Laptop Stolen

My training course in Cambodia is over, even though I'm still here. I had planned a trip to Sihanoukville, which is on the coast of Cambodia, this week before I had to leave for China. I bought a room at a guest house, which are cheap motels here, and on the day I meant to depart I left for lunch, locked my door and when I came back my laptop and camera were gone. I left them both just laying out, a stupid mistake, but at least nothing else had been taken. Just the electronics both left in plain sight. I'd been at the motel for three nights so I figure whoever stole them had been keeping tabs on me for a couple of days. Or more likely they saw a white person and assumed I had some money, so they decided to go exploring in my room. I'm not too upset about the camera. I spent $70 on it in a Fred Meyer's in Washington and took about 3000 pictures with it on my bicycle trip. I'd taken about 500 more since coming to Cambodia. I feel I got my money's worth out of that piece of equipment. The computer, however, I am less than ecstatic about losing. At only two and a half months old I hardly had gotten use out of it and had looked forward to using it while teaching in China. A lot of potential there for how it can be used in a classroom. I have an external harddrive so everything on the computer (and from the laptop I had before this) is backed up. Thusly, I didn't lose any information (except for my sterling record playng backgammon against the computer) I'm out of the money and functionality of the device. It's disheartening, but I don't hold it against the country or the hotel or anyone else. I did, for the record, tell the front desk but they might as well have laughed at me. With signs everywhere stating "We are not responsible for lost items of any kind at any time" I didn't have high hopes. Nothing to do about it really. I have no idea who did it, the front desk didn't care and the police, whom I did not contact, would have done absolutely nothing. I say that assuredly. The police function here as bribe takers, not law enforcers. Plus, they would have had no leads and very little information.

That's the update. I'll be in China next week as I have two days of training July 9th and 10th in Jinan and then the week after that I start actually teaching in Weifang. Even with the recent theft I find myself excted as ever and ready to continue my travels.

A New Moto and the Orphanage

I rented a motorcycle this week. I hadn't ridden one before and traffic is insane here, but I wanted to try it out. It's a little honda, no idea what engine is in it, but it can only get up to about 35-40 but that's a guess since the speedometer (and odometer and fuel gauge) is broken. It came with a helmet and costs $4 a day with no down payment. I got it on Wednesday and have gone for a number of little rides throughout the city. There's one road, Mao Tse Toung Street, that does a loop around the entire city, but I haven't had time to do the whole thing yet. It's a lot of fun. I don't have definite plans for the weekend yet, but the motorcycle is certainly involved. Feels like only a matter of time before I'm taking a trip on that thing to another country or at least other Cambodian cities. Maybe I'll go to Siem Reap again and wander through Angkor Wat again.

Class has gone well. Also on Wednesday I taught a class as the lone teacher for the first time. I didn't think it went well, but the guy observing me seemed to think I did just fine. They were young kids, none older than eight. Their good kids, for the most part, and seemed genuinely interested in learning. I was intimidated standing up there, but you get used to it pretty quickly. One student even gave me the obligatory-overly-cute note saying the class loves me. Quite nice.

The school where I teach is pretty amazing. It's paid for by the Chicago Bulls. They take in kids from rural areas that have no schools and provide educations free of charge. The better part of that is they specifically try and find young women with the idea of educating them before they're sent off to the city to become prostitutes. Prostitution is everywhere here. It's technically illegal but there's virtually no law enforcement here of any kind. I haven't heard anything about gang activity or mafia, it seems as if there are just lower level pimps, as it were, or small groups of them who find young women largely in rural areas, move them to the city and give them $60 plus a month. Then the women send most of the money home, which is enough for about a family of eight in Cambodia. It should be noted the men pimping these women do not kidnap them. They travel through the countryside like businessmen and the vast majority of the time the families hand pick one of their daughters, grand daughters, nieces, etc. to be sent to the city. The families stay put, continue to farm or whatever their trade might be, and get an extra paycheck for the young woman they sent off. From what I gather it seems they typically send off whom they consider to be the most beautiful and also typically they pick a girl in her early teens.

