. I love when we have parties here. The music is so loud that everyone in the neighborhood has to hear it- it's like hiring a DJ back in the States. Yet nobody calls the cops- instead our neighbors come out on their balconies and listen and join in the dancing. There really is no place like Cambodia anywhere else in the world.
So after the party (which, like the last party at Palm Tree, was a mixture of American and Khmer music), we all pretty much collapsed and went to bed. The music didn't stop till 9:30, which is definitely past our bedtime here, and by the time we were done dancing and chasing kids, we were exhausted.
The next morning we got up at our usual 6 a.m. and went to see a fortune teller. Sna, one of the older girls at Palm Tree, had gone to see him earlier and insisted that he is the best- I think she may be a little biased because he is also related to her family. But we all thought it would be really fun to go see a fortune teller in Phnom Penh since they're everywhere here and none of us had ever had our fortunes read before. We met the fortune teller at Sna's sister's house, where most of her relatives now live.
To jump off the subject for just a moment: a lot of the children at Palm Tree do still have living relatives and some of them even have parents who are still alive. However, a lot of their relatives can't afford to take care of them, so they still live at Palm Tree and they go home to visit once in awhile.
Back to the fortune teller. We sat down on a rug in a circle, and he told all of our fortunes in front of each other (which may seem a little scary but in light of the situation I think it was nice to have other people there with me). Sna translated everything for him since he didn't speak much English. I went first- I feel like for some reason I always end up going first in these situations, I have no idea why.
The fortune teller took out half a deck of cards (all the cards from the Aces to the sevens), and had me shuffle the cards seven times. Then he had me cut the deck and hand it to him. He spread out the cards and had me pick one. I'm still not sure what the significance of any of this was. He spread out the cards in lines, and then proceeded to give me information about my life. He told me that I like to travel- well no duh I'm in Cambodia. Anyone could guess that. He also said that I would be taking a trip in a week- yes we're going to Thailand, but still, most foreigners who travel to Phnom Penh are going all over Southeast Asia, so he could still have guessed that I would be traveling. Not that I was skeptical about the fortune telling process or anything.
Then he had me do the shuffling the deck thing again and he spread the cards out differently, with stacks on one side and a row on the other side. He proceeded to tell me that I would get married when I'm 26-27 to a businessman. He then told me that I'm going to be rich when I'm 26-27. So apparently I'm either coincidentally selling a novel at the same time as I'm getting married or I'm marrying somebody who's rich. He said I'm going to date somebody in the next year but it's not going to work out- which, even though I feel like I mostly laughed off this whole experience, will still probably nag at me if I do actually end up dating somebody this year haha. He also said that when I do get married, I'm going to have three kids: a boy, a girl, and another boy. That part is ok with me.
He told me a lot of specific things too. He said that I was going to get a gift from a man on Wednesday (which I don't think happened but I forgot I was supposed to be on the lookout for it, so it might have happened and I just didn't realize it). He also said that one of my friends was going to come to me for help this weekend (Jessi thinks it's her), and that I'm going to have a fight with a friend next week (we're all hoping that's not true). He also told me that I'm going to have trouble at work at the end of this month... but I don't have a job (thanks for reminding me mr. fortune teller), so I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean. He told me that I'm going to be able to do whatever I want with my life- he told us all that so I'm not sure how I feel about that actually being true, but it was nice to hear.
All in all, I liked my fortune teller experience. I have to say it was probably the highlight of my week. Jessi's and Alisa's were similar- Jessi is getting married when she's 28 and Alisa is apparently supposed to meet her husband in November while she's still at Palm Tree. So that might be interesting haha. He also said basically the same things about our past love lives and experiences, but kept it general enough that we could all apply his words to our experiences... So I'm not sure how legit that part was. But it was still fun to hear our "futures" and compare notes.
It was also really cool to see the family dynamic at Sna's sister's house. They brought food for us and refused payment, even though we felt kind of bad eating their food. We plugged in a vcr in the little room upstairs with its bamboo for floorboards, and watched Sna's sister's wedding video. Let me tell you- wedding videos here are soo different. They love to put random bright colors in the background of the pictures, for one thing. It's a little blinding. But Sna's sister looked beautiful and it was fun to watch the wedding ceremony itself and see all of the guests interacting.
Later that day, after our fortune teller experience, we decided to go find a gym. We ended up at this little all but outdoor gym where several Cambodian men were working out. Since it was only a dollar for four of us, we were like, "Oh why not?" Everyone stares at us anyway, so it wasn't as if it was anything new for us. Though it was extremely hot in the gym and we vowed to find an air conditioned one next time. Also there is some strange gym equipment on this side of the world, I have to say. I'm not sure what some of it even works out. And everyone works out in jeans. I don't know how.
The rest of the week was pretty much similar to all of our weeks at Palm Tree. We had exams in my class almost every day, but the kids apparently like exams here so I guess it was a good thing. Most of them did pretty well anyway. I've become a lot more comfortable with teaching while I'm here and Nita will leave halfway through class all the time, and I no longer feel like I need to panic- which is definitely progress. It's been easier to think on my feet and come up with games and fun ways to teach my lessons now that I know where the kids are and what they are used to a little more.
As for our upcoming plans. We're heading to Thailand later today- our flight for Bangkok leaves at 4 and lands at about 5:30. Then our plan is to wander around until we find a guesthouse. Fool proof plan, right? We do have a travel book that lists several guesthouses so we'll have some help, but it'll be an adventure. We're staying in Bangkok all day Saturday and sightseeing. Sunday morning we're leaving for Koh Samui- we ended up getting a flight since it was only a few dollars more than taking night trains both ways, and saves about twenty hours of travel time. Koh Samui is one of the islands on the Eastern coast here, and we're hoping the weather will be a little better there because apparently the weather is going to be terrible all over Thailand this week (of course), but statistically the Eastern islands get hit less than everywhere else. We're planning to stay at Koh Samui but also go to Koh Pangnang, which is about half a ferry ride away, and maybe to Koh Tao, which is supposed to have amazing diving and snorkeling trips. We head back to Bangkok Thursday afternoon, and then we're staying in Bangkok until Sunday afternoon (the 26th), when we head back to Phnom Penh. So that's our plan so far.
And I promise you'll get a detailed post when I get back of all of our Thailand adventures. I miss all of you so much- I'll be home in a few weeks! Can't wait to see you!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
So first off, this past week has gone basically as normally as any week here in lovely Phnom Penh can. We had two visitors to the orphanage this weekend- Doug and his son Michael from Ohio (I think I mentioned them in my last post). They threw a party Saturday night that started off with fried chicken and sodas for dinner. And when I say fried chicken I mean it looked like someone had taken a whole chicken and put it in a fryer- every part of the chicken was still there. It was a little awkward to eat, but we managed. Then the older kids set up speakers and we had music all night- well until about nine p.m. I love when we have parties here. The music is so loud that everyone in the neighborhood has to hear it- it's like hiring a DJ back in the States. Yet nobody calls the cops- instead our neighbors come out on their balconies and listen and join in the dancing. There really is no place like Cambodia anywhere else in the world.
So after the party (which, like the last party at Palm Tree, was a mixture of American and Khmer music), we all pretty much collapsed and went to bed. The music didn't stop till 9:30, which is definitely past our bedtime here, and by the time we were done dancing and chasing kids, we were exhausted.
The next morning we got up at our usual 6 a.m. and went to see a fortune teller. Sna, one of the older girls at Palm Tree, had gone to see him earlier and insisted that he is the best- I think she may be a little biased because he is also related to her family. But we all thought it would be really fun to go see a fortune teller in Phnom Penh since they're everywhere here and none of us had ever had our fortunes read before. We met the fortune teller at Sna's sister's house, where most of her relatives now live.
To jump off the subject for just a moment: a lot of the children at Palm Tree do still have living relatives and some of them even have parents who are still alive. However, a lot of their relatives can't afford to take care of them, so they still live at Palm Tree and they go home to visit once in awhile.
Back to the fortune teller. We sat down on a rug in a circle, and he told all of our fortunes in front of each other (which may seem a little scary but in light of the situation I think it was nice to have other people there with me). Sna translated everything for him since he didn't speak much English. I went first- I feel like for some reason I always end up going first in these situations, I have no idea why.
The fortune teller took out half a deck of cards (all the cards from the Aces to the sevens), and had me shuffle the cards seven times. Then he had me cut the deck and hand it to him. He spread out the cards and had me pick one. I'm still not sure what the significance of any of this was. He spread out the cards in lines, and then proceeded to give me information about my life. He told me that I like to travel- well no duh I'm in Cambodia. Anyone could guess that. He also said that I would be taking a trip in a week- yes we're going to Thailand, but still, most foreigners who travel to Phnom Penh are going all over Southeast Asia, so he could still have guessed that I would be traveling. Not that I was skeptical about the fortune telling process or anything.
Then he had me do the shuffling the deck thing again and he spread the cards out differently, with stacks on one side and a row on the other side. He proceeded to tell me that I would get married when I'm 26-27 to a businessman. He then told me that I'm going to be rich when I'm 26-27. So apparently I'm either coincidentally selling a novel at the same time as I'm getting married or I'm marrying somebody who's rich. He said I'm going to date somebody in the next year but it's not going to work out- which, even though I feel like I mostly laughed off this whole experience, will still probably nag at me if I do actually end up dating somebody this year haha. He also said that when I do get married, I'm going to have three kids: a boy, a girl, and another boy. That part is ok with me.
He told me a lot of specific things too. He said that I was going to get a gift from a man on Wednesday (which I don't think happened but I forgot I was supposed to be on the lookout for it, so it might have happened and I just didn't realize it). He also said that one of my friends was going to come to me for help this weekend (Jessi thinks it's her), and that I'm going to have a fight with a friend next week (we're all hoping that's not true). He also told me that I'm going to have trouble at work at the end of this month... but I don't have a job (thanks for reminding me mr. fortune teller), so I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean. He told me that I'm going to be able to do whatever I want with my life- he told us all that so I'm not sure how I feel about that actually being true, but it was nice to hear.
All in all, I liked my fortune teller experience. I have to say it was probably the highlight of my week. Jessi's and Alisa's were similar- Jessi is getting married when she's 28 and Alisa is apparently supposed to meet her husband in November while she's still at Palm Tree. So that might be interesting haha. He also said basically the same things about our past love lives and experiences, but kept it general enough that we could all apply his words to our experiences... So I'm not sure how legit that part was. But it was still fun to hear our "futures" and compare notes.
It was also really cool to see the family dynamic at Sna's sister's house. They brought food for us and refused payment, even though we felt kind of bad eating their food. We plugged in a vcr in the little room upstairs with its bamboo for floorboards, and watched Sna's sister's wedding video. Let me tell you- wedding videos here are soo different. They love to put random bright colors in the background of the pictures, for one thing. It's a little blinding. But Sna's sister looked beautiful and it was fun to watch the wedding ceremony itself and see all of the guests interacting.
Later that day, after our fortune teller experience, we decided to go find a gym. We ended up at this little all but outdoor gym where several Cambodian men were working out. Since it was only a dollar for four of us, we were like, "Oh why not?" Everyone stares at us anyway, so it wasn't as if it was anything new for us. Though it was extremely hot in the gym and we vowed to find an air conditioned one next time. Also there is some strange gym equipment on this side of the world, I have to say. I'm not sure what some of it even works out. And everyone works out in jeans. I don't know how.
The rest of the week was pretty much similar to all of our weeks at Palm Tree. We had exams in my class almost every day, but the kids apparently like exams here so I guess it was a good thing. Most of them did pretty well anyway. I've become a lot more comfortable with teaching while I'm here and Nita will leave halfway through class all the time, and I no longer feel like I need to panic- which is definitely progress. It's been easier to think on my feet and come up with games and fun ways to teach my lessons now that I know where the kids are and what they are used to a little more.
As for our upcoming plans. We're heading to Thailand later today- our flight for Bangkok leaves at 4 and lands at about 5:30. Then our plan is to wander around until we find a guesthouse. Fool proof plan, right? We do have a travel book that lists several guesthouses so we'll have some help, but it'll be an adventure. We're staying in Bangkok all day Saturday and sightseeing. Sunday morning we're leaving for Koh Samui- we ended up getting a flight since it was only a few dollars more than taking night trains both ways, and saves about twenty hours of travel time. Koh Samui is one of the islands on the Eastern coast here, and we're hoping the weather will be a little better there because apparently the weather is going to be terrible all over Thailand this week (of course), but statistically the Eastern islands get hit less than everywhere else. We're planning to stay at Koh Samui but also go to Koh Pangnang, which is about half a ferry ride away, and maybe to Koh Tao, which is supposed to have amazing diving and snorkeling trips. We head back to Bangkok Thursday afternoon, and then we're staying in Bangkok until Sunday afternoon (the 26th), when we head back to Phnom Penh. So that's our plan so far.
And I promise you'll get a detailed post when I get back of all of our Thailand adventures. I miss all of you so much- I'll be home in a few weeks! Can't wait to see you!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Same Same But Different
So here's the Siem Reap post- sorry for the delay! Miss you all!
We left bright and early for Angkor Wat Friday morning (7/3). Meaning six a.m. Which is actually about when we get up every morning anyway, so it wasn’t that early for us. But as the sun was rising, we were heading to the bus station, about to leave Phnom Penh for the first time since we flew in. I have to say that I was a little nervous about the bus ride itself, more so than about Siem Reap. A six hour bus ride through the back country of Cambodia seemed adventurous at best, terrifying at worst. But the bus was air conditioned and there were other foreigners with us, so we figured it wouldn’t be too dodgy. We slept most of the way and enjoyed watching the farmland, swamps, and rice paddies we passed along the way.
One of the coolest things were the stops along the road. I couldn’t help comparing them to the turnpike stops I take in the States when I'm driving between York and Pittsburgh. It even had food, bathroom, and snacks for purchase. Okay, so the bathrooms were squatty potties that we had to pay to use, and the food was rice and what may or may not have been chicken, and we couldn't read any of the names of the snacks, but still. It was pretty cool. The road stops all looked the same, just like pit stops back home.
We reached Siem Reap at about one in the afternoon, which wasn’t bad- we made decent time. Probably because the driver didn’t give us more than ten minutes rest the two times that we did stop. But we were in a good mood as we got out of the bus and made our way up the muddy, dodgy alley from the bus station to the main road.
We picked up a tuk tuk and he took us to his guesthouse. Since the guesthouse was a still pretty far from where we actually wanted to go, we thanked him for getting us that far and walked the rest of the way. The walk ended up being really nice- Siem Reap is beautiful. All of the trees were green, and people smiled and waved at us, and there was a river with picturesque park benches surrounding it. We also got stopped during this first walk, and throughout our time in Siem Reap, by children. These weren’t your average beggar children, like we’d become accustomed to on our forays outside of Palm Tree in Phnom Penh. These children carried baskets of bracelets and postcards and decorations. They followed us and asked where we were from. I said, "The United States." They said, "Oh. The capital is Washington, DC. Your president is Obama. His wife is Michelle." Every time. We started jazzing it up after the first few times to hear facts about other countries. They knew most European and Asian countries, but they couldn’t tell us the capitals of South Africa or Mauritius. Still, they were sweet kids. And their English was fantastic from practicing on all of the tourists, and from government school since all of them talked about going to school.
