Hawaii day three: I give a darn about an oxford comma.

(If you don’t want to read this, I don’t blame you. Be sure to read the last paragraph and then ask Erik or Jim to re-tell the story because my writing has gone downhill)

This day was filled with very little, but somehow took us the whole day and left us feeling tired. I don’t even know how the following things took 12 hours. Wake up, throw a frisbee, return snorkel equipment, obtain and consume breakfast, return to campsite and checkout, drive one hour north and walk to a real nice beach, play in the ocean, play on the slackline, play on the beach, drive to the timeshare condo, obtain and consume dinner, and fall asleep.

That’s why I give a darn about an oxford comma. They help me write pseudo run-on sentences.

But seriously we stretched it out. And my observations are thus:

First, the campsite on the second morning had a very distinct “hippie” vibe. I gleaned this from the yoga and marijuana cigarettes happening all over the place.

Second, the breakfast place had outstanding bagels, which struck me as odd. But they had non-outstanding reading material next to several tables. My personal favourite is a book describing how the structure of freezing water crystals changes with the amount of positive thoughts/words directed at the water. By this, I mean that if you say nice things to water (example: you’re nice), then the subsequent frozen crystals will be way more symmetrical and pretty. Feel free to draw your own conclusion from my severely biased and subjective synopsis.

Third, America has way more types of cereal than we do.

Fourth, David Woods cannot cut pineapple in any sort of reasonable fashion. I was starting to make dinner (chicken kabobs). He offered to help, and I put him to work cutting a pineapple in a way that is conducive to grilling. This might not make any sense (it didn’t to me), but he took the pineapple and made filets like he was cutting a fish. This wasn’t the worst thing. It was unorthodox but could be dealt with. But no one noticed how he had cut it until he was leaning over the sink gnawing on half of the pineapple, which he claimed was okay because the core is inedible. Half the pineapple was still attached to the core, and he was taking large bites off. Erik, Jim and myself seemed to notice at the same time and all had our arms outstretched with palms up in a way that communicated this: WHAT THE F— ARE YOU DOING?????!!!!

He looked back at us like we were idiots and he was doing nothing wrong.

The utter dismay that he would act so out of character and eat half the pineapple we were going to share soon melted away. It got really funny. This grown adult male didn’t know how to cut a pineapple, the poor guy.

So the next day I bought him a practice pineapple.

Anyways, this is what dinner looked like most nights: no shirts and POG (pineapple orange guava juice or something like that)

Sexy man dinner. Every night.

So here is the thing….

The thing about this blog is that I’ve written a bunch of stuff, but haven’t put it on the internet yet.

Just relax for once.

It’ll come.

Okay.

Good talk.

Hawaii the first: Sand is everywhere.

(I wrote this on Sunday, but am posting it now. Deal with it however you so choose.)

So I’ve been away from any form of internet for a few days and had no battery left in my computer. I sit here writing at 6:30 am local time not wearing a shirt and drinking Wolfang Puck’s “personal recipe” brand coffee. We are at a timeshare somewhere on the west side of the big island. My attempts to summarize the first three days are as follows. No pictures will be added because I am smart and don’t have any way of getting photos off my camera.

Day 1:

Wake up and 4. Go to the airport. Fly to Seattle. Eat breakfast at Seattle. Fly to Kona.

The flight to Kona had two interesting things. First, David spilled a little bit or orange juice on some random sitting next to him, who was then not impressed and pointed at the juice in a menacing way. He then continued to be a bit of a tool to the flight attendants. We called him juicy-pants behind his back.

I was not sitting near anyone else, and had a nice conversation with an older couple from Spokane who come to Kona fairly often. Barry (the older guy), then gave me lots of “helpful” advice about the big island. And by that, I mean that his advice was not helpful at all. It was a hand-drawn map of major locations on the island that anyone who has ever planned a trip here for any reason would probably know beforehand. But Barry was super nice. So I smiled and pretended not to know where the city of Kona is, where the airport is, where the only volcano is, and where the only highway is.

So we proceed to land, put on shorts, and then pick up our rental car from Alamo (which had delightful customer service). We grabbed the coolest, sportiest looking Chevy Malibu on the lot and drove to get some food in Kona. We end up at the Kona Brewing Company, and then ate delicious food and drank delicious beer.

Then we went to what I perceive as the Mecca of cheap consumer goods that isn’t also a Walmart: Target. Target was large and confusing. I tried on a onesie, took out money, got coffee from Starbucks. We also bought a football and frisbee and sandals. Then I got overwhelmed and left.

Next, we went on a journey to find the place we were staying that night, which was a campsite somewhere on the coast that I had reserved online but failed to print directions to get there (I emailed them to myself, but had no internet). We stopped, got directions, and purchased the following important items: Cigars, sunscreen, a map, Jack Daniels, a lighter, and a flashlight. All these items were purchased in the same place! America is growing on me.

So we got there at 6:30 or so after driving a super windy/sketchy road in the dark. A large Hawaiian guy checked us in, gave us our rental tent, and then chatted to us for a while about snow, the airforce, and seeing UFO’s in Alaska.

So we hop on the struggle bus and take 30 minutes to set up our tent in the dark. Then we sat on the beach, smoked cigars and toasted to the trip with a mickey of Jack Daniels. It also happened to work out that there was a meteor shower that night. So we watched some meteors fall. It was super romantic, even for 4 guys.

Then we got tired and slept. It was 9:30. We had been awake for 20 hours or so and slept maybe two hours the night before. Jim hadn’t slept since two nights previous because he was writing a paper all night before we left Calgary (which, because he is a machine, received an A).

