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!