We walked around till we found a decent looking guesthouse above a place called Molly Mallone’s, an Irish pub. The rooms were nice and fairly cheap for a tourist town, so we decided to stay. Air conditioning was pretty much our only requirement at that point. We unpacked and found dinner at a restaurant nearby that mixed all kinds of international foods so that we ordered a few dishes from different countries. It was nice to jazz up our diet a bit from the typical rice and veggies.
Sometime between checking into our guesthouse and dinner, I ended up getting the same rash that Alisa and Jessi had a few weeks ago. We assumed it had to be some kind of virus since none of us had eaten seafood, and we had all eaten the same food the past week. Of course I would wait to get sick until we decided to take a trip somewhere. But it ended up going away by Sunday night, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as Jessi and Alisa’s- I didn’t have to go to the clinic or anything for it. But I'm hoping it still counts as getting sick in Cambodia. They say that everyone who comes here gets sick, so I hope that’s going to be my only illness because it wasn’t bad at all. You can’t even tell in my pictures- at least I hope you can’t.
I would also like to take this moment to interject with a few differences between Eastern and Western medicine. When any of us gets sick, the kids tell us to shower twenty times a day. Their response is always, "Oh you should take a shower, you should take a shower." They say that not showering often enough causes the illness. The kids have also blamed everyone from witches to different religious sects each time one of us gets sick. Everyone tells us to stay away from girls who are menstruating- apparently this aggravates the sickness. If someone here gets a fever, they put this ointment on their shoulders and chest, and then scratch it with a coin until it’s red and raw. They say that this helps the fever escape. It distracts from the fever anyway. We always know when one of the kids is sick because they run around with the red marks across their shoulders. We sit in our rooms and take Tylonel cold medicine when we feel ill while they sit outside and scratch with a coin- clearly we have different views about what to do when you get sick. To each his own.
Anyway, back to Siem Reap. After dinner, we went to the night market. I have to say that the night market in Siem Reap was definitely the biggest market that I’ve seen in Cambodia so far, and honestly probably is the biggest market in Cambodia. It was really cool to walk around and see everyone there, and bargaining was super fun. We also found the weirdest foot massage I’ve ever seen. There were fish in an inflatable pool and when you put your hand or foot in, they all rushed over and started sucking at it. Apparently they suck off the dead skin. I stuck my hand in for about two seconds and decided they weren’t getting anywhere near my feet for any length of time. Jessi and Alisa wholeheartedly agreed so we went back to walking through the market and helping each other bargain.
The markets are also where we learned the saying "Same same but different." Everyone in Cambodia goes around saying it, and we have since taken it and made it our own. We use it for everything now- I don't think ten minutes of conversation goes by without one of us saying it. We all bought T-shirts that say it. "Same same but different" refers to so many things here. Like the market stands. They sell scarves and jewelry and pottery- the same artifacts, but in different shapes and styles and techniques. Same same but different.
After the markets, we headed back to our room to dump off our purchases and then made our way out to explore the nightlife in Siem Reap. Which I have to say is much easier to find than the nightlife in Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh, the night life is all spread out with people going to bars on different streets in different districts of town; in Siem Reap, all of the bars are on one street (conveniently named Bar Street) so everyone ends up in the same place. And we literally found out where all of the foreigners in Cambodia have been hiding. There were so many foreigners in the bars that we no longer felt like we stood out for the first time in Cambodia. It was a bit of a relief. We met a few French guys and hung out with them for most of the night, trying out Temple Bar and Angkor What (yeah the names were a bit cheesy). We didn’t stay out late though- we had to make it out to Angkor Wat early the next morning.
We dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning at the oh so early hour of nine a.m. Yeah we were a little lazy during our stay in Siem Reap- we figured we were on vacation so we deserved a bit of a break. We found breakfast and I mean breakfast: eggs, bread, bacon, hash browns, and coffee for three dollars. Paradise in a little restaurant that I don’t even remember the name of. We were so happy to have something other than oatmeal for breakfast that we all but kissed the waitress.
After that we found a driver who offered to take us around for the day for the negotiated price of $12. We probably could have gotten it down even more, but he was driving us several miles- it seemed pretty fair. We went straight to Angkor Wat. I had no idea what to expect, to be honest. I’ve seen pictures, but everything I’ve seen just shows what the temple looks like. I didn’t know what it would be like inside, or what anything around it would look like.
So first surprise: there’s a huge river around Angkor Wat. We had to cross a bridge to get to it. Who knew? The tuk tuk driver pulled up and joined his buddies who were also waiting for their clients to come back. He told us it typically takes about two hours to walk around inside Angkor Wat. We walked across the street and waited to cross the bridge because apparently a wedding had just taken place and the bridal party was taking photos. Getting married at Angkor Wat would be pretty sweet, I have to say. Getting married at any one of the seven wonders of the world would be an awesome story.
We made our way across the bridge, talking to some Cambodians along the way who, after they realized we weren’t going to buy postcards from them, started talking to us about all of the foreigners they met and what life was like in Siem Riep. I feel like the kids selling postcards on the streets in Siem Reap have more knowledge of global culture and languages than most Americans will ever have.
We walked through the entrance to Angkor Wat, which was almost as elaborate as the outside of the temple itself. A monk sat inside and offered us incense, so we knelt and did the "three times bow" that we had grown used to from visiting places in Phnom Penh, then left our incense and a few riel in front of the statue of whichever Buddhist figure gives good luck (if anyone reading happens to know, feel free to share). We made it through to the other side of the stone entrance and got our first glimpse of Angkor Wat a quarter mile ahead of us, surrounded on either side by small stone buildings with single rooms inside.
Angkor Wat is a lot simpler than I had imagined for being called a wonder. There are no frills, no brightly colored wall hangings, no jewels or gems or sparkling lights anywhere. It’s actually so simple that it’s stunning. The architecture is amazing- the rooms were separated by knee high remains of walls that we climbed through as we explored the interior. Monks passed through several times, their bright orange robes contrasting with the deep gray of the ancient temple. We walked through and examined what must have been a grand meeting hall surrounded by levels and levels of passageways. We crossed to the side and saw what was probably a prayer meeting going on: about fifty people sat in the grass in front of one of the idols outside the temple, everyone repeating words in Khmer that I didn’t understand. We spent awhile exploring and then walked around the outskirts, examining the crumbling yet formidable walls. I felt like I could imagine the temple as what it must have once been: strong, sturdy, unyielding. For as well as it looks now, it must have been grand and stately once, a treasure in the Angkor time period.
Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century as a Hindu temple and was then converted into a Theravada Buddhist temple. It is currently open to the public for walking through and exploration. However, rumor has it that the government is closing Angkor Wat after this summer and people will only be able to take pictures from the outside. I feel privileged to have gotten to see the inside, but I understand why they would consider closing it. The inside looks worn and the stone is chipping along the floor and walls and pillars because so many people have crossed through since it was built. The architects were certainly planning a structure that would last as a remnant of religious culture for ages and ages, but with so many tourists walking through daily, it is starting to wear away faster. Not that I have any of this information from a plaque or pamphlet. Angkor Wat and the other temples did not have any information for tourists, not even a little center nearby with handouts. There was no type of history- we came across each temple as if it was just sitting there, waiting to be discovered, and most of them I had never heard of.
We left Angkor Wat and went to Angkor Thom after that. The faces carved in to the temple of Angkor Thom were one of the coolest things I’ve seen, mostly because it made me wonder what kind of status you would have to have in Cambodia to get your face carved in to a temple pillar. I’ll try to put up a picture so you can understand the awesomeness that was this temple; it was literally made of people’s faces peeking down at us as we explored the remnants.
We went through several other temples, but the coolest one was the temple at Ta Prohm. This temple literally had trees growing on top of it, huge trees with roots way bigger than I am that spilled down the sides of broken stone structures. As we walked through, we saw signs warning us of danger from falling rocks. Clearly the temple was falling down daily, but it was so cool to see what remained of it and the fact that the trees were slowly reclaiming the earth that had once held such a powerful structure. It was also there that it began to pour. By this point in our stay in Cambodia, we learned to embrace rain, if only because it cooled off our little section of the world. I have to say that it did not do much for my rash, but it was still a relief to be wet from rain instead of sweat for the first time that day.
Though the rain did make pictures difficult and exploring became dicey. Add rain to the fact that the temple was falling down and I’m a natural klutz, and I was pretty much asking for disaster. So we walked around for a few more minutes and then made our way back through the muddy trail to our tuk tuk driver, who laughed at the sight of us but tenaciously let down straps of plastic around the tuk tuk that would have kept us relatively dry were we not already soaked through. We stopped for watermelon juice at a village that was pretty much a few restaurants and shops, and clearly existed from increased tourism in the area. Watermelon juice is… I don’t even have words. The English major has no words. You know it’s good. And watermelon is so fresh here, it’s the perfect refreshing drink, but Siem Reap is the only place we’ve found it so far- it is hiding from us in Phnom Penh.
We headed back to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat is about four miles outside), and ran up the guesthouse steps to our room. We stood outside the door while one of us fumbled for the key, impatient, soaked, knee deep in mud, and desperately in need of a shower. "Wait," one of us (I can’t remember who) said, "doesn’t that sound like water?"
Cautiously we pushed open the door. I walked in like a police officer entering a crime scene, purse at the ready in one hand. There was definitely the sound of water in our room, and it wasn’t dripping, it was pouring. I looked around- no one was in there. I waved the other two in, and we located the source: the sink had a leak and water was pooling across our bathroom floor. This isn’t quite as devastating as it may at first seem; it wasn’t as if the room would flood. Let me take a moment to describe the way that bathrooms are set up in Phnom Penh. There are no bathtubs. Instead there is a shower hose stuck against the wall with a button next to it that you use to turn on the water, and then turn to adjust the temperature. The water then goes in to the bathroom and leaves through a little drain typically located in one corner. So the water flooding out of the sink in our guesthouse bathroom drained effectively, but the water kept gushing.
I ran down the stairs and let the "innkeeper" (not sure what they're called in Khmer) know. She and a mechanic rushed upstairs after me and immediately set to work on the sink. A half hour later it was in pieces and water still spewed everywhere. An hour later they moved us to another room that was even better: we got our own balcony and got to look out as the sun set over the street that was starting to fill with early nightlifers. We all showered (desperately needed by this point), and changed in to clothes to go out for our second and final night in Siem Reap.
We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I really don’t think I need to say anything besides that it was the best Mexican I have ever had. And maybe that’s because I haven’t had Mexican in what feels like forever, but I don’t know how another restaurant could make better vegetable chimichangas and mojitos.
Afterwards, we went to Angkor What and ordered a few drinks. We ended up meeting a group of Belgians and hanging out with them late in to the night, swapping travel stories, sharing drinks, and enjoying the general ambience of tons of foreigners speaking in all different languages. The walls of Angkor What are covered with marker from thousands of visitors writing messages on them, and we found lots of messages from SASers who traveled to Cambodia on one of the SAS trips. We of course wrote our own messages, played a little pool, and talked to tons of strangers. It was a cool little part of the world where people from all different backgrounds came together to relax, chat, and just have some fun. Almost everyone there was traveling through Southeast Asia, and we got a lot of advice about our upcoming trip to Thailand, and swapped some advice about traveling to Phnom Penh. After we left the bar, the neighborhood kids set upon us again; to distract them from the constant harmony of "money money money" we played games with them, and they stole one of the Belgian guy's shoes and ran off with it, and it was an entertaining walk home.
The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed at eight, stumbled to breakfast (eggs and bacon again Hallelujah), and then found another market for last minute souvenirs. We went back to our guesthouse and checked out, which was actually really sad because everyone there had been nice and the rooms had been spotless, and all in all we’d enjoyed our Siem Reap experience. Checking out of the guesthouse made it hit home that our vacation was over.
We went back to the bus station by tuk tuk and got on to our bus. Six hours, a few moody arguments about Thailand plans, and a terrible lunch stop later, we made it back to Phnom Penh. Needless to say we were all ready to get off the bus. None of us had gotten a lot of sleep, which made us a little short with each other, though this is bound to happen when three people spend as much time together as we do. Three is also a terrible number to travel with- just throwing it out there. It would be great to have an even number, but Mike isn’t into spending a single dollar more than he has to on this trip.
Getting back to the orphanage was great. The kids were really happy to see us, their faces were so excited, and they jumped around us and tugged at our bags, wanting to know about Siem Reap. Throughout my time spent here, they just keep asking me, "Are you happy? Are you happy?"
"Kinyom s’bai," I say. I am happy.
Seeing how excited they were when we got back made me a little sad that I’m leaving in August. I’m the first one to leave (although Mike is leaving three days later) and I have considered staying longer. I’m just having such an amazing time working with the kids here and I don’t want to have to leave. But I know that I’m just delaying the inevitable because eventually I would have to leave, and there are other volunteers coming in, and I can’t hide from the real world forever. Plus I plan on getting back to this side of the world fairly soon in my life, and hopefully to Palm Tree again, so I have the reassurance that it’s probably not forever. Still… Spending so much time with these kids…. They’re great kids. I can only hope that I have kids that are as great as these kids one day (in the far away future). I almost can’t believe how amazing they are. They’re smart and sweet, and they take care of each other, and they almost never cry, and they aren’t selfish. And they’re all so cute. How do they get that cute?
The rest of this week has been fairly typical, much more so because of our exciting Siem Reap trip. Tuesday was the celebration of the dedication of Preah Vihear (the temple where all of the fighting is going on with Thailand right now), so everyone in the city turned out for a concert in the Olympic Stadium at six. We attempted to go, but there were so many people that we just ended up sitting outside and watching the fireworks. Which was exciting in and of itself because it was only three days after the Fourth of July, so we felt like we were getting to secretly celebrate our own holiday too.
We also had some adventures with renewing our visas this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Jessi and Alisa went on Wednesday to renew theirs, and I stayed at Palm Tree because my visa says it doesn’t expire until August 10th, so I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about renewing it. Nope. Apparently the date on the visa doesn’t matter. When you land in Cambodia, you have to fill out a customs form, which they then staple in to your passport. After one month from the date on that form, you have to renew the visa. We still aren’t sure what the point is of putting a date on the actual visa if it’s not the correct date. Luckily Jessi got to Cambodia the same day as me and had applied for her visa right in the airport, not beforehand, so the expiration date on her visa was the same as on the customs form. She and Alisa came back and we all ended up going back to the Immigration office later that day, and Jessi and I didn’t have to pay any additional fees. But Alisa and Mike had gotten to Cambodia earlier than we had, and they both had a hefty amount in fines to pay since the fee is $5 for each day that you’re late. We also had to pay twice as much to renew our visas as we did to get the visa in the first place. And when we leave the country to go to Thailand next week, we have to get entirely new visas, which cost less than we paid to renew our current visas. It’s actually cheaper to leave the country and get a totally new visa than it is to renew your existing visa. I still don’t get the logic behind it.