This ends the account of the first day. So it goes.

Day 2:

Wake up. Leave the campsite. Drive back up the windy road, which is way more fun in the daylight, especially in the “sporty” Chevy Malibu. We got breakfast at this roadside cafe and my brain exploded upon drinking Kona coffee, which is ridiculously tasty. I also got some free spam because I had never tried it before. It was not great. The texture was similar to what I imagine lint feels like in ones mouth. It was this odd amorphous blob that disintegrated in my mouth.

We went and rented some snorkelling gear and eventually made our way to a snorkelling area near a tourist attraction called the Place of Refuge. As a quick aside, this is a place where you would go to get your slate wiped clean if you were to be put to death by clubbing, fire, or strangulation. It was a bunch of rocks. I peed into the raging ocean.

So then we left there and drove to buy some groceries and food for the night. Somehow we all ended up getting straw hats along with the hot dogs and Bruddha Island Lager, which I do not recommend.

We get back to the campsite and cook food. We listen to a conversation near us about new age spirituality, meat production best practices, preventative health care. I can safely assume they swung quite far to the liberal side of the political and social scales.

Then we sat on the beach, again. We toasted and drank Jack Daniels, again. Then we went to bed. David also stubbed his toe in such a way that half of it was gone.

So ends the second day.

I have written about days three and four, but I want to spread out the content so that people won’t be intimidated by the amount of boring and poorly written text.

I’m back on the internet. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

So. Here is the deal. I stopped writing this thing because my worldly travels ceased, only to be replaced by rural Alberta travels. Until now.

I’m sitting in at the Seahawks 12 Club in the Seattle airport waiting for a flight. I’m here with David Woods, Jim Billington, and Erik Johnson. We are going to Hawaii. I’m international again, and I told people I would write about this trip. As was the case in most of my other blog posts, I will continue to write for mainly selfish reasons. I like to keep track of my travels in writing, and figured that you, the people, could be recipients of my benevolence.

So, expect more updates that are questionable in both quality and grammar. 

Here we go.

London Episode I: Han Shot First

I completely forgot that I wrote this. I probably meant to post it shortly after we got back from London, but I got really busy being unemployed and all. You know how it is. Anyways, from the depths of my hard drive, London Episode I: Han Shot First. Enjoy. Or not. It’s long, poorly edited, and not very interesting. Deal with it.

Out of the little bit of traveling I’ve done this past year, I’ve learned a few things. One of those things is that I hate being a tourist. Hate might be a little strong, but I really don’t enjoy being the guy that goes around to the toursity places and takes stereotypical tourist pictures and eats at places only in the Lonely Planet travel guides. I fully realize that I can be rather cynical, but being a tourist sucks. Which is probably why I liked being in Cambodia for a while. I didn’t feel like a tourist. I had this false sense of legitimacy, which honestly makes me a bit of a tool.

But a conversation at church a week ago led to an impulsive trip to London. This happened in the span of an hour. Karly Peters informed Erik Johnson and myself about cheap flights to London. We all drove to the mall and bought tickets. Boom.

Ergo, I was a tourist for seven days in London.

So, in typical Jeff Seaman fashion, I’m selfishly writing about it so I can remember the fun things we did. But I’ll graciously put in on the internet for your reading/skimming pleasure.

So. Lets go.

Wednesday February 16, 2011

Our flight left at 3 PM, so we went to the airport, did airport things, got on the plane, and then didn’t take off. The pilot said the following three things, and you need to say it in an English accent. It’s funnier that way.

“Hi there. We’re almost ready to take off, but just going to fire up the engines to make sure everything is working just fine”

5 minutes later

“Hello, me again. There’s been a fault in one of the engines, so we’ll just be a few minutes figuring out what happened.”

10 minutes later

“Hi there, me again. We’ve turned the engines off and on, and everything seems to be fine. We’ll be taking off in about 5 minutes”

You had to be there. It was hilarious. Trust me. Everyone laughed. Also, Thomas Cook Airlines are bush league.

Thursday February 17, 2011

Anyways. Eight hours of not sleeping and watching How I Met Your Mother later, we arrived at the Gatwick airport where I got grilled be customs. I’m pretty certain it was all because I told them I had no job. Then I made a severely unfunny joke about my post secondary education (maybe not the best choice). After that they wanted to know exactly what I was doing and what my degree was in and who I was there with and if I had a flight home. I loved it.

Local time was 6:30 AM. So we took our time getting into central London and went to Buckingham Palace. I made two observations: (a)The changing of the guard is kind of boring; (b) among the Beamers/Aston Martins/Mercedes parked inside the gates, there was a PT Cruiser. Seriously. Who at Buckingham Palace drives a PT freaking Cruiser (no offense if you own one).

We then got a train to Greenwich (where the hostel was), ate some food and took naps. We walked around the town for a while, the entire time Karly exclaiming how cute everything was. We saw the Greenwich Meridian, which is apparently a badass laser they shoot from the top of a hill across London. The night ended with nachos, cheap beer, and jetlag.

Friday February 17, 2011

After getting up and eating free breakfast (toast), we got a train into London and saw St. Paul’s Cathedral (or rather, the outside of St. Paul’s). We decided to try see it for free by going to a service at a later time (which didn’t work).

So we walked. We walked for a good long while. There is a nice river boardwalk on the south of the Thames, and we walked for many hours. But we saw some cool stuff: Shakespeare’s Globe, Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, The Tate Modern, Big Ben, some random market, and Westminster Abbey. It was rather fun. There were a few things of note.

