Monday, July 14, 2014

On To The Next One

This past weekend the group went to Sihanoukville as our last hoorah of sorts before we spread out to our respective countries. Six of the group members stayed put in Cambodia; two went to Thailand while Libby, myself and the designated “cool aunt” of the group, headed to Saigon for the last two weeks of our program. Jan is 50 years old but has no trouble hanging with us younger folks. She’s a drug counselor in the Seattle school system and is planning to move with her husband into semi-retirement over here in Vietnam next year. It’s cool to see someone her age still be able to relate to people our age, and she has an awesome retirement scheme (these beaches are amazing), but like the majority of the people looking to move here for an extended time period, she doesn’t really have any familial ties back home. She’s recently married, doesn’t have any kids, doesn’t talk to her sister, and both of her parents were only children. In her position, it seems like a no-brainer, but still. The same goes for two of the younger girls, both come from divorced families, the normal one (from Nebraska) also escaping from a broken off engagement. The other one, the black sheep of the group, hailed from the northern reaches of Canada (New Brunswick(ish), and had never been out of the country. One of the most important rules I’ve set for myself is to complain as little as possible, and she seemed to totally miss the memo. A, it only makes the situation at hand even worse and B, it seems to invite/attract more annoying things to complain about.  However, with Libby always chirping in the background that I should be nice to her, I was slowly able to forgive her ridiculous crassness (she told us her types of boys were construction workers) and her nonstop whiney attitude (I’d be bitchy too if I was from middle of nowhere Canada). What was really the kicker was the sob story of growing poor with the single mother working two jobs with no supervision, getting into trouble in school ect ect. And I’m being serious about it being a sob-worthy story, which is the eternal dilemma in this situation, where do you draw the line between being standoffish and rude and just recognizing personality differences between the two. These past two weeks have been like the first week of college on steroids. You’re around these people 24/7, they are the only people that can really speak your language and you all are experiencing some degree of culture shock, so we’ve gotten to be quite good friends with a couple of the people in our group, but I’m so thankful that I came to Southeast Asia with my buddy/confidente/best friend whatever you want to call Libby in this situation. My brother did the same when he went to Korea with his best friend, and I think it takes a lot of the pressure/tension off trying to adjust to a new culture by having to try and force a best friendship that could backfire after a lot of investment was put into ect ect. Nebraska and Canada immediately hit it off over some commonalities and were already planning on living together after about 5 days of knowing each other. As the days went by and Nebraska started recognizing Canada’s flaws, it got a little awkward and catty as Nebraska slowly distanced herself and starting befriending our little group which wasn’t very accepting of poor ole Canada… Anyways, we’re in Saigon now with Jan as our only other program mate (so the drama has essentially ended) so I’ll stop with this pseudo-serious rubbish, I see now our petty drama doesn’t really translate well into words not to mention the constant boy talk. I had to try though. Maybe in the next post I’ll devote a brief section to our very, um, eclectic program mate from Santa Clause, Indiana, just because.
There have been some comic developments in our lewd and crude section. First, the Buddhist Karma I was secretly hoping for in my first post seems to be alive and well over here. For weeks leading up to our departure for Southeast Asia, I was very vocal about my greatest fear about coming to SE Asia was how my poor stomach was going to handle the infamous meats over here. And right after my public confessions, Libby would always interject about her Ecuador maymester in college. She was always so proud of her “iron stomach,” and how everyone in her group in Ecuador got sick during their month abroad except Libby!!! I always was like, cooool (in my head of course). Anyways, during my first week in Cambodia, while I lay locked in tremendous sparing matches with the bacteria laden meat, I actually thought Libby’s gloats may actually have a shred of truth in them. Then came week number two. Let’s just say Libby finally broke down and asked me if Immodium would help her feel better. I won’t go any farther, that may not even make it past her edit session. Anyways, for me, I’ve settled into a digestive pattern remarkably similar to the rainy season that literally started about a couple days into our stay in SE Asia: sometimes it drizzles, a lot of the time it pours, sometimes it literally strikes without warning, sometimes the clouds and wind brew before the coming onslaught.  Which provides us with the perfect segue, and, I promise, the last of my “toilet sessions: live from SE Asia.” First off, let me just say that I’ve fallen in love with the “bum gun,” a true symbol of Asian ingenuity and efficiency. That being said, the bum gun only works in combo with toilet paper; and, most importantly it is predicated on having sufficient water pressure… Which finally brings me to the most infamous of Water Closet options in SE Asia-the squat toilet. It’s pretty much self-explanatory, and in concert with the bum gun doesn’t really prove much of an issue. It’s when the bum gun goes missing that the squat toilet really gains its reputation. It’s replacement-a plastic pale you use to scoop a standing reservoir of water with. I had been forewarned about this devious variation in the water closet and after two weeks had felt pretty clever over never getting into one of these sticky situations. Which brings us to the bus ride to Sihanoukville. A simple 4 hour ride, nothing to worry about. We stopped at the bathrooms, which our director Rick told us was a “nice bathroom,” well, I had been getting a few rumbles in my stomach during the first hours, akin to the clouds gathering. There was a decent line and a few of the girls were in line in front of me, well, being the clever one I had TP packed in my backpack in the bus and thinking I was going to be nice and gentlemanly offered to go get them some of my TP, by the time I dug around my backpack and came back, the proverbial monsoon struck, just in time for me to open the door and lay witness to my first squat toilet. First off, the toilet is tiny, I mean you’re aiming for a target about 6 inches wide and a foot and half long, which doesn’t provide much margin of error. What the squat toilet needs is like a handle to hold onto because it’s really awkward trying to balance a squat and hold ‘er steady, sorta felt like the map guy/aimer in a B-52 doing a run over Tokyo or Dresden. Anyways, after it was over, I just stood looking confused because the whole thing was manual and I didn’t know what to do next. After about a minute or two I heard a big splash next door and putting two and two together, I washed it down with a pall full of water. By the way, I think the reservoir gets contaminated by the waste. I shudder to think about what would have happened without TP…


Back to Sihanoukville. Parts of it were dumpy and touristy, and some parts were amazing. Got my first dose of SE Asia white sand tropical beaches which are amazing. It was bittersweet leaving some of our good friends and leaving behind some of our not so good friends. Have been in Saigon for a day now, which seems like a paradise compared to Phnom Penh, seriously. Glad I got to have a healthy dose of Cambodia, enough to feel like I probably don’t need to ever go back unless it was another excursion to Angkor Watt. I need to go explore more of Saigon so I can report back, and also need to describe the absurdness of driving in Cambodia (think Autobahn meets Frogger), but I got a little sidetracked with the squat toilet, and my toilet sessions needed a proper finale- so till next time.

Sihanoukville Pictures from our boat trip below, and view from dinner on the beach-grilled Baracuda is very very delicious. Meaty like Salmon, yet very white and mild.









                

2 comments:

  1. Glad that $600 camera takes more pictures than just squat toilets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thankfully there's the point and shoot to go where SLR's don't dare

    ReplyDelete