Phnom-enal

I've wanted to name an entry that all summer. Saved it for the last day of the trip. Don't believe the hype: delayed gratification is great.

So, yeah, I suppose this it, dear friends. In a little over 24 hours I'll be climbing aboard a plane out of here to Hong Kong. I'll be there overnight, and then back in the States Wednesday afternoon (EST). It's amazing how, due to time zones, I can leave Hong Kong at 8AM on Wednesday and arrive in Detroit at 3:30PM the same day. Crazy, I tell you.

It's been real. It's pretty incredible to look back at my first few days here and realize the growth, the change, the maturation that has occurred. I feel like I can take on the world now, as cheesy as that sounds.

I don't think I can look at the world the same way ever again. It's really life-changing to live amid such poverty, corruption, suffering. It really makes me appreciate what I have, and it also makes me a bit sad. Right now, I am really looking forward to wheels hitting the ground in Detroit, hearing the stewardess over the PA saying "Welcome to America/Detroit." It's my home. I miss it. But it's sad to me that so many people in the world live almost the opposite existence as I do.

But it is time. It's been a good run. I've tried to recollect all I've done and I can't even begin -- I've lived this to the fullest. I regret almost nothing. I'll miss a lot. Home right now seems sort of boring, but good: when you've pushed yourself as much as I have, you get to a point where "not pushing" seems incredibly ... uneventful. This is how I feel about home right now. I miss you all, and I love it there, but part of me is going to miss the challenge. It's made me feel alive.

Cambodia's a sad place. I'm disappointed that I didn't leave a bigger mark. Hopefully something I did at some point did something.

At least I'll know I tried.

I suppose the blog is now over. I'll probably have one or two more posts to cover the travel back / arrival, just to make the whole blog complete. It's weird. I left two months ago today. I remember typing the blog post about leaving in a few hours and trying to hold back the tears.

I can't believe it's over.

Thanks for the memories, Cambodia.

In the eternal words of Borat Sagidyev, "I go to America!"

Later.

- m

The end

I'm leaving for Kuala Lumpur International Airport in about an hour, and thus my odyssey across SE Asia (hardly) has come to an end.

I think it's a combination of both my mind-blowing exhaustion and the relative boringness of the city, but I was a bit let down with KL. There just wasn't a ton to do here.

On Thursday I saw Petronas, and hung around that part of town for a bit, got some lunch at Pizza Hut (wasn't the same). Came back to my hostel and took a quick nap, then walked over to the shopping area Banga Burksit or something like that. Here, I found a sweet looking roller coaster -- like a legit one -- and rode it twice. Pretty fun. I had a nice sit-down dinner around there, wandered around the streets for a bit, wandered through some parks, saw the KL tower (essentially the CN Tower). I was really tired at this point so I headed back to the hostel, had a beer, and watched the second half of Spiderman 3 (I'd already seen the first half, so this worked out well).

Yesterday I woke up feeling mindblowingly tired. The weather was hot and humid and drizzly, not exactly the best sightseeing weather. I forced myself around the city, taking in mosques, minarets, churches, etc. It was disgusting how sweaty I was. Disgusting. I got kicked out of a mosque for not being muslim right after call to prayer. I went to Chinatown and Little India. Ended up back in the shopping district, contemplated eating dinner at Planet Hollywood (seriously) but ended up at Outback because they gave me a card for a free appetizer -- naturally, I could not turn down free Aussie Cheese Fries. Hung around these parts for a bit and then came home, slept.

The language here is bizarre, either some Malaysian tounge or some weird form of pidgin English: you eat in a "restoran," you take an "ekspres" bus if you want to go somewhere in a hurry, and "ogos" is the month that comes after "julai." Weird.

I'm just done with Asia, as weird as that sounds. I've had enough. I think it's just the fact that I know I am going home. If I knew that I were staying for another few weeks, I wouldn't be at this point. But since my departure is now like 3 days away, I've mentally already packed my things. I haven't eaten Asian food in over 2 days now and walking by the restaurants makes me gag. My patience for it all had diminished greatly.

My feet are just destroyed. Honestly, my whole body is wrecked. I've been doing 12-14 hrs a day of straight walking for the last 7-8 days. It's been a lot of fun. I've seen a lot. I even got to pray in a Christian church yesterday, which, after being in a Buddhist nation for 2 months, felt great. It was probably an Anglican church.

But I've loved my trip. I truly have. This has been amazing. I've been trying to spend the last few days absorbing everything, taking it all in. I can't. There's so much there. I am so blessed.

I'm going to take the rest of today to rest and relax -- I think I am going on absolute fumes. Probably just go back to PP and watch movies or something, as most of my roommates are gone. I'm no longer feeling this rush as if I have to take in every second, every ounce of Asia.

I'm just so excited to be home. I haven't let myself miss it too much, but now that I'm a few days away from landing in Detroit, the floodgates are starting to open.

See you in a few days. For now, I've got one last encore performance in Cambodia.

- m

Petronas

Yo, I'm at the Petronas Towers, formerly the biggest buildings in the world.

1. Going to get some Pizza Hut. Woo-hoo!

2. Just heard the Radiohead new album "clips" for the first time and am now beginning the process of wiping the drool off the keyboard. Please leak soon. PLEASE!! I can't take it.

Alright, I'm super tired from not sleeping well on the train so today I am lying low. Rumor has it there is an amazing roller coaster somewhere in one of the malls around where I am typing and I might just hunt that down, go check out some mosques later, if the sun comes out.

Later.

- m

Singapore

Leaving Singapore for Kuala Lumpur in a matter of hours. Taking an overnight sleeper train, which is bound to be a bit of an adventure.

Singapore is as clean and efficient and nice and modern as you hear. Upon landing (15 minutes early), I flew through immigration in less than five minutes, literally had my bag waiting for me, and was on and off the subway in front of my hostel in about 20 minutes. Nice work.

Yesterday I crawled basically every district of the city: the British Colonial district, the seaside, Little India, the Arab district, Chinatown. I visited my first mosque and greatly offended everyone (innocently) by walking in the prayer room and by not wearing the green gown they told me I had to wear.

My afternoon brought me to Orchard Rd where I ate ice cream and spent about an hour walking trying to find the Botanical Gardens. They were alright. I walked back, took a shower, and headed to the Night Safari, a night zoo. Saw some sweet animals (elephants, leopards, etc. up close). Came back around 11 and had an expensive (2.75USD) Tiger beer (these were 90 cents in PP) and slept.

I've been staying in a 6 bed dorm room. Suprisingly, I've been the last person to bed both nights.

Today I woke up feeling drained. I've been running myself hard the last few days. I took the subway to Harbour something-er-other and then took the monarail across to Sentosa Island, some sort of synthetic resort island off the coast of Singapore. I haven't quite figured out exactly what it was supposed to be, but it sure looked nice and touristy. But they had a great aquarium with an underwater passageway and a tank where you could touch rays and sharks - nice.

After this it was crappy out and I was totally exhausted so I decided to see Transformers. I actually didn't hate it and it made me realize I really miss America. I'm one of the few "backpacker/NGO workers" that doesn't actually hate America. Michael Bay, you have shown me the light.

Now here I sit. Gotta shower, etc., and then I'm off.

City 3/3 on deck. Back in the US one week from today!

- m

I don't know why I can't add titles to these entries in Thailand. Worked fine in Cambodia.

So I'm leaving BKK in about a half hour. Really, not for like 4, but it takes 1.5 hrs to get to the airport, and then I've got to do the obligatory wait in the airport.

Final thoughts on BKK:

1. This is a city that will seriously rip you off if you're not a smart traveller. Tons of "hidden" fees, lots of shady dealings. It's funny for a day and then annoying after that. My advice if you ever come: tell them you live here. They're a lot more honest once you say that. Learn to say a couple things in Thai (which I didn't) and you'll probably be okay too.