I felt like Death Eaters were going to shoot some spells at me when I was walking across the Millennium Bridge (a la opening scene from HP 6).

We got food at this amazing pie place. Erik loves savoury pies. I loved them too. What’s even better is that I swear the girl working there was hitting on me, or as I so delicately put it: “she undressed me with her eyes”. It’s true. Seriously.

There were 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds spread out on the floor at the Tate Modern. I didn’t get it. Modern art is weird.

Westminster Abbey was awesome. The history there is incredible. I’m a little bit of a nerd and made sure I took note of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton’s graves.

The Parliament Buildings seem unreasonably large, but impressive nonetheless.

Later that night we met up with Laura, my cousin who graciously let us sleep at her flat for the remaining four nights while her and two other roommates (all teachers) went traveling for the week. Ironically we went to the Canadian pub. It was funny. We sang the national anthem with some random dude who was getting married soon and ate poutine. She gave us directions and keys. We left and went back to the hostel. There was live music in the bar underneath us, but thankfully jetlag makes it easy to sleep.

Saturday February 18, 2011

Woke up. Ate toast. Trained to the flat on the other side of London. Dropped off our stuff. Met the last roommate at the flat. Got Indian food. Went back into central London. That took roughly 4 hours. London is big. Who knew?

So we went into the London Tower. It’s a badass castle with lots of tourists, including us. So we walked around for a while and looked at stuff. It was rather fun. We saw the crown jewels as well. And let me tell you. They like their diamonds big, and they like them everywhere.

After that, we went Borough Market right as everything closed. But luckily we got some cider and mulled wine, which is delightful. Also, delicious. After walking around for a while, we found a pub and got fish and chips. They were okay. I’m not a big fish and chips kind of guy. But English beer is fantastic, and a little warm. After this we trained back the flat and got ready for bed.

That is, until Erik and myself decided to join Shawn (the last roommate) and his friend Matt at a local Australian bar. It was midnight at this point. I was tired. But Erik peer pressured me into going. I cave easily to peer pressure, so off we went to meet the other guys there.

We walked down to find them in line, and also the find that this bar was more of a club. If you know me, you know I don’t particularly enjoy clubs. Neither does Erik. So what do we do instead? We get lost. Really, really lost. It took us two hours to get back. But Erik saw his first rat (it was dead). We both saw our first fox. Twice. We asked some people where we were, didn’t understand them, and walked more. Then we jogged and found where we were. So we got pizza to celebrate and went to bed at 2 AM. We both had a great time. It was kind of like a Jeff+Erik date. Which is probably better than a normal date with a girl, unless that particular girl can make light of a potentially bad situation that very well could have ended with us sleeping on the streets and contracting the Black Plague from the rats.

Run and tell that. Home boy.

I’m back to the blogosphere for one last stand. Part of the debriefing time was about finishing the internship well, which should implicitly include this blog. But I’m shooting for mediocrity instead.

I realized I haven’t written anything since Sunday October 24. I’m going to try and get through the last few days in Cambodia, transit to Calgary, battling jetlag, debriefing, and intern retreat. Hopefully I’ll throw in some deeply profound thoughts and reflections of the last six months, but don’t hold your breath. I might write some heartfelt John Mayer lyrics and no one will know the difference. John Mayer can do the reflecting for me*.

The last weekend in Phnom Penh was quite similar to all the other weekends I spent there. Except this time I decided to be intentional about appreciating the city and the people. To do this, I woke up early and went to the riverside to see the sunrise. And my goodness you should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes. Cambodia is really pretty, and I almost forgot. I took some pictures and enjoyed the pleasant morning heat. I went to a cafe and my favourite used bookshop and did some other random stuff (aka work) before calling it a night.

On Sunday I went to the Russian Market as per usual. Except I walked. No one walks in Phnom Penh. It was weird. I went a few blocks before a nice guy from Thailand asked me where Russian Market was. So we walked together and had a friendly chat about random stuff. Then I shook his sweaty hand before continuing on to buy an assortment of cheap stuff. I spent the rest of that day napping and working in a cafe. I finished the day by watching Transformers 2 and working on a powerpoint presentation for the workshop. That movie sucks.

Monday was my all day workshop with the staff. All I wanted to cover were some new monitoring indicators, Formstack, and iPods. I had some things planned, but I left lots of time for questions. So I get to the conference room to find that the projector I thought was coming never came. So instead of using the presentation, I improvised and asked them to follow along with the iPods.

Whats funny about this is that a someone said “a projector would be useful for this”. I responded with “I know”. Then one of the managers dropped by and also noted “Jeff, I think maybe you should use a projector”. I told him “yes, I know”. Then Viriya comes into the workshop and says “Jeff, you should have asked for a projcetor”. I told him I did ask. Then I felt bad because Sitha (the guy I requested a projector from) is going to get yelled at, and I love Sitha. He’s hilarious. The entire day just devolved into the staff playing with iPods. Which, in all honesty, was probably a good thing to do while I was there to answer questions.

That night we went for dinner to a nice restaurant and ate banana curry, which immediately blew my mind all over the place. Tuesday was spent working at my favourite cafe in the morning, and finishing up at the office. Then the staff threw us (Andrea and myself) a party. It was awesome and catered by a restaurant fifty feet down the street; which was funny because they walked all the food down. There were also very awkward speeches, one was surprisingly given by myself (I know, Jeff Seaman and awkwardness are not normally associated).

