Week of UnAwesome :(

So far so good right? After my first month here in Kampuchea, not much has really made me heart los estados unidos muy mucho, except of some of the basic life necessities like mexican food( just nachos with green chile and queson would do just fine please), people who drive between the lines, and TV. I guess not just basic TV, cuz we can find that down the street, I mean the kind that has 404 channels, and is available everywhere outside of here and parts of missisppi, would be my guess. Oh yeah and all of you lovely people.

Anyways, outside of an incident on an overnight bus, there were was lil to be concerned over regarding safety, besides just wearing a helmet when cruising the sweet motos around town.

Wrong, last week shit got real. I mean like real real real. Break ins, pick pockets, dirty teeves, and a good old fashioned bag snatching. Lets just roll through the week Monday-Monday. Its kind of a long post with even a touch of development theory at the end, something I told you was gonna be here on the last post, so grab a beverage, as it goes a little like this:

Monday- Not bad. Pretty good overall day, some decompressing from the Hochiminhsanity, starting to experiment with making my own Vietnamese coffee with my stash I brought over the border. Overall for here, prolly like a 7.5, nothing crazy notable, but a good day none the less.

Tuesday- Once again, things are just moving along nicely. I am actually starting to make a passable cup of Vietnamese coffee. We head out to Mith Samlanh, one of our NGOs we visit twice a week, teach some youngins. Same same as Monday for the most part up until sleepy time. 12-1am(talking weds here for those keeping track, but as i only count the next day when i wake up, its still tues and will make for a better story, just wait) things get a bit loud at outside the house, my room which is adjacent to our office which is a always bit noisey. I get up a couple times in the night but nothing seems too weird and out of place. No Big Deal. I get some more of that sweet sweet sleep in, and get up as usual, right before our morning meetings. Beauty of working where you live, zero commute!

Wednesday- Post 8:45am meeting things are going well, TPS reports and jibber jabber is filling the war room. Day 3 of Vietnamese coffee making, is a step back, too much water not enough magic beans. Around, 10 am, we notice that one of the windows is ajar. And not just kinda open, but rather opened, with a pry bar or two wedged in between the metal* window cages. No real damage, but somebody tried their hardest to steal all my deep v's and short shorts for sure, why else would they be here right. With that coming to light, precautions are recommended, and old wives tales of teeves using wire to snatch goodies, through open windows are regaled. No biggy, our house with our metal* window covers is safe and secure. Joe Pesci and that weird bearded dude from home alone and city slickers would have a tough time getting in, or so we thinks. Fast forward to the evening.

Already on edge from the night before, hard to sleep, and this time I wake up two or three times before 4am(cuz then it gets good), actually turn on some lights and walk around. This night is loud too, dogs barking, weird noises, etc. Well while I am dreaming about some chubby's chile chee fry, I get a phone call at 4am(this would be thursday morning). It's my roommate, and my other roomy calling me. They are freaking out hard. They tell me that a door is open in the house, after we diligently locked just about everything. I walk to the room and huddled under the mosquito net are two super scared roomies. After finding out we have an open door, from the inside, I am a bit creeped out, make that 3 super scared roomies.

Being the lone hombre in the casa, guess who gets to walk around a dark house in a third world country? Correct. For the next two hours I check every room in the house, luckily I found a baseball bat(made in China)and a light. Cruising around every room, trying to figure out if anyone was inside, we recognize that we are down a laptop, and someone decided to move our metal* window helpers out of place. This time in the bottom floor. Great. This is how easy it was to break in. Dude used sticks, I mean really come on, sticks to get in.

Thursday- Wake up and try to figure how to make our casa safe again, and figure out where to file a police report** get started on travel insurance forms and start to figure out how to better protect the casa. Start getting my bean to water ratio correct, and discuss that we will get a security guard, or maybe potentially move(due to the just described crime as well as the continuous burning trash dump a stones throw away. If you have some free time google this: steung meanchey, just down the street!!!!!!), or maybe razor wire, or my suggestion hang out in front of the house each evening polishing a shotgun and drankin some smooth angkor beer. With no shirt of course. Word would get around that there is a cra cra roundeye in the hood and don't fuck with that house. Well we make some moves, get a security guard, and then head out and grab a beer to reminisce the previous night at Zepplin Cafe, which by the way is by far the best bar in town with cheap cold beer and great tunage. Get home in a reasonable time, brush my teef, place the Beijing slugger next to my bead and fall asleep after a long day of UnAwesome.

