We went to the "Beefsteak" place last night. ('
Beefsteak' is a relative term, as it turns out.) About 2 minutes after we sat down we heard this *tremendous* ROARING noise, like a giant freight train- the whole building shook and the noise didn't stop. At the same time all the people outside started screaming and yelling and they all jumped up, turning over tables and scrambling and yelling trying to get inside (where we were). I thought a friggin bomb had gone off or something....but nooooo, it was just
rain.
The rain turned on like it was on a switch, and it rained so hard that you literally couldn't talk, it was so loud it drowned out everything. It was just this intense roaring, hissing, hammering noise that flicked on- *boom* -and in 15 seconds the streets were 3 inches deep in water. After one minute they were about 6 inches deep. After ten minutes there was 1 to 2 feet of water in the streets. We took a tuk-tuk home and I swear to god- it was *exactly* like a boat ride. I'm not kidding, you'd have thought you were on a river boat; the water was almost up to the floor of the tuk-tuk. PhnomPenh
really needs a sewer system.
Then my son called here at ~1am on skype. I forgot to mute the sound (doh) and so we all woke up to the doodle-doodle-doodle skype calling noise. As soon as I saw it was my son I thought
Oh shit, major emergency because I told him not to call me unless he "was bleeding or the house was on fire"....but no, he said he twisted his neck and it hurt and he wanted to know where the aspirin was. I can't wait till he joins the Marines.
What else...I succumbed to the allure of
The Buy Phone Here Store (that's its name, pretty creative, eh?) and bought this Chinese phone that may or may not turn out to be a brick. It works and it's way cool, but the manual is in Chinese and so we couldn't figure out how to get the #%@$! cover off to insert the SIM or extra battery. We had to go back and have the 12 year-old girl that runs the booth show me how to open it up. She rolled her eyes and everything. How embarrassing, lol. But it's really really really cool. I hope it works for more than a week, but what can you expect for $600, right? (I'm kidding, it was $100).
I managed to find some cheap t-shirts and bought 5 or 6. I got
both of the black ones in stock, so Led Zeppelin is shit out of luck if they ever come to do a concert here.
We're also going out to the famous "777 Cafe" for breakfast. Truthfully, it's not actually famous and it most definitely isn't a cafe. And it may not even be 'breakfast' if our last meal there is indicative of the "menu", but it is what it is.
I brought our Garmin GPS along for fun. Before we left I managed to load a map of Cambodia (after an
enormous amount of screwing around, I should add). I tried to get it to show the map before we left but it wouldn't do it, even though it showed the map was present and loaded. So I figured I'd just wait until we got to Cambodia and try it.
So, after arriving I went outside and turned it on. It flashed the "Acquiring Satellites" message on and off (which is normal when you first turn it on), but it kept flashing for a looooooong time. I mean a really long time, like 5 minutes. It looked like it may have reset itself a couple of times too but I'm not sure. Then the screen went dark, and I swear to god I saw a little frowny-face icon for just a second before it did that: (
When it finally lit up, there we were in Phnom Penh just like we should be, right on the exact street and everything! Pretty damn impressive.
I figure the GPS turned off the day before, all happy in Seattle and the next time it woke up a few hours later it was on the
other side of the world. Its tiny little brain probably went, "
*ERROR ERROR WTF?*" and couldn't believe it.
I'm guessing it thought, "
Whoah, damn, this isn't right..." and kept trying to figure out what the hell was wrong and why everything was soooooooo far away from its last computed location. Then it finally gave up (frowny face) and said "Screw it, I'm just gonna go with wherever those stupid satellites say I am."
So now I can get as lost as I want here and still find my way back to where we're staying (at my wife's mom's apartment) so I don't end up sleeping in the street.