The staff even gave Andrea and I a card and a gift. The gift was a scarf with “Pray For Cambodia” embroidery, and a banner with a bible verse. Mine was a verse from the prodigal son story, Andrea’s was this obscure verse about prosperity and womb fruit. The funniest thing were the cards they gave us. I was told that the “words were from their heart”. I opened the card to see that it was addressed to Andrea. I figure that the cards got switched up, so I trade with Andrea and open my card to find that it was also addressed to Andrea. I felt appreciated. As my act of revenge on the staff, I bought them a fruit basket and Andrea framed an awesome picture of us being awesome. This picture is big papa Viriya giving me the gift in a very staged photo.

I went home, packed my bags, unpacked my bags, repacked my bags, watched a terrible movie entitled Letters To Juliet and slept for the last time in Cambodia. The next morning I exacted my revenge by delivering the fruit basket to the office and saying goodbye. I got my stuff, went to Mama and Papa Chee’s, and ate pancakes. We got a ride to the airport and left. Just like that. Here is an assortment of things I will miss (off the top of my head).

Stinky canal road (except not really at all).

The guy that cut my hair. The first time I went in, I pointed at the only picture that wasn’t an asymmetrical Asian pop star haircut. It was also the only picture of a white guy. I’m very stereotypical. The interaction was pretty much like this.

Chinese Noodle, the restaurant I went to at least three times a week.

My moto driver who can’t speak English.

My iced coffee guy, who has the self-proclaimed “best iced coffee in Phnom Penh”. Its true. He is the best.

Cafe Yejj and their devastatingly good breakfast special.

Riding my around my old school roadster bike without being a hipster.

Mike’s Burgers.

White dragon fruit.

Meat on a stick.

The nod of acknowledgment I got from the Mormon’s who also ride bikes, and wear helmets and white collared shirts. The only thing that made me different was having no name tag. That, and not being Mormon.

Catching locals off guard with one of five Khmer sentences I could speak pretty well.

Smiling at people. Because its nice, not creepy.

And the people. I miss them. I’ll probably remember more things later. But lets get back to the shenanigans in Taipei.

Our flight plan was Phnom Penh to Taipei to Vancouver to Calgary. We had a seven hour layover in Taipei that was super boring, except when Andrea realized she left her bag somewhere. Luckily she had her passport, but we spent a good hour or two looking for it. Andrea then made peace with the loss of her iPod, camera, credit card, and cash. After eating overpriced food, we were walking to the departure gate when some dude stopped us and asked if we were missing a bag. Turns out, Andrea left it at security. She was excited, Naomi was excited, I fist pumped, so you know I was excited.

It gets better. The plane wasn’t full. There was an elderly Chinese guy in my row, and we were on the same page. He gave me a nod, and promptly commandeered an empty row shortly after takeoff when no flight attendants were looking, leaving me with a row to myself. It was amazing. I had a decent sleep, and watched Predators. Adrian Brody should not be in action films. He was just terrible.

So we land in Vancouver, and through Facebook chat, I met up with my friends and Vancouver residents Lindsday and Jono. We got coffee, before I realized my flight was boarding and I was not boarding. So I swear loudly in my head, go through security and run to the gate where I find that no one had boarded yet. I love how tardy Air Canada is.

I made my storied return to Calgary late Wednesday night and promptly froze. I slept quite well that night. The days afterward were spent feeling terrible on account of jetlag and the steak I ate on Thursday night. Apparently Alberta beef wages war on my bowels. Who knew.

We began the official debrief on Monday, which was a whirlwind of meetings and presentations and writing reports and what not. Team Cambodia was signed up for three presentations on Tuesday, and another Wednesday morning. I winged at least one of them. We didn’t have a ton of time to prepare, so our presentations were like a freaking clinic in mediocrity. The quality of work that we did all week wasn’t great, it wasn’t bad, it was satisfactory. And I’m okay with that.

Team Cambodia went for a delightful hike in Kananaskis on Saturday, where I got blister and wouldn’t fix it right away because I’m a real man. That, and the med kit my parents gave me was what some would call “Bush league”. But I’m comparing it to the med kit Samaritan’s Purse sent with us to Cambodia, which was full of assorted drugs and enough supplies to perform open heart surgery. It was that good. Birds then proceeded to land on me. Canada rules.

The intern group went on a retreat for a few days at Kingsfold, which was supposed to be a time of reflecting and what not. Here is the thing about Kingsfold, its awesome. Its has facilities geared towards being quite and contemplative. But all of us get along really well, Marley brought Dutch Blitz, Charlie Cook (Ambrose professor/intercultural expert) was dropping bombs of hilarity, and it was Carolina’s (regional project manager) birthday; so we ended up getting a little crazy. Its cool though, we made friends with some other retreaters there, and they didn’t hate us by the end. So you can run and tell that. Home boy.**

Then on Wednesday, I finished my last report signed my life away to Samaritan’s Purse Canada for another five weeks. Which means I’m on contract until mid-December. So that’s pretty neat. The internship is officially over. And it weird. I’ve been telling people it feels like 6 months just didn’t happen. It seems like May was last week. Another intern put it well by saying that other people are more excited than I am to be home.

I’m not entirely sure how the whole experience has impacted me. I’m still not entirely sure what I think about about the developing world, but there isn’t a disconnect between the Western world and the developing countries anymore. Here are a few things that I do know:

People live really happy and fulfilling lives; and have such a greater sense of community and relationship than we do. We (the Western world, as it were) are so disconnected from each other, and it sucks.

Lots of beggars and kids asked me for money. An ethical dilemma was presented. I have the means to meet a need (money), but by doing so I am perpetuating a system where I (as a white foreigner) rob people of their dignity and value. I had a really hard time with this.