2. Sorta related, but the street peddlers are relentless. In Cambodia, you'd ignore their first statement and they'd stop. Here they just hound and hound you, sometimes follow you down the street. I've just gotten used to being a prick to all of them because it shuts them up.

3. This city is a mess. If you've ever wanted to research the merits of centralized planning, and need a counterexample, BKK's a good choice.

4. It's a lot of fun here though, corruption, pollution, near-constant annoyances and mind-boggling gaps in public transportation aside. I'd recommend a weekend at most, like I did.

So, so long Thailand. I wish I could've seen more. Would've been nice to get to Phuket / Krabie / Ko Samui / etc. but I just didn't have the time.

Next stop: Singapore.

- m

Day 3 in Bangkok. Woke up, did some Wats. Pretty cool. Hard to describe without you being here.

Took a tuk-tuk to the zoo, which was sorta boring, honestly. Saw some leapords and panthers, king cobras, the typical little boy stuff. As I watched the penguins swim I decided that, I too, wanted to swim.

My ideal pool wouldn't just be a pool however. It would be the pool at the bottom of a waterslide. Maybe with a roller coaster or two nearby for some variety. I thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if there is such a pool in Bangkok?" In fact there was: Siam Park City, a theme/water park in the city. Having done a boatload of culture in the last two days, I figured I'd treat myself to a purely "Mike Vukich" afternoon: waterslides and rollercoasters.

So I headed over to the Victory Monument, where the website told me I could board a bus for the park. Sounds simple. Then I get to the victory monument. Dozens of busses. All simply numbered with no ID of where they were going. No one spoke English. I get on one bus but realize it's heading the wrong way. Get off. Finally find an information booth . . . that spoke 100% Thai. I finally get directions by drawing, no joke, a roller coaster on a piece of paper and showing it to a kid who spoke a little bit of English. I get on Bus 168 and head off, proud of myself.

One hour later, the park is nowhere in sight. I'm just out in the middle of Bangkok's suburbia, no clue of where I'm going. Start to get nervous. Finally, it appears. I exit the bus, and buy tickets -- 350 baht (~$10) which is pretty pricey for Bangkok and this is only enough to get my two coaster rides and admission to the water park (the real reason I came... the coasters looked a bit crappy).

So I ride Coaster #1 which was an inverted Raptor-like deal. Pretty okay, albeit short and nowhere as good as the Raptor. All the Thai kids think I'm a badass for riding in the front seat as they were all afraid.

Then I head over to Coaster #2, which, after riding, I affectionately titled "Gulag: The Ride" (I know it doesn't exactly fit, but work with me). This was hands-down the worst and most painful rollercoaster I have ever been on. It was essentially the old Lazer Loop at Kennywood, but riding it was like getting lazers in my neck and back. Holy hell. It was obviously a Soviet creation, you could just tell by the "We want to be like the Americans but simply aren't as good" look and feel to every detail of the ride -- the crappy cars, the crappy platform, the fact that it nearly broke my head off. Good lord. At least now I have a concensus #1 Worst Coaster Ever on my list.

Then I headed over to the water park, which was decent enough. Honestly, I can't explain to you how amazing it felt to submerge myself in water. It's like 95-105 everyday. Sweat soaks through my clothes within 10 minutes of walking outside. It's embarassing / disgusting. The water was amazing. Amazing.

I took off around 5, which at the time seemed like a good idea. The park wasn't too far from downtown Bangkok; I could see the skyline from the top of the coasters and the stupidly tall speed slides I went down (which also beat the crap out of my back). First I get on the wrong bus. It drops me off in the middle of nowhere.

Then I get picked up by the right bus. They have no idea where I want to go so I show them the picture of the Victory Monument on my camera as they speak no English. They look at it and laugh. I wonder why. I found out why over the next two hours. Two hours it took! TWO HOURS ON A BUS. To get a matter of maybe 10-20km.

We get to the Monument and of course it is pouring. I finally eat, make it back to Khao San and drink two beers in a matter of minutes. And here we are.

- m

I'm in Bangkok. I've been here since yesterday. I'm staying on Khao San which is a big backpackers district. Really it feels like a bunch of weirdos and Western brats (which I suppose I am). It's just sorta the whole "backpacker" mentality that gets on my nerves I guess. Generally rich people pretending they're poor, haha.

Yesterday I got lost around this part of town / Chinatown / etc. Went and got a drink at a bar, saw some local music which was really good actually.

Today I woke up early cause I went to bed early. My hotel -- which was in and out of power during a 20 minute period yesterday -- didn't have running water this morning, which was great. I just got dressed and went to the local Wats (temples). Took a boat across the river and climbed Wat Arun, which was tall and gave me vertigo (I think you get vertigo from heights, maybe, I don't know). I took a tuk-tuk to Siam Square next. The tuk-tuk driver gave me two options, either a.) pay 200 Baht for the ride (around $6) or b.) pay 10B (about 30 cents) but go visit a tailor that he had a "deal" with on the way. I chose option "B" and was forced to poke around a tailor for 10 minutes, but it saved me around $5.50. Nice.

Siam Square is a mess of shopping malls and restaurants, all incredibly modern and nice. It took forever to get there and the first thing I saw was an Au Bon Pain and the hunger in my stomach made me go in, although I was excited to try the local Thai cuisine. I wandered around the square for a bit and then had enough. Took the skytrain to Lumphini Park, which is a beautiful park in the middle of the city. Sat there and relaxed. Next I headed over to the Red Light District just to see what it was like. It was 3PM, mind you, so nothing was open, but I did see the exteriors of sex clubs with names both innocuous ("Tip Top") and hysterical ("Super Pussy.")

Eventually I ended back up at Siam Square. It started to rain so I figured seeing a movie was a decent option, wait out the rain. The only thing playing in English was Die Hard 4, so I saw it. Was okay for a Die Hard movie I guess. Before this I had amazing Thai stir fry with pork and vegetables... really outstanding food. Best meal I've had in a while but it didn't fill me up.

Grabbed a tuk-tuk back to Khao San and now here we stand. I'm totally exhausted (my eyes are drooping as I type this and it's only 9:50PM). My whole goal of spending very little money on this trip fell through as soon as I sit down and figured out that I could spend $60/day and still come home with enough money to pay rent and live comfortably. So things are a lot more fun now!

Um... that's about it. I'm back in the USA a week from Wednesday and I'd really love if someone could get me the new Spoon, Iron & Wine, Interpol, Okkervil River, White Stripes, New P's, etc.

Until later.

- m

Last day at work

Last day at KiD.

Found out today that I am officially an Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law. Adding on the fact that I'm a chair of the International Law Society, my resume is looking pretty good going into OCI.

8 days of travel await. I'll update from the "road."

- m

More pictures of me in Cambodia

Courtesy of Bobby Mauger's Facebook:


Kep, next to our boat, and with a storm looming


Sort of hating the boat ride to/from Kep


Jungle hike, Kep again


"This is no way a cheeseburger," Sihanoukville

- m

Assorted stuff

First of all, I should say that I went to Sihanoukville this weekend, which is another beach town. And it rained. In fact, as I got off the bus at the terminal, it looked like a monsoon. I rode a moto to the beach by hiding underneath the back of my driver's poncho, my face nicely planted into his B.O.-emenating arm pit. He then tried to con me into staying at some guest house he worked for (and I was too smart for that!) so he just dropped me off at the end of this street. Eventually, by walking through the rain, I found our guesthouse. It was gray and rainy for the rest of the weekend.

It wasn't all a wash. I got a nice massage (no happy ending) and got to read a lot of The Corrections.