So after we got that mess figured out, we had to run across the street from the Immigration Office to the airport so we could get money. And we discovered that Dairy Queen does exist in Cambodia and it is, in fact, inside the airport. Needless to say, we took a pit stop. We also did a little research on flights to Thailand and decided that it was cheap and would save us a lot more time to fly there, so we ended up getting a flight while we were at it.
We had a fairly productive week all in all. Tonight we’re taking the seven kids who just took government school exams out for dinner, so that’ll be good. This weekend is going to be interesting because there is a father and son visiting who sponsor one of the children at Palm Tree. They’re staying until Tuesday and throwing a pizza party Saturday night, so we’re excited for that. They’re also from Ohio, which is pretty funny since we’re all from the east coast too.
My kids could use the break, I have to say. They’ve had a pretty tough week. I’ve been teaching them when to use "there is" vs. "it is", and what countable and uncountable nouns are. These are the children who didn’t know what the word "sentence" meant. It’s like pulling teeth. I know they could get it if I could explain it in Khmer, they’re smart kids and if I wasn’t explaining it in English, it would make sense to them. Unfortunately I can’t- our Khmer lessons have been teaching me a lot, but come on, they’re not working miracles here. But luckily Nita has been in class to translate every day- the teachers didn’t have as many meetings this week, so she’s been able to help me explain everything. As a native English speaker, some of the stuff that I’ve been teaching the kids is difficult even for me, let alone for them. But they’re all really smart, and they try hard, and none of them are afraid to say that they don’t understand, which makes them an awesome class.
Other than teaching, we’re just preparing for our Thailand trip next week. I’m super excited! Right now we’re thinking we’re going to spend a few days in Bangkok and then take a sleeper train to Phuket, one of the islands along the south coast. But I’ll give you guys more updated plans next week.
I hope you’re all doing well!! I miss everyone, and even though I’ll be really sad to leave here, I’m also excited to go home in a few weeks! Can't wait to see you!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
We left bright and early for Angkor Wat Friday morning (7/3). Meaning six a.m. Which is actually about when we get up every morning anyway, so it wasn’t that early for us. But as the sun was rising, we were heading to the bus station, about to leave Phnom Penh for the first time since we flew in. I have to say that I was a little nervous about the bus ride itself, more so than about Siem Reap. A six hour bus ride through the back country of Cambodia seemed adventurous at best, terrifying at worst. But the bus was air conditioned and there were other foreigners with us, so we figured it wouldn’t be too dodgy. We slept most of the way and enjoyed watching the farmland, swamps, and rice paddies we passed along the way.
One of the coolest things were the stops along the road. I couldn’t help comparing them to the turnpike stops I take in the States when I'm driving between York and Pittsburgh. It even had food, bathroom, and snacks for purchase. Okay, so the bathrooms were squatty potties that we had to pay to use, and the food was rice and what may or may not have been chicken, and we couldn't read any of the names of the snacks, but still. It was pretty cool. The road stops all looked the same, just like pit stops back home.
We reached Siem Reap at about one in the afternoon, which wasn’t bad- we made decent time. Probably because the driver didn’t give us more than ten minutes rest the two times that we did stop. But we were in a good mood as we got out of the bus and made our way up the muddy, dodgy alley from the bus station to the main road.
We picked up a tuk tuk and he took us to his guesthouse. Since the guesthouse was a still pretty far from where we actually wanted to go, we thanked him for getting us that far and walked the rest of the way. The walk ended up being really nice- Siem Reap is beautiful. All of the trees were green, and people smiled and waved at us, and there was a river with picturesque park benches surrounding it. We also got stopped during this first walk, and throughout our time in Siem Reap, by children. These weren’t your average beggar children, like we’d become accustomed to on our forays outside of Palm Tree in Phnom Penh. These children carried baskets of bracelets and postcards and decorations. They followed us and asked where we were from. I said, "The United States." They said, "Oh. The capital is Washington, DC. Your president is Obama. His wife is Michelle." Every time. We started jazzing it up after the first few times to hear facts about other countries. They knew most European and Asian countries, but they couldn’t tell us the capitals of South Africa or Mauritius. Still, they were sweet kids. And their English was fantastic from practicing on all of the tourists, and from government school since all of them talked about going to school.
We walked around till we found a decent looking guesthouse above a place called Molly Mallone’s, an Irish pub. The rooms were nice and fairly cheap for a tourist town, so we decided to stay. Air conditioning was pretty much our only requirement at that point. We unpacked and found dinner at a restaurant nearby that mixed all kinds of international foods so that we ordered a few dishes from different countries. It was nice to jazz up our diet a bit from the typical rice and veggies.
Sometime between checking into our guesthouse and dinner, I ended up getting the same rash that Alisa and Jessi had a few weeks ago. We assumed it had to be some kind of virus since none of us had eaten seafood, and we had all eaten the same food the past week. Of course I would wait to get sick until we decided to take a trip somewhere. But it ended up going away by Sunday night, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as Jessi and Alisa’s- I didn’t have to go to the clinic or anything for it. But I'm hoping it still counts as getting sick in Cambodia. They say that everyone who comes here gets sick, so I hope that’s going to be my only illness because it wasn’t bad at all. You can’t even tell in my pictures- at least I hope you can’t.
I would also like to take this moment to interject with a few differences between Eastern and Western medicine. When any of us gets sick, the kids tell us to shower twenty times a day. Their response is always, "Oh you should take a shower, you should take a shower." They say that not showering often enough causes the illness. The kids have also blamed everyone from witches to different religious sects each time one of us gets sick. Everyone tells us to stay away from girls who are menstruating- apparently this aggravates the sickness. If someone here gets a fever, they put this ointment on their shoulders and chest, and then scratch it with a coin until it’s red and raw. They say that this helps the fever escape. It distracts from the fever anyway. We always know when one of the kids is sick because they run around with the red marks across their shoulders. We sit in our rooms and take Tylonel cold medicine when we feel ill while they sit outside and scratch with a coin- clearly we have different views about what to do when you get sick. To each his own.
Anyway, back to Siem Reap. After dinner, we went to the night market. I have to say that the night market in Siem Reap was definitely the biggest market that I’ve seen in Cambodia so far, and honestly probably is the biggest market in Cambodia. It was really cool to walk around and see everyone there, and bargaining was super fun. We also found the weirdest foot massage I’ve ever seen. There were fish in an inflatable pool and when you put your hand or foot in, they all rushed over and started sucking at it. Apparently they suck off the dead skin. I stuck my hand in for about two seconds and decided they weren’t getting anywhere near my feet for any length of time. Jessi and Alisa wholeheartedly agreed so we went back to walking through the market and helping each other bargain.
The markets are also where we learned the saying "Same same but different." Everyone in Cambodia goes around saying it, and we have since taken it and made it our own. We use it for everything now- I don't think ten minutes of conversation goes by without one of us saying it. We all bought T-shirts that say it. "Same same but different" refers to so many things here. Like the market stands. They sell scarves and jewelry and pottery- the same artifacts, but in different shapes and styles and techniques. Same same but different.
After the markets, we headed back to our room to dump off our purchases and then made our way out to explore the nightlife in Siem Reap. Which I have to say is much easier to find than the nightlife in Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh, the night life is all spread out with people going to bars on different streets in different districts of town; in Siem Reap, all of the bars are on one street (conveniently named Bar Street) so everyone ends up in the same place. And we literally found out where all of the foreigners in Cambodia have been hiding. There were so many foreigners in the bars that we no longer felt like we stood out for the first time in Cambodia. It was a bit of a relief. We met a few French guys and hung out with them for most of the night, trying out Temple Bar and Angkor What (yeah the names were a bit cheesy). We didn’t stay out late though- we had to make it out to Angkor Wat early the next morning.
We dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning at the oh so early hour of nine a.m. Yeah we were a little lazy during our stay in Siem Reap- we figured we were on vacation so we deserved a bit of a break. We found breakfast and I mean breakfast: eggs, bread, bacon, hash browns, and coffee for three dollars. Paradise in a little restaurant that I don’t even remember the name of. We were so happy to have something other than oatmeal for breakfast that we all but kissed the waitress.
After that we found a driver who offered to take us around for the day for the negotiated price of $12. We probably could have gotten it down even more, but he was driving us several miles- it seemed pretty fair. We went straight to Angkor Wat. I had no idea what to expect, to be honest. I’ve seen pictures, but everything I’ve seen just shows what the temple looks like. I didn’t know what it would be like inside, or what anything around it would look like.
So first surprise: there’s a huge river around Angkor Wat. We had to cross a bridge to get to it. Who knew? The tuk tuk driver pulled up and joined his buddies who were also waiting for their clients to come back. He told us it typically takes about two hours to walk around inside Angkor Wat. We walked across the street and waited to cross the bridge because apparently a wedding had just taken place and the bridal party was taking photos. Getting married at Angkor Wat would be pretty sweet, I have to say. Getting married at any one of the seven wonders of the world would be an awesome story.
We made our way across the bridge, talking to some Cambodians along the way who, after they realized we weren’t going to buy postcards from them, started talking to us about all of the foreigners they met and what life was like in Siem Riep. I feel like the kids selling postcards on the streets in Siem Reap have more knowledge of global culture and languages than most Americans will ever have.
We walked through the entrance to Angkor Wat, which was almost as elaborate as the outside of the temple itself. A monk sat inside and offered us incense, so we knelt and did the "three times bow" that we had grown used to from visiting places in Phnom Penh, then left our incense and a few riel in front of the statue of whichever Buddhist figure gives good luck (if anyone reading happens to know, feel free to share). We made it through to the other side of the stone entrance and got our first glimpse of Angkor Wat a quarter mile ahead of us, surrounded on either side by small stone buildings with single rooms inside.
Angkor Wat is a lot simpler than I had imagined for being called a wonder. There are no frills, no brightly colored wall hangings, no jewels or gems or sparkling lights anywhere. It’s actually so simple that it’s stunning. The architecture is amazing- the rooms were separated by knee high remains of walls that we climbed through as we explored the interior. Monks passed through several times, their bright orange robes contrasting with the deep gray of the ancient temple. We walked through and examined what must have been a grand meeting hall surrounded by levels and levels of passageways. We crossed to the side and saw what was probably a prayer meeting going on: about fifty people sat in the grass in front of one of the idols outside the temple, everyone repeating words in Khmer that I didn’t understand. We spent awhile exploring and then walked around the outskirts, examining the crumbling yet formidable walls. I felt like I could imagine the temple as what it must have once been: strong, sturdy, unyielding. For as well as it looks now, it must have been grand and stately once, a treasure in the Angkor time period.
Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century as a Hindu temple and was then converted into a Theravada Buddhist temple. It is currently open to the public for walking through and exploration. However, rumor has it that the government is closing Angkor Wat after this summer and people will only be able to take pictures from the outside. I feel privileged to have gotten to see the inside, but I understand why they would consider closing it. The inside looks worn and the stone is chipping along the floor and walls and pillars because so many people have crossed through since it was built. The architects were certainly planning a structure that would last as a remnant of religious culture for ages and ages, but with so many tourists walking through daily, it is starting to wear away faster. Not that I have any of this information from a plaque or pamphlet. Angkor Wat and the other temples did not have any information for tourists, not even a little center nearby with handouts. There was no type of history- we came across each temple as if it was just sitting there, waiting to be discovered, and most of them I had never heard of.
We left Angkor Wat and went to Angkor Thom after that. The faces carved in to the temple of Angkor Thom were one of the coolest things I’ve seen, mostly because it made me wonder what kind of status you would have to have in Cambodia to get your face carved in to a temple pillar. I’ll try to put up a picture so you can understand the awesomeness that was this temple; it was literally made of people’s faces peeking down at us as we explored the remnants.
We went through several other temples, but the coolest one was the temple at Ta Prohm. This temple literally had trees growing on top of it, huge trees with roots way bigger than I am that spilled down the sides of broken stone structures. As we walked through, we saw signs warning us of danger from falling rocks. Clearly the temple was falling down daily, but it was so cool to see what remained of it and the fact that the trees were slowly reclaiming the earth that had once held such a powerful structure. It was also there that it began to pour. By this point in our stay in Cambodia, we learned to embrace rain, if only because it cooled off our little section of the world. I have to say that it did not do much for my rash, but it was still a relief to be wet from rain instead of sweat for the first time that day.
Though the rain did make pictures difficult and exploring became dicey. Add rain to the fact that the temple was falling down and I’m a natural klutz, and I was pretty much asking for disaster. So we walked around for a few more minutes and then made our way back through the muddy trail to our tuk tuk driver, who laughed at the sight of us but tenaciously let down straps of plastic around the tuk tuk that would have kept us relatively dry were we not already soaked through. We stopped for watermelon juice at a village that was pretty much a few restaurants and shops, and clearly existed from increased tourism in the area. Watermelon juice is… I don’t even have words. The English major has no words. You know it’s good. And watermelon is so fresh here, it’s the perfect refreshing drink, but Siem Reap is the only place we’ve found it so far- it is hiding from us in Phnom Penh.
We headed back to Siem Reap (Angkor Wat is about four miles outside), and ran up the guesthouse steps to our room. We stood outside the door while one of us fumbled for the key, impatient, soaked, knee deep in mud, and desperately in need of a shower. "Wait," one of us (I can’t remember who) said, "doesn’t that sound like water?"
Cautiously we pushed open the door. I walked in like a police officer entering a crime scene, purse at the ready in one hand. There was definitely the sound of water in our room, and it wasn’t dripping, it was pouring. I looked around- no one was in there. I waved the other two in, and we located the source: the sink had a leak and water was pooling across our bathroom floor. This isn’t quite as devastating as it may at first seem; it wasn’t as if the room would flood. Let me take a moment to describe the way that bathrooms are set up in Phnom Penh. There are no bathtubs. Instead there is a shower hose stuck against the wall with a button next to it that you use to turn on the water, and then turn to adjust the temperature. The water then goes in to the bathroom and leaves through a little drain typically located in one corner. So the water flooding out of the sink in our guesthouse bathroom drained effectively, but the water kept gushing.
I ran down the stairs and let the "innkeeper" (not sure what they're called in Khmer) know. She and a mechanic rushed upstairs after me and immediately set to work on the sink. A half hour later it was in pieces and water still spewed everywhere. An hour later they moved us to another room that was even better: we got our own balcony and got to look out as the sun set over the street that was starting to fill with early nightlifers. We all showered (desperately needed by this point), and changed in to clothes to go out for our second and final night in Siem Reap.
We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I really don’t think I need to say anything besides that it was the best Mexican I have ever had. And maybe that’s because I haven’t had Mexican in what feels like forever, but I don’t know how another restaurant could make better vegetable chimichangas and mojitos.
Afterwards, we went to Angkor What and ordered a few drinks. We ended up meeting a group of Belgians and hanging out with them late in to the night, swapping travel stories, sharing drinks, and enjoying the general ambience of tons of foreigners speaking in all different languages. The walls of Angkor What are covered with marker from thousands of visitors writing messages on them, and we found lots of messages from SASers who traveled to Cambodia on one of the SAS trips. We of course wrote our own messages, played a little pool, and talked to tons of strangers. It was a cool little part of the world where people from all different backgrounds came together to relax, chat, and just have some fun. Almost everyone there was traveling through Southeast Asia, and we got a lot of advice about our upcoming trip to Thailand, and swapped some advice about traveling to Phnom Penh. After we left the bar, the neighborhood kids set upon us again; to distract them from the constant harmony of "money money money" we played games with them, and they stole one of the Belgian guy's shoes and ran off with it, and it was an entertaining walk home.