I didn’t take as many pictures in villages as I wanted. Most of the time I felt terrible pulling out a camera that costs the same amount as some people make in 5 months. If only they knew I was carrying a laptop and three iPods in addition to the camera.

My attitude towards money and material stuff has changed; but I don’t want to be the guy that plays the “developing world” card all the time and guilts people into not buying things. But thinking about money in terms of how many water filters one could buy happens fairly often.

I use semicolons far too often without really knowing how to properly use them; but I don’t care. It makes me look smarter.

Development is tricky.

I think I’ll be able to make sense out of this experience with more time.

But hey, thanks for reading. This is the last post, and I think it was a textbook anticlimax. I’ll make the entire blog it into a PDF if anyone wants a copy. I’ve been asked about doing a slideshow or something. If people are interested, I would be more than happy to oblige. If you have any questions or comments, please send me an email (jeff.d.seaman@gmail.com). I’ll answer it. Unless the question is “How was your trip?”. I won’t answer that.

I leave you with this epic quote that gives me shivers every time I read it.

“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”
-Aragorn

Mmmmmm, shivery.

Anyways, if any of the following people read this thing, thank you very much. In no particular order: Steve+Jodi Chee for being the amazing, Nathan Chan for giving me a room and making bagels with me, Pool McKnight for hanging out (I lost your book in Kampong Thom, sorry), Jesus, the people from the house church I attended sporadically. The Clear Cambodia staff (specifically Mr. Viriya, Mr. Savath, and Mr. Heng).

I hope you enjoyed this mediocre final post. Be strong and courageous.

* You probably thought I was kidding about the John Mayer comment. I wasn’t. Lets play a fun game of “find the John Mayer lyrics”. Embedded somewhere in this post is a line from a John Mayer song. The first person to email (only emailed entries will be accepted) the correct line and song will win a prize. I’m serious. It will either be fake sunglasses, a tobacco pipe, or a hammock. You can choose. If you are from outside of Calgary I’ll even send it to you.

** inside joke; google “bed intruder song”

Another week in the field, and FLIGHTS GOT CHANGED AND I HAVE 16 MILLION THINGS TO DO!!!!!

All caps might have been drastic, but our flights back home got switched up, and I have been wildly busy in the last few weeks trying to finish things, set up Formstack for the staff, and attempt to be reflective of the last 6 months.

It’s cool though. I like to think I work better under pressure.

Anyways, a two weeks ago I went to Pursat for 5 days. Only two of the staff were there (the other three were in Phnom Penh/on vacation), so most of what I did was do some community health outreach, and a bit of field testing for Formstack. Then I came back to the city.

Last week I was in the office doing a million things.

Yesterday I bought a cheap guitar from a nice guy in a Hawaiian shirt . Now I’m in a cafe working very ineffectively.

Tomorrow I am doing a workshop with all the staff. Tuesday I am probably training a few office staff. Wednesday I am going for pancakes and then leaving.

Back in Calgary on Wednesday night at 1 AM.

Hows that for an update? Quick and dirty, with no proofreading. Just the way I like it. The only quote I can think of off the top of my head is:

That’s no moon.
-Obi Wan Kenobi

That had nothing to do with anything….

I wish I ate the turtle.

As promised, this is a very long and boring post. But there is gold at the end of the rainbow, if you catch my drift.

So throughout all of my travels, I keep getting asked if I have been to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I have always said not yet; to which I get the reply why not?

Here’s the thing about Cambodia. People love Angkor Wat. It’s on their flag, on every souvenir t-shirt, and roughly a million stores have some variant of ‘Angkor’ as part of the name. If I wanted to buy someone a painting, my options are limited to Angkor Wat, and Angkor Wat at sunrise. I swear the only thing people paint is that giant temple. And its not just Cambodians love Angkor Wat, but the rest of the world too. When tourists go to Cambodia, they go to Siem Reap and see the temples. Phnom Penh, Kampot, Sihanoukville, etc are all optional. But not Siem Reap. It is considered a wonder of the world of something like that. And there are tourists everywhere. It’s the biggest deal in the whole country, and considered a ‘must see’ in Southeast Asia. So naturally I went to see it.

So, here I am with nothing to do in Pursat province on a Tuesday night except write a short novel of a blog post. Let me provide some context first.

Andrea, Naomi, and I had set a date to come to Siem Reap during a big national holiday called Pchum Bin. I have no idea what Pchum Bin is about, but I do know that everyone goes back to their home village and has fun. Phnom Penh basically empties for four days when everyone leaves. To some extent this also occurs in Siem Reap too, but the tourists hinder local people from seeing their friends and family. It’s akin to working on Christmas. No one wants to do it, and the people that do are mentally and emotionally elsewhere.

Then, a week before leaving, we added another person. Kristen had just arrived in Cambodia to intern at AOC (Asian Outreach Cambodia, the NGO Naomi works with), and having just arrived in a foreign country during a weekend when Phnom Penh is dead, joining us to Siem Reap was a better option. I had also picked up a bit of a cold right before leaving; which was not ideal, but pretty darn easy to deal with.