Oh, and here are the dates for my trip:

7/6 Leave for Bangkok
7/9 Leave Bangkok for Singapore
7/11 Take overnight train from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur
7/14 Fly from Kuala Lumpur to Phnom Penh

My three flights cost a total of $220. My train ticket will be about $15-20. Besides that I'm hoping to find a way to live on $20 a day (food + accomodations), with a little extra being spent in Singapore and on attractions at each place. I'm praying that this will only cost me around $500. If not, it shouldn't be too much more.

I'll be arranging hostels and guest houses shortly.

Hmmm. Only 3 days left in Cambodia this week. Sad. After I leave I'll only have the 2 days after I return from KL to finish enjoying the city. I fly out of PP only two weeks from today.

- m

Change of plans

Work offered me the last week off from my internship if I wanted to travel. Seeing as I have more than enough employment left in the summer when I return -- if anything, I was working too much -- I accepted.

Right now it looks like I'm heading to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore across 8 days with nothing but my backpack. Hooray! More details to come.

I just left Freebird, a bar/grill that looked and felt distinctly American. It was weird to walk out on the street when I was done... I honestly felt like I was at home. Sadly, and happily too, I will be home in less than 3 weeks now: Wednesday the 16th.

Tomorrow I am catching the 8AM bus to Sihanoukville. All the rest of my friends are already there, so I'm stuck home alone. I bought a bus pass for Saturday before I realized work would've easily let me take a half day so I could go today. Oh well. So tonight I am all alone. I enjoyed my chicken sandwich @ Freebird and now just booked a flight to Bangkok! And I bought the Prestige today @ the DVD store so I could watch it tonight, so this is what I will do.

Plus, since I'm travelling alone tomorrow, this means I can get up early and indulge in something that probably only I would enjoy... USA DONUTS!!! Yes! Authentic, American-style donuts (cake with sprinkles) await me when I wake up tomorrow. Awesome. I'll almost more excited about this than I am about going to Sville.

- m

Plane crash stuff

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6243842.stm

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/6/27/worldupdates/2007-06-27T072714Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-281930-2&sec=Worldupdates

Turns out it had crashed a lot earlier in the day, which means we were definetly there when it happened. Don't know where we were in relation to the mountain it was found on.

Yikes.

- m

Weekend, Insanity (part 2)

Wanted to get this up but no time to do pictures. Sorry.

Sunday

Woke up the next morning bright and early, and I’m hoping to go to the beach. The rest of my group thought going to the beach at a beach town would be a bad idea (?) so we went on a five mile hike in the hills instead. It ended up being really invigorating and we got great views of the ocean from up high. I however, like my fear of water, also fear snakes and there were a few too many on the trail for my liking. But I got a good work out.

I was going to be working in nearby Kampot for the rest of the day/Monday so work picked me up in Kep around lunch time. We had another great seafood feast – more prawns, more squid, and this time, fish soup! – and then headed into the communes once again. Here, we encountered a.) the worst road I have ever, ever driven on; b.) a commune still ruled by Khmer Rouge. Neither was pleasant at all. It took an hour to go less than 3 km and I’m pretty positive the van’s undercarriage and shocks are just blown to hell. And Mr. KR didn’t want us telling his people about human rights and wanted us to fire a few of the citizen advisors we had hired in the area. Our director got diplomatic and we eventually appeased him but it was tense and disheartening and we were all a bit upset about it.

So after that meeting we headed back to Kampot where we had yet another fresh seafood feast and then retreated to our guest house for the night. I got my own room, which was awesome, and I watched about half of V for Vendetta and some CNN before I fell asleep.

Monday

More communes, more bumpy roads. No huge animosity from any village leaders this time, which was a good thing.

On the way home we got stopped for a bit because the bridge in front of us had gone out. So, we just waited as they fixed it. We didn’t have to wait long, which was sorta disconcerting. As we crossed, I was convinced we were going into the river. They had just thrown a few sheets of metal across the hole and hoped it stuck. Thankfully we made it across. This was not the first blown-out or untrustworthy bridge we had encountered all weekend – at one point, we almost began to cross a bridge before realizing it had collapsed (yikes). But we made it every time, thankfully.

About 35 minutes after leaving the last commune in Chhuk district, a parade of ambulances and military vehicles full of soldiers were heading the opposite way down the road towards Kampot, which puzzled us all. I honestly thought a coup was going on and we were in the midst of it. Turns out a passenger plane had crashed in Chhuk, right where we were, about 15-20 minutes after we left, killing the 22 passengers and crew on board. What’s weird is that they couldn’t find the plane for days, and just found it this morning (Wednesday morning) after a government search, a reward from the prime minister for any information about the plane’s whereabouts, and a donation from the U.S. government of the use of two spy satellites to track it down. A little bit odd for my tastes. Won’t be getting on any domestic Cambodian flights soon, that’s for sure.

We got home and I was exhausted and hungry and on sensory overload from everything I had experienced all weekend. So I stopped in at the new hit restaurant in town, Pizza World (yes!), ate a medium deep dish pepperoni pizza w/unlimited orange Fanta (one of my more expensive meals in PP at $6 total), grabbed a tuk-tuk home and watched House / read the Corrections all night.

- m

Weekend, Insanity (part 1)

Another multi-part update. Sorry. I've gotten lazy with this. As have you with the comments!!

So, my weekend update is long overdue. Here’s what I did.

Friday I went out with work to hold some meetings in the communes (a commune is the smallest administrative area recognized in Cambodia; they’re small villages and are in no way communist). We were commissioning Citizen Advisors, who, with our training, would teach the locals – who have no education and concept of law, human rights or democracy – about, well, law, human rights and democracy.

The communes are a trip. Often, the roads aren’t really roads -- they’re just piles of dirt that have been flattened by lots of use. Or, they're somewhat roads, just with unending amounts of potholes. So, we’d bump and jostle across the “road” for an hour or two, reach the meeting (which I’d suffer through since it was all in Khmer... sigh), and then repeat it. At one point in the afternoon we had to wait on the side of the road as a tractor “built” the road for us; the road was literally a huge series of dirt piles, and the tractor flattened them into a sort of plateau that we very slowly drove over. Probably took hours to go a matter of 10 km. And I almost barfed a couple times. We ate this totally sketchy lunch in Kampong Speu province that I was convinced was going to make me hurl instantly; it didn’t, but I was hungry all afternoon.

It’s insane to see this level of poverty and under-development. The houses were often literally shacks amongst rice fields. The schools were old and rotting. People stared at our truck and white skin like we were aliens that just landed in the mother ship. It was humbling, to say the least. At one place I was given an authentic scarf made in the design worn by all citizens in the area. The people were very gracious.

When we got back to PP I headed to Steve’s Steak House as it has the biggest burgers I knew of in town and I was starving. I order the big burger, and doused it in ketchup... or so I thought. I had actually grabbed the chili sauce bottle, which looked just like – and was sitting right next to – the ketchup bottle. Hottest burger I’ve ever eaten, but I was starving so I just got through it. I got home so late that all my housemates had already left to go out so I just chilled at home and fell asleep really early.

Saturday

Woke up way too early again to catch the bus to Kep. Kep is a beach town on the south coast of Cambodia that just got ravaged during the war in the 1970’s and really hasn’t been rebuilt much. Really, it was pretty much a ghost town and we were one of the few hundred people there. But it is beautiful, and it is the ocean, so it was alright in my book.

The bus ride was another four hours of dust and constant jostling, despite the fact that it was only a 120 km trip. Lovely. I do around 130-140 km/hr in Ontario. They didn’t want to run A/C so they just kept all the doors to the bus open the whole time. The smells were nice. The bus itself was falling apart as we drove. I sat in the back listening to Wilco and dreaming about moving to Chicago and had a sort of zen-like peace for an hour or two.