Friday- Post theft, things are getting to feel a bit normal again. Less violated, just more of a realization that this country is real poor, and people will do what they can to survive, and that being a westerner around here calls immediate attention. My Vietnamese coffee recipe is getting honed in, lots of beans, liller bit of water is my new trick, used half a bag in half a week.

Things this day/ evening for the most part are nice. Our neighbors and fellow francofiles have a street concert, which was good fun, we get an out of town guest, and have a pretty laid back evening for the most part. On the way home around midnight cruising my moto(starting to get good at thisf point), I see a body in the middle of the road, face down. Not good at all. I hop of the moto and go over to the body, who is yelling for help in English (Thank god she was coherent, as usually when you come across a body in the middle of the road, things do not end up well. Either dead or a Zombie trying to dupe you into thinking they are dead only to devour your brains. I digress.). There is a crowd beginning to form, my roommates who were right with me are all there. After talking to the body we find out she is Sandra from Vancouver, and everything hurts.

We find out that someone tried to steal her purse while on a moto, a common theft around here, and she held on only to her purse only to be pulled from a moving moto, and then have her driver take off, leaving here there. My guess is that we arrived about 30 seconds after the incident, as we were the first folks there, and almost everybody passing by stopped by to see how they can help. We have our Skateistan ride with us, so we are able to load Sandra who is in some considerate pain into our car and take her one of the western hospitals in town. A French doctor lets us know that she has a broken collar bone, some chipped teeth, lots of road rash and bruises but will be ok. She will also heavily medicated for the next while. Once we can do nothing but clog the hallway of the SOS clinic, we head home and try and get some ZZ's around 4am.

Saturday- After waking up extremely tired, around 8am, we head out to one of the two daily sessions, and lucky for me I got the good one. Good in two ways; first was that the kids were killing it, hitting a mini launch ramp for the first time in their short skate careers. Second was that I didn't get pick pocketed, which happened to my roommate Frauke during the afternoon session. $10 or 7.55 Euro as she is one of Ze Germans that I work with was lifted out of her pantalones. Once again another theft. Starting to get old at this point. But we call Sandra's friend and find out she is on her way out of the hospital, and off to home in Vancouver soon. Travel safe.

We press on and head with the evening, and head to one of our freelance photographers house for a going away party with unreal ribs, Neddy believe you me I took notes, and then to another ex-pat party later in the evening. Great evening meeting new people and an overall badass time. We make it home safely, and I dream about how even taco bell would be classified as gourmet mexican food around here.

Sunday- Actually this day goes off without a hitch. Sleep in, no sessions, good eats, cruise the city for some yet unseen by parts. Vietnamese coffee, dominating it after one week, only missing the crushed ice. Fun times and quite a lazy Sunday for the most part.

Monday Again- One week, and so far it has been quite a doozy. With all that went on over the past week, one would hope that good karma, this is the land of buddha, would be cruising its way over soon. But nope, I become the most recent victim of the week of UnAwesome, as I have my local phone stolt, while at our Riverfront session. Now I didn't lose too much, but a few numbers and about $10 in prepaid credit which I just picked up. Side note, we had an almost doctor with us today who helped 3 kids with holes in their feet, not from skateboarding, but rather living the life of a street kid, which was a bit redeeming.

Now lets tally this up, in one week we had one almost break in, one real break in, one gnarly moto attempted theft, and two minor thefts. Quite a rough week indeed.

Yet, instead of being angry at what happened, well actually angry at what happened to Sandra, I can't help but start to think more about the cool stuff we get to do here. In reality I have started to realize not just what I can live without, but also more importantly what others are trying to live with. If we have the chance to get one of the kids we work with to not start sniffing glue and into something good, then I would regard it as success. Being here you meet a lot of people who work at fancy NGOs and places like the UN who are doing good work but are often obsessed with changing the world, which is great, but realistically unattainable, as whole. What you can hopefully do is affect the people around you and hope that they do the same to others, and so on and so forth.

Now that I have bored you with what I have spent the last two years studying and countless $$$$$ on, here is a bit more. I guess I just want people to know that creating new buildings and roads doesn't solve much, except maybe traffic jams here. Realistically, the only way for weeks of UnAwesome to slow down, here and in other similar countries, is to provide opportunities for people to live a decent life, thus the temptations for such UnAwesomeness are somewhat abated. It really is for lack of a better term, "Poor as Fuck" here, with people often living on so much less than $1 a day, kids picking through trash for food, yet often still smiling after it all.

