The Eighth TripWow, this was a fun trip (#8!) and getting out of Cambodia without being incarcerated was a real plus.
As usual, I did the Seattle-Taipei-Cambodia run on EVA Air. The trip itself was uneventful, although I admit that being stuck in a seat for 20 hours is a little less fun each time I do it. My friend 'Run' took the same flight as me this time and we arrived on time with both of our sweethearts waiting for us at Phnom Penh International Airport.
Dishes, Dishes, DishesOne of the things my fiance and I did this time was to get another huge load of dishes for eventual use in Seattle. I got what must have been about $1000 worth of dishes for $140 and change. This is the same beautiful blue glaze stuff as last time, although this time we got full sized dishes, cups, saucers, etc. We got so much I had to leave some behind- there was just too much to fit in my bags after it was packed for travel. By the way, you cannot buy bubblewrap in Phnom Penh at any price. You can scrounge some up from auto part stores, but it just isn't for sale anywhere (and believe me, we looked). This fact alone, I believe, explains America's superiority over Cambodia in matters of commerce and standard of living.
Some of our dishes in their native habitat:
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/Dishes001.jpg)
I'm happy to report that
every single dish, plate, and cup (about 60 pieces) made it home in perfect condition, not a single broken or cracked piece in the bunch. I did get into a bit of a skirmish with the baggage monkey at SeaTac airport, however. He was taking the bags as they came off the conveyor and literally throwing them into a huge pile. When the pile got to be too big to toss bags on top of, he just started throwing them OVER the pile to the other side.
What a dick. When my first bag appeared I stepped in to grab it and shouted "Whoah, wait wait wait, there's china in there, it's fragile, let me get it please." The baggage monkey took offense at my bizarre request and got all official with me, "
You'll have to step back sir, blah blah security blah blah terrorists blah...." Yeah, like that's going to happen after all I've been through, lol. I grabbed my bag and told him that I'd flown this stuff all the way from Cambodia and if I wanted it broken, I'd damn well do it myself. The scene was repeated for the second bag as well- "
step back sir, blah blah blah".
No fricking way, Mr Baggage Monkey. I grabbed the second bag and told him "
Yeah, right, this is me and I'm stepping back- WITH MY BAG thankyouverymuch.".
Traffic Cops - Pay Me Now, Or Pay Me Now While driving down Monivong Boulevard one day I got waved over by a Phnom Penh extortionist, I mean traffic cop. I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong- did I turn in a "go straight" lane or did I go straight in a "turn" lane? Apparently I did neither- what I did is known as "driving while being a tourist". The cop saw me, figured I could afford a fine, and waved me over. My fiance started yelling at him and that worried the hell out of me. Things got a a bit errr heated, and he asked me (through my fiance) for my license. Riiiiiiiiiiight, I mean it's pretty obvious that I'm not from around these parts, you know?
Like I'm really gonna have a valid Cambodian drivers license. Duh. So I gave him my Washington State license and he examined it for a while, but he wasn't very convincing as he was holding it upside down the whole time (lol!).
I told my fiance to tell the cop that it was an "International" license and was good "
in all civilized countries all over the world" and so I didn't
need an actual Cambodian driver's license. Since the cop couldn't read or speak English, it sort of worked but I still had to pay 5000 reals for my unspecified offense (about $1.25). My fiance really lit into him then and he started yelling, she started yelling louder, all his cop buddies came over to see what was the trouble....hoo boy. I listened to all the commotion thinking to myself, "
Shit, I am SO going to jail". The cop would yell something at me, my fiance would yell something at him, and round and round we went. But she didn't back down and apparently ORDERED him to give me back my license, which he reluctantly did. Being a complete idiot, I asked my fiance if I was going to get a receipt for my payment. She looked at me as though I had said something even stupider than normal and told me, "
No get receipt for bribe."
It turns out that you can pay your fine on the spot (how convenient!) and I guarantee you that not a nickel of your fine makes it into the city's books- it goes right into the cop's pocket. Don't want to burden City Hall with unecessary paperwork, right?
After a few more choice comments to him from my fiance, we were allowed to drive off. That's when she explained to me that I hadn't done anything wrong (except for being a tourist on the wrong street in Phnom Penh).