I walk around the city at night and talk to people. People don't speak English well enough to have more than a simple conversation about what they do, who they are, where I'm from, etc. But I do pick up tid bits. The tuk tuk drivers offer drugs of all kinds and always women. "You want boom boom? Big or small?" I walk past opened gates and see men standing in the doorway to a room full of scantily clad women. "Hello, sir. You want lady?"

I like the idea of working for an organization that helps prevent that. It's idealistic but they put their time, money and efforts toward a practical use. I don't know for sure if any of the kids I work with will ever "make" it. If they'll be able to avoid something like being a child prostitute, but it's nice to be a part of something with good intentions and functional effort.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

For at least a couple of hours now thunder has boomed as the rain pounds the tin roof on my porch. Typically in the afternoons I can hear kids playing in the alley outside my house or guys working on their moto-bikes and Tuk Tuk's, but today it's only the sound of the rain. I've heard floods will come in July and apparently June gets a dose of downpour as well.

Thursday, June 12, 2009 marked the end of our time as full time students. We had 9 classes with Language Corps and now they're sending us out for practical purposes. Split into groups I'm with three Americans, Jazmin Fushini from Trenton,  New Jersey, Arturo Torras from Queens, NY and Vladimiro Navarrete from Austin, Texas. The four of us teach at New Day, a school with about 30 students ranging from age 6 through 20. They put 15 students in each class generally arranging it as one beginner/intermediate class and one intermediate/advanced class. Considering how short handed the school is regarding textbooks, number of teachers and range of skills per class the students seem very excited to learn and, for the most part, well behaved. A number of students speak English very well. Protocol for the class consisted of introducing new vocabulary while trying to make it relevant to previous sessions. The teacher introduces the vocab through reading a story the students will have to identify later. Again, I was very impressed with the attention the students paid and how quickly they were able to write an entire paragraph about what they'd just heard. One little girl, clearly the leader of her group, announced "no no, these answers aren't adequate, we need more time," when teacher announced it time to share with the rest of the class.

We had one hour of class followed by a ten minute break. The school has a small play area with a basketball hoop, some soccer balls and a small sandy area to kick the balls around. I tried to teach a kid how to throw a behind the back pass, but didn't find much success (for him or myself). All in all it's a lot of fun. The kids seem to love being at school, which was certainly never the case for me when I was young, and seem to get a lot out of the classes.

We'll be working in the schools this week and the next. Then it's off to China. I haven't bought a ticket from Saigon to Beijing yet. I think it means I'll have to get another Vietnamese visa, but those are cheap and easy. I took my passport to the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh on Friday and by Wednesday I will have a visa to China. It's not a working visa though, just a tourist visa. This means there's a new plan on where I'll be in China and potentially for how long. I'll be in Weifang now for two months with my time there ending August 25, giving me 10 days before I'll start teaching in Chongqing, a city province more in the south central. And how long I could be there I'm not certain. The pay is the same, however, and I won't have to find or pay for my own accommodation. I'm taking this course of action because each province in China has it's own specific criteria for visa's. In Weifang there's a law that a tourist visa can't be transfered into a work visa while the person is still in China. By law they have to be in their home country to obtain a work visa (I didn't find this out until recently). The city of Chongqing, however, has no such law and will grant me a work visa within days of arrival.

I've really enjoyed my time here. Southeast Asia is unlike any place I've been. I love the motorcycle culture, the food, the temples and some great scenery. Those aside I like the people the most. Almost everyone here shows a great deal of gratitude for what they have. I think after what happened with the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot they're appreciative to live in a country not rife with violence and uncertainty. It's still a very impoverished country, but that doesn't seem to necessarily bother anyone. Almost as if they're fine with the idea that things have slowly gotten better and they will continue to slowly do so. Even if it's slow it's still there. Of course, I've been wrong before (apologies for all the cliches in this post).