So we get to Kep and decide to take a boat across to Rabbit Island, which lays off the shore of Kep in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. It’s about a few km across the open sea to get there. In true Cambodian fashion, our moto driver “had a friend with a boat” who magically appeared after a twenty second phone call and the mention of $20 in payment. Soon, we’re on some complete stranger’s rickety old, tiny rowboat – which had thankfully been juiced up with an absolutely pitiful offboard motor – a few miles off the coast of Cambodia and I’m just freaking out. I hate water. I’m watching him pump water out of the bottom of the boat. Fish are flying in the air and hit Erin in the face. Really, it was fun, but I hate deep water, as I said. We could see into Vietnam from the boat, and in the gulf there were all these small islands all around... it really was beautiful.

We get to Rabit Island, it’s a secluded beach, really beautiful. Too bad it is raining. We swim in the ocean any way, and it was totally warm, which was awesome. We quickly forgot about the rain. I’m glad to say I’ve now swam in three of the four oceans (and I hope I never swim in the Arctic, honestly).

The trip back across the Gulf was even scarier than the way there because now there was a storm passing in the distance and we were hitting some waves pretty hard. Thought we might have bit it a few times but we didn’t. Everyone made fun of my fear.

Back on stable ground, we had an amazing seafood dinner – grilled crab, deep fried battered squid, and prawns in pepper sauce – and then we all sorta gave up on the night early. There’s zero night life in Kep so I ended up in our little bungalow in the hills (which, I should add, only had electricity from 6PM to 6AM... just like the rest of Kep, which runs on generator). I finished White Noise and Bobby and I went to the guest house patio for a beer a bit later, but that was about it.

Angkor What (part 3)

Sunday

No sunrise today. Woke up and had a normal breakfast at the hotel: pancake with chocolate. Read an old issue of Elle as I waited for it to come. It was surprisingly really good.

We made it out to the Wats (in Khmer, Wat = temple) around 9:30. We didn’t see too much remarkable, but it was a really fun day. We made friends with some local kids, I have some really cute pictures. The kids here are, admittedly, pretty adorable. The sad thing is that as soon as your tuk-tuk stops, they swarm it, trying to sell you postcards, bracelets, drinks. If you give to one, or buy from one, the rest expect you to give / buy from them. I made this mistake at one point and two boys almost started fighting each other. They walk up to you with the standard routine, almost every one:

“What country from?” “U.S.” “Capitol Washington D.C. You buy postcard, ten for one dolla?”

Or, the worst, hands clenched in a praying position, eyes dropped, lips pouty, and in a quiet tone:

“Sir, sir ... sir ... money ... sir ... please ... sir ... money ... sir, sir ....”

I always tried to talk to them about school or something, to try to be friendly, but of course, they just wanted my money, which is understandable. I don’t understand this level of desperation. Very sad. Many of the kids are forced into this profession by a parent or a "beggar pimp"; they know Westerners are disturbed by the site of desparate kids and send them out for money, collecting usually all of it from the kids when they get home, often to support addictions, etc. It's a problem in Cambodia, as is the child sex trade in general.

And it's not just kids. It's adults running food stands, book shops, t-shirt shops, all around the main entrances and exits of the temples. Literally, as soon as I walked out on the street, and they saw my white skin, I was swamped. Like, at times up to 20-30 people screaming at the four of us. My favorite exchange, which I got a lot:

“Sir, you want some cold drink?” “No, no thank you.” “Yes thank you why no thank you? Why no buy?”

I think they all learned English from the same person. I had the same exchange like 20 times this weekend.

So we saw a ton of minor temples today, and the temples took a backseat to us just generally enjoying the forests, the jungles, the countryside, and hanging out. Things are intense in PP and it was great to get out of the city and see something else. We headed back to Angkor Wat one last time, where Jordan pissed off a monkey – they have monkeys just chilling here – and it chased him 50 feet across a bridge, causing all the Cambodians to laugh at the stupid, silly American boy.

Exhausted, we left the temples around 4 or 5, did dinner in town, slept.

Monday

We took the bus home. 5.5 hours. No Titanic. I read half of White Noise by Don DeLillo and almost passed out from a lack of protein. Back in PP at 3:30 and I was sad. A great weekend was over.

I was sad to see it end. I can’t wait to show you all the pictures.

Photos of me in Cambodia

So I still haven't taken the initiative to figure out how to get my photos onto the internet, but for now, here are two unexciting photos I stole from my co-worker's Facebook album. This should serve as photographic documentation that I, in fact, am in Cambodia.

Here's me at work, at my desk, sitting in front of the computer I am now typing on, looking like a goofball. My hat says "clean hands" in Khmer and it's advertising a big anti-corruption campaign a lot of NGO's are partaking in right now. I am making the standard "Asian tourist" pose, which caused my co-workers to laugh, in turn causing me to laugh.

Here's me (in the upper left hand corner) out to dinner at One Fish Two Fish a few weekends ago with the American college students crew. We all just sorta found each other around town and all did dinner together.

Oh the excitement! Two whole crappy pictures.

I'll get the third part of my Angkor Wat saga up soon. I finished all my assignments for work last week and have now asked multiple times for more work and have not been given any. My director is so busy with other programs that she has yet to read or comment on either of the memos I have completed, or obviously come up with a new assignment for me. So, I'm sitting here in an office in Cambodia from 8-5 doing nothing when I could very easily be travelling. I'm using my time to work on my Cambodia paper for class so I can get the grade on my transcript before interviewing and to research firms for interviewing. After that, I might just not come in anymore until they give me work to do. I'm frustrated. I didn't fly 8,000 miles to surf the internet.

Thankfully tomorrow, Sunday and Monday I will be in the provinces observing human rights development and training sessions. That will be good.

Yesterday we ate pizza at the Pizza Company downtown, which was the most American -- and expensive -- meal I have had yet. I spent $6 and got a personal pan pepperoni pizza (pretty good, but no distinguishing taste), breadsticks, a couple buffalo wings, and a large coke. Mmmmmmmmm. And then I fell into a food coma the rest of the afternoon.

- m

Angkor What (part 2)

Saturday

We woke up at 4 am to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. We specifically saved the big temple for this setting. We got to the site just as the sun was starting to light up the sky – 4:30/4:40ish local time. Welcome to the Equator.

It was eerie. We were some of the first at the temple that day. It’s never empty; in fact, there are so many tourists there that you can hardly walk. But now, the temple was almost exclusively ours. We found one other couple there, and thankfully they had a flashlight so they guided us through. We climbed through the tombs and inner rooms of the temple in near total darkness.

Then we sat on the edge of the reflecting pool and watched the sun come up over the towers of the temple. To be honest, I wasn’t too impressed with the sunrise – it was really just sorta blah. Nothing great. But it was cool to be there, in that setting.

With the sun pretty much up around 6AM, we decided to fully explore Angkor Wat. We made it to the second highest level of the temple (~25 feet off the ground) and had one more to go. I looked up. The “steps” into the tower were probably about 30-40 feet in height, at least at a 60 degree angle, and they were big enough for me to get my toes on, at best. Essentially, it was like climbing a rock climbing wall with small grips for your hands and feet... except without a harness or rope. If I fell, I was going to be seriously, seriously messed up.


I watched some little girls climb up and figured I’d be fine. I made it about half way up before panic set in. I scrambled to the top. Once there, a huge feeling of dread came up on me as I realized I had to go back down. For a few moments I enjoyed the view, but then it was time to go back.

As I lowered myself over the top, the wall truly felt vertical. I looked down and couldn’t really see a slope. It just seemed like a drop off. I was, admittedly, really scared. I went down four steps, reached my foot for the fifth and.... it wasn’t there! There was a hole where I had stepped. I kept myself from panicking, because if I would’ve slipped then I would’ve fallen off. I made it to the side and lowered myself down. It scared the living crap out of me but I felt accomplished.