Fishing for LunchWe went to a really cool little place way outside of town- it's a little place on a lake and there are all of these nice little gazebos that sit out on the banks of the lake. They give you a fishing pole and some bait and you go fishing for your lunch. If you catch a fish they cook it for you and serve it up on a platter. You can also buy lunch there if you want, and that's a good thing because we didn't catch a damn thing all morning long. We would have starved to death if we had to rely on our skills as anglers. The worst part is that the fish were jumping out of the water all over the place further out in the lake, but our poles couldn't reach that far. Hmmmm, what a coincidence. My fiance has gone there a whole bunch of times and has always caught something, but those damn fish were just too scared of me to come close to where we were. Yeah, that must have been what it was....all in all though, it was a lot of fun, right up to the part where we drove home and I ran over two little Cambodian schoolgirls and killed them.
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Running Over Cambodian SchoolgirlsOkay, I didn't really kill them, but I came
awfully damn close. Before I say anything else, I'd like to apologize to the two young ladies I almost killed. They know who they are (and they're probably still having nightmares about the whole thing). I hope you live long and happy lives, but that probably won't happen unless you stay off the road while I'm in your lovely country.
Here's what happened....
We were zooming home on the moto. I was driving and I was going about 50 or so along this fairly busy highway road. For some
completely inconceivable reason, these two schoolgirls about 10 years old
decided to do something utterly insane, namely,
cross the road while I was driving nearby. I mean really, what were they thinking? Haven't they read about my moto driving?
So, they start to cross the road. I spot them and start to veer to the right to avoid them. They move forward a step so now I'm coming right at them again. They step back just as I overcorrect and again we end up on a collision course.
75 meters and closing fast. They start forward again just as I change course and I veer toward them again.
Ooops. Now they freeze, one foot in the air, trying to discern just what the f*ck I'm doing. What I'm doing, of course, is heading right for them like a fricking cruise missile.
50 meters to go and their mouths are open in anticipation of their imminent death. (Since they're only 10 years old it probably didn't take long for their lives to flash in front of their eyes.) I heroically apply the moto's handbrake, but did I mention that I was a)
going really fast, and b)
still heading right for them?
40 meters. Shit, this is looking really bad. I put a Terminator-like death-grip on the handbrake, and now the scene resembles one of those Driver's Education movies, you know, the one where they show that slow motion collision inside a car. Our sudden slowing causes my fiance and I to slide forward on the moto, our hair and clothing is pulled forward from the G-forces, pens and pencils are flying out of our pockets, and we're all doing that slowed-down yelling thing, just like in the film, "
Nooooooooooooooooooo........"
25 meters left and and I'm still racing right at them like Rosie O'Donnel running for the refrigerator. I'm crushing the handbrake so hard it's almost to the handlebar. The brutal deceleration causes my fiance's head to impact the back of my neck, causing her teeth and jaws to snap shut with a very audiable "
CLACK" noise. I hear her yell something but it's muffled by the fact that her face is now sort of forcefully buried between my shoulder blades. I think she might have been telling me what a great and skillful moto driver I am, but I could be mistaken here.
Oh dear. 10 meters left. Game over. By this time the front tire is now locked up and we're skidding on the pavement, but I don't dare turn even a little bit because that would definitely throw Sakha and I right off the moto, giving us a short aerial view of Phnom Penh just before we would hit headfirst into the roadway divider wall, which has thoughtfully been made of solid concrete. (No, we weren't wearing any helmets. Where would be the sport in that?)
So, I can't turn, the moto is skidding, and we're all basically screwed. The schoolgirls are still frozen solid and we're about to squash them like bugs. At this moment I manage to downshift straight from 4th gear to 2nd gear.
Wow, talk about instant deceleration. The moto's transmission makes a terrible screaming noise like an overheated starship engine and the added deceleration causes my fiance's head to once more slam into the back of my neck. I hear her teeth make that *
CLACK* noise again. I'm hoping her tongue wasn't in the way, but mostly I'm getting a really up-close and personal look at the schoolgirls eyes, which by this time are about the size of dinner plates.