Hours later, it's still raining.

Angkor Wat

I spent this weekend, with the 12 students in my TESOL course, at Angkor Wat one of the world's largest religious monuments. It's an entire city, basically, of temples built in the 12 century as home for King Suryavarman II and capital. At the time built as a Hindu Temple dedicated to Ganesh, the faces of many Hindi gods can still be found (namely Vishnu, Naga and Shiva) even though the transition to Buddhist iconography began the following century. The Wat has stood, then, for over 900 years and multitudes of changes, internally and externally. Though most of the temples lay in ruin (not from war, however, but rather the inevitable wear of time), but new temples exist within for Buddhist monks to meditate and study.

We left Phnom Penh just before 2 in the afternoon after a meager morning of classes on Friday, June 5, 2009. The Cambodian countryside reveals very few hills and flat lands of soaked rice paddies. Villages line the road but have no streets parallel. After minimal stops we reached the city of Siem Reap, which is only 5.5 kilometers from Angkor Wat. Language Corps paid for the trip in its entirety, so we stayed in a nicer hotel. At dinner at a pizza place and after a couple of drinks settled down for the night, with the exception of Paul, a Brit, who's fervor for the night life never wanes. He showed up in my room with a small group around 4 am to have more drinks and some music. When he realized my position he hugged me and kissed my cheek proclaiming a mutual affinity betwixt brethren of his nationality and my own. Whilst I appreciate the sentiment I prefer he keep his sweaty face and kisses distanced from my sweaty slumbering head.

Had breakfast and on our way by 9 in the morning. We started with a group tour guide, which while informative drove me nuts because of the slow pace and constant breaks. By noon I was on my own wandering through the woods, climbing towers and temples with no one in eye or ear shot. I crept through the woods aimlessly chasing monkeys, talking to young monks about their appreciation of the serenity and simplicity of their lives and the world around them, and even took a nap in a dusty corner of a nameless temple. I loved the history of the place, even if many specific details are beyond me. It'd been built and preserved for nearly a thousand years for the purpose of peace and serenity. Even in the light of 2 million people dead in the 1970s via the hands of the Khmer Rouge as well as the other inevitable idiotic and destructive tendencies so intertwined with our human shitheadedness, this ancient place remains. I climbed around on my own for a while and for a while with a Norwegian chap named Arild (part of the TESOL group). We hardly spoke, just brief exclamations, simply breathed words of wonder. 

Being able to climb, to touch and be a part of the experience made it unique from my other experiences with religious monuments. Much of Christian decoration is off limits, not to be touched and seen as holier than humanity. It furthermore glorifies and idolizes the brutal murder of a Jewish man, driving home his graphic death over and over and over. This place knew no outward malice like that (although I'm sure like every other sizable structure many workers died to see it's construction through). Vines grew with the fallen stones and trees grew from temples. It seemed the temples were meant to co-exist with the life growing around it, not to dominate or control it. Once away from the tourist traps, which unfortunately exist, you can find a lot of peaceful walking and exploring to do.

The next day we stopped on the way back to Phnom Penh at a Temple with equal or even more beauty. Away from the tourism of Siem Reap we were able to freely explore ruins of a more dilapidated state. James of England and John of Texas and I found a young boy who led us through partially collapsed rooms, ruins and hallways. It rained for a spell and we hunkered underneath a bridge. The scene is indescribable to me. It was a moment of clarity where, in my naivity and childishness, I find myself imagining the millions of years, simultaneously, of human thought, intelligence and organization it took for this place to exist. Hunched beneath that bridge watching the vibrant green forest highlight the rain falling on mossy old stones, sitting next to a Texan, an Englishman and a nameless Cambodian boy. Two weeks ago we didn't know any of the other existed.