For the nerds out there here are some stats: Bodia ranks 139 out of 180 countries on the Human Development Index, has a life expectancy of 63 years, and an average income of $1850 per capita PPP included. USA sits at 4 in the ranking, 78 years of life expectancy, and $43000 income PPP included(Thanks UN! Sorry for bagging on ya earlier). So on average, because of the combination of poverty, health, pollution, etc here, you are expected to live 15 years less in your life if you lose the birth lottery and get borned in Phnom Penh instead of a place even like Arvada. Gnar Gnar.

Sometimes I kinda understand what Angelina Jolie felt when coming here and picking up a couple ninos, putten em in her louis vuitton travel bags and taken em home.

Enough of the debbie downer, most of you tuned in for the funny, which I promise will be back. I just wanted to give yall something to noodle on.

Next Week either Cambodian Hipsters? or No Shoes, No Shirt, Get Radical! Depends on which group I can snap more photos of this week, which will be Awesome!

VayaConDoritos

Lorli



*When we say metal here, my guess its just shiney playdough, as my niece Z could could easily bend this shit into an oragami elephant.

** When I say "Police Report" I mean pay the police to file paperwork on your behalf, maybe even pay them to drive you to another office, and then pay them again to sign all the paperwork you paid them before to fill out. UnAwesome.

Ho Chi Minhsanity

Always read the fine print! If not you might end up like me, having to get a new Visa in order to fulfill my duties here in Cambodia. You see, I didn't quite pay attention to everything before I arrived, and accidentally purchased a Tourist Visa instead of a Bizniz Visa. Ruh Roh. What that means is that after one month here in Cambodia, I needed to get the hell out, and then get the hell back in with the right Visa in order to stay for the duration.

Now there are a couple options for this. First of which is taking a four plus hour trip to the Thai border, hopping off the bus, walking over the border, then simply paying $25 bucks for a new Visa, walking back into Cambodia, then hopping on a 4 plus hour bus trip back to Phnom Penh. Been done plenty of times by folks, and my roommates, needing to extend their Visa, and if you ask me a pretty fucking awful way of spending a day off.

The other option, which is less popular for some reason, but a way more awesome option is to take a six hour bus to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon fill your face full of pho and spring rolls, throw a couple cheap cold Saigon beers in the mix and have an overall pretty sweet weekend. I chose option 2, and could not have been happier.

Besides the fact that Vietnam is not a third world or developing country, which in itself was a great treat, I found Ho Chi Minh to be an amazing city with blends of French Colonialism smashed right into Asian Tigeryness, all tied together with some nice cafes and the best coffee in the universe. Nice green parks filled with young people just hanging out and chillen all over. Oh yeah and malls, a bunch of em, which I absolutely love!

Quick recap of my weekend goes like this: arrived at 3pm and promptly cruised the city to check it out, grabbed a banh mi(hold the mayo) and ca phe sue da(ice coffe with sweet milk), watched a lil TV and cranked up the AC in my room(superduper nice as I have been without both since I got here), met some new homeys and got my skate on( these dudes were rad and had names like Sword and Imagine), ate spring rolls and a couple Saigons(add a splash of pleasant dinner conversation with some Aussies), cruised the city more(got offered just about any vice imaginable as being a westerner rolling by yourself people have you pegged for a certain type), fell asleep( AC and TV on again), woke up and stuffed my face with pho and soda chanh(don't worry I had about 3 ice coffees later in the day), cruised to the ZOO(place makes the Denver Zoo look like a critter Ritz Carlton), looked at some communist posters(they are still at it), discovered Trung Nguyen(best vietnamese coffee chain), found the coffee bean(best american coffee chain), back to hotel(cue AC and TV), met up and skated with Sword and the homeys(this time there were about twice as many and it was twice as fun), ate a vietnamese hotdog(recipe: chopped hot dog, pate, laughing cow cheese, waffley/crepe batter all cooked together in a street forman grill), grabbed a couple more Saigons( Angkor beer is no match), went to go find some late night eats and ran into Sword again(no luck on the food), hung out on some tiny chairs and tiny tables(broke a chair), drank some johnny walker red with sting(a strawberry flavored energy drink, much better than it sounds, just ask my boss Benji), finally cruised home(last night of AC and TV), woke up and fed my face of street pho(this one had yummy chickeny meatbally tubes floating in it for added deliciousness), one last ca phe sue da(you bet I brought some coffee back),hopped on the bus( lucky for me this version didn't have the traditional mothball smell), maneuvered the border back to Cambodia(got that new Bizniz Visa!!!!!!), made it home by 8pm.