Thanks to my downshifting we come to a
very dramatic screeching stop with the front wheel of the moto ending up
less than a centimeter from the tips of the first schoolgirl's Hello Kitty sneakers. I smell urine. Maybe it's mine, maybe it's the schoolgirls, but I didn't have time to ponder that because now the front shock absorber of the moto springs back from it's hyper-compressed position, causing the moto to lurch backwards a little bit, which causes me to lurch backwards a little bit, which drives the back of my head into my fiance's mouth one last time. I hear the aforementioned *
CLACK* noise yet again. My fiance screams another somewhat muffled comment, again probably something about how much she loves me but I don't speak Khmer so I'm not really sure. But that's what I'd guess she said.
I look at the schoolgirls (still frozen solid with that deer-in-the-headlights look) and I say "
Hi!", probably a little too loudly. I think I startled them because the paralysis instantly left their bodies and they started scrambling backwards blindly, trying to get back to the safety of the roadway divider.
They actually went up the divider thingy backwards, no kidding.
My fiance called out to them in Khmer (probably telling them that I was a great moto driver and not to worry), but by then they were running along the roadway divider away from us, occasionally looking back over their shoulders to see if I was following them (I wasn't).
My fiance was so exhilirated by this whole thing that she
insisted on driving the rest of the way home. I mean she really,
really insisted.
When we got home, I told her that since this was my first real Combat Kill (well, almost) in Cambodian traffic that I should get some recognition of it. I showed her these little drawings I had made and taped to the moto- they were
two little silhouettes of a pony-tailed schoolgirl's head with a big "X" over it, just like the fighter aces used to do in World War II when they shot down an enemy plane.
Credit for two kills
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/ponytail2.gif)
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/ponytail2.gif)
My fiance
pretended she didn't like them and scraped them off with a nail file. While she was scraping them off she was muttering to herself, "
I cannot believe I'm marrying this..." and then she used some Cambodian word.
It was a really short word but I think it meant something like "creative guy" or "wonderful man" or something like that. Then she took a bunch of Advil. The next morning she said her teeth and jaw felt much better.
(Footage from my gun camera later revealed that had I been using live ammo, I would have completely smoked those schoolgirls butts for sure.) When my fiance told this story to her family (in Cambodian), she made all the appropriate back-and-forth motions and screeching noises and ended up by holding her fingers about an inch apart for them to see. This must have really impressed her family with my awesome moto driving skills because they were very quiet and (
probably out of respect) avoided me completely for the next few days, but then they got over their awe of my incredibleness and things returned to normal.
Weird Hooting Noises Cambodian Girls MakeI don't know what to tell you, but this is just weird. Sometimes when Cambodian ladies get all worked up about something they will all (in unison) make this "whooowoooowoooo" noise. For example, I bought my fiance this Louis Vitton handbag.
Apparently it is THE handbag to end all handbags, period, end of story, go home. If you carry this handbag you are too cool and every woman within 500km must bow to you and tell you that they like your handbag. Now, I'll be really honest here- it looks terrible to me. It's looks like it's been stitched together from like 5 other handbags, none of which match AT ALL.
It's just freakin' hideous. It looks like it has a mutant handbag growing out of the side, plus all sorts of chains and things flopping around. You couldn't bury me with one of these, but for the ladies it's like dying and going to heaven. So I got her one.
[img width=302 height=286p]vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/louis-vuitton-bag.jpg
When we visited the place she used to work you'd have thought the Pope had arrived. All of the girls went into this frenzy, making the aforementioned hooting noise and they clustered around my fiance like she was a movie star, admiring her Louis Vitton bag. Then they all kissed her toes and swore their loyalty to her till the End Of Time. Wait, I made that last part up, but only just barely. (I should mention that the real LV bag sells for like $3,000.00 and no way I'm insane enough to spend that much on something like that. You couldn't buy the real thing in Cambodia if you wanted, but you can buy spot-on copies for about $35 or so.)
Valentines Day Yes, Cambodia has been infected with Valentines Day, or as we guys call it, "
Romances' Answer To April 15th". All sorts of little steetside stalls spring up offering candy and flowers. I was driving Sakha somewhere on the moto (did I mention what a great moto driver I am?) and I pulled over to buy her some roses. I told her to pick out a bouquet, and she pulled a single flower out of the basket. Oh, please, I'm not going to fly all the way to Southeast Asia and buy one flower! So I grabbed one of the nicer bouquets but she didn't want it- she kept holding up the one forlorn little flower and telling me "
Simple, simple, no, simple!" She really doesn't want me to spend money on stuff like that, lol. But after a little back and forth I got her a nice bouquet and off we went. Wow, everywhere we went all the other women looked at her enviously and would smile at me, then they'd turn to their husband or boyfriend and pound him on the arm for not getting them a bouquet. The guys looked at me like, "
Oh you bastard, now I've gotta buy her flowers. Thanks a lot." But the ladies dug it and Sakha was the envy of most of the city. Cambodian men are about as romantic as wet bricks and they don't go for that stuff unless it's at gunpoint.