The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed at eight, stumbled to breakfast (eggs and bacon again Hallelujah), and then found another market for last minute souvenirs. We went back to our guesthouse and checked out, which was actually really sad because everyone there had been nice and the rooms had been spotless, and all in all we’d enjoyed our Siem Reap experience. Checking out of the guesthouse made it hit home that our vacation was over.
We went back to the bus station by tuk tuk and got on to our bus. Six hours, a few moody arguments about Thailand plans, and a terrible lunch stop later, we made it back to Phnom Penh. Needless to say we were all ready to get off the bus. None of us had gotten a lot of sleep, which made us a little short with each other, though this is bound to happen when three people spend as much time together as we do. Three is also a terrible number to travel with- just throwing it out there. It would be great to have an even number, but Mike isn’t into spending a single dollar more than he has to on this trip.
Getting back to the orphanage was great. The kids were really happy to see us, their faces were so excited, and they jumped around us and tugged at our bags, wanting to know about Siem Reap. Throughout my time spent here, they just keep asking me, "Are you happy? Are you happy?"
"Kinyom s’bai," I say. I am happy.
Seeing how excited they were when we got back made me a little sad that I’m leaving in August. I’m the first one to leave (although Mike is leaving three days later) and I have considered staying longer. I’m just having such an amazing time working with the kids here and I don’t want to have to leave. But I know that I’m just delaying the inevitable because eventually I would have to leave, and there are other volunteers coming in, and I can’t hide from the real world forever. Plus I plan on getting back to this side of the world fairly soon in my life, and hopefully to Palm Tree again, so I have the reassurance that it’s probably not forever. Still… Spending so much time with these kids…. They’re great kids. I can only hope that I have kids that are as great as these kids one day (in the far away future). I almost can’t believe how amazing they are. They’re smart and sweet, and they take care of each other, and they almost never cry, and they aren’t selfish. And they’re all so cute. How do they get that cute?
The rest of this week has been fairly typical, much more so because of our exciting Siem Reap trip. Tuesday was the celebration of the dedication of Preah Vihear (the temple where all of the fighting is going on with Thailand right now), so everyone in the city turned out for a concert in the Olympic Stadium at six. We attempted to go, but there were so many people that we just ended up sitting outside and watching the fireworks. Which was exciting in and of itself because it was only three days after the Fourth of July, so we felt like we were getting to secretly celebrate our own holiday too.
We also had some adventures with renewing our visas this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Jessi and Alisa went on Wednesday to renew theirs, and I stayed at Palm Tree because my visa says it doesn’t expire until August 10th, so I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about renewing it. Nope. Apparently the date on the visa doesn’t matter. When you land in Cambodia, you have to fill out a customs form, which they then staple in to your passport. After one month from the date on that form, you have to renew the visa. We still aren’t sure what the point is of putting a date on the actual visa if it’s not the correct date. Luckily Jessi got to Cambodia the same day as me and had applied for her visa right in the airport, not beforehand, so the expiration date on her visa was the same as on the customs form. She and Alisa came back and we all ended up going back to the Immigration office later that day, and Jessi and I didn’t have to pay any additional fees. But Alisa and Mike had gotten to Cambodia earlier than we had, and they both had a hefty amount in fines to pay since the fee is $5 for each day that you’re late. We also had to pay twice as much to renew our visas as we did to get the visa in the first place. And when we leave the country to go to Thailand next week, we have to get entirely new visas, which cost less than we paid to renew our current visas. It’s actually cheaper to leave the country and get a totally new visa than it is to renew your existing visa. I still don’t get the logic behind it.
So after we got that mess figured out, we had to run across the street from the Immigration Office to the airport so we could get money. And we discovered that Dairy Queen does exist in Cambodia and it is, in fact, inside the airport. Needless to say, we took a pit stop. We also did a little research on flights to Thailand and decided that it was cheap and would save us a lot more time to fly there, so we ended up getting a flight while we were at it.
We had a fairly productive week all in all. Tonight we’re taking the seven kids who just took government school exams out for dinner, so that’ll be good. This weekend is going to be interesting because there is a father and son visiting who sponsor one of the children at Palm Tree. They’re staying until Tuesday and throwing a pizza party Saturday night, so we’re excited for that. They’re also from Ohio, which is pretty funny since we’re all from the east coast too.
My kids could use the break, I have to say. They’ve had a pretty tough week. I’ve been teaching them when to use "there is" vs. "it is", and what countable and uncountable nouns are. These are the children who didn’t know what the word "sentence" meant. It’s like pulling teeth. I know they could get it if I could explain it in Khmer, they’re smart kids and if I wasn’t explaining it in English, it would make sense to them. Unfortunately I can’t- our Khmer lessons have been teaching me a lot, but come on, they’re not working miracles here. But luckily Nita has been in class to translate every day- the teachers didn’t have as many meetings this week, so she’s been able to help me explain everything. As a native English speaker, some of the stuff that I’ve been teaching the kids is difficult even for me, let alone for them. But they’re all really smart, and they try hard, and none of them are afraid to say that they don’t understand, which makes them an awesome class.
Other than teaching, we’re just preparing for our Thailand trip next week. I’m super excited! Right now we’re thinking we’re going to spend a few days in Bangkok and then take a sleeper train to Phuket, one of the islands along the south coast. But I’ll give you guys more updated plans next week.
I hope you’re all doing well!! I miss everyone, and even though I’ll be really sad to leave here, I’m also excited to go home in a few weeks! Can't wait to see you!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Explorations and Occurances in Our Little Corner of the World
Hey everyone! Sorry it's been awhile since I posted- I meant to post before this weekend and a huge lightening storm knocked out the power Thursday night so I couldn't send it. I wrote this post last Wednesday and Thursday, and I haven't written anything about this weekend yet so I'll just put this up for now. I included a few dates so you know what week I'm talking about throughout the post since I'm putting it up so late. I'll update you on Siem Reap and everything that's happened so far this week in a few days.
So I left you in the last full week of June. Friday (June 26th) we taught all day like usual, although I feel like by the end of the week everybody is so tired around here that we only end up having twenty minute classes. The teachers don’t ring the bell and the kids don’t come, and then Nita and I don’t have much to teach so we just sing songs or have the kids draw pictures. I don’t mind, it is Friday after all.
After dinner, we went out to the night market again. There are also a lot of other things I want to get gift wise there- it’s like a miniature version of the markets that we went to in Vietnam, and I’m excited to keep going back. Though I'm being super money conscious right now because we also made the decision to go to Thailand at the end of the month for our visa renewal trip. We have to leave the country to renew our visas since they expire after two months- though I’m technically not sure if I need to renew mine because I’m only going to be here for 56 days. I'm still going though. So we’re getting our plans together for that trip, and we think we’re going to take a week off from classes to go.
Back to Friday. While we were exploring the night market, we got fried noodles called Me Cha. We have become obsessed with them because the teachers brought some Friday morning that were definitely the best Khmer food I’ve had since I’ve been here. So we tried to get the same thing at the night market, but it didn’t really work out for us. Unfortunately. Because they just can’t get the noodles the same way as the little place down the street from Palm Tree.
Saturday morning we went to wrestling since one of the boys invited us. The guys go every Saturday to this little place right up the street from Palm Tree to watch wrestling and whatever else is on TV. There are green lawn chair type seats and you can get breakfast and this weird thick, sweet coffee there that I didn’t really enjoy. Rotonoc and some of the other boys came with us. We were the only three girls so we left kind of early. Not that there was any hostility or anything towards us- there never is here. And anyway we probably stick out more as foreigners than we do as girls in that type of situation.
After our wrestling experience, we went to our little market up the street from Palm Tree. Jessi found a dress and didn’t have enough money so we went home and then came back like an hour later and it was gone. It was weird because they hardly sell anything at these stands all day, especially so early in the day, and it was the only thing that wasn’t there. And the shopkeeper wasn’t there, so we thought maybe she had it someplace else or just hadn’t hung it back up since Jessi tried it on originally. It was entertaining trying to explain it to the shopkeepers on either side- they just kept looking at us and laughing because none of us could understand each other. Our plan is to go back later and see if it magically reappears.
We took off for dinner and went to one of the many pizza places in the riverfront tourist area. The pizza was better than most pizza in the States. I just got pepperoni, peppers, and onions- so good. Typing about it now is making me drool, it’s gross. Also they have pizza with hotdogs in the breading at some of the pizza places around here, which is gross to think about but kind of tempting. I’m such a fat kid. Hot dogs are considered definitively American here though. If you walk in to a restaurant and there is any inclusion of American food on the menu, there will be hot dogs. Italy has pasta, Japan has sushi, and America has hot dogs. I'm not really sure how to feel about that.
After pizza, we went to this awesome karaoke place. They know how to do karaoke here. You get a private room with couches and you can order whatever drinks/food you want, and then there’s a TV and two microphones, and books listing what codes to type in for each song. We let T sing some Khmer songs and we found a lot of American songs. Apparently karaoke is a big tourist thing there too. It was fun to act like a tourist for a little while- I haven’t felt like one very often on this trip. The songs had the weirdest background movies going on though. We put on My Girl and there were crabs walking along the beach in the background. It made no sense. We stayed for an hour since the place charged by the hour, and then we went to another bar.
The next bar was a Mexican place, which was cool except it was pretty expensive. We were still in the tourist area of town, so everything was more expensive than we were used to. And by more expensive I mean it was like three dollars for a drink and two dollars for a shot. Which for here is expensive. But we got the chips and salsa to try and they were amazing- I think we've all been craving different types of food and Mexican has definitely been my craving.
Mike and T left after the Mexican place. Mike hasn’t been doing much with us because he wants to save money, which is understandable but we feel bad when we have to leave him behind sometimes, especially since we really haven't been spending much money here. I feel like I’ve been pretty careful with how much I spent so far- I’ve spent significantly less than I would in a normal month in Pittsburgh. I may actually end up saving money from this trip. At least until we get to Thailand. But as far as going out in Cambodia and taking trips goes, so far it's mostly been just the three of us girls.
Anyway, after the Mexican place, we wandered around for awhile and found a club called Memphis. It was definitely a tourist place, but it was a blues club that had a live band so it was awesome. We met some cool people and got to see the weird dynamic of having pretty much every foreigner in Cambodia packed in to one bar. It was interesting to see the kinds of people who were traveling in Cambodia, since it’s not exactly at the top of everyone’s travel destination list. We talked to one Scottish couple who is doing a world tour and spending four months in Asia, four months in Africa, four months in South America, and four months in North America. They were living the dream, I’m really jealous. I don’t know how anybody would have the money to fly everywhere on their list, flights are so expensive to all those places.
After Memphis, it was pretty late so we figured we ought to find a place to sleep. They have guest houses everywhere in Cambodia that are similar to hostels everywhere else. Although I have to say that I did not realize the main difference between a hostel and a guest house until we checked in to a guest house above a little bar.
The main difference is that hostels are generally clean- at least in my experience, though I have heard some hostel horror stories. People come in and clean the sheets and pillows and wash the floors, whatever. In guest houses, at least the one that we stayed in, that definitely doesn’t happen. The bed was literally growing mold- the sheets and pillows had little specks of it everywhere. Nothing smelled clean. There was a bathroom- that was about all we could ask for at this point. And air conditioning that sort of worked and gave off at best a light breeze. Granted we had paid twelve dollars, but still. It was gross. So we slept horizontal across the bed and used our clothes as pillows, and just didn’t touch the blankets or sheets.
The next morning was ten times better. We got up at about eight, which is the latest I’ve slept in here (not that you could really call the fitful tossing and turning that I did in the dirty guest house sleep). We found an awesome breakfast place that actually had doughnuts and chocolate croissants, and we pretty much gorged ourselves for an hour there (again I was a total fat kid this weekend). After that, we headed to a hotel. All of the nicer hotels here have pools and will let you pay a few dollars to use them for the day even if you aren’t technically staying at the hotel. We went to the extremely ritzy Hotel Cambodiana and promptly felt like queens for the day. Not that the orphanage is a bad place to stay, it’s nice by Cambodian standards, but we didn’t know places like this hotel actually existed in Cambodia.
The pool was gorgeous. There was a little pool and a waterfall in to a bigger pool. You could look out and see the Mekong River, and it reminded us all of being on a cruise ship, able to look out and see the water around you. There were also a bunch of tourists there, of course, but we didn’t mind. We were just happy to find a place to relax for a day. The locker room itself was gorgeous- there was incense lit, and bowls of flowers everywhere, and showers with actual water pressure… Yeah we lived the dream on Sunday. And yeah I did feel a little guilty that we could afford these kinds of luxuries and there were poor people on the streets of Cambodia who had never even seen a place like that. It would be wrong to say that I didn’t feel some kind of twinge and remember them. But I think we still needed to take that day and get away, and to remember both the luxuries that we're used to at home and the contrast with we're doing in Cambodia through teaching.
Eventually we made our way back to Palm Tree. We were all feeling a lot calmer and much more relaxed… which is definitely beneficial when you live with 96 children. Many of whom came to greet us and promptly jumped on us at the gate. We were home. But it was a good little mini-vacation, and we all really needed to take a break and get away and hide.
We also really needed it in preparation for this week, though we didn’t know it at the time. It has been a legitimate really long week, and we technically only have a four day week because tomorrow (Friday 7/2) we’re leaving for Siem Reap. We decided to just take classes off and go on Friday since it takes about six hours to get there by bus and we wanted to make sure we spent as much time there as possible.
Two of the girls in my class got in to a fight Tuesday morning. One girl hit the other girl, and then the other girl threw a sweatshirt at the first girl and started crying. I let everybody out a few minutes early and just sat with her for awhile, she was really upset. I didn’t even really know what had happened- they always talk in Khmer during class and I don’t really mind because usually they’re helping each other, especially when Nita isn’t here to translate for me and they have to figure out what I’m saying. And Navy and Kuhn are generally good friends- Navy gets along with everyone usually. But for some reason, they were at odds that day and it ended up being more of a big deal than I’m sure it needed to be. It wasn’t the best morning I’ve had here to say the least.
Later we went to the bank for the first time since we’ve been here to get out money for Siem Reap. Jessi had an issue with her bank card because her bank put a hold on it since she didn’t tell them she was going to be out of town, and then used it when her plane stopped in Vancouver and South Korea. So we solved that, but it took our entire break between lunch and class at 2, and we were all a little grumpy by the time we got back to Palm Tree.
We had been promising one of the girls that we would go to the restaurant where her "friend" works for a week now, so we finally decided to go that night. The girls here aren’t technically allowed to have boyfriends, according to Palm Tree rules, but this many teenagers living in such close proximity? Come on, we know they're dating. We took her and two of the other girls with us and the restaurant was in this really ritzy mall that we decided we needed to come back and explore at a later date. The food was really good- it was the typical rice or noodle dishes that seem to be the two staples of Cambodia, but they added a few things to it that made it amazing. Like fried egg. I’ve had egg almost every day since I got here- I’m definitely getting my cholesterol checked when I get home. I keep saying I’ll stop eating egg and then the cook makes it at Palm Tree, and she makes the most amazing scrambled eggs- I have no idea how she does it.