So, with all that being said, we set out last Thursday morning at 6:30 for the enjoyable six hour bus ride to Siem Reap. There were a few odd things that happened. This bus, like most buses, had a TV at the front which normally plays terrible Khmer music/karaoke videos or terribly dubbed Jackie Chan circa 1982 movies (similar to Operation Condor 2, which is maybe the worst movie ever). This was playing for the first few hours and I drowned it out with nerdy history podcasts (Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, go check it out). Then, they put in a video of an inspirational speaker talking at a bunch of 13 year olds. What was odd about this is that it was in English, and the subtitles were in English. There were only four expats on the bus. It seems odd to seemingly cater to four people and disregard the other forty, but I had no say. Anyways, I wasn’t paying attention until I heard a bit of English. Then I looked up and BOOM. The dude had no arms and no legs! I was instantly captivated and watched the whole thing. His name is Nick Vujicic. He talked about being nice and what not, he nailed it. All the 13 year olds were crying by the end of it. Kristen said she was crying a little too. I wasn’t crying, but I was inspired. It was the kind of thing that every junior high should show to their students. That dude is legit.

Once that finished we stopped for lunch at a normal bus stop food place. Normal, except they had turtles. There were about six cooked turtles upside down in a pot with a few vegetables. It was insane. Even some Khmer people took photos. I honestly wanted to try one, because really, when are you ever going to get the chance to eat a turtle (and keep the shell). But the girls seemed legitimately offended (Kristen is also a vegetarian), so I opted out. And they did look disgusting…..

Anyways, so we get to Siem Reap and check in at the place we stayed (called Journeys Within, and they do awesome work in Siem Reap and surrounding area). The place was amazing, and had a pool and free breakfast and what not. Andrea, Naomi and I immediately went to eat some foods and check out a photography gallery by some guy named John McDermott. And he takes insane pictures. The prints are a few hundred dollars for the cheap ones. Apparently he used some infrared film and took photos during a solar eclipse. The guys got good timing.

That evening we went to see some temples. If you didn’t already know, Angkor Wat is actually just one temple in the Angkor Archeological Park (there are lots of wicked old ruins that are slightly less famous than the namesake). So we go to the park, pay for a three day pass, and get to a temple where every tourist every flocks to see the sunset. It was super busy, but the sunset was super awesome. And the temple was really old. Other highlights include me getting yelled at for climbing something I wasn’t supposed to. Typical. Here is an intern shot in a doorway at the top.

Afterwards we grab a tuk tuk to a restaurant for some food before going to bed early, aka 9:00. Why so early? Because when Naomi, Andrea and I go for little weekend trips, we hit it and we hit it hard. We left the next morning at 4:30 AM, rode our rented bikes (our preferred method of travel) for thirty minutes to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat. I wore my headlamp. There were quite a few people to see the sunrise, but my goodness it was worth it. Our guesthouse even packaged some breakfast to take with us. So we watched the sun climb while eating yogurt and “rich white people fruit”, aka apples.

We left before most people to go into the Angkor At itself. I walked around and looked at stuff. It was unreal. Everything is so old. Oddly enough, what struck me the most was the moat surrounding the Angkor Wat complex. It’s massive. Probably a few hundred meters across, and it makes a big square maybe one kilometer per side. The whole time I was thinking ‘that must have been so much work back in the twelfth century’.

We hopped back on the bikes and proceeded to Angkor Thom (the next big area). Steve and Jodi had recommended biking along the top of the outer wall. So that’s what we did. The trail itself is rather unknown to most tourists, so we enjoyed not seeing anyone else for an hour or two. Its kind of surreal. It feels like a normal single track biking trail, but its on top of a 20 foot wall that’s really overgrown. We came to the corner and climbed up a smaller temple before continuing to the Bayon (the center of Angkor Thom).

The Bayon is similar to Angkor Wat, but not as big and with lots of carved faces. The whole time walking around, the only thing I could think was ‘man this is old, and must have been so much work to build back in the eleventh century’. It was also crawling with tourists. So we walked around for a while and ended up taking naps on one of the lower levels where few people go and the sun doesn’t shine. Napping was desperately needed because it was eleven o’clock by this point, but it felt like four.

We hopped back on the bikes, rode past some temples (but didn’t look at them), and made our way to this giant temple called Takeo. It was pretty much a square based pyramid with really steep stairs up to the top. So up we climbed. We made friends with a little girl selling postcards at the top and chatted with her for a while before buying some postcards. Pictured is me climbing up the staircase that is closer to a ladder than anything.

Okay, I’m going to make a bit of a digression. At every temple there are tons of Cambodians selling stuff. Normally it is bracelets, postcards, scarves, and guidebooks. I don’t really want to get into the ethics of young kids selling stuff; we can talk about that later. Most tourists seem to find them all very annoying and don’t like being followed by someone saying “you buy postcard special price one dollar”, or “You buy my water, I remember you” or “You buy my scarve you get girlfriend”. I, on the other hand, think its hilarious. One of my favourite things to do is drop a bit of Khmer to surprise them, tell them I won’t buy anything, and then tell them one of my friends will buy something. I feel like saying in Khmer gives me a bit of temple cred, and the sellers sometimes turn off the sad face, genuinely smile, and then have some fun at my friends expense. I think it’s funny. Naomi and Andrea didn’t. Kristen had no idea and always caved and bought stuff. That probably makes me a bit of a jerk.

Anyways, after Takeo we got some lunch and continued to Ta Prohm. This is the temple with all the iconic photos of massive trees growing over the ruins. It looked straight out of Tomb Raider, which might be why people call it the Tomb Raider temple. That, or in the Tomb Raider movie there is a scene with Angelina Jolie in coming through one of the archways. Either way, it was awesome. This quote seems to describe it much better than i can.

“Shrouded in dense jungle the temple of Ta Prohm is ethereal in aspect and conjures up a romantic aura”

The romantic aura for me was pretending I Indiana Jones-ed the temple and stole something important, and then didn’t get my heart ripped from my chest a la Temple of Doom. Because that would suck for sure.