The long weekend ended. The sites were amazing, though as per usual, I find it hard to keep company of others. A girl from San Diego, California can't help herself. "This road is so bump!" (yeah, we're in rural Cambodia and that's the 9548th pothole we've hit, what's the surprise?). "It's so hot here. We need more AC's." (Yes Cambodians, get on that. More AC for Princess California. Never mind rebuilding your infrastructure, get this woman mildly warm at the least!). And my favorite "These cheeseburgers don't taste like American cheeseburgers" (Ugh, no comment). Others who earlier made such claims as "This is the best food I've had in my entire life" now lament that they're "shitting green sludge 8-10 times a day" and "can't take anymore of this food, dude." I'm also in that boat of bowel movements, but I semi-expected it and have been narrowing down foods that my stomach reacts well to (ginger beef with noodles, Lok La chicken and rice with an egg) and other dishes it does not (eel). The trick, for me, is lots of vegetables and keep up on fruit intake. They like fruit at a different ripeness here (a ripeness I would hardly even consider ripe) so that changes things a bit, but fruit vegetables and lots of water keep me mostly healthy and regular.

In all a great weekend. A memorable experience to say the least and now back to living in this ever shifting, muddy, drunk, crazy, beautiful, uplifting city of insanity.

May 31, 2009

Got up early today and walked around the city. I haven’t explored far or wide, yet, but am becoming more familiar with landmarks and the city in general. The best way to get to know a city is to get lost in it, which is what I’ve been trying to do, at least to a minor extent. I thought about visiting the Cambodian National Museum, but a tour for the students at Language Corps was scheduled for the afternoon and I didn’t want to visit it twice. Turned out not to be a factor.

At 1 p.m. tuk tuk drivers picked up all the students, about 12 of us, and drove us to different sites within the city. First we visited a park near Wat Phnom. Wat is the Cambodian, Thai and Laotian term for a Buddhist temple or monastery. They’re beautiful buildings several stories high with cavernous interiors. Murals telling Buddhist and Hindi stories coat the walls, with golden statues of Buddha and Hindi gods (with which I am not familiar). Not all, however, are golden, but it seemed the predominant theme. Wat Phnom and The Royal Palace shared these similarities, though The Royal Palace was considerably more extensive with multiple temples and gardens. Wat Phnom did have monkey’s and an elephant wandering in the park.

While there our group, predictably, found itself approached by vendors selling a multitude of products and mostly small children trying to sell water. I bought a bottle of water from one girl as another reproached me for not buying her. Arturo, from New York and also planning on teaching in China after our month in Cambodia, bought a small sack of fried crickets, of which I had two. They were quite tasty, reminiscent of homemade jerky. These children followed us around all over Wat Phnom and as we left the young girl who earlier reproached me did her best to sell more water. When I walked away she angrily said “Fuck off. You are all crazy.” It seemed an unreasonable thing to say.

Although I enjoyed the Buddhist and Hindi influenced temples (my apologies for not having more information on how that influence came about. I’d like to do research before I start including the few tiny tidbits I have now) I couldn’t help but notice the bipolar dichotomy of having such huge and expensive projects, as building these temples surely was, while so many Cambodians live in extreme poverty. I rant and rave about such things often, but so rarely make any positive contribution to change the course of such discrepancy. No need to rant about it here. It’s just hard to appreciate such man-made beauty when man made filth and depression litter the streets outside.

Meeting the other students went well. They’re from a variety of places, as to be expected. New Yorkers, Texans, an Englishman and others unknown. There is, however, a guy from Gothenburg, Nebraska. What are the fucking chances. I have cousins from Gothenburg. He hasn’t lived there for some years and didn’t know any of them, but it was a strange coincidence to meet him. His name is Dirk and he’s a tall fellow with a quiet thoughtful persona. We digressed over the meaning of artifacts and murals while walking through the temples. It was nice to meet a Nebraskan and at no point discuss the upcoming football season.