Anyway. So we approved of her "friend", well, sort of. He was cute and has a steady job, and he made really good fried noodles… but he’s 24 and she’s 16. A lot of the girls are dating guys that are way older than them here. One of the Palm Tree girls is dating one of the Palm Tree boys (shh) and he’s six years older than her- there’s definitely a huge age gap and after talking to the girls, it seems like they deliberately look for guys who are older and thus generally more stable.
So after we got back from the restaurant, there was a huge group of girls waiting for us. We were trying to figure out what happened- we had only been gone for an hour. They told us we should take our key with us and check our room to make sure that nothing had been stolen. We were like, "Uhhhhm why?" But nobody was really saying anything other than that, so we went in and started searching through our money and making sure it was all there.
Except that it wasn’t. While we were gone, somebody had gotten in and taken $50 from Jessi and $20 each from me and Alisa. We knew pretty quickly who it had been.
There’s a boy at Palm Tree named Piraq who has had trouble in the past with stealing. He got kicked out of an orphanage before he came to Palm Tree for trying to take money from the director. Palm Tree sent him to the farm for a year when he tried to steal money from them, and he had just gotten back before we came. We had no idea that this was the case, but we had walked in on him in our room from time to time. He said he was cleaning or he had seen a bug run in and killed it, and we all kind of thought he was odd but we didn’t have a reason not to believe him. We always locked our door but it wasn’t much of a secret that we kept the key on the shelves beside our door- high enough to keep the little kids from getting in but the older kids wouldn’t have a problem. It was technically our fault, but in our defense we didn’t suspect that someone would break in.
We went to confront Piraq after discovering the missing money and he had spent the money already on beauty supplies. This kid is in beauty school and it's literally his life- he loves it. It seems like a weird contrast- a kid who loves beauty supplies vs. a kid who has a chronic stealing problem. Returning things here doesn’t work like returning things in the States- you can’t just take a beauty kit back to the place where you got it and expect to get your money back. So instead we took all of the beauty supplies he bought and the next day, we let the girls (and some of the boys surprisingly) use them. Everyone crowded in to the common room and we had a huge nail painting party- it actually ended up being rewarding to see how happy the kids were to experiment with all of the nail supplies. We haven’t seen Piraq around much since we confronted him Tuesday night- pretty sure he’s avoiding us. The whole situation was just really sad.
I’m not sure I agree with the way that Palm Tree handled the situation, to be perfectly honest- it's just a big cultural difference between the way things are done here vs. back home. At first Phearun, one of the men in charge of Palm Tree, came to us and said, "Well this is how much he said he took, we’ll just pay you back." Of course we weren’t about to let them just give us money for it- it would take away from the rest of the kids. We figured donating the beauty supplies to the kids so they all could use them would be a better solution even though it still means we’re all out a significant amount of money. But we were a little surprised that they wanted to just give us money and forget about it. We suggested that Piraq do kitchen duty or be given some other kind of task because it didn’t seem like they even reprimanded him for stealing. We’re still kind of worried that he might steal from future volunteers. Phearun told us that he decided not to tell the volunteers about Piraq’s problem because he didn’t want us to judge Piraq unfairly, which is a legitimate point, but I think Piraq has lost that privilege now. So hopefully he’ll tell the volunteers in the future to keep doors locked at all times.
Seeing the kids really enjoying the beauty supplies made us all feel better about everything though. At least they got some use out of them, and if we still had the money we would have used it on the kids anyway, so really it worked out well enough in the end.
The other addition to our week is daily Khmer classes. At first we were excited about them. I can honestly say that I’m still excited on some (hidden) level, but between the heat, the smaller portions of food, and our erratic sleeping patterns, Khmer classes every day are exhausting. They’re only an hour, but learning Khmer is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do. It takes me ten minutes to write a word in Khmer. It’s pathetic. It’s interesting to see the language, and I like the speaking portions that we get to learn, but I think now that it’s the end of the week I’m just running out of steam.
But I need to get some of that steam back because tomorrow we leave for Siem Reap! We’re going to pack tonight and then try to catch an early train tomorrow morning so we can get there by the afternoon. Siem Reap is supposed to be beautiful this time of year. Since it’s the rainy season (which actually just started a few days ago- we had thought it started at the beginning of June), all of the plants and trees are green and everything is beautiful. I’m excited to explore another city in Cambodia- we haven’t been more than ten minutes outside of Phnom Penh since we got here, so I can’t wait to do some exploring.
My next post will talk about our weekend in Siem Reap and I’ll try to post some pictures! Miss you all!
So I left you in the last full week of June. Friday (June 26th) we taught all day like usual, although I feel like by the end of the week everybody is so tired around here that we only end up having twenty minute classes. The teachers don’t ring the bell and the kids don’t come, and then Nita and I don’t have much to teach so we just sing songs or have the kids draw pictures. I don’t mind, it is Friday after all.
After dinner, we went out to the night market again. There are also a lot of other things I want to get gift wise there- it’s like a miniature version of the markets that we went to in Vietnam, and I’m excited to keep going back. Though I'm being super money conscious right now because we also made the decision to go to Thailand at the end of the month for our visa renewal trip. We have to leave the country to renew our visas since they expire after two months- though I’m technically not sure if I need to renew mine because I’m only going to be here for 56 days. I'm still going though. So we’re getting our plans together for that trip, and we think we’re going to take a week off from classes to go.
Back to Friday. While we were exploring the night market, we got fried noodles called Me Cha. We have become obsessed with them because the teachers brought some Friday morning that were definitely the best Khmer food I’ve had since I’ve been here. So we tried to get the same thing at the night market, but it didn’t really work out for us. Unfortunately. Because they just can’t get the noodles the same way as the little place down the street from Palm Tree.
Saturday morning we went to wrestling since one of the boys invited us. The guys go every Saturday to this little place right up the street from Palm Tree to watch wrestling and whatever else is on TV. There are green lawn chair type seats and you can get breakfast and this weird thick, sweet coffee there that I didn’t really enjoy. Rotonoc and some of the other boys came with us. We were the only three girls so we left kind of early. Not that there was any hostility or anything towards us- there never is here. And anyway we probably stick out more as foreigners than we do as girls in that type of situation.
After our wrestling experience, we went to our little market up the street from Palm Tree. Jessi found a dress and didn’t have enough money so we went home and then came back like an hour later and it was gone. It was weird because they hardly sell anything at these stands all day, especially so early in the day, and it was the only thing that wasn’t there. And the shopkeeper wasn’t there, so we thought maybe she had it someplace else or just hadn’t hung it back up since Jessi tried it on originally. It was entertaining trying to explain it to the shopkeepers on either side- they just kept looking at us and laughing because none of us could understand each other. Our plan is to go back later and see if it magically reappears.
We took off for dinner and went to one of the many pizza places in the riverfront tourist area. The pizza was better than most pizza in the States. I just got pepperoni, peppers, and onions- so good. Typing about it now is making me drool, it’s gross. Also they have pizza with hotdogs in the breading at some of the pizza places around here, which is gross to think about but kind of tempting. I’m such a fat kid. Hot dogs are considered definitively American here though. If you walk in to a restaurant and there is any inclusion of American food on the menu, there will be hot dogs. Italy has pasta, Japan has sushi, and America has hot dogs. I'm not really sure how to feel about that.
After pizza, we went to this awesome karaoke place. They know how to do karaoke here. You get a private room with couches and you can order whatever drinks/food you want, and then there’s a TV and two microphones, and books listing what codes to type in for each song. We let T sing some Khmer songs and we found a lot of American songs. Apparently karaoke is a big tourist thing there too. It was fun to act like a tourist for a little while- I haven’t felt like one very often on this trip. The songs had the weirdest background movies going on though. We put on My Girl and there were crabs walking along the beach in the background. It made no sense. We stayed for an hour since the place charged by the hour, and then we went to another bar.
The next bar was a Mexican place, which was cool except it was pretty expensive. We were still in the tourist area of town, so everything was more expensive than we were used to. And by more expensive I mean it was like three dollars for a drink and two dollars for a shot. Which for here is expensive. But we got the chips and salsa to try and they were amazing- I think we've all been craving different types of food and Mexican has definitely been my craving.
Mike and T left after the Mexican place. Mike hasn’t been doing much with us because he wants to save money, which is understandable but we feel bad when we have to leave him behind sometimes, especially since we really haven't been spending much money here. I feel like I’ve been pretty careful with how much I spent so far- I’ve spent significantly less than I would in a normal month in Pittsburgh. I may actually end up saving money from this trip. At least until we get to Thailand. But as far as going out in Cambodia and taking trips goes, so far it's mostly been just the three of us girls.
Anyway, after the Mexican place, we wandered around for awhile and found a club called Memphis. It was definitely a tourist place, but it was a blues club that had a live band so it was awesome. We met some cool people and got to see the weird dynamic of having pretty much every foreigner in Cambodia packed in to one bar. It was interesting to see the kinds of people who were traveling in Cambodia, since it’s not exactly at the top of everyone’s travel destination list. We talked to one Scottish couple who is doing a world tour and spending four months in Asia, four months in Africa, four months in South America, and four months in North America. They were living the dream, I’m really jealous. I don’t know how anybody would have the money to fly everywhere on their list, flights are so expensive to all those places.
After Memphis, it was pretty late so we figured we ought to find a place to sleep. They have guest houses everywhere in Cambodia that are similar to hostels everywhere else. Although I have to say that I did not realize the main difference between a hostel and a guest house until we checked in to a guest house above a little bar.
The main difference is that hostels are generally clean- at least in my experience, though I have heard some hostel horror stories. People come in and clean the sheets and pillows and wash the floors, whatever. In guest houses, at least the one that we stayed in, that definitely doesn’t happen. The bed was literally growing mold- the sheets and pillows had little specks of it everywhere. Nothing smelled clean. There was a bathroom- that was about all we could ask for at this point. And air conditioning that sort of worked and gave off at best a light breeze. Granted we had paid twelve dollars, but still. It was gross. So we slept horizontal across the bed and used our clothes as pillows, and just didn’t touch the blankets or sheets.
The next morning was ten times better. We got up at about eight, which is the latest I’ve slept in here (not that you could really call the fitful tossing and turning that I did in the dirty guest house sleep). We found an awesome breakfast place that actually had doughnuts and chocolate croissants, and we pretty much gorged ourselves for an hour there (again I was a total fat kid this weekend). After that, we headed to a hotel. All of the nicer hotels here have pools and will let you pay a few dollars to use them for the day even if you aren’t technically staying at the hotel. We went to the extremely ritzy Hotel Cambodiana and promptly felt like queens for the day. Not that the orphanage is a bad place to stay, it’s nice by Cambodian standards, but we didn’t know places like this hotel actually existed in Cambodia.
The pool was gorgeous. There was a little pool and a waterfall in to a bigger pool. You could look out and see the Mekong River, and it reminded us all of being on a cruise ship, able to look out and see the water around you. There were also a bunch of tourists there, of course, but we didn’t mind. We were just happy to find a place to relax for a day. The locker room itself was gorgeous- there was incense lit, and bowls of flowers everywhere, and showers with actual water pressure… Yeah we lived the dream on Sunday. And yeah I did feel a little guilty that we could afford these kinds of luxuries and there were poor people on the streets of Cambodia who had never even seen a place like that. It would be wrong to say that I didn’t feel some kind of twinge and remember them. But I think we still needed to take that day and get away, and to remember both the luxuries that we're used to at home and the contrast with we're doing in Cambodia through teaching.
Eventually we made our way back to Palm Tree. We were all feeling a lot calmer and much more relaxed… which is definitely beneficial when you live with 96 children. Many of whom came to greet us and promptly jumped on us at the gate. We were home. But it was a good little mini-vacation, and we all really needed to take a break and get away and hide.
We also really needed it in preparation for this week, though we didn’t know it at the time. It has been a legitimate really long week, and we technically only have a four day week because tomorrow (Friday 7/2) we’re leaving for Siem Reap. We decided to just take classes off and go on Friday since it takes about six hours to get there by bus and we wanted to make sure we spent as much time there as possible.
Two of the girls in my class got in to a fight Tuesday morning. One girl hit the other girl, and then the other girl threw a sweatshirt at the first girl and started crying. I let everybody out a few minutes early and just sat with her for awhile, she was really upset. I didn’t even really know what had happened- they always talk in Khmer during class and I don’t really mind because usually they’re helping each other, especially when Nita isn’t here to translate for me and they have to figure out what I’m saying. And Navy and Kuhn are generally good friends- Navy gets along with everyone usually. But for some reason, they were at odds that day and it ended up being more of a big deal than I’m sure it needed to be. It wasn’t the best morning I’ve had here to say the least.
Later we went to the bank for the first time since we’ve been here to get out money for Siem Reap. Jessi had an issue with her bank card because her bank put a hold on it since she didn’t tell them she was going to be out of town, and then used it when her plane stopped in Vancouver and South Korea. So we solved that, but it took our entire break between lunch and class at 2, and we were all a little grumpy by the time we got back to Palm Tree.
We had been promising one of the girls that we would go to the restaurant where her "friend" works for a week now, so we finally decided to go that night. The girls here aren’t technically allowed to have boyfriends, according to Palm Tree rules, but this many teenagers living in such close proximity? Come on, we know they're dating. We took her and two of the other girls with us and the restaurant was in this really ritzy mall that we decided we needed to come back and explore at a later date. The food was really good- it was the typical rice or noodle dishes that seem to be the two staples of Cambodia, but they added a few things to it that made it amazing. Like fried egg. I’ve had egg almost every day since I got here- I’m definitely getting my cholesterol checked when I get home. I keep saying I’ll stop eating egg and then the cook makes it at Palm Tree, and she makes the most amazing scrambled eggs- I have no idea how she does it.
Anyway. So we approved of her "friend", well, sort of. He was cute and has a steady job, and he made really good fried noodles… but he’s 24 and she’s 16. A lot of the girls are dating guys that are way older than them here. One of the Palm Tree girls is dating one of the Palm Tree boys (shh) and he’s six years older than her- there’s definitely a huge age gap and after talking to the girls, it seems like they deliberately look for guys who are older and thus generally more stable.
So after we got back from the restaurant, there was a huge group of girls waiting for us. We were trying to figure out what happened- we had only been gone for an hour. They told us we should take our key with us and check our room to make sure that nothing had been stolen. We were like, "Uhhhhm why?" But nobody was really saying anything other than that, so we went in and started searching through our money and making sure it was all there.
Except that it wasn’t. While we were gone, somebody had gotten in and taken $50 from Jessi and $20 each from me and Alisa. We knew pretty quickly who it had been.