We seemed to be getting pretty tired, so we decided to go to another temple. It was late in the afternoon and I was tired and had started to lose some of the awe that I first felt upon walking into Angkor Wat and the other temples. We quickly walked around and took some photos before making the long 15 km bike ride back to the guesthouse.

We were all pretty tired by the end of that monster day looking at temples, so we went swimming, showered, got a tuk tuk and went to a decidedly western café that made terrific food and also had outstanding ice cream. So we ate. And then went back to the guesthouse and crashed hard at 9:30 or so.

The next day (Saturday) Naomi, Andrea and myself (sans Kristen, who stayed back to relax or something) wanted to get to a temple farther away, and do a few other things as well. So we slept in to 7:30, ate breakfast, discussed how I infected everyone, and hopped into a tuk tuk for the thirty minute journey to Bantey Srei. This one was the oldest of all the ones we’d seen and was made from some other kind of stone; sandstone or soapstone or something else I didn’t care about. All I know is that there were tons of people, unbelievably intricate carvings, and people trying to sell me stuff. It was neat, and also involved following signs labeled “Way Of Visit” which pointed us down a path that (apparently) led to a village where tourists can see “traditional village life” or something. I already do the “traditional village life” thing pretty often, so I’m glad we didn’t walk the whole way. There was also a sign with a picture essentially saying “point at birds”. So I went and pointed at a bird.

After that we went to this place that has carvings on the bottom of a river. It was fun, and accompanied by a 1.5 km walk which many Khmer people deem “very far”. This is a culture where no one walks and takes motos everywhere. After eating food, we went to the landmine museum that was set up by a guy named Aki Ra. He was a child soldier that specialized in laying landmines, and now is the guy that removes all of them and set up a school for landmine victims. He is legit, and so is the museum.

It was mid afternoon, and we decided on one last stop before heading back. It was a butterfly sanctuary. And it was awesome. We got a tour and learned all about butterflies and stuff. Neat, right! The craziest thing was a stickbug longer than my arm, thicker than my thumb, and could probably beat me in a fight. It was ridiculous.

We headed back and got lots of looks that screamed “stupid tourists” for the way I was lying down in the tuk tuk being comfortable. We got back and left quite quickly to eat, this time at some pub ironically located on pub street. We went back to the ice cream café where I got a milkshake and a fish foot massage. This is the thing where you put your feet into a small pool and about five million minnows nibble at all the dead flesh on your feet. I paid one dollar for twenty minutes and had a nice conversation with some Khmer kids who did not have to pay, which was fine by me. Apparently I have a lot of dead skin on my feet. Who knew.

Andrea, Naomi and I finished the night with an enthralling game of travel scrabble, where I was made acutely aware that girls don’t find inappropriate Scrabble words nearly as funny as me. We stayed up to 12:15, which is the latest I’ve been up in since leaving Canada. Seriously. I honestly can’t remember a time being up this late.

Sunday morning consisted of eating breakfast, and then going on a tour of a silk farm. It was fun and interesting full of nicely made silk products. This tour came highly recommended by Peter Mahaffy (who is Naomi’s father and is also awesome), and it didn’t disappoint. After that we got some lunch quickly, packed our stuff and got on the bus back home.

The bus ride was generally long and uneventful, except for lightning that continually struck close to the road. We passed a big palm tree that was on fire at the very top. Crazy. Then magically we got back to Phnom Penh.

The end.

Wow. Long post. I was thinking about breaking it up, but I didn’t just to see how long it would be with pictures and stuff.

Just because you presumably made it all the way to the end, enjoy this video at a big dance party in Kampong Chhnang at the start of June. The first twenty seconds are the best, then it digresses into me awkwardly trying to figure out how to move my feet correctly. This is a good substitute for me until the real me comes back on October 30.

You know I’m legit because of the bandizzle hanging out of my back pocket.

Web+Log=Blog. Who knew?

And just a quick thought on blogging itself, and this blog that I’m writing. I wish I could say that I’m writing all this just so friends and family back home can keep updated. But that’s only partially true, and maybe 40% of the reason I’m writing.

I am mainly doing this to record my experiences, and write down all the stuff that I’ll forget within a week or two. It’s effectively like a journal that I make all pretty and put on the internet for the benefit of anyone who cares to read.

Does that make me selfish? Probably. But only 60% selfish, which isn’t too bad. Right? Probably not. I didn’t want this to turn into one of those boring travel blogs that gets updated once a month with a post around the lines of:

“OMG its been so long since I’ve updated this thing.lol. I’m super sry:) I promise to write more;) Travelling is sooooo amazing tho! Now I’m here in (tropical destination) and its so crazyLOL! I love and the people and the food and everything. I met some people from (Western European country or Australia) and they are awesome and tomorrow we are going to (local attraction). I can’t wait!!!1!!111! LOL. I miss my friends I back in (Canada/USA) but Its so great here. Byyyyyyyyeeeee. lol”

Seriously, could you imagine if I actually wrote like that? Full of emoticon and poor grammar….yikes. I hope someone really strong punches me in the teeth if I ever write something like that.

I feel like I’ve (hopefully) achieved something not even close to that. You know, even though I am writing this for slightly more selfish reasons, it’s still motivating knowing that people care and want to know whats going on.

So, I still love you all. Just relax.

That being said. The next post about our trip to Siem Reap + Angkor Wat is a product of having lots of time in the village with unlimited electricity (I know, the staff house in Pursat could be in Cribs if only there was an obligatory Scarface poster). It’s really, really long and not that exciting. So get pumped.

Remember this beauty from Star Fox 64?