Until I found out a few minutes later that there was a "proper" staircase (for Cambodian standards) with a handrail on the other side. I just hadn’t seen it. All that risk-taking for nothing, and still, it was not even 7:30 am.


Next up was breakfast and then Ta Prohm, the Tomb Raider temple. Here, the trees – and their roots – have quickened the ruination process. Whole segments of the temple city have been knocked down by outwardly expanding roots and trunks. Certain parts of the temple have been engulfed by nature. It was quite a sight. Really, it's worthless to try to describe. The words don't do the pictures any justice.

Honestly, the whole place felt like Disney world. I suppose that's the best way I could describe it. It was hard to look at this stuff and believe it was real. That at one point it was a city. That it was nearly 1,000 years old. It just looked like a movie set (which, ironically, I suppose it was at one point.)

We eventually headed back to sleep at some point in town. We were just all destroyed. Made it back to the park by 4, headed to Angkor Thom / the other part of Bayon, which is just a temple made up of all these eerie faces.

The faces are the king, some guy Jamalagaaaayas or something that I don’t remember. This temple absolutely blew my mind. I honestly felt like an explorer, or a contest on Legends of the Hidden Temple. I swear Bayon was the influence behind Ole Mec.

We headed to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset but this idea sucked, we left early and exhausted, back to Bar Street. I had an amazing bacon cheeseburger and two Anchor drafts for $4.50 total and called it a night early. I passed out around 9:30.

To be concluded...

- m

Angkor What (part 1)

Note: This is the first part in what will be a series of entries documenting my weekend in Siam Reap and visiting temples around Angkor Wat. There's so much to remember and document that it would be too big to do it all at once.

This was the weekend of the Angkor Wat/Siam Reap spectacular. For those of you not versed in Cambodian history and/or culture, you should know that Angkor Wat is a massive Buddhist temple – in fact, it’s the largest religious building in the world. It – and the temples surrounding it – date from the height of the Khmer empire, between 1150-1200 AD. They were used for religious and royal purposes. Some are as large as small cities. They’re ruins now, some with nature growing right in the midst of them. The setting is so unique and exotic that this is where they filmed Tomb Raider (as such, Angelina Jolie is quite the celebrity around town). It was a little odd that here, in the middle of the jungle, I could purchase Tomb Raider on DVD for a reasonable price.

No hyperbole: Angkor Wat is Cambodia. It’s on the flag. It’s on the cans of the national beer, not surprisingly named “Angkor.” What the Statute of Liberty, White House, Mt. Rushmore, etc. are combined to the U.S. cannot even touch the significance of this temple to the Cambodian people. Wars have been fought over it. No movies from Thailand are shown on Cambodian television because once a Thai actor said that Angkor Wat was really owned by Thailand. The name of the city nearby – Siam Reap – literally means “fall of the Siamese,” the Siamese being the ancient name of the Thai people.

I was told by someone here that if you visit Cambodia, but don't see Angkor Wat, you haven't truly visited Cambodia. After going, I understand why.

Friday

We headed up Friday in a bus where they played Mr. Bean in English. Titanic in Khmer, and Karaoke (in Khmer of course). The trip took about six hours, we were in by 1:30. We wandered around Siam Reap for a while – and it’s a truly nice town. Much more green and lush than PP. Parts of it actually reminded me of Hilton Head. It is, after all, a major SE Asian tourist destination.

We went to the Angkor complex around 5:30 to catch the sunset from the top of Bayon (sp?), a hilltop temple. I say “Angkor complex” because it’s really a huge mass of temples, ruins, and cities – probably thousands of square kilometers big. Massive. You’d need weeks to see it all. The sheer productivity of the Khmer empire in such a small period of time is incredible.

We climbed the hilltop, where we were afforded quite a view – the landscape of Cambodia stretched on for miles beneath us. I could see so far, and the countryside was beautiful: lush, green, dotted with lakes. In pure Indian Jones-ian fashion, I climbed all over the ruins of the temple, half playing, half in awe of the view and my surroundings. A massive storm drove us off the temple; we made it to our tuk-tuk just in time: the downpour was on. We drove home in the rain, just getting bombarded. Soaked to the bone. We laughed like crazy people because it was the first time in Cambodia we’d ever felt cold. Our drivers aimed for the puddles to soak us, cracking up the whole time. It was fun. Then we went into town, had some beers on Bar Street with some boys from Brainerd, MN, of all places.

More to come.

- m

Progress

This morning I went to the courthouse for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (the extremely awkward name for the venue of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) for a somewhat historic and important press conference.
Finally, after over a year, the internal rules have been agreed upon (there had been quite a lot of disagreement). The trials have, I suppose, officially "begun."

Preliminary indictments and conferences will begin in a few weeks. The rest of the pre-trial stuff will take about six months. The actual courtroom litigation is set to begin in January, 2008.

What does this mean?

It's unclear. The rules have yet to be distributed to the public. There have been some complaints from the defense support staff, but nothing particular. Thus, I can't comment on the content or quality of the rules until they're circulated.

What is clear is that time is running out. The ECCC is under a strict three-year mandate, and the clock began running in February 2006. That means, from the time the first defendant enters the courtroom in January, there will be a little over a year to hear and try the cases of the remaining KR leaders (~5-10 defendants).

A little over a year to hear, try, and do any appeals work for 5-10 of the top perpetrators of one of the worst acts of genocide in recorded history. Almost thirty years after the fact.

It's hard to be satisfied.

Rupert Skillbeck, one of the leader defense team members, told me over lunch last week that the likelihood of an extension is slim to none. The only hope is that all the defendants could be rushed in early to the chambers, allowing for the glimmer of hope that if all trials aren't completed by February 2009, the UN will allow extra time to finish up (but this isn't guaranteed at all). But there will be no likelihood of new complaints being heard or new trials being initated after February 2009.

It's a bit of a mess.

Here's the Yahoo story.

In other news, I'm going to a mock trial for the KRT tomorrow, and then Friday morning it is off to Siam Reap! Likely no posting until I get back Monday afternoon / evening. It's sure to be a ridiculously awesome weekend, hopefully as sweet as Justin Verlander no-hitter:


- m

Weekend in Cambodia

It's 9AM. I'm at work dead tired cause I slept like crap last night. I had my fan up to near full blast and was still sweating. I don't know if it was the heat that kept me up. I feel asleep around 4:00AM and woke up at 6:30AM for work. It's super hot here as well, plus my computer is broken, so I'm sitting here on another computer without my work trying to figure out how to keep busy.

Friday night we went to the FCC (Foreign Correspondents Club) after work for happy hour. The FCC was supposedly the place where journalists used to hang out but now it's a very touristy place that caters to fashionable (and cheesy) westerners and ex-pats. This is just my personal opinion. Also, the beer and food is twice as much as it is elsewhere in the city -- a cheeseburger costs $8. But the people in my group like it a lot for some reason so I go to be social. Then we hit up this excellent and cheap Indonesian restaurant called Bali's on the riverfront. It was great. I try to be adventurous with food but there's not much description on the menus and somehow I always end up with meat and rice on my plate, maybe a few vegetables, no matter what I order. Anyway it was good.

Saturday we did lunch at a western-style bar and grill on 240. I had fish and chips. Tasted like fish and chips, Asian style. Like, Almond Boneless Fish and Chips. Then Bobby and I saw the Royal Palace. The architecture is cool here -- unlike the Chinese, who use a lot of reds and dragons and such to decorate, there is a distinct SE Asian flair here. Elephants replace dragons. Yellows and blues replace reds. Yet there are still tons of huge gold buddhas everywhere (I mean, everywhere), some with psychedelic lights behind their heads that go a long way in explaining why many buddhists are hippies.


Saturday night we met up with a lot of students in town at One Fish Two Fish on 278; there were about 10 of us there, most of us from Michigan, Harvard or Georgetown. My stir fry was tiny and left me hungry, sad.