There’s a boy at Palm Tree named Piraq who has had trouble in the past with stealing. He got kicked out of an orphanage before he came to Palm Tree for trying to take money from the director. Palm Tree sent him to the farm for a year when he tried to steal money from them, and he had just gotten back before we came. We had no idea that this was the case, but we had walked in on him in our room from time to time. He said he was cleaning or he had seen a bug run in and killed it, and we all kind of thought he was odd but we didn’t have a reason not to believe him. We always locked our door but it wasn’t much of a secret that we kept the key on the shelves beside our door- high enough to keep the little kids from getting in but the older kids wouldn’t have a problem. It was technically our fault, but in our defense we didn’t suspect that someone would break in.
We went to confront Piraq after discovering the missing money and he had spent the money already on beauty supplies. This kid is in beauty school and it's literally his life- he loves it. It seems like a weird contrast- a kid who loves beauty supplies vs. a kid who has a chronic stealing problem. Returning things here doesn’t work like returning things in the States- you can’t just take a beauty kit back to the place where you got it and expect to get your money back. So instead we took all of the beauty supplies he bought and the next day, we let the girls (and some of the boys surprisingly) use them. Everyone crowded in to the common room and we had a huge nail painting party- it actually ended up being rewarding to see how happy the kids were to experiment with all of the nail supplies. We haven’t seen Piraq around much since we confronted him Tuesday night- pretty sure he’s avoiding us. The whole situation was just really sad.
I’m not sure I agree with the way that Palm Tree handled the situation, to be perfectly honest- it's just a big cultural difference between the way things are done here vs. back home. At first Phearun, one of the men in charge of Palm Tree, came to us and said, "Well this is how much he said he took, we’ll just pay you back." Of course we weren’t about to let them just give us money for it- it would take away from the rest of the kids. We figured donating the beauty supplies to the kids so they all could use them would be a better solution even though it still means we’re all out a significant amount of money. But we were a little surprised that they wanted to just give us money and forget about it. We suggested that Piraq do kitchen duty or be given some other kind of task because it didn’t seem like they even reprimanded him for stealing. We’re still kind of worried that he might steal from future volunteers. Phearun told us that he decided not to tell the volunteers about Piraq’s problem because he didn’t want us to judge Piraq unfairly, which is a legitimate point, but I think Piraq has lost that privilege now. So hopefully he’ll tell the volunteers in the future to keep doors locked at all times.
Seeing the kids really enjoying the beauty supplies made us all feel better about everything though. At least they got some use out of them, and if we still had the money we would have used it on the kids anyway, so really it worked out well enough in the end.
The other addition to our week is daily Khmer classes. At first we were excited about them. I can honestly say that I’m still excited on some (hidden) level, but between the heat, the smaller portions of food, and our erratic sleeping patterns, Khmer classes every day are exhausting. They’re only an hour, but learning Khmer is probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do. It takes me ten minutes to write a word in Khmer. It’s pathetic. It’s interesting to see the language, and I like the speaking portions that we get to learn, but I think now that it’s the end of the week I’m just running out of steam.
But I need to get some of that steam back because tomorrow we leave for Siem Reap! We’re going to pack tonight and then try to catch an early train tomorrow morning so we can get there by the afternoon. Siem Reap is supposed to be beautiful this time of year. Since it’s the rainy season (which actually just started a few days ago- we had thought it started at the beginning of June), all of the plants and trees are green and everything is beautiful. I’m excited to explore another city in Cambodia- we haven’t been more than ten minutes outside of Phnom Penh since we got here, so I can’t wait to do some exploring.
My next post will talk about our weekend in Siem Reap and I’ll try to post some pictures! Miss you all!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Rainstorms and Reminiscing in Phnom Penh
Hey everyone~ I feel like it's been awhile since I last posted so this one is going to be a long one. Hope everyone is well!! :)
So I left you right before our day off last Thursday for the Queen's birthday. We figured having a day off was a good time to go to Choeng Ek, or the killing fields. It was probably the saddest thing I’ll do in Cambodia- it was overwhelming. I think the worst part was how the place felt. Just getting there and walking around, there was this automatic presence of loss and sadness, and you could tell that something bad had happened there. I don’t think they needed a memorial to mark it because just walking through there, I could feel that something very grave had happened.
The first thing that we saw was the worst part of the memorial- there was a building at the entrance that was filled with human skulls, and they had little sign markers that showed the different age groups of the people who had been killed. The slaughter in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime was worse than the Holocaust. And, not to stray away from the subject but I feel like it's worth mentioning, do we talk about the killing fields in schools in the U.S.? Of course not. Looking back I have to say my education was definitely biased toward American history- it would have been nice to learn more about the rest of the world.
The rest of Choeng Ek consisted of a pavilion that had pictures and a detailed history of what happened during the Khmer Rouge’s reign, and ditches overgrown with brambles, weeds, and struggling flowers. We quickly learned that these ditches were mass graves, each for hundreds of people. Just walking down some of the narrow paths between these ditches, we could see bones poking through the worn dust.
We spent maybe a half hour there.
I never want to go back.
On Friday, we taught again- but we “taught” because Mike and I had to go to the airport and pick up Danielle and Lydia. Danielle was the first volunteer from SAS here and she apparently comes back every year and takes the kids to the beach or to the waterpark each time. She came last summer with her mom and brought her friend Lydia with her this summer. So teaching became pretty much pointless because all of the kids fled their classes when we returned to greet her and didn’t come back- each new arrival constitutes a day off in their book.
We took it easy on Friday- Danielle and Lydia slept all day from jet lag. Alisa and Jessi both came down with a really strange rash. We took them to the clinic for meds since it kept getting worse. The doctors didn’t have much to say about it except that they thought it was food related, which we had already worked out for ourselves. They were the only ones to eat fried prawns at a restaurant we had gone to a few days earlier, so we figured it was probably from that even though neither of them have a seafood allergy.
Saturday during the day we went out and got ice cream and bought movies as a way for Jessi and Alisa to get out for a bit- we didn’t stay long though because their rash got a lot worse in the heat. We came back, watched a movie, and then Mike and I went with Danielle and Lydia and a bunch of other Palm Tree people to the night market.
The night market was sweet. Pretty much what you would expect in a tourist market, but still, I liked it. Especially since I really need clothes- I brought enough clothes to get by assuming that I would just buy more here, but in the past few weeks I've had to do laundry way too many times from running out of things to wear. We’re going to go back tonight after classes because I didn’t really get a chance to buy anything that first time. Instead of shopping, we ended up eating behind one of the stands on a mat that served as a table. I’m getting pretty adventurous with the food here. We had fried bread that was really good, I don’t know what they fry it in but I want a recipe of some kind. We also had this juice that they swore would make us sick, but Mike claims to have an iron stomach now that he's had typhoid and I’ve been doing pretty well myself.
Sunday we took the kids to the waterpark. It was awesome- they were so happy. It sucked that girls had to wear shorts and t shirts and guys could run around naked though. I mean seriously. I have a one piece bathing suit. A conservative one piece. But we abided by the strict rules. And the kids had so much fun that it made it all worth it. They had a pool, kiddie pool, slides, a wave pool, and a lazy river. The kids pretty much just dispersed everywhere and had a great time, and Mike and I became jungle gyms for those who couldn’t swim. We were in the main pool most of the time, and kids just kept jumping in and then clinging to us because they didn’t actually know how to swim-it was a bit crazy. And the lifeguards were sleeping, or at least two of them were. Not the same standards as the States, clearly. Yet no one gets hurt. It’s interesting .The wave pool was insane- everyone was in there with inner tubes and kids were jumping in off the sides on top of other kids. It was claustrophobia city with waves thrown in just to make things a little more terrifying. Plus they didn't have a lifeguard at the wave pool, which was, in my opinion, the most dangerous of the attractions at the waterpark.
The rest of the week has been fairly typical. Jessi and Alisa fully recovered from the rash they had. And I can officially say that everyone has been sick here except me- so clearly much has changed since Pittsburgh/York. Not really. Though it’s bound to happen-no one spends a significant amount of time in Cambodia without getting sick. Mike got typhoid, Jessi and Alisa got the rash, and Danielle had dengue fever two years ago when she volunteered at Palm Tree. So I'm kind of just biding my time.
Tuesday night we had a party for Danielle and Lydia before they left, since apparently its customary to have parties before people leave. They went out and got the kids soda floats, and we rented speakers and blasted music. It was an eclectic mix of tunes; they played a lot of Khmer songs but they also played a lot of American songs. And by American songs, I’m talking Akon and Jay Z. Five year olds were walking around singing, “I want to make love right now now now.” It’s really good that nobody but us actually understood most of the words to those songs. But the entire orphanage danced. It was awesome- the kids aren’t shy here, they have no problem dancing in front of each other for hours. And they watched us to see how we danced, and I do have to admit that it was pretty different. They have group dances for almost every type of song, like we have group dances for songs like The Electric Slide, except that it’s usually the same dance. It was pretty easy to pick up and we did that for awhile, but we broke out our own moves too, especially to the American music that we recognized, and then the kids copied us.
At some point early on in the week, one of us (really can’t remember which one) got the crazy idea that a good way to work out would be to borrow some of the kids’ bikes and go riding through the streets of Phnom Penh. And to be more specific about the streets, I mean our street, which you can’t even really call a street- it’s more a path of death with a little dirt road thrown in for kicks. Our street is about half the size of a street in a small neighborhood in the U.S., and there are constantly cars, vans, trucks, and motorcycles all vying for position in both directions. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen but (knock on wood) we have yet to see any accidents.
We taught all day Thursday and it was ridiculously hot. It’s been hot all week but not like it was on Thursday. The kids all walked around in their pants and long sleeved shirts that they often wear in ninety degree plus weather and we taught while melting like the human popsicles that we are in this type of heat. We were looking forward to the bike ride. It's important to find things to look forward to here. Don’t get me wrong, I love volunteering, but it does get a bit monotonous after awhile. It’s a place that takes patience, to put it straight up, and I’m not used to being in the same place day after day. We were itching to get out and get around a little bit. Plus I desperately need the exercise- the only real exercise I've been getting is running around after/ away from kids.
So after dinner (a particularly good dinner of chicken and rice), we borrowed the bikes. Two of the guys rode ahead of us. They don’t like to let us go anywhere by ourselves, and I’m not sure if it’s because they think we won’t be safe or because they know we’ll buy them things if they come with us (probably a bit of both),but a few of the older kids always come with us wherever we’re going. It tends to help when we have to bargain in Khmer, although the kids don’t really bargain- they just translate for us and leave the rest up to us.
Starting out went fairly well. We had some near misses with motorcycles and a pretty determined truck, but we did well all in all. We were feeling pretty cocky. We got to the main road and decided we really weren’t up to riding down highways yet, so we turned around and found a little bar. It was about six, and it was almost the weekend, and we felt a little nostalgic for home anyway with the whole bike ride (also I haven’t ridden a bike since like 10th grade so I’m kind of proud that I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere). We ordered beer and got food for the guys who came with us, and it was relaxing….
For about five minutes.
Then the skies decided to open up and flood the streets of Phnom Penh. We stayed in the little café/bar for as long as we could, but it was starting to get dark, and between floods and darkness we would take the floods. We had hoped the rain would stop- since we arrived, we’d only been getting little rainstorms that lasted ten or fifteen minutes tops. Of course the first time we decided to get daring and venture from home without a covered method of transportation, we hit a real storm. And it doesn’t rain anywhere else in the world like it rains in Cambodia. I’m not even sure if it’s because it rains harder here (though it does rain super hard) or if it’s because all of the roofs are tin. The sound of the rain is deafening; it’s as if the sky itself is plunging in to the streets and buildings of Phnom Penh. We cancel class when it rains because it’s too loud for us to teach. But in the café/ bar, we didn’t have much choice but to get home before dark. There are gangs in Cambodia that come out after dark (much like many American cities) and when we’re out late we usually take the tuk tuk- on bikes we wouldn’t be as much of a match for them. So we paid and eased our way in to the midst of a pretty furious storm. Not to mention the ever present Phnom Penh traffic.
Riding home was like trying to ride a bike straight through a lake during a rainstorm. Literally, that’s what it was. A lake of trash that smelled terrible. And it was nothing to all of the other people on the roads-it might as well have not been raining or lightening or thundering or flooding. They just carried on like it was no big deal. I think we might actually be getting into monsoon season now- I’m a little apprehensive to say the least. But we made it, feeling (at least I was) slightly euphoric at the sight of Palm Tree’s gates. There was definitely something thrilling about biking through the back streets of a foreign country through a pounding storm.
We’ve been getting more and more adventurous as we ease into living here- we’ve started going to the markets by ourselves and exploring the shops in our neighborhood more. We’ve also settled in to a routine, which helps with establishing a sense of familiarity and comfort. We get up at 5-6 a.m. every morning, teach 9-11, eat lunch at 11, teach 2-4, eat dinner at 5, and then while away the last few hours till we go to bed at 8. Even on the weekends the structure isn’t much different, though we tend to go in to the city center of Phnom Penh and explore in the hours we aren't teaching.
One of the things that helps is that we’re all readers. We’ve been exchanging books since we got here, which is great because in the past two weeks, I’ve gone through all three of the books I brought and half of one that a previous volunteer left here. Reading is probably the best pastime available to us- we don’t get out often enough to buy that many movies, and even when we want to watch one it’s hit or miss on whether the quality is decent and if the movie will even play at all. I’m just excited to read something that I want to read and actually be able to enjoy it for the first time since like high school.
One of the teachers here has also agreed to start teaching a Khmer class on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays so we can learn. I’m really excited- so far my Khmer abilities can barely take me past a simple greeting, and I’d really like to get better.
Anyway I have to teach soon and I'm not sure what I'm teaching yet (this is the norm because they change the system pretty much daily), but I'll try to post again shortly! Miss all of you!!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
So I left you right before our day off last Thursday for the Queen's birthday. We figured having a day off was a good time to go to Choeng Ek, or the killing fields. It was probably the saddest thing I’ll do in Cambodia- it was overwhelming. I think the worst part was how the place felt. Just getting there and walking around, there was this automatic presence of loss and sadness, and you could tell that something bad had happened there. I don’t think they needed a memorial to mark it because just walking through there, I could feel that something very grave had happened.
The first thing that we saw was the worst part of the memorial- there was a building at the entrance that was filled with human skulls, and they had little sign markers that showed the different age groups of the people who had been killed. The slaughter in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime was worse than the Holocaust. And, not to stray away from the subject but I feel like it's worth mentioning, do we talk about the killing fields in schools in the U.S.? Of course not. Looking back I have to say my education was definitely biased toward American history- it would have been nice to learn more about the rest of the world.
The rest of Choeng Ek consisted of a pavilion that had pictures and a detailed history of what happened during the Khmer Rouge’s reign, and ditches overgrown with brambles, weeds, and struggling flowers. We quickly learned that these ditches were mass graves, each for hundreds of people. Just walking down some of the narrow paths between these ditches, we could see bones poking through the worn dust.
We spent maybe a half hour there.
I never want to go back.
On Friday, we taught again- but we “taught” because Mike and I had to go to the airport and pick up Danielle and Lydia. Danielle was the first volunteer from SAS here and she apparently comes back every year and takes the kids to the beach or to the waterpark each time. She came last summer with her mom and brought her friend Lydia with her this summer. So teaching became pretty much pointless because all of the kids fled their classes when we returned to greet her and didn’t come back- each new arrival constitutes a day off in their book.