“Use bombs wisely”
-Peppy Hare

Shout outs go to Nintendo and David Woods, who reminded me of this winning quote.

The monorail and crazy eyes? You guessed it, I went to Kuala Lumpur.

So, I’m not sure how it happened but I’m pretty shocked at how G-darn fast October snuck up (relax; the G stands for “gosh”, as is gosh darn). Wow. Only four weeks left, and this week barely counts. It’s a national holiday where everyone goes to their hometown and does stuff, or something. So us interns are going to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat.

I had never really thought about it, but over the last four months I’ve managed to get to every surrounding country and its capital city. I think that gives me permission to use the phrase “I did Southeast Asia”. And it’s all thanks to Air Asia and their dirt cheap flights.

So, as promised, this is mainly going to be wonderfully boring post about Kuala Lumpur. Sit back and get ready to stop reading after three paragraphs when you find something slightly more interesting on Wikipedia or TSN, or in the fridge, and realize that snacks take a higher priority than an x-tremely mediocre blog post about travelling to KL. Thats pretty legit though; heck, I would stop reading this if I was hungry and I knew there were some Bugles beckoning me from the pantry. Okay. Now that’s settled. Here we go.

We hit a seat sale in August and scored some super cheap tickets to KL for a weekend. So off we flew on Friday morning. We land, battle passport control, and take a bus to China Town where the hostel was. While trying to find the hostel, some random dude told me I was a very lucky man. KL was already sort of freaking me out. After checking in, we walked ate some food in China town and Andrea chatted to a vendor in Cantonese while Naomi and myself enjoyed ourselves immensely (we’d never heard Andrea drop Cantonese before). After walking around for a while, we sniped a taxi to the Petronas Towers, took some stereotypical pictures, and walked around a mall trying to pinpoint exactly what smelled like cinnamon buns. We didn’t find the place. Walking back to some road we passed one of the greatest playgrounds I’ve ever seen. Andrea got excited and ran to the swings where she gotten whistled down by the playground police. It was awesome. I had a hunch it might happen but didn’t say anything just because there was no way I was going to miss Andrea getting yelled at in a different language.

We got another taxi to a place that apparently had the best chicken wings in the world (according to the New York Times). So we ate chicken wings. I can’t pass judgment because I haven’t eaten chicken everywhere in the world, but they were honestly the best I’ve ever had. Chicken wings in Canada are all from baby chickens and doused liberally in some sort of sauce. These were wings from teenage/adult chickens, and they were ridiculous. My mind was blown all over KL. We walked some more, I rejected an old guy asking me if I wanted a girl. This freaked me out because he looked like a stereotypical dad. He even had a strap around his glasses so they wouldn’t fall off. Either way, the sex trade continues to sadden me. Then we got a taxi and went back to the hostel. I had the first conversation about hockey in four months with this Canadian guy (and Leafs fan), and then went to sleep.

The next day consisted of waking up pretty early, getting a different hotel, and going to the Batu Caves. The limestone caves have some Hindu shrines in them, and are also protected by a giant statue very very reminiscent of the awe inspiring stone sentinels guarding the great River Anduin. Seriously. The resemblance is striking.

After that we went to a forestry research institute and did a jungle “trek” and canopy walk. It ended up being really fun; we finished it with an impromptu self-timer photo shoot on one of the platforms.

We tried for a normal picture. This is what happened.

We tried again.

Then we tried an “everyone go crazy” picture. Andrea fails hard on this one. Not me though. I’m giving my crazy eyes. Check them out.

Awesome.

Afterward we went to KL Tower and decided not to battle about a tourists and school groups, so we went back to the hotel and took naps. Best idea ever.

After napping we made our way to Little India and ate some street food that blew my mind everywhere, again. This was for three reasons. There was lamb, it was delicious, and they made naan bread right in front of us. Oh baby. KL food beats Cambodian food like a rented mule. We spent the rest of the night meandering around a night market before going to bed early.

(Still reading? If yes, then way to go. I’m tad bit surprised….)

The next day we made it to KL Tower and looked out on the living testament to pollution that is KL smog. It was really beautiful and felt like a forest fire was really close by. We took the monorail (I know right! A freaking monorail!) to the bus terminal and went back to the airport. Funny story though. It was Andrea’s birthday. Naomi and myself had loosely planned something involving a card, ice cream, and candles. We failed badly. Naomi left the card in Phnom Penh and candles are impossible to find in China Town.

So we get to the airport and we beat Andrea at picking the best line at passport control. We go buy this nasty cake-like marshmallow sucker type thing in the shape of a kitty, and some gummy worms. Andrea finally got through, and we went to the departure gate. Andrea then went to the bathroom, which gave Naomi and myself time to buy a postcard, write a very short message and give Andrea the marshmallow kitty with two gummy worms impaled on the bottom of the stick. I know right, best birthday ever! The plane ended up being “delayed” for an hour, so I busied myself by spilling imitation Smarties everywhere, playing it cool, and exchanging money. The girls decided to sing Disney songs (not me though, I walked away from the embarrassment of being associated with them). The plane mercifully showed up mid-Mulan medley, and we went back to Phnom Penh.

We actually took Andrea for some fancy pizza later. So we don’t suck that much. And I still cry on the inside about not being in National Geographic.

Anyways, in the spirit of arguably the greatest Simpson’s episode of all time, Marge vs. The Monorail, enjoy this winning Homer Simpson quote (I could honestly pull a million quotes from this episode thanks to the Leonard Nimoy cameo and outstanding cultural references; writing credit goes to Conan O’Brien).

“Doughnuts, is there anything they can’t do?”
-Homer Simpson