Yesterday I woke up and grabbed some donuts from Del Gusto on Sihanouk. The donuts here generally suck -- no glaze at all. Then I worked off the donut with an hour long bike ride through the city. I got the bike from KiD; some people get cell phones from their jobs, I got a bike. So I biked all the way to the other end of Phnom Penh and back. I got destroyed by the heat (it was in the 40's yesterday... like 100+ farenheit) and I also got an amazing farmer's/sunglasses tan. The farmer's tan might be the best I've ever had. Ended up around Wat Phnom (see picture) later in the day; WP is a 600-year old temple (literally means "hill temple") and is the supposed namesake for Phnom Penh. Here, I saw some monkeys, an elephant, more buddhas, then went to Sorya for some gelato, which I ate in about 20 seconds to cool my body down.


Home to chill / listen to a Kensington message. At night we went to Pat, Tiffany and Jordan's apartment for pizza from Happy Herb's. As the name implies, it's pizza with weed as the topping. A few of us (including myself) opted for the un-happy pizza, and it generally sucked. I should've had the weed pizza, perhaps I wouldn't have noticed how bad it tasted.

Came home later, and didn't sleep. This entry has come full circle. Great.

- m

A day in the life

So some of you might be wondering what my daily life is like here. Or, maybe I just hope to remember it. So here's what happens:

6:30AM(ish): Because my body hates my guts, I usually wake up well before 6:30AM, but can't convince myself to get out of bed until then. I climb out of bed a bit sweaty because we don't run the A/C in our house. I sleep with a fan on but it's still hot, even at 6:30AM. I then take a freezing cold shower; we have a water heater but don't run it because we don't want to pay for it. You get used to not having hot water pretty quickly, actually. Then I get dressed, apply my morning layer of bug spray, and head out the door.

7:00AM: I eat breakfast now, at one of two places (so far). If I want a full breakfast, I go to Sweet on Street 294. Here, I get two pieces of toast with jam, a fried egg, two pieces of bacon, two pieces of Canadian bacon, and unlimited tea for $1.50US. Or, if I don't feel like having heart burn, I go to Java Cafe on Sihanouk Blvd, and get a muffin or bagel for $1.50US.

Then I walk about ten minutes to work, get harassed by ~10 moto or tuk-tuk drivers who keep trying to get me to buy a moto ride to work. I choke on the smell of rotting garbage/food that wafts my way every 500 feet or so and do my best to avoid the dirty, flea-ridden (and probably rabid) dogs that roam the streets. My thrill of the day occurs when I try to cross Norodom Blvd in morning rush hour: it's like a human game of Frogger. Believe me, it's disconcerting to just walk out in front of cars, but that's how it works in Cambodia -- you just walk into the street and make people stop. I've gotten used to it, partly due to the fact that the driving is so chaotic here that people can only drive 10-15 mph, so getting them to stop is easy. Dodging the speeding motobikes is tougher, but not so bad.

I buy a bottled water from the same street vendor everyday for $.50USD and head into work.

7:30AM-9:45AM: I'm at work now at the Khmer Institute for Democracy, a human rights NGO. For the first hour or so I usually catch up on e-mail and things at home; it's pretty loose around here so it's no big deal. My work usually entails researching and writing memos about legal issues. It gets really hard to just sit there and research / write for 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week. Consequently, I do a lot of web surfing. I still get my work done.

9:45AM: Coffee break. The coffee is disgusting so I drink Ovaltine. Yes, Ovaltine. Here I usually joke around with the guys I work with; most of the staff members here are male, around the age of 24. The female staff members are very much "seen but not heard." I suppose it is cultural. They get the coffee and tea ready, set it out on a table on the outdoor patio attached to our building, and then drink their's in the kitchen by themselves, indoors. Strange.

10:00-12:00PM: More of the same; working, etc.

12:00-1:30PM: Lunch break. Me and Ting, my fellow intern from Harvard Law School, go grab lunch somewhere around KID. KID is situated in Bong Keng Kang 1 (I think I came close to spelling that right) which is dubbed NGO-land; it's full of foreigners and ex-pats and has lots of decent restaurants. Sometimes we go get Khmer food, or Thai food, other times I eat Western food (such as at the Herb Cafe, in the picture), even fast food at Lucky Burger, the Khmer version of McDonald's. I spend $2-3.50US on lunch, which is average; some of my fellow Michigan students eat street food for lunch, running them around 3000riel ($.75US) but I don't have either a.) the courage or b.) the stomach to eat that stuff everyday (I've done it once or twice with not-so-hot results), even though they do save a TON of money that way.

The portions are pretty small here so after we eat Ting and I often go to the Friendly Mart at the intersection of Street 278 and Street 63. This is a Western style convenience store and the only place in town I've found that sells Mountain Dew (I haven't had a can since I left the U.S., however). I usually get Chewy granola bars to complete my lunch. We usually try to make bets with the store clerk to get free food; there's not a ton of accountability here so you can barter and bet your way into discounts and food (it's never worked at Friendly Mart though). Sometimes we go to the DVD store on 63 as well.

1:30PM - 5:00PM: More work. Around 4 PM my ability to sit still in a quiet room and work on research projects drops percipitously and I find myself counting minutes until I go home. I like my work, but as I said before, you can only do so much quiet research (with no human interaction) before it just gets old.

5:00PM: Hopefully the usual afternoon downpour hasn't occurred. Like clockwork, it rains in Phnom Penh a good amount of days. It always occurs between 3:30-4:30 and lasts a while, although it goes on and off in that period. It can be torential and the lightning is just out of control. Even after it stops raining, there's just a ton of heat lightining for the rest of the night -- it can be incredible to sit outside on a balcony and watch it over the Tonle Sap river.

If it hasn't rained, I walk home, facing the same challenges as in the morning. If it's raining, I have to pay for a tuk-tuk ride. When I get home, I change and usually veg out for a half hour with whoever's home; we usually watch the Simpsons at 5 and then Friends at 5:30.


6:00PM: This is when I call home to Ashley / mom and dad from an internet cafe. The cafes here generally blow and I spend a while trying to get a signal or finding one that actually works. Often, I'm stuck inside a small glass box with no cooling system and trying to wipe the sweat off my forehead so that it doesn't drip into my eyes. It's a sacrifice, friends, and I hope you realize this (just kidding). It costs 100-200riel/minute ($.2-$.4US) and I usually spend about 20-30 minutes on the phone, running me about $1US a day.

6:30PM: Since we're so close to the equator it starts getting really dark right about now. It's not entirely safe to be out alone past dark so I wrap things up as close to 6:30PM as I can. I'm generally okay since I am bigger than most of the men here, so I don't worry about it too much, but still, it's not a good idea to be alone so I get home as soon as I can.

7:00PM-8:30PM: We go to dinner now as a group -- Lindsey, Erin, Bobby and I (the four of us share our apartment). We have a few good places by our house: the Boat Noodle (Khmer/Thai) and Sweet (Khmer/Thai/Western), which is where I also do breakfast. Or sometimes we'll all get on a tuk-tuk and go up to the riverside, which is the heart of the city and the general tourist-y area. There are a ton of great places to eat; we went to the Cantina for Mexican on Tuesday and it was delicious. If we stay close to home dinner usually isn't anymore than $1.50-2US, and it's really good; if we go to the riverside, it's hard to eat for less than $3 and we each spend about a dollar on transportation (it's about a 10 minute moto ride and a 30 minute walk). Dinner takes a long time; they're a lot more laid back here. You might sit for 10 minutes without getting menus. They might not bring your bill for a really, really long time, and eventually you often just have to get up and ask the manager. So it can be a time-intensive experience.