We took it easy on Friday- Danielle and Lydia slept all day from jet lag. Alisa and Jessi both came down with a really strange rash. We took them to the clinic for meds since it kept getting worse. The doctors didn’t have much to say about it except that they thought it was food related, which we had already worked out for ourselves. They were the only ones to eat fried prawns at a restaurant we had gone to a few days earlier, so we figured it was probably from that even though neither of them have a seafood allergy.
Saturday during the day we went out and got ice cream and bought movies as a way for Jessi and Alisa to get out for a bit- we didn’t stay long though because their rash got a lot worse in the heat. We came back, watched a movie, and then Mike and I went with Danielle and Lydia and a bunch of other Palm Tree people to the night market.
The night market was sweet. Pretty much what you would expect in a tourist market, but still, I liked it. Especially since I really need clothes- I brought enough clothes to get by assuming that I would just buy more here, but in the past few weeks I've had to do laundry way too many times from running out of things to wear. We’re going to go back tonight after classes because I didn’t really get a chance to buy anything that first time. Instead of shopping, we ended up eating behind one of the stands on a mat that served as a table. I’m getting pretty adventurous with the food here. We had fried bread that was really good, I don’t know what they fry it in but I want a recipe of some kind. We also had this juice that they swore would make us sick, but Mike claims to have an iron stomach now that he's had typhoid and I’ve been doing pretty well myself.
Sunday we took the kids to the waterpark. It was awesome- they were so happy. It sucked that girls had to wear shorts and t shirts and guys could run around naked though. I mean seriously. I have a one piece bathing suit. A conservative one piece. But we abided by the strict rules. And the kids had so much fun that it made it all worth it. They had a pool, kiddie pool, slides, a wave pool, and a lazy river. The kids pretty much just dispersed everywhere and had a great time, and Mike and I became jungle gyms for those who couldn’t swim. We were in the main pool most of the time, and kids just kept jumping in and then clinging to us because they didn’t actually know how to swim-it was a bit crazy. And the lifeguards were sleeping, or at least two of them were. Not the same standards as the States, clearly. Yet no one gets hurt. It’s interesting .The wave pool was insane- everyone was in there with inner tubes and kids were jumping in off the sides on top of other kids. It was claustrophobia city with waves thrown in just to make things a little more terrifying. Plus they didn't have a lifeguard at the wave pool, which was, in my opinion, the most dangerous of the attractions at the waterpark.
The rest of the week has been fairly typical. Jessi and Alisa fully recovered from the rash they had. And I can officially say that everyone has been sick here except me- so clearly much has changed since Pittsburgh/York. Not really. Though it’s bound to happen-no one spends a significant amount of time in Cambodia without getting sick. Mike got typhoid, Jessi and Alisa got the rash, and Danielle had dengue fever two years ago when she volunteered at Palm Tree. So I'm kind of just biding my time.
Tuesday night we had a party for Danielle and Lydia before they left, since apparently its customary to have parties before people leave. They went out and got the kids soda floats, and we rented speakers and blasted music. It was an eclectic mix of tunes; they played a lot of Khmer songs but they also played a lot of American songs. And by American songs, I’m talking Akon and Jay Z. Five year olds were walking around singing, “I want to make love right now now now.” It’s really good that nobody but us actually understood most of the words to those songs. But the entire orphanage danced. It was awesome- the kids aren’t shy here, they have no problem dancing in front of each other for hours. And they watched us to see how we danced, and I do have to admit that it was pretty different. They have group dances for almost every type of song, like we have group dances for songs like The Electric Slide, except that it’s usually the same dance. It was pretty easy to pick up and we did that for awhile, but we broke out our own moves too, especially to the American music that we recognized, and then the kids copied us.
At some point early on in the week, one of us (really can’t remember which one) got the crazy idea that a good way to work out would be to borrow some of the kids’ bikes and go riding through the streets of Phnom Penh. And to be more specific about the streets, I mean our street, which you can’t even really call a street- it’s more a path of death with a little dirt road thrown in for kicks. Our street is about half the size of a street in a small neighborhood in the U.S., and there are constantly cars, vans, trucks, and motorcycles all vying for position in both directions. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen but (knock on wood) we have yet to see any accidents.
We taught all day Thursday and it was ridiculously hot. It’s been hot all week but not like it was on Thursday. The kids all walked around in their pants and long sleeved shirts that they often wear in ninety degree plus weather and we taught while melting like the human popsicles that we are in this type of heat. We were looking forward to the bike ride. It's important to find things to look forward to here. Don’t get me wrong, I love volunteering, but it does get a bit monotonous after awhile. It’s a place that takes patience, to put it straight up, and I’m not used to being in the same place day after day. We were itching to get out and get around a little bit. Plus I desperately need the exercise- the only real exercise I've been getting is running around after/ away from kids.
So after dinner (a particularly good dinner of chicken and rice), we borrowed the bikes. Two of the guys rode ahead of us. They don’t like to let us go anywhere by ourselves, and I’m not sure if it’s because they think we won’t be safe or because they know we’ll buy them things if they come with us (probably a bit of both),but a few of the older kids always come with us wherever we’re going. It tends to help when we have to bargain in Khmer, although the kids don’t really bargain- they just translate for us and leave the rest up to us.
Starting out went fairly well. We had some near misses with motorcycles and a pretty determined truck, but we did well all in all. We were feeling pretty cocky. We got to the main road and decided we really weren’t up to riding down highways yet, so we turned around and found a little bar. It was about six, and it was almost the weekend, and we felt a little nostalgic for home anyway with the whole bike ride (also I haven’t ridden a bike since like 10th grade so I’m kind of proud that I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere). We ordered beer and got food for the guys who came with us, and it was relaxing….
For about five minutes.
Then the skies decided to open up and flood the streets of Phnom Penh. We stayed in the little café/bar for as long as we could, but it was starting to get dark, and between floods and darkness we would take the floods. We had hoped the rain would stop- since we arrived, we’d only been getting little rainstorms that lasted ten or fifteen minutes tops. Of course the first time we decided to get daring and venture from home without a covered method of transportation, we hit a real storm. And it doesn’t rain anywhere else in the world like it rains in Cambodia. I’m not even sure if it’s because it rains harder here (though it does rain super hard) or if it’s because all of the roofs are tin. The sound of the rain is deafening; it’s as if the sky itself is plunging in to the streets and buildings of Phnom Penh. We cancel class when it rains because it’s too loud for us to teach. But in the café/ bar, we didn’t have much choice but to get home before dark. There are gangs in Cambodia that come out after dark (much like many American cities) and when we’re out late we usually take the tuk tuk- on bikes we wouldn’t be as much of a match for them. So we paid and eased our way in to the midst of a pretty furious storm. Not to mention the ever present Phnom Penh traffic.
Riding home was like trying to ride a bike straight through a lake during a rainstorm. Literally, that’s what it was. A lake of trash that smelled terrible. And it was nothing to all of the other people on the roads-it might as well have not been raining or lightening or thundering or flooding. They just carried on like it was no big deal. I think we might actually be getting into monsoon season now- I’m a little apprehensive to say the least. But we made it, feeling (at least I was) slightly euphoric at the sight of Palm Tree’s gates. There was definitely something thrilling about biking through the back streets of a foreign country through a pounding storm.
We’ve been getting more and more adventurous as we ease into living here- we’ve started going to the markets by ourselves and exploring the shops in our neighborhood more. We’ve also settled in to a routine, which helps with establishing a sense of familiarity and comfort. We get up at 5-6 a.m. every morning, teach 9-11, eat lunch at 11, teach 2-4, eat dinner at 5, and then while away the last few hours till we go to bed at 8. Even on the weekends the structure isn’t much different, though we tend to go in to the city center of Phnom Penh and explore in the hours we aren't teaching.
One of the things that helps is that we’re all readers. We’ve been exchanging books since we got here, which is great because in the past two weeks, I’ve gone through all three of the books I brought and half of one that a previous volunteer left here. Reading is probably the best pastime available to us- we don’t get out often enough to buy that many movies, and even when we want to watch one it’s hit or miss on whether the quality is decent and if the movie will even play at all. I’m just excited to read something that I want to read and actually be able to enjoy it for the first time since like high school.
One of the teachers here has also agreed to start teaching a Khmer class on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays so we can learn. I’m really excited- so far my Khmer abilities can barely take me past a simple greeting, and I’d really like to get better.
Anyway I have to teach soon and I'm not sure what I'm teaching yet (this is the norm because they change the system pretty much daily), but I'll try to post again shortly! Miss all of you!!
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Things that are both awesome and terrifying: 1. Teaching 2.Riding an elephant 3.Tuk tuks
I hope everyone back home is doing well! Thank you to the people who responded to my last post :)
So my life at Palm Tree is getting more normal now that I have a set teaching schedule. I teach 9-11 and 2-4 every day. The Grade 6 kids are interesting because they know some English so I can actually teach the whole lesson, but they don’t think they know as much as they do. My morning class is awesome- they try to trick me into thinking that it’s 11 when it’s not. Mike doesn’t have a watch and his class gets him to let them out a half hour early all the time, so my class will say, “Time to go!” And I say, “No, it’s only 10:25.”And they say, “Mike’s class.”And I say, “Mike doesn’t have a watch.” And they just laugh. And then they beg me to play games. They have so much personality, I love it.
My afternoon class is more hesitant. There are less of them so that might be why, but they’re so quiet. It’s like all of the quiet kids just ended up in the same class coincidentally together. They don’t like answering questions and they’re not quite at the same level as the other class for some reason. I don’t know if they’re just pretending that they don’t know as much English or what, but I think I need to come up with some more fun things to do to get them out of their shells more.
It probably says something about me that I like my rowdy class more than my quiet class.
Nita, the teacher who sits in with me and translates when I need it, also has to help out a lot more with the afternoon class. Nita is one of the greatest people here. She’s 21 and goes to the University of Phnom Penh now. Palm Tree pays for all of their teachers to go to the university-we aren’t sure if they also get a salary or not. But Nita’s hilarious. She’s in love with David Archuleta- she calls him her boyfriend. We’ve seen the music video of him singing Crush so many times I never want to see it again when I go back to the States. In reality she has two boyfriends. One of them calls her everyday and he’s in love with her, but she “doesn’t like him that much.” The other is this guy she met a few weeks ago at the library at her university who sounds really sweet but isn’t as cute as the first guy. This is why I love Nita.
I’m not sure how I feel about teaching yet. I like it a lot but I don’t like having to stick to the lesson plans and the class book. It’s all really boring- I feel bad for the kids. At one point, when it got too boring, Nita was like, “Do you have any games?” And I was like, “Uhhh.. sure.” And I just created a game on the spot. The kids also ask for songs all the time and it doesn't matter what we do so long as we fill the time, so I just start singing sometimes. I broke out in the Lion King the other day, it was pretty spectacular. The kids seemed to like it anyway haha. They also have this game that they love where I write a word on the board, and then one person writes a word starting with the same letter that I ended with and the next person writes a word starting with the letter that he ended with, and the two duke it out. They get really into it, screaming and cheering each other on, it’s fantastic. So I usually let them play that.
The problem is that there aren’t a whole lot of materials to work with. They have a whiteboard, markers, and some posters on the wall. That’s about it. They don’t even have student books- we have one student book and Nita copies pages from it to pass out to them for each lesson. I’ve been trying to find more fun things I can do with them that don’t involve any element of technology- I think I’m going to sing Grammar Rock to them next time they ask for a song because they’re learning verbs and adverbs haha. We’ll see.
Also Nita leaves class to go to meetings almost every day so I just teach by myself a lot. It’s kind of nice because the kids relax so much when she’s not there. Not that she’s scary at all (she's a sweetheart, I love her) but I guess they think they can get away with more with me- which is totally true and I’m not even going to try to deny it. As long as they try and we get through the lesson, I don’t care if they want to play a game afterwards. I was ten once- I know how much it sucks to be stuck in class when you want to go play with your friends. Especially when class is also taking place right in your home. But it gets dicey because they don’t understand a whole lot of English, so when I try to give instructions they’ll tell me they understand and then just continue to sit there because they really have no idea what I’m saying. I tried to play two truths and a lie with them today, and they did it but they didn’t get the game- they just kept saying one thing about themselves that was really obviously a lie. I’m definitely hitting all the challenges of teaching ESL head on right now.
The kids themselves are awesome though. They have so much spunk and personality, I love all of them. They also all just really like hugs a lot. They like attention but they share with each other and help each other, and I mean they’re kids so they also knock each other around a bit, but they’re so normal. It’s just amazing. And they’re so freaking smart. The high school kids are learning math that I still haven’t learned and I graduated college.
The schedule here is also really lax. Nothing happens on time and the lessons aren’t even that structured anyway. Class doesn’t start till like twenty minutes late sometimes and they just cancel classes sometimes for teacher meetings. They also cancel class when it rains a lot because the roofs around here are metal and tin, and rain is defeaning. I got to see a pretty legit rainstorm yesterday- it was wild. The streets flood to the point where it’s hard for people to even drive through them. We pretty much just hole up in Palm Tree when that happens because walking around knee-deep in water, mud, and garbage isn’t exactly appealing. But the rainstorms are extremely fierce and incredible to watch here.
I’m legit getting sick of the food. Palm Tree provides lunch and dinner for us every day. Which basically means rice plus vegetables plus either egg or chicken. Sometimes they just give us fried eggs or a piece of chicken with the rice. The meals are actually pretty tasty especially by Cambodian standards, and they do actually feed us well. It’s just that there are only so many times you can eat chicken and green beans before you want to just run away screaming.
We took our first trip out of the orphanage on Saturday (yay) and went to the main city section of Phnom Penh. Our initial plan was to find a bar that was showing the Stanley Cup because Jessi is from Pittsburgh too and we both desperately wanted to see it. Friday night at 8 EST was 7 a.m. on Saturday our time. No one was showing even highlights of the game- we seriously need to introduce hockey to these people- so we just started drinking at about 8:30 a.m. We figured it was Friday night back home so that justified our decision.
Also let's just take a moment to enjoy the fact that the Pens won the Stanley Cup. WOOOOOO!!
So back to Saturday. By about ten we dragged ourselves out of the bar and walked around for a bit, found some cute kids movies to show the kids since Saturday is movie night every week. Then we found this awesome English pub and got burgers. I know, I know, so disgustingly American. We drank beer in the morning and then ate burgers. We suck. But you have no idea how good that burger was. I don’t even care. I was full for the first time in a week, and it wasn’t from chicken and green beans.
But food issues aside, I’m really enjoying living in Cambodia. Like actually enjoying it- Cambodia is a sweet place. We took a tour on Sunday of a few major sites in Phnom Penh and I don’t know why people don’t come here more often- besides the slightly daunting regimen of shots you have to get before you come, it’s awesome.
We started at the National Museum, which had a lot of ancient Khmer inscribed on tablets. They kept giving us flowers to put in front of statues of gods as offerings- which we did about two times and then we figured we had enough good luck. There was also a gorgeous garden in the middle and we took loads of pictures- which I will post once I have enough spare time to load them since it takes forever here.