Part II - June 1, 2009

Last night the Language Corps staff and this months class of students had dinner at The Titanic, a lovely place on the Sap river. I had flambéed duck with vegetables and, of course, rice. Delicious. Truly a great meal. The meat was juicy and tender, the veggies crisp and fresh and all of it very spicy. After that we went to a couple bars for drinks. Talked at first with James and Abbey, a couple from England, about the mundane life they left behind to travel Asia and now to teach English. They don’t yet have jobs, instead are taking this course and will see what happens. Second half of the evening I spent talking to Dirk and Cambodian women who were with Englishmen we didn’t know in a pub. Good times.

Had the first day of class, which consisted mostly of orientation and simple teaching methods. The class will be pretty easy and straight forward. Doesn’t mean it won’t be useful, it’s just not going to be particularly challenging since it’s mostly a preparation course utilizing information I already have through methods of instruction. I heard about $30 bicycles, brand new that come with a basket and a lock at a place, but I don’t remember where the place is. Phnom Penh is small though so I’m sure I can find it. Plus the bicycles are silver, making them an obvious target. I also want to buy a guitar, which I hear are also $30 or less here. I want to do this because I want to play an instrument and my obsession with Neil Young is at an all time high. Currently he takes up 18 of the top 25 songs most listened to on iTunes. I’m reading his biography, which really isn’t that good since I can only hear so many stories about David Crosby tripping on LSD, how he used to smoke pot with Joni Mitchell and how Stephen Stills is an asshole, and I listen to Young pretty much all the time. It’s a little ridiculous since I have 6446 songs on iTunes and listen to fewer than 500 of them, but I love it. At least I have options! And I do in real life, so I’m off to find a bicycle.

Arrival in Asia

I arrived safely in Asia after a series of long transports. In 48 hours I’ve been in Denver, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City and now in my room in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 

 

The plane ride across the Pacific, over 12 hours in the air, was far less grueling than anticipated. With a window seat I had a good view of the Alaskan mountains, the Aleutian Islands, the far east of Russia, Japan and, of course, miles upon miles of the Pacific blue. For the first time I had an interesting conversation with my seated neighbor on the plane. Sarah, from Pennsylvania, was on her way to Ho Chi Minh City for a three week session teaching classes on morality as well as coaching soccer to Vietnamese youth. Majoring in Psychology she also plays field hockey and lacrosse for Duke University. We amiably covered a variety of topics to pass the time and even exchanged laptops to peruse the others iTunes library. What a wonderful world of technological interaction!

 

I didn’t have a Vietnamese Visa so I applied for one when I arrived. I only spent one night in Ho Chi Minh City, so obtaining said Visa took about 15 minutes. The Language Corps representative, as promised, awaited my arrival outside the airport. I spent roughly 12 hours in Vietnam I felt a strong attraction to the place. The first thing of note are the motorcycle. They’re everywhere. Fearlessly weaving in and out of traffic they dominate the road, sometimes driving on sidewalks and the wrong (or perhaps other or either is more appropriate) of the road. Young, old, male, female, and entire families road these motorbikes around what parts of the city I saw.

 

I stayed the night at the Language Corps office spare bedroom. The Vietnamese woman, Hien, who picked me up shared “fresh” milk (a carton of sweetened milk) and mango with me before bed. She asked how I liked the mango and when I said it was very good thank you she replied “that’s because it’s drenched in heroin” with a straight face. For better or worse she was joking.

 

We arose early and walked around the city for a short jaunt and ate large bowls of beef noodle soup with spicy peppers and iced tea. An odd breakfast, but delicious and I felt great all day in part because of it. The bus ride kept my interest for all six hours. Ho Chi Minh is a large, vibrant city again packed with motorcycles, pristine parks, large billboards and colorful housing which eventually gave way to flooded rice patties, grazing cattle and houses on 8-10 foot stilts. These houses became notably shabbier in appearance once in Cambodia. In fact, almost everything became notably shabbier in appearance once in Cambodia.