Sometimes we just stick around home and eat take-out; there's an okay (all things considered) pizza place at the end of Street 308 (we live at the intersection of Street 9 & Street 308) that I occasionally get a small pepperoni pizza from for $4. Pizza here is expensive because Cambodians as a whole hate cheese, thus it has to be imported almost exclusively for foreigners. They have a cheese substitute made from fish. It's odd.

If we stay in we usually watch a DVD on somebody's laptop. The other night we watched Shrek 3, which is available on DVD here even though it's still in theaters in the States. It might seem boring to spend nights overseas holed up in an apartment watching DVD's but it's sorta sketchy here at night and there's not much nightlife on weeknights. It's a third-world country, and an impoverished one at that.

9:00PM: I start getting incredibly tired around now because a.) I am usually up before 6; b.) the 95-105 degree heat just destroys me; c.) my body is on heightened-sensory mode all day because I am perpetually out of my comfort zone. I can't break the cycle. I take my second freezing-cold shower of the day, and then relax for a bit. I have my own huge bedroom and bathroom. I lay down on my bed (king size), listen to my iPod a bit. I usually try to journal for around 10 minutes a day just to remember what went on. Then I read for about 20 minutes until my eyes start closing. Usually, we're all asleep by 10:00 or 10:30.

So there you have it. My weekday life in Cambodia. Weekends are obviously different but too scattered to really describe.

- m

It's June (long post)

First off, some of you have left me comments and I don't have your e-mail addresses. I'd like to stay in contact with you. So, if you've left me a comment and we don't normally correspond, please e-mail me at mpaulv@umich.edu or leave another comment with your e-mail so we can keep in touch.

Second, I'll try to work on getting some pictures posted soon. It's tough because it's difficult / expensive to get my laptop hooked up to internet.

Third, my mom said I don't talk enough about the work I'm doing here, so part of this will be about that. It'll probably bore most of you so feel free to skip it, but I'm sure at least someone is interested.

Friday I went to a prison to deliver food with a mixed group of do-gooders: people from a variety of charities and human rights groups, church folks, and evil Western people from the US Embassy (believe me, all the Western-born NGO folks here have done their best to convince me that America is indeed evil, whereas all the Cambodian-born NGO folks tend to think of it as a nice, albeit rich, place). The prison was for women and juveniles only. In Cambodia, women can have their children in the prison with them until the age of five, and then the children have to leave (hopefully they have somewhere to go?). Most in the prisons are malnourished... the government pays 1500riel (about $.20US) a day to feed them; I spend 6000riel ($1.50US) on my (remarkably cheap) breakfast everyday, and probably close to 30,000riel ($7.50US) a day for food. So, it was pretty humbling to hand out food to the prisoners (some of which tore right into it), but I almost feel bad getting anything personally edifying out of it considering just how rough the prison situation was. Not to sound too trite, but the world needs love a lot more than I think we realize on a daily basis.

I got dehydrated after that and skipped the afternoon at work. At night we went to this yuppie ex-pat bar that was very fashionable and trendy, and I sort of felt weird being there, and I was generally run down from my trip earlier, so I called it a night after one Beerlao (probably the best beer I've had so far in PP) and went home to relax.

Saturday and Sunday were just general wandering around town days. We saw the National Museum, which was essentially a ton of Buddha statutes and old crumbly bits from Angkor Wat.

As for work, it's very discouraging. The Khmer Rouge tribunal is crap. Imagine a country with improving but weak infrastructure, with lots of poverty and malnourishment, etc. etc. Then imagine spending $60M in that country (most of which will come out of Cambodian funds) for a trial of maybe 4 old, greying dudes, some of which are senile. Then, consider these facts: a.) it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to effectively bring justice to Cambodia, so while $60M is large enough to make a difference elsewhere in Cambodia, it is simply too little of an amount to be effective in the trials; b.) the trials are being manipulated behind the scenes by government officials who don't want them to happen. It's a joke. Why not feed some of the starving kids I see on the street everyday instead?

Everybody here has some part of their family tree distorted by the Khmer Rouge, and 95% of the population wants the trials. But with the corrupt state of the judicial system here, and the fact that most of the accused will be dead in five years anyway, why not just use the money on something else?

It's frustrating. I believe in the cause of justice - especially for crimes like genocide - in the abstract. But this isn't justice.

So there you go, my first really serious post about Cambodia.

- m

Bills bills bills

I'm not worrying about money on this trip, but I am becoming slightly irritated at how I'm spending more than I wanted to. I'll survive either way I suppose, but since I am paying for this out of pocket, I was really banking on the food, etc. being less expensive. It's not. Or perhaps I should stop buying cheap DVD's... I've only gotten three so far... one of which was $10.80 alone (House Season 1). Oh well.

Not to mention that Dragon Airlines is charging me $60 each way for excessive baggage weight. Cheap airlines = no love. Bastards!

I think I'm just going to start bringing PB & J to lunch every day. Eating's not really relevant to the Cambodia experience anyway.

I think our TV got blown up by lightning last night. We were right in the middle of watching a really great episode of Friends, too (hahahahaha).

For some cute pictures of my siblings and I, check this out: Arising Images.

- m

Tuesday stuff

Been a few days since I've added anything. Hopefully your worlds kept turning.

The weekend was good. I had my first Indian food (ever) and my first Vietnamese food (ever). I had my first Cambodian beer (ever) on a pontoon boat anchored in the Tonle Sap river while I listened to Gnarls Barkley (not by choice). They tell foreigners to stay away from Angkor (pronounced ann-chore for some reason), the main brew in town, because it contains formaldehyde. I think I'm still functioning. Will -- I'll bring you home a case, I know you love the crazy stuff.

It's been raining a lot. Consequently this weekend I watched a bunch of House and Scrubs. Scrubs is just okay.

Mmmm. Stomach's been all over the place. Don't want to talk about it. I'm probably just going to stop at the pizza place on the way home and get something that will form a brick in my stomach (pizza).

Work picked up a bit. I'm going to deliver gifts at the prison this Friday. They were going to send me 4 hours away to attend a conference in Keph (seaside village, supposedly beautiful) but I've got prison duty. Niiiiccceee.

Time is actually flying by. I only have 1.5 months left. Yikes.

Go Pistons.
- m

To those keeping score at home

Diarreha - 0, Mike - 1

And until you all complain about me discussing crap on here, I'd like to point out that the last entry was the one that received the most comments so far. I'm only providing what you guys want to hear.

Ate breakfast with Christian missionaries from London this morning. They were working for a children's organization. They continually travel (this is their full time thing) and their stories were a bit fascinating. A bit encouraging... made me want to do what they were doing.

- m

It begins

Had my first case of the runs today. Wasn't all too runny (not that you needed to know that). A bit exciting I suppose. I don't know what caused it.

This was a great excuse for me to take off the afternoon from work, which I did. I stopped on my way home at the DVD store and picked up House Season 1 and Little Miss Sunshine. I laid on my bed watching House on my laptop, drinking electrolytes and waiting for my stomach to calm down (which it did). Verdict is out as to what my post-dinner evening will be like.

All in all a nice little afternoon.

Thanks.

Sigh.

I'm proud of them. Defied even my skepticism. You've got to put a team away when you have the chance, and they didn't do it. I've got to think this is invaluable experience for our younger core (Hank, Flip, Franzen, etc.). Unless the team could somehow sign Giguere or something I don't know how you don't want Hasek back. He was unbelievable from what I saw. A lot of people were ragging on him for his Game 6 performance but they wouldn't even have been there if it wasn't for him. I'd also like to give Bert another shot; you can't vilify a guy forever and this is probably as good of a chance as he'll get to turn his career / life around. Oh, and happy trails to Bobby Lang.

So now I get to follow the Pistons and Tigers closely. A good consolation gift, yes, but still a consolation gift.