All in all I had a pretty good time and it was nice to see how much different these two neighboring countries, Cambodia and Vietnam, are. For a little bonus feature this week, I am gonna square them off in the first eva VayaConDoritos battle royal. At the end we will will see how these two SouthEast AZN amigos stack up.

Street Food and overall Yumminess
Bodia < Nam
Bodia has some good eats, but Nam has more variety and less flies.

Coffee
Bodia < Nam
No contest here, Bodia needs to stop serving Nescafe ASAP and get with the program.

Flavorocity of Beer
Bodia < Nam
Saigon and Hue taste much more like beer and less like water, Bodia you need to step up Nam is already running away with this.

General Lawlessness
Bodia > Nam
Bodia is pretty much the wild wild west, anything goes and I mean an y thang.

Moto Unpredictability
Bodia > Nam
Nam, sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and roll head on to oncoming traffic, yellow lines be dammed.

Livestock on the Road
Bodia > Nam
As soon as you cross the border in Bodia, less cars and more cows, buffalo, dogs, chicken, naked babies just straight walking across the highway. I do not envy my bus driver at all.
Making a nice lil comeback here Bodia.

Tummy Troubles
Bodia > Nam
Bodia you might have earned a point here, but not in a good way, wakka wakka.

Friendliness of Folk
Bodia=Nam
Push here people, both places have amazing and kind people always smiling and helpful to ole uncle lorli.

Cleanliness
Bodia < Nam
After a day out and about in Bodia you have a weird combo of sweat, grime, pollution, and maybe a bit of shame covering your body, Nam only has the sweat, and a touch of grime.

Mosquitos
Bodia < Nam
Pretty sure they forgot to mention in the brochure that I would have additional roommates here. Sometimes I think my blood is Mosquito Spanish Fly. Ouch.



Well, disregarding the extra point for constantly keeping my tummy on edge, it looks like its Nam by hair. Now I don't want to debate world politics today, just wait for my next post I got a lot to say about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness here in the Bodia. Nam was pretty rad, and a place I will be taking regular weekend trips to so expect another post or two about adventures on the east side of the Mekong. Here are a couple pics of last weekends trip and the remains of communism. Yayyyy!










Old School and New School Saigon











This is what happens when we lose a war.


Ice YUM YUM.


Nuevo Amigos, Sting and Walker, perfect combo.


Vayacondoritos
rorirent express

ANGRY BIRD FLU

This just in! The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning for Americans traveling overseas to Cambodia, and potentially Vietnam and Thailand(I haven't been yet so I don't know fo sho). It seems an intense and highly contagious form of Avian Bird Flu has taken over in Cambodia. From children to adults, no one is safe, as much of the population here has been infected. Symptom's include fever, disorientation, and a strong possibility of being slung shot towards a the make-shift house of a green pig.

Repeat, it is very contagious and the CDC recommends that those traveling abroad do their best to avoid what is being dubbed, "Angry Bird Flu." This flu has many modes of transmission, and though my crack hardy boyesque skills I have been working on the case to document and bring awareness and hopefully a solution to this epidemic. Below are some of the forms of the flu which I have come across in my short time here.

Something as seemingly harmless as this, a simple fishing bobber can easily be a vehicle for carrying the flu(this thing actually ended up in my roommates shopping bag full of veggies, trying to sneak its way into our guesthouse).



There are other ways this contagion can enter the system, through the use of office supplies that have been contaminated, quite an easy way for unsuspecting folks catch the flu.



Another way of catching this uber contagious flu is through wearing infected clothing, which seems to be the most common form of transmission, and has claimed youth and old alike, including our very own Chanthou here at Skateistan. Here are a few examples of articles of clothing which have or will soon have a host.






Can infect your feets too.



Here is a lil one that has the flu. He is one of our river front homeys and has a phone that has been infected too. No not with the game, with stickers. Cough, Cough.



Here is the Bird Flu in its most dangerous state. Infection of the mind, Inception style, where unsuspecting folks have their subconsciousness slowly being molded into a high flying, pig smashing bird. Yikes!



Overall I have seen little sign of this infection slowing down while here on the front lines. It seems to be just about everywhere. After doing some thorough research on my own I have discovered an intriguing fact. Nobody here actually knows where this phenomenon started. Really, honestly, and truly. They have never even heard of the game, here its just a bunch of Angry Birds taking the town by storm.

Next Time: Midnight Visa Run or maybe Cambodia the Land of Contradictions. Haven't figured out which will be more fun.