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