T came with us but he seemed really bored. And by “seemed really bored” I mean we asked him if he was bored and he said, “Yes. This is really boring.” So we didn’t hang out for too long. We wanted to go to the Silver Pavilion but it was closed, so he took us to a temple that is basically Phnom Penh’s version of Angkor Wat- but miniature. We parked the tuk tuk and he took us around a bit.
They also happened to have an elephant at the temple. We also happened to end up riding said elephant down the street. I wish I was kidding.
We decided we’d ride the elephant, figured it’d be like a five minute thing, and they took it out on to the actual street. Cars had to go around us. It was insane. It was also terrifying. We climbed up this tiny platform, crawled across the elephant’s neck, and sat on this little seat that was only made for two people at best. It kept sliding left and right and we had to keep adjusting our position so we didn’t fall off. Riding on an elephant is not my method of choice for getting around- take riding a horse and make it about ten times jerkier. Though it was cool to see people’s faces on the street.
We went in to the actual temple itself and there was a man leading what looked like a kind of church service, so we joined everyone sitting down for a little while. People came forward and gave money, and the man gave them what looked like a scroll, and then they proceeded to pray to the idols- of which there were quite a few. T came and prayed for his mom, which was sad but also an interesting process. He tried to explain it to us-he prays to his mom so that his mom will pray for him, since he’s Buddhist. It’s a strange cycle for an outsider to hear about, and kind of sad from our perspective about his mother, but he seemed comfortable explaining it to us.
I’ve only ever seen two kids at Palm Tree cry. One of them I can honestly say I’m not sure why he was crying, but it didn’t look provoked- he just sat in the corner and cried, it was heart-wrenching. Another girl who is probably about thirteen started crying one day because it was her mother’s birthday. The kids here almost never cry, but when they do it just breaks your heart. They can hit each other and chase each other around and tease each other, and they will never cry. So when they do, you wish it was something like a bruise or a scrape that you could just kiss away. The kids are super brave though and usually really happy, and can talk about tough issues. Which is why T could talk about his mother straight up to us.
Sunday was also Mike’s birthday so we took him out that night. We went to a random bar called Bogeys about fifteen minutes from Palm Tree, and stayed for a few hours just drinking beer and hanging out. The bar was basically us and three other creepy old guys who were probably only in Cambodia for one thing, which was disgusting, so we just kind of kept to ourselves the whole time. It was our first time experiencing Cambodian night life but it was Sunday so we really didn’t get to see a lot, unfortunately. But we bought Mike and T whiskey shots, and T, who is twenty (which is legal here), had never taken a shot before by the looks of it. First he asked for ice, and then he watched how Mike took his, and then he sort of took it after that. It was entertaining. We had to kind of cut him off after two because he was driving us home haha.
This week I’ve just been teaching each day. Monday night we went to a random market that was clearly for the upper class- it looked basically like an American grocery store and the prices were just as high, which we were totally not ok with. We’re planning to go to the night market tonight so we can bargain for things. T drove us in the tuk tuk and got us to buy him tons of stuff- he’s getting good at it, but it’s still really obvious. Pretty much the only reason he gets so much out of us is because Jessi and Alisa have a bit of a crush on him. Even though he’s twenty, I thought he was like sixteen the first time we met him because he looks so young- I still can’t get that idea out of my head.
I also got the best news in my class this morning. When the kids stood up at the end of class to say goodbye, they all said, “See you on Friday.” I was like, “Wait why don’t we have class tomorrow?” Apparently tomorrow is a holiday- something about it being the Queen’s birthday. I had no idea- it's like getting a snow day. So we’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do with our day off, besides sleep. And get rid of our apples because I’m pretty sure there is a mouse living in the box of apples.
Cambodia definitely has its ups and downs. The language barrier can get really frustrating, it’s insanely hot to the point where we pretty much all melt like Popsicles, and we get lots of unwanted creatures as visitors. Also the power decides to go out pretty much every time I take a shower- I’m getting good at showering in pitch darkness. But the culture here is incredible. I love meeting people and just watching what everyone does- the games they play, the way they dress, the music they listen to. Everyone in Phnom Penh plays badminton on patches of grass in the middle of the street at night. How else would I have known that if I didn’t live here for awhile? Plus the kids make everything worth it- I’d walk barefoot across coals for those kids, they’re that awesome.
I miss all of you! People keep asking me for Palm Tree's address so I'll post it as soon as I can- I don't have it with me right now. I'll also post pictures asap :)
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
So my life at Palm Tree is getting more normal now that I have a set teaching schedule. I teach 9-11 and 2-4 every day. The Grade 6 kids are interesting because they know some English so I can actually teach the whole lesson, but they don’t think they know as much as they do. My morning class is awesome- they try to trick me into thinking that it’s 11 when it’s not. Mike doesn’t have a watch and his class gets him to let them out a half hour early all the time, so my class will say, “Time to go!” And I say, “No, it’s only 10:25.”And they say, “Mike’s class.”And I say, “Mike doesn’t have a watch.” And they just laugh. And then they beg me to play games. They have so much personality, I love it.
My afternoon class is more hesitant. There are less of them so that might be why, but they’re so quiet. It’s like all of the quiet kids just ended up in the same class coincidentally together. They don’t like answering questions and they’re not quite at the same level as the other class for some reason. I don’t know if they’re just pretending that they don’t know as much English or what, but I think I need to come up with some more fun things to do to get them out of their shells more.
It probably says something about me that I like my rowdy class more than my quiet class.
Nita, the teacher who sits in with me and translates when I need it, also has to help out a lot more with the afternoon class. Nita is one of the greatest people here. She’s 21 and goes to the University of Phnom Penh now. Palm Tree pays for all of their teachers to go to the university-we aren’t sure if they also get a salary or not. But Nita’s hilarious. She’s in love with David Archuleta- she calls him her boyfriend. We’ve seen the music video of him singing Crush so many times I never want to see it again when I go back to the States. In reality she has two boyfriends. One of them calls her everyday and he’s in love with her, but she “doesn’t like him that much.” The other is this guy she met a few weeks ago at the library at her university who sounds really sweet but isn’t as cute as the first guy. This is why I love Nita.
I’m not sure how I feel about teaching yet. I like it a lot but I don’t like having to stick to the lesson plans and the class book. It’s all really boring- I feel bad for the kids. At one point, when it got too boring, Nita was like, “Do you have any games?” And I was like, “Uhhh.. sure.” And I just created a game on the spot. The kids also ask for songs all the time and it doesn't matter what we do so long as we fill the time, so I just start singing sometimes. I broke out in the Lion King the other day, it was pretty spectacular. The kids seemed to like it anyway haha. They also have this game that they love where I write a word on the board, and then one person writes a word starting with the same letter that I ended with and the next person writes a word starting with the letter that he ended with, and the two duke it out. They get really into it, screaming and cheering each other on, it’s fantastic. So I usually let them play that.
The problem is that there aren’t a whole lot of materials to work with. They have a whiteboard, markers, and some posters on the wall. That’s about it. They don’t even have student books- we have one student book and Nita copies pages from it to pass out to them for each lesson. I’ve been trying to find more fun things I can do with them that don’t involve any element of technology- I think I’m going to sing Grammar Rock to them next time they ask for a song because they’re learning verbs and adverbs haha. We’ll see.
Also Nita leaves class to go to meetings almost every day so I just teach by myself a lot. It’s kind of nice because the kids relax so much when she’s not there. Not that she’s scary at all (she's a sweetheart, I love her) but I guess they think they can get away with more with me- which is totally true and I’m not even going to try to deny it. As long as they try and we get through the lesson, I don’t care if they want to play a game afterwards. I was ten once- I know how much it sucks to be stuck in class when you want to go play with your friends. Especially when class is also taking place right in your home. But it gets dicey because they don’t understand a whole lot of English, so when I try to give instructions they’ll tell me they understand and then just continue to sit there because they really have no idea what I’m saying. I tried to play two truths and a lie with them today, and they did it but they didn’t get the game- they just kept saying one thing about themselves that was really obviously a lie. I’m definitely hitting all the challenges of teaching ESL head on right now.
The kids themselves are awesome though. They have so much spunk and personality, I love all of them. They also all just really like hugs a lot. They like attention but they share with each other and help each other, and I mean they’re kids so they also knock each other around a bit, but they’re so normal. It’s just amazing. And they’re so freaking smart. The high school kids are learning math that I still haven’t learned and I graduated college.
The schedule here is also really lax. Nothing happens on time and the lessons aren’t even that structured anyway. Class doesn’t start till like twenty minutes late sometimes and they just cancel classes sometimes for teacher meetings. They also cancel class when it rains a lot because the roofs around here are metal and tin, and rain is defeaning. I got to see a pretty legit rainstorm yesterday- it was wild. The streets flood to the point where it’s hard for people to even drive through them. We pretty much just hole up in Palm Tree when that happens because walking around knee-deep in water, mud, and garbage isn’t exactly appealing. But the rainstorms are extremely fierce and incredible to watch here.
I’m legit getting sick of the food. Palm Tree provides lunch and dinner for us every day. Which basically means rice plus vegetables plus either egg or chicken. Sometimes they just give us fried eggs or a piece of chicken with the rice. The meals are actually pretty tasty especially by Cambodian standards, and they do actually feed us well. It’s just that there are only so many times you can eat chicken and green beans before you want to just run away screaming.
We took our first trip out of the orphanage on Saturday (yay) and went to the main city section of Phnom Penh. Our initial plan was to find a bar that was showing the Stanley Cup because Jessi is from Pittsburgh too and we both desperately wanted to see it. Friday night at 8 EST was 7 a.m. on Saturday our time. No one was showing even highlights of the game- we seriously need to introduce hockey to these people- so we just started drinking at about 8:30 a.m. We figured it was Friday night back home so that justified our decision.
Also let's just take a moment to enjoy the fact that the Pens won the Stanley Cup. WOOOOOO!!
So back to Saturday. By about ten we dragged ourselves out of the bar and walked around for a bit, found some cute kids movies to show the kids since Saturday is movie night every week. Then we found this awesome English pub and got burgers. I know, I know, so disgustingly American. We drank beer in the morning and then ate burgers. We suck. But you have no idea how good that burger was. I don’t even care. I was full for the first time in a week, and it wasn’t from chicken and green beans.
But food issues aside, I’m really enjoying living in Cambodia. Like actually enjoying it- Cambodia is a sweet place. We took a tour on Sunday of a few major sites in Phnom Penh and I don’t know why people don’t come here more often- besides the slightly daunting regimen of shots you have to get before you come, it’s awesome.
We started at the National Museum, which had a lot of ancient Khmer inscribed on tablets. They kept giving us flowers to put in front of statues of gods as offerings- which we did about two times and then we figured we had enough good luck. There was also a gorgeous garden in the middle and we took loads of pictures- which I will post once I have enough spare time to load them since it takes forever here.
T came with us but he seemed really bored. And by “seemed really bored” I mean we asked him if he was bored and he said, “Yes. This is really boring.” So we didn’t hang out for too long. We wanted to go to the Silver Pavilion but it was closed, so he took us to a temple that is basically Phnom Penh’s version of Angkor Wat- but miniature. We parked the tuk tuk and he took us around a bit.
They also happened to have an elephant at the temple. We also happened to end up riding said elephant down the street. I wish I was kidding.
We decided we’d ride the elephant, figured it’d be like a five minute thing, and they took it out on to the actual street. Cars had to go around us. It was insane. It was also terrifying. We climbed up this tiny platform, crawled across the elephant’s neck, and sat on this little seat that was only made for two people at best. It kept sliding left and right and we had to keep adjusting our position so we didn’t fall off. Riding on an elephant is not my method of choice for getting around- take riding a horse and make it about ten times jerkier. Though it was cool to see people’s faces on the street.
We went in to the actual temple itself and there was a man leading what looked like a kind of church service, so we joined everyone sitting down for a little while. People came forward and gave money, and the man gave them what looked like a scroll, and then they proceeded to pray to the idols- of which there were quite a few. T came and prayed for his mom, which was sad but also an interesting process. He tried to explain it to us-he prays to his mom so that his mom will pray for him, since he’s Buddhist. It’s a strange cycle for an outsider to hear about, and kind of sad from our perspective about his mother, but he seemed comfortable explaining it to us.
I’ve only ever seen two kids at Palm Tree cry. One of them I can honestly say I’m not sure why he was crying, but it didn’t look provoked- he just sat in the corner and cried, it was heart-wrenching. Another girl who is probably about thirteen started crying one day because it was her mother’s birthday. The kids here almost never cry, but when they do it just breaks your heart. They can hit each other and chase each other around and tease each other, and they will never cry. So when they do, you wish it was something like a bruise or a scrape that you could just kiss away. The kids are super brave though and usually really happy, and can talk about tough issues. Which is why T could talk about his mother straight up to us.
Sunday was also Mike’s birthday so we took him out that night. We went to a random bar called Bogeys about fifteen minutes from Palm Tree, and stayed for a few hours just drinking beer and hanging out. The bar was basically us and three other creepy old guys who were probably only in Cambodia for one thing, which was disgusting, so we just kind of kept to ourselves the whole time. It was our first time experiencing Cambodian night life but it was Sunday so we really didn’t get to see a lot, unfortunately. But we bought Mike and T whiskey shots, and T, who is twenty (which is legal here), had never taken a shot before by the looks of it. First he asked for ice, and then he watched how Mike took his, and then he sort of took it after that. It was entertaining. We had to kind of cut him off after two because he was driving us home haha.
This week I’ve just been teaching each day. Monday night we went to a random market that was clearly for the upper class- it looked basically like an American grocery store and the prices were just as high, which we were totally not ok with. We’re planning to go to the night market tonight so we can bargain for things. T drove us in the tuk tuk and got us to buy him tons of stuff- he’s getting good at it, but it’s still really obvious. Pretty much the only reason he gets so much out of us is because Jessi and Alisa have a bit of a crush on him. Even though he’s twenty, I thought he was like sixteen the first time we met him because he looks so young- I still can’t get that idea out of my head.
I also got the best news in my class this morning. When the kids stood up at the end of class to say goodbye, they all said, “See you on Friday.” I was like, “Wait why don’t we have class tomorrow?” Apparently tomorrow is a holiday- something about it being the Queen’s birthday. I had no idea- it's like getting a snow day. So we’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do with our day off, besides sleep. And get rid of our apples because I’m pretty sure there is a mouse living in the box of apples.
Cambodia definitely has its ups and downs. The language barrier can get really frustrating, it’s insanely hot to the point where we pretty much all melt like Popsicles, and we get lots of unwanted creatures as visitors. Also the power decides to go out pretty much every time I take a shower- I’m getting good at showering in pitch darkness. But the culture here is incredible. I love meeting people and just watching what everyone does- the games they play, the way they dress, the music they listen to. Everyone in Phnom Penh plays badminton on patches of grass in the middle of the street at night. How else would I have known that if I didn’t live here for awhile? Plus the kids make everything worth it- I’d walk barefoot across coals for those kids, they’re that awesome.
I miss all of you! People keep asking me for Palm Tree's address so I'll post it as soon as I can- I don't have it with me right now. I'll also post pictures asap :)
Love from Cambodia,
Monica
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