Drilling For Oil In Our Hotel Room We stayed at the New York Hotel this time, and the room was very nice. But, every so often we'd hear this noise, or more accurately, this
NOISE. I swear to god it sounded like they were drilling for oil in the room next door. It was so loud that everytime it started up it would shake the room and we'd jump about a foot. "
BR-R-R-R-BAMBAMBAMBAM-DDD-BAM-RRRRRRR!" We never did figure out what it was. We were too scared to go out into the hall and see what was making the NOISE.
What To Do When They Insist You CANNOT Take A Picture Lots of places will tell you quite firmly that you can't take pictures, like malls, stores, resturants, etc. Just take a picture anyway:
Me (taking pictures):
click, click, clickStore Owner: Please, you cannot take picture in here!
Me: Okay. (
click, click, clickclickclick) I won't.
Clickclickclick.
Store Owner: No, you cannot. Is not allowed!
Me: I see (
clickclickclick). Why is (
click) that? (
click)
Store Owner: Is rule, no picture, no take any picture here!
Me: Ah, (
click) I understand. (
clickclickclick)
You get the idea. Never ask them first!
Remember kids- it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. By the time they're done telling you "no", you got your pictures. You can also point the camera at whatever you want to take a picture of (like a guard with a gun, for example) and quietly press the shutter button while you politely ask if you can take their picture. If they decline, say "Okay" and walk away. For god's sake, remember to
TURN OFF YOUR AUTOMATIC FLASH or you can get yourself in
big, big trouble. Ask me how I know.
You can also pretend not to speak English. Pretend you're a German tourist:
Me (taking pictures):
zeclick, zeclick, zeclicken
Store Owner: Please, you cannot take picture in here!
Me: Yah. (
zeclick, zeclick, zeclickclickclick) Wilkommen da biergarten.
ZeClickclickclick.
Store Owner: No, you cannot. Is not allowed!
Me: Jahwol, mien putzengruben! (
zeclickclickclick). Vast ist der autobahn (
zeclick) schnitzel? (
click)
Store Owner: Is rule, no picture, no take any picture here!
Me: Vost? (
zeclicken) Pleben der schnitzel haus. (
zeclick,click,click)
By the way, the rough translation of the "German" above is "
Welcome to the beer garden",
Yes, my putzen something", "
This is the autobahn sausage", and "
Paint the sausage house". Or something like that. (Hell, I don't know, I don't speak German!)
The Magic Traffic Horn Driving in Cambodia is a lot of fun (especially if you're a great moto driver like me) and one of the secrets to success is to be "
BAD". That's "
Bold,
Audacious, and
Decisive". In other words, go for it. When you come to an intersection
you must pretend that you don't see the other drivers coming the other way. They will pick up on the fact that you don't see them and they'll slow down or go around you instead of making you stop for them. Also, it's critically important that while you're pretending that you don't see them, you also use your horn for its tactical "first strike" capability. [span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"]Beep beep, beepbeepbeepbeep[/span]. That way they
KNOW you're coming and have to pay attention to you no matter what. Don't overdo it though. Only use your horn 90% of the time. I am firmly convinced that you could drive from one end of Cambodia to the other without stopping (or even slowing) if you just taped your horn button down and pretended not to see the other drivers.
When crossing intersections you can also use a car as a shield, just drive alongside them and cling to them when they cross the intersection. No one wants to hit a car so the cross-traffic will stop or slow to allow the car (and you) to go by. Mwuhahahahah!
True story: My fiance used to always tap me on the shoulder when I went "too fast" and she'd say "
No hurry, no hurry honey!". I told her that was very distracting and was likely to cause me to have an accident. Now all she says from time to time is "
Uh oh".
