VAYA CON DORITOS: May 2012

Ok, so I know that I promised to provide yall with photos of my trip pretending to be Indiana Jones while visiting Angkor Wat during the Khmer New Year Holiday, which I will do. But honestly the place is so immense and amazing that my lil iphone pics cannot do it nearly enough justice, even with my artsy $1 app that makes it look like I know how to take pics. There is a reason that tourists go there for a week and spend pretty much all day everyday visiting temples. There are like a million of them I am pretty sure, and they are all pretty dang cool too. I guess that's what happens when you have successive kings trying to outdo each other over a few thousand years.

If you really want to know more about it, my suggestion is to hop on a plane to Phnom Penh to come and visit me! I very much like visitors! When you get here we can cruise to Siem Reap and I will play tour guide and you can take all the photos your heart desires. We will even stop for the best cheeseburgers I have had to date in Cambodia. Sounds like a plan to me. We can even hit up Battambang, a sleepy town with some very cool old colonial architecture, awesome people, and good french fries too. Just give me about a weeks notice and I will take care of the rest. Done and Done. See you there.

Now I have some other fun stuff I want to discuss with you. I have been working on an idea in my brain, trying to document the different modes of transportation in the lovely Kingdom of Cambodia. Besides the Khmer Rich rolling deep in SUV's there are some pretty awesome methods of getting around town and making sure whatever goods you have get there too. From overfilled trucks with dudes riding on top, to bicycles with old ladies meandering through dirt roads there are multiple modes utilized here. With all the different types of ways of getting from A to B, by far the most entertaining has to be the moto. For me, I am actually getting pretty used driving our machines around town, which is pretty fun, albeit a tad dangerous and it can also be a bit hectic. Need to meet some folks to discuss NGOness at a coffee shop, hop on a moto and Pow! There in a jif. Need to grab lunch from one of the lovely ladies at the Russian Market, moto+me=done. Pretty simple math.

One drawback is that you never know when Johnny Law might pull you over for just about anything. Got blues shoes on, that's a ticket. Driving with a light on, that's a ticket(best part about is that it is totally illegal to drive with a light on during the day, but no problem driving at night without a light). Being white, That's definitely a ticket. But with all the dodging of the po po, I am improving my bargaining skills with them too. Very easy to talk your way out of a $20 ticket down to just a couple bucks. My personal move is to make a phone call, pretend I am talking to a boss at an NGO, then tell the copper to take me to the station because I would gladly pay the fine, I just need a receipt for the NGO. For some reason they never want to, wonder why...... Anyways now that I am official to drive with my real license issued from the Cambodian Man, I am emboldened to keep up my motoing ways.

Keeping with the theme here, many of you have probably heard me talk about how much I enjoy these thangs, so I made a plan to document these machines to show everybody stateside what coolness/crazyness I get to witness on the daily here. Really the best part about moto's in Asia is not just the machines or the people riding them, but what you can actually put on them. Motoists get pretty inventive when it comes to hauling around goods in these parts. So far I have seen pigs(yes not just one but multiple pigs!) on the back of a moto, 5 people on one moto(only 1 helmet though), tractor tires(about 5 was what I counted), and I have even heard of fridges being transported on these bad boys. Pretty much if you can figure out a way to make sure it doesn't fall of you can take it on a moto.

Last Friday afternoon, when my work was pretty much done for the day I went outside the casa/officina grabbed a chair and sat for about 25 minutes just looking for some fun stuff to cruise by. Literally in just the 25 minutes I was able to capture what I would say is a pretty nice slice of Cambodiana motoness. The neighbors were pretty hip to my game and it became a community effort to look down the road, see what was coming down our way and make sure I was ready to snap a pic. Savuern's father, who is probably the coolest dude in Cambodia by far, was more than happy to play lookout for me and give me a thumbs up when he saw a good rig on its way. When I showed him the afternoons work of street snapping unsuspecting moto drivers, we were both satisfied with our work.

It now becomes a bit of an afternoon trend, taking a 15 minute break to hang out on Savuern's porch, eat a cookie, mango, or whathaveyou, talk in broken English and Khmer, mostly not understanding anything being said, but somehow smiling and laughing a whole lot. They also find it fun to watch what stuff gets strapped to the back, sides, tops, whatever of these. Pretty good times and when you come to visit the temples I can take you there too and enjoy the radness of the hood and its inhabitants.

Here is some of our handywork from the afternoon, and ok ok a couple pictures of temples too. Enjoy!