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.
