Slow Progress in Phnom Penh

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I’m sat in one of the expat cafes in Phnom Penh, typing away on my laptop, imagining I fit in here. I’m enjoying it. The place is full of NGO workers and everyone is talking loudly into their blackberries about government policy, development and general do-gooding. I like pretending to be one of them. Only my laptop is covered in duct tape and the battery doesn’t work so I can’t move more than three feet from a plug socket. They keep looking at me funny. I think they suspect I don’t belong.

Infuriatingly, my WIFI card is knackered, so I’ll have to upload this later. I researched and located the cheapest WIFI enabled accommodation in Phnom Penh specifically so I could sit and write up my project, and it doesn’t bastard work. So I wasted all day yesterday trying to fix it, then gave up, swallowed my pride and went to stake out a computer at the cheap internet place full of 12 year old boys playing Warcraft. Sigh. Needless to say, my project still isn’t done.

Despite my WIFI tragedy, I love the place where I am staying. I treated myself to this after two nights in a two dollar guest house where the walls were so paper thin I could have (and nearly did) quite literally put my fist through the wall and punched the guy in the room next to me. The new place is simply gorgeous, and exactly what I would want my house to look like, should I ever live in a tropical country. It’s part of the aforementioned trendy hippy organic NGO café. My room is bizarre. I did wonder why the other rooms are 40 dollars while mine is just 12. Turns out it’s because mine is a strange little attic room on a mezzanine floor high above the upper level of the café, and one wall is just a curtain. Whatever. It means I can peer down from a great height and spy on the NGOers, which amuses me no end.

So what have I been doing in Phnom Penh, aside from NOT my project? The first thing I did was head to a European bakery and eat three slices of cake. I like Khmer food but after a month, rice three times a day was making me lose the will to live. I also went on a huge shopping binge at the market, which I am now regretting. Do I need bright pink silk cushion covers, an extremely heavy carved Buddha statue and an opium pipe? Possibly not. Though now I am going to meet Kit and Bangkok soon (change of plans, long story) I can hopefully find somewhere to store some of my crap there and pick it up in September when I fly home.

I went to the TPO head office to say goodbye to San and the others. Sad times. I also went back to visit my Monk buddies, and gave them printed copies of the photos I took last time, which delighted them. I got to see where they live, which is worse than my two dollar guest house, though in the monastery I doubt they are troubled by people singing drunkenly in German at 3am. They fed me lots of food, including a watermelon which they insisted on watching me cut up, so they could observe “how you slice watermelons in your culture”. I was given a lecture on Buddhism and mildly reprimanded for having a red string tied around my wrist, which here is supposed to be symbolically protective. A Buddhist nun in Kampong Thom put it on me after reading my fortune and telling me, quite ominously, that I need to beware of traffic. I kept it because it helps me fit in; loads of Khmer people wear them. It was really interesting listening to the Monks explain how things like shrine worship, incense, candles and these protective strings aren’t Buddhist at all, but have become popular over the years. My Monks think these ‘decorations’ detract from the real meaning of the religion, but they have to play along with them because it’s what the people want.

I actually love Buddhists. I have spent a whole month talking to Buddhist monks and devoutly Buddhist people. They have always been happy to explain their beliefs to me and answer my questions, yet no-one has been remotely judgemental or attempted to hassle or convert me in any way. Why can’t more religions be that way? I was sat next to a Nigerian guy in an internet café yesterday who took approximately 30 seconds to progress from introducing himself to attempting to convert me to Christianity. This ALWAYS happens to me. What gives, Christians? Chill out.

I am leaving Phnom Penh tomorrow to commence backpacking, despite the fact that my project is still not quite in a handinable condition. I have all of the write up, most of the references and some of the appendices done. I just need to email my tutor and the clinic in KT, then look up some stuff on the internet. I have three weeks to polish off these little details. Obviously I’d rather the project would just DIE ALREADY so I could hand it in and get on with my life (and my travels) but it’s never so simple.

One last random tangent. Does anyone know how to open those little closed hoop earrings that go in piercings at the top of your ear? On my very last day in Kampong Thom, just before I left, one of the counsellors told me that such upper ear piercings, in Cambodia, indicate that one is a “gangster”. A male gangster, because girls would never ever wear such a thing. Fantastic. Thanks for telling me this, guys, after I’ve been here a month. So I’m trying to get it out but I don’t even know how, it’s been there years and I’ve never attempted to remove it before. Help?

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Photos

Baby Monks
Taken from back of moving motorbike.

Central Market
Like a bizzare alien spaceship landing in the middle of Phnom Penh.