Things are good in PP. Moved into our new apartment. We're on the first floor of a villa which has a large patio, garden, basketball net, etc. I have my own room. We have a large living room, dining room, kitchen. Honestly, it would be a nice place in the states, although it is a little bit dirty.

Had my first pizza in Cambodia yesterday. Nike Pizza shop. I had to laugh at the attempt to woo westerners. Went to the DVD shop after that; I can get American DVD's for $1.80 a piece. Probably going to pick up Little Miss Sunshine, Children of Men and a season or two of House.

I love taking the motos around town -- so much fun. I've got to get a motorcycle. How cool.

As you can tell being in PP is getting to be a bit routine. Hope all is well at home.

- m

Why, Lilja, Why?

Let us hope the Wings can repeat the WCF of 2002. Lose game 5 in OT, stun the fans, win games 6 & 7. I don't know if you can predict or expect something like that to occur, but I suppose you can hope it.

My heart sank when I saw the headline today. 47 seconds away from a 3-2 series lead.

I didn't see the game so I can't blame Lilja exclusively. Obviously he did score what was to be the game winner up until the Ducks evened it late. But my goodness.

Was this game as brutally terrible as it sounds?

Things in PP are going alright. I'm at work right now and there's not much for me to do until next week. Had a hot ham & cheese sandwich and fries for lunch. Awesome.

- m

Sunday in PP

It's Sunday here, Saturday back home. Yesterday we went to the Central Market. It was out of control. Chickens running around. Smelled like a sewer. People selling everything imaginable for dirt cheap. iPod nanos go for about US$25, problem is I don't know if I could clear customs w/them.



They also had a mall next door with a Western grocery store. I got some cheese & crackers and cookies. The mall also had a pizza place and a burger place, both of which looked obnoxious, a bit like Red Robin. I plan on trying both soon.

We all went back to the apartment of Haley and Zara, two other girls that are here. Their apartment is totally nice, right by the Tonle Sap riverfront, two levels, fully furnished, etc. It even had cable TV and I was watching some soccer, Manchester United v. AC Milan I think, and saw some CNN & Britney Spears (circa 2000, thankfully) on Asian MTV. They even had HBO. Also, Asian ESPN was playing a lot of clips of the Tigers' playoffs from last year and it made me feel right at home.

Came back last night and had my first Cambodian food. Pretty good. It was essentially Cambodian noodles with beef and a ton of cauliflower, and I hate cauliflower, but it tasted alright if you dipped it into this spicy sauce that came with it. The noodles and beef were good. Also, had some carrots and green peppers mixed in.

Fell asleep last night at like 10. Woke up today at 3AM and have been awake ever since. I had "church" around six by reading 40 pages of a Christian book Ashley gave me, then got really homesick and wrote in my journal for about 45 minutes. I switch between loving it and hating here. Guess that's to be expected. Good news is I can call home for super cheap. Finally got in touch with Ashley today (which was awesome) and our 20 minute phone call cost me fifty cents. Good news there.

Today we went to Tuol Sleng, the torture center. Very, very sad. The KR were brutal people.

We're going apartment shopping in an hour, so that should be pretty boring. There's a Cambodian wedding party going on in the street outside the internet cafe -- they just prop up a tent and everyone gets underneath it, like a graduation party right in the middle of Schoenherr.

GO WINGS!
- m

Phnom Penh

Got into PP late last night after a 2.5 hour delay in Hong Kong. Slept a lot on the plane. Flying over Cambodia at night was very strange: complete darkness save for a few lights every few miles, then Phnom Penh was all lit up. The airport was surprisingly nice although customs took forever. The people from KiD (my job) picked me up; I felt bad because they were waiting for 3 hours to get me due to the delay.

Driving into PP at night was crazy. Run down. Wild dogs. People standing around in packs by motorcycles. Garbage all over.

Got to the Boddhi Tree (my guesthouse) which is nice. Right across the street from Tuol Seung prison, the KR torture center in the 1970's. A bit creepy, yes. The BT is very western and well-staffed. I have a room on the second floor of an old European-style house. My bed has a mosquito net and sleeping in it makes me feel like a princess. I have a small balcony and my own bathroom with a toilet and shower.

I met up with Erin, a UM student, and we chatted for a bit. Then I took a melatonin and slept for about 10 hours. Woke up this morning feeling on time w/the local time, finally.

Ate some eggs bacon and toast for breakfast. They were playing Jose Gonzales and Thom Yorke in the cafe. Met up with a few other UM students and we've been doing things together; took a tuk-tuk (motocycle w/4 person carriage attached) around town and saw some sights.

All in all I feel okay. Things are uncertain and I occasionally feel very stressed out. I already feel like my life has changed. This morning I woke up and thought about being in the pool at home and I couldn't believe my life exists. We're all very blessed indeed.

Until later.
- m

No sleep

Here's Hong Kong live from outside my hotel window. It's 545 am local time here in Hong Kong. I have not slept a wink, although I have tried admirably. I feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. Jet lag is no fun and my body hates me.

In the last 42 hours or so, I may have slept about 8 hours. I have also been sitting or laying for most of them. This combined with my ever-present excitement / anxiousness about my location probably goes a long way towards explaining my lack of sleep.

I've got a flight to Phnom Penh at 3:30pm local time today. I might pass out before then.

- m

Hong Kong

I'm in Hong Kong. My hotel room is about the size of a closet but it has free internet and House on TV, so all is well.

My 20 hour or so commute wasn't as bad as could be imagined. Perhaps I slept too much because now I'm not so tired. However, it is like 12:30 pm at home right now.

Hong Kong's amazing, pictures to come.

Lets go Red Wings,
Mike

The Morning Of

Been sort of a rough morning. In general, pretty sad to be leaving. Still excited to go, but these next few hours are going to be somewhat difficult. I'll be much better once I'm in the air.

Very happy that the Red Wings won last night in such a convincing fashion.

Alright, time for some last minute suitcase / paper checks, and trips to the store.

Next stop: somewhere in Asia.

- m

Introduction part I.

Today is Saturday and I am in the U.S. I leave for Cambodia on Wednesday. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good because I am totally excited to go. I've been itching to get overseas for a while and I'm returning to my place of main interest: Asia. I am excited to be doing work related to genocide, and to actually be doing "international law" (although, as Justice Scalia says, international law blows.)

This is bad because I'm nervous -- after all, going to Phnom Penh is not like going to Paris. It's going to be 95 and humid everyday (probably). I don't speak Khmer or whatever the language is called (shouldn't I know this by now?). I don't really like adventurous food. I'm going to miss people. I'm going to miss home.

And the Red Wings, Pistons and Tigers are looking absolutely amazing right now. What am I going to miss? This really isn't too important I suppose.

Anyway.

The name of the blog is inspired by the song of the same title recorded by the Dead Kennedys.



That picture's actually really awful if you know what's going on in it.

This is a map of Cambodia:



Major points of interest:

Phnom Penh: This is the capital, where I'll be living.

Siem Reap: Home of one of the wonders of the world, Angkor Wat, "the largest religious temple in the world" or something.

Sihanoukville: This is the beach where we pick up the babes.

I'll be living in Phnom Penh, the capital. Phnom Penh was once a popular vacation spot and/or colony (take your pick) for the French, so today it's pretty much a bunch of crumbling French colonial inspired architecture. A bit sad in a way... I suppose it sorta reminds of the architecture I saw in China, though with a much more noticable European influence, and with a lot less upkeep. Here's a shot of what Phnom Penh looks like, according to Google images:



Have no fear I'll take some of my own pictures.

I'm going to try to break all this up into smaller posts so that it doesn't become unmanageable. This, of course, presupposes that people will take the time to read this blog. If not, the blog will be for my own benefit. Hopefully I will be able to update it. I'll have internet at work and there are internet cafes everywhere (supposedly). Hope it's not dial-up.

That is all for now, more later.

- m