An unscheduled, self-indulgent day


Advertisement
Cambodia's flag
Asia » Cambodia » North » Siem Reap
March 5th 2009
Published: March 6th 2009
Edit Blog Post

I seemed to be fully recovered from my stomach troubles by 6:00 this morning, and there's nothing like feeling like shit for a while to make feeling normal seem like near-ecstasy! I had a cup of coffee and waited to make sure it settled well, which it did.

Jaz and I are slowly finding a rhythm to our mornings. She's sleeping well, and when she first gets up around 8:00, it's prime time for her to be online with her friends. She opens her eyes, rolls over, reaches under the bed for her laptop and signs onto Facebook. This morning I asked how many of her friends were online and she said, "Let's see....63." So her fingers fly over the keyboard as she reads messages they've been leaving her since they got out of school and then she chats with some of them for a while. We do this little dance where I say, "How long before you want to head out?" and she says, "In a few minutes..." but she keeps typing and smiling at her laptop screen while I putter around the room waiting. We finally have decided that I should go out for a bike ride in the morning to give her plenty of time with friends without me feeling stuck in the room, so tomorrow that shall be our plan.

We spent a little time this morning doing some errands: I went to the ATM and “grocery store” which are little adventures themselves. The ATM I use has always been reliable, but there’s something slightly dangerous-feeling about watching it suck my card in. What if it never spits it back out??? (I have another debit card as a back-up, but that bank charges ridiculous fees and my credit union charges me nothing.) But it always works, and I walk away with US dollars in my wallet and a receipt that even shows exactly what my balance is in my account. It still amazes me…

The biggest grocery store in town is fun to explore. It’s trying to be an American-style supermarket, though it doesn’t carry any produce or meat or frozen food. It has liquor and a decent selection of wine, with decent prices to match; an entire aisle of soft drinks, from Diet Coke to something called “Grass Jelly Juice”; and several aisles of various cleaning products, many of which I can’t tell what they’re meant to clean - your hair? Your laundry? Your baby? Your toilet? They also have many aisles of snack foods: crackers, cookies, and chips both familiar and not so familiar. You can buy Lay’s potato chips in flavors we don’t get at home. (Lobster Flavor chips, anyone?) You can buy something that looks like Pringles in a can, though the brand name is “Mr Tapioca” and the most popular flavor seems to be chicken curry. You can also buy Honey Dijon Kettle chips, which cost no more here than they do at City Market back home. There are also Prawn Flavor Biscuits, “Burnedmeat flavor” biscuits (which aren’t bad), and fish-flavored items all kinds, from potato chips to ramen noodles to jerky.

I especially love that you can buy baby teething biscuits in the liquor aisle and Viagra in the candy aisle. No kidding!

Speaking of drugs, I also made a stop ay the drug store to stock up on electrolyte powder to force on Jaz so she can avoid dehydration (that kid never drinks anything without me nagging her mercilessly!) and Cipro antibiotics in case of another longer-lasting intestinal issue. The Cipro is available over the counter, as are many things: Lori had a friend who once went off in search of ibuprofen and came back with Demerol. While I was at the pharmacy, an American woman was there looking for something to treat an irritation on her legs (from riding elephants) and was grateful when I remarked that the cream that pharmacist was offering seemed a good choice. Of course, despite her very smart-looking blue and white uniform, the “pharmacist” appeared to be about 15 years old, which may have explained the American woman’s lack of confidence. In chatting with the pharmacist, it turned out she is actually a nurse, which requires three years of training beyond high school, so I’m guessing she looks much younger than she actually is.

Funny thing about people and age. To me, everyone here looks younger than they actually are until they’re about 30, and by the time they’re 40, they can look quite ancient. I’m not sure how we look to them, but I know that people frequently ask Jaz how old she is and when she tells them, they often say, “Ooooh, so young!” We just haven’t figured out how old they think she is before they ask.