The Prohibited Fruit There is a *
very* delicious kind of fruit sold in Cambodia. I cannot pronounce its name, but it's spiky-looking and very big (see picture). It's absolutely to
DIE for, it's that good. Very expensive but worth every penny. It has a very powerful and distinctive aroma and most hotels have a picture of the fruit with the international "NO" symbol over it posted at the elevators.
You are not allowed to take the fruit into the hotel because of its overpowering smell. You buy it and the stall owner slices it open and deftly removes the meaty blobs inside like he was doing a cesarean or something.
It's repulsive looking but so so so delicious. 
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/spikyfruit01.jpg)
More scary mannequins A few more pics of mannequins. God help me, I never get tired of having the living crap scared out of me by these things. Use 'em to scare your kids if they're been bad.
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Ummm,, wait a minute...that's a GUY with BREASTS...
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Good AdviceA few signage shots from various places. I like the "Be Careful" one. That's just good advice whether you're driving, making love, searching for landmines, or (as in this case) stepping onto an escalator. I apologize for the blurry "Be careful Your Head" shot, it was made on a moving escalator. I hate to think what prompted them to put up that sign.
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Transporting Stuff By Moto As you can see,
anything and everything is transported by moto. These are just a few shots of various things being catred around the city on motos. It's the standard form of transport for virtually everything, animal, mineral, or vegetable.
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You get the idea. If it can be carried, it will be carried. Multiple Moto PassengersThis is also very very common. Seeing 3, 4 or even 5 or 6 people (including babies) on a single moto going somewhere is quite common. Do that in the US or Canada and the cops would write you so many tickets you could wallpaper Disneyland with them. And helmets are uncommon, at most maybe 1 in 10 or 20 people use them.
] (//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/peopleonmoto001.jpg)] (//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/peopleonmoto001.jpg)]
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Romantic Love RubberI really have no idea what this is and I'm not sure I want to. But it was too good of a picture to pass up!
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/loverubber01.jpg)
Double Happiness CigarettesGotta love it- I'm only surpised that there wasn't a tagline like "
Now With Twice The Cancer!"
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Funeral SceneOutside one of the markets I saw all these people dressed sort of like KKK members.
It wasn't a KKK rally, it was a funeral and the custom is to burn the body and throw paper messages on the funeral pyre to speed the departed soul to Heaven.
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Terrible Sounds All Around Outside of some of the markets there are these people who set up a mobile computer station and then play 10-second clips of the WORST music you've ever heard, one clip after another. If you want you can pay them a little money and they'll beam the song to your phone for use as a ringtone. They play the worst music imaginable, and at very VERY loud volumes. When you get 5 or 6 of these idiots doing it at the same time it sounds even worse. There aren't words bad enough to describe it, but I came up with a phrase that comes close: "
Ear Diarrhea". Because the term "
Loud Shitty Music From Hell" doesn't quite cover it.
(//vny!://discoverseattle.net/cambodia/eardiarhea01.jpg)
Burned Out Buildings These date from the time of Pol Pot and all of the horror that took place during his genocidal regime. In some places you can still see bullet holes and other evidence of the fighting that went on. "During his time in power Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectivization whereby city dwellers were forcibly marched out to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects, conceived as a restarting of civilization in 'Year Zero'. The combined effect of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care and executions had an estimated death toll of 750,000 to 1.7 million. His regime achieved special notoriety for singling out all intellectuals and other 'bourgeois enemies' for murder."
Monks Some monks going about their daily routine of traveling around the neighborhoods blessing people and receiving donations.
Weird Art StuffYou, yes YOU can own this delightful picture of a scowling Ayatollah for only $30 Wouldn't this look great on your living room wall? Answer; Hell no, it would not. Why anyone would buy this is beyond me. Completely beyond me. That's my fiance holding it up, by the way. Isn't she cute?
The Alien BarI was afraid to go inside for fear of being ummm "probed" if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Electrical Wiring Nothing odd about this, it's an example of the basic wiring all over the country. This is outside my fiance's apartment, by the way. Notice the dangling wires?
They're live.
CASHEWS!!Also, in the market you can get killer deals on some things, like cashews. A brick of 8 kilos -about 17 pounds- of cashews goes for around $10.
Dressed for ReentryAt the airport there was this woman dressed in a tinfoil dress. The picture doesn't show it as shiny as it was, but I swear she looked like she was dressed for reentry from orbit.
Well, that's about it. I hope ya enjoyed this latest look at Cambodia!