 

When the bus stopped in Phnom Penh, multitudes of tuk tuk drivers (tuk tuk drivers are basically taxi’s. Drivers ride motorcycles with carriages hitched on the back end). These carriages offered rides to wherever I needed to go. I was met, again as promised, by a Language Corps representative, named Steve. As motorcycles, people, bicyclists and Lexus SUV’s swarmed around us kicking up dust and trash Steve, an Irishman who’s lived in Cambodia for four years and a year in Thailand before that) very simply introduced himself and said “Welcome to the twilight zone.”

 

Phnom Penh has enormous and beautiful structures. Eastern palaces, ministries and temples of exquisite age and beauty. French Villas line a several block park with statues, flower beds and gardens. Children play badmitton and soccer on the sidewalks, grass and streets, while couples, families and tourists stroll in the hot air of the evening heavy with humidity and towering clouds of the monsoon season outlining the scene. This is, not however, the dominate theme. Run down apartment buildings, litter and naked children urinating in the streets are far more common. Motorcycles, while not as plentiful as in Vietnam, still dominate the roads (which have no traffic lights, stop signs or otherwise verifiable order to them).

 

As I walked down one of the main drags, a road paralleling the Sap River, people approached me asking for money, offering motorcycle taxi rides and selling books, DVDs, sunglasses, opium and even women. I stopped and ate chicken and rice at a little restaurant and splurged on an Angkor draught beer ($1, but only 75 cents during happy hour). The US dollar is accepted everywhere here. I’m under the impression people take the US money and exchange it on the black market. There’s a Cambodian currency but it’s utterly worthless. I have 10,000 Cambodian dollars and I’m told it’s worth about 27 and a half cents.

 

The city itself isn’t very big, about half a million in the downtown area and a total of around one million including suburbs. Most of the streets are parallel making it difficult to get lost. Two main drags contain almost everything you need in the city and all streets have numbers instead of names (I live on 312. North-south roads are odd numbers and east-west roads are even). This convenience makes a difference as Cambodian script is impossible to decipher without training and few people speak English well (many speak well enough to sell you something, but that’s about it).

 

My room at the Language Corps headquarters is very nice, I couldn’t have asked for more. The bed is firm (very good for me), it has a toilet and a shower (the toilet gets drenched during showers and the drain is about two inches behind the toilet) a place to cook, a tv, fresh water and a small living area. The toilet doesn’t flush. This was a learning experience. I have a sprayer next to the toilet and you spray water into the toilet until you can’t see the excrement anymore. This is further complicated by the light not working in the bathroom. I can also fill a mixing bowl, specifically set in my sink for this purpose, with water and pour it into the toilet. My room is on the ground floor of a two story building with Rick Barnes on the second floor, who is the head honcho here at Language Corps in Cambodia. He’s from Kansas City, MO and declined to tell me how many years he’s been abroad doing this. He did so with a laugh and generally seems like a humorous and amiable fellow, as does Steve the Irishman (when I lived in Sweden I had three good friends from Ireland, Neil, Barry and Killian. They had great senses of humor and we used to drink Swedish ale and watch English Premier League. Needless to say I have good memories of them, the association of which helps me get off to a good start with anyone from Ireland). My classes begin June 1 with 12 other students. At this point I know nothing about them, but look forward to attending classes at Pannastra University of Cambodia Institute of Foreign Languages. 

 

Cambodia, different from anywhere I’ve ever been, holds a lot of mystery and intrigue for me. I’m looking forward to learning more about the city, the modern state of the country, the history of genocide and poverty here and the general psyche of the people, or at least as much in those veins as I can. And, of course, you always learn more about a city, country and it’s people than you bargained for while traveling. The first 24 hours here certainly haven’t let me down.