For the afternoon, we treated ourselves. We paid $3.50 each to use the pool at Bopha Angkor Hotel, where we stayed last year. They have a beautiful salt-water pool surrounded by lovely gardens, and a very helpful staff who will deliver anything from their menu poolside. We swam and lounged and ate some ice cream and generally felt very much like we were on vacation. The saltwater makes me so buoyant that I can float on my back effortlessly, with my ankles crossed and my hands behind my head as if I were lying in bed. I did that, gazing up at palm fronds and cascades of orange, white, salmon, and purple hibiscus flowers, feeling as though I was in heaven. There were perhaps a dozen people around the pool, mostly French-speaking and mostly just stretched out on loungers reading or napping. There was background hum of traffic in the distance, and the rhythmic sound of gardeners in green pajama-style uniforms sweeping with pink-handled palm-frond brooms, punctuated by birdsong now and then. The outside world intruded a bit only when the smell of smoke drifted in from a nearby trash fire and we briefly heard the loudspeaker from a passing tuktuk who drives around all day blaring a whining exhortation to buy something - at least I’m guessing that’s what it’s saying.

Jaz spent time eating fruit, lounging poolside and in the water. She would hang on the edge of the pool with a satisfied smile on her face, and I would ask, “Are you happy?” Yes. “Are you bored?” No. “What are you thinking about?” Getting tan.

I keep encouraging Jaz to read, but she hasn't yet, so after a couple of hours she was ready to leave, though I wasn't. Since the Bopha Angkor is only a three-minute bike ride from our guest house, we decided she would be fine to ride back on her own. Despite her initial lack of confidence in her ability to learn her way around, she's getting the hang of it, and she manages the traffic and crazy mayhem of intersections just fine. (The intersections have no lights or signs, and everyone just goes and manages not to hit each other, but the traffic isn't that heavy and everyone goes slowly, so it really is manageable.) My cell-phone-dependent American nature really wished she could call me when she arrived safely, but I got over it and hung around for another hour before going back myself. Ironically, on the way back, I missed the turn and overshot by a little distance, but it was a nice ten-minute ride anyway.

After rinsing off the saltwater and changing our clothes, we headed downtown with more indulgence in mind. Jaz went off for a $6 hour-long massage while I parked myself at a sidewalk café to write email. (Wi-fi at the guesthouse is down this afternoon, and since we borrow the signal from the guy next door, we can’t really complain about it.) While sitting there, a 50-something American couple stopped to ask about my laptop and ended up joining me for a half-hour or so to chat about travel, politics, computers, and a variety of other topics. They asked about my story, and when I told them what Jaz and I were doing, I got a kick out of the man’s response: “That’s great! What good parenting! Bill Cosby would be proud of you - and so would Barack Obama.” Well, I’m always looking to please Bill and Barack, so that’s good news!

When Jaz finished her massage, we went to meet Lori for dinner. We wandered Pub Street for a while to choose a restaurant, and eventually settled at Le Tigre de Papier, in part because it had a wi-fi signal. We ordered pizzas and Khmer cannelloni, and 2 beers and a banana shake, and just as our food was arriving, the telltale sound of an incoming Skype call came from the computer tucked behind me. “Steve Mojica calling” said the screen display. We hit the “connect” button and proceeded to have a ridiculously funny attempt at communication. Apparently, Steve could see and hear us, but we could neither see or hear him. He’s home from Portland now, but his laptop is off for repair, the desktop at home has no webcam or microphone, and he accidentally left his headset in Portland. Luckily, he could type messages to us, so we were able to at least make a plan for a better effort at communication on Thursday evening (Vermont time.) I’m really looking forward to it!

We were back “home” by 9:00 and didn’t stay awake too much later than that. Overall, we had a lovely day, and plan to do it all over again next week sometime.




Advertisement



7th March 2009

hello 4
Hi, YEA!!! Jaz is smiling , she IS having a good time. I remember that pool of course and the ice cream Jaz loved, delivered to her, AND they had GREAT food in the restaurant, cheap too. Jess, keep my child safe. Yes i know you will. LOVE, me

Tot: 0.224s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 47; dbt: 0.085s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb