For a moment today, I was almost cold

Rainy season is finally here, thank the blood-drinking New Year Devada. When I left the National Museum this afternoon—first visit ever, she typed sheepishly—I was confronted with a bit of a monsoon. Rather than stand under an awning and listen to the loud conversations of fat French tourists wearing too much perfume, I decided to venture into the weather on my bicycle.

Yes, my knuckles were white from the fear of colliding with a Land Cruiser whose windshield wipers had failed, but it was worth it. For a 20 minutes today, my clothes were soaked through, but not with sweat—how refreshingly different.

When it rains here, it’s not like Vancouver rain. There’s real volume to Phnom Penh rain. At the corner of Sisowath and Sihanouk, the puddles were so deep that my feet were completely submerged on the bottom half of my pedal revolutions.

That corner is where I saw a motorcycle with a teenage boy hanging off the back of it. He was holding onto the seat and dragging his feet, fishtail style, through the puddles as his friend drove at full speed. Moto surfing? Awesome. I think I’m going to like rainy season.

***

As has been thoughtfully pointed out on several occasions, I have been somewhat lax in updating this blog. In part, I blame my Internet connection. Uploading photos takes something like a week. Hence this imageless entry, which may be the standard for this diary from here on in. My words are evocative enough on their own, right? (To which my mother replies, resoundingly: “WRONG!”)

But if you really want honesty from me, my life has suddenly acquired some new priorities that take up much of my free time. I can no longer imagine a life in which a week passes without a manicure, pedicure, and massage. Yesterday, I partook in all three. Who has time for blogging when my pressure points need stimulating?

Clean and white as the womb

of course

My older sister buried her son’s in the backyard. Guess she didn’t think that maybe someone in Cambodia might want it.

But more importantly:

just what I needed

It’s nigh on impossible to find skincare products in Cambodia that don’t boast of their whitening powers. I just re-upped my exfoliant supply, thinking that I’d somehow found the only non-wiggerfying cream at Lucky Supermarket, only to discover that small print on the label: “rejuvenates, revitalizes and whitens”.

Every summer of my life, I have crammed in as many sweaty, boring hours in the sun as I could to dim the whiteness of my skin. Now I find out that I’ve wasted my time. Almost all of the Cambodian people I interact with on a regular basis have made negative comments about how dark I’m getting. My Khmer teacher—ever the charmer—suggested that I’m turning African. Even our sweet little doorman keeps telling me I should start wearing long sleeves to protect my Caucasianicity.

My white liberal guilt starts panging like crazy whenever I see those skin lightening creams, especially when they’re made by Western companies like Olay and Vaseline. The racial and colonial implications are so obvious that I won’t expend precious finger energy typing about them.

But on the other milky white hand…

My friend/coworker Bopha is the only Cambodian I know who thinks white people look nice with a tan. I asked if the pressure to be pale bothered or offended her at all. Not at all, she said: “I just think people want what they don’t have.”

Warning: This post is disgusting

Sometimes I feel as if my right leg is just about ready to throw in the towel. Never-ending knee problems, and now this. Friends, please sign your organ donor cards and specify that if you die in some horrific accident, you’d like me to have your leg. Thanks.

It started with a mosquito bite. I’ve had billions or possibly trillions of them since I got here. Case in point:

after my first night in PP

This particular bite had healed over long ago—or so I thought. I’d estimate that it had been two weeks already since the bite’s first appearance when it started itching again and become purple and swollen. Soon, the swelling had spread to the rest of my foot and I was having trouble walking. Luckily, I have years of experience with limping, and pulled it off with aplomb.

the word 'cankle' was invented for just such an occasion

At first, the spot itself somewhat resembled the exhaust-pipe burns that expats call Cambodian Tattoos.

Day 1: not so bad

When the problem first appeared, I figured it would disappear within a day. After all, I’m always complaining that nothing interesting ever happens to me. But when I stepped out of bed on the second morning, I got a bolt of pain up my leg and saw that things were only getting grosser down there.

Day 2: that ain't right

And so I got my honky butt down to the closest expensive Western clinic, where it was treated to a shot of antibiotics—they don’t seem to have mastered the proverbial shot in the arm here—and a dose of good old-fashioned bedside manner. The American doctor speculated that it’s probably a staph or strep infection, unless it’s that flesh-eating disease that’s been showing up lately, and golly, let’s hope it’s not antibiotic resistant. Did you hear about that woman in Brazil who just died from something similar?

He sent me away with a fistful of pills, and told me to return if it got worse or started draining. And so, the next morning:

Day 3: gross, yes, but I post this to uphold my journalistic integrity

More alarming, however, was my face. I’ve compared it to Jocelyn Wildenstein, a Cabbage Patch Kid, and an apple doll, but all my Western friends here were like, “It’s not so bad, promise.”

Pfft.

so kindly

But Cambodians know what’s what. At work, a Khmer reporter poked my cheek and asked wtf happened. My language instructor laughed at me and said I looked like a pig.

On my emergency return to the clinic, I was hooked up to an IV of antibiotics and had my pills switched up. No one seemed too concerned about my face. Maybe they all assumed that I’m naturally roly-poly.

Since then, the face has almost returned to normal. I never thought I’d be so happy to see those rhinocerian bumps on my nose. The pain in my ankle is way down, and I think I just felt a mosquito bite me—they had been staying the eff away from my poison blood. All in all, it’s a pretty magical Valentine’s Day in Phnom Penh.

(Specials thanks to Pants for all the research and advice!)

A word on my beloved Nokia

If I cast my mind back to mid-December, I seem to recall a mild, verging on manic, jealousy of my friends’ iPhones. Why wouldn’t my phone tell me the name of the song playing in the background at American Apparel? Why couldn’t that worthless piece of crap impersonate a glass of Bud that drained as I tilted it toward my mouth?

Lucky for me, I abandoned that obsolete relic along with my useless old life. Who needs satellite radio, email, and a camera, when you could have a phone with a FLASHLIGHT?

actually quite useful for identifying mysterious snack foods at dark beer gardens

—–

Yeah, this is a short update. I’m struggling with my first week of language lessons and intestinal issues. Khmer is hard; my stool is not.

Ma bicyclette

My second order of business upon arriving in Phnom Penh — after travelling back to the beginning of time to purchase this cellphone — was buying a bike.

The standard mode of transportation here is by moto taxi. You sit helmetless on the back of a moped — they like to pretend it’s a motorcycle — while the driver careens into uncoming traffic, all the while turning his head to converse in broken English.

Now, I’m no great fan of safety, but I am pretty big on independence. I just could not handle the idea of depending on — and paying for — other people to get everywhere. Walking is not an option. Cambodians do not understand the concept of exercise, and they will make fun of you for participating in it.

And so, my new friend Arielle and I hitched a ride to the bike market with Fong, a moto driver who acts as fixer for everybody in the house.

Fong inspects a bike for Arielle

Although the street was lined with stall after stall of bicycles, Fong claimed that this particular bicycle stall was superior to the surrounding ones because its bikes were “brand new”. Right. Brand new(ly stolen from the streets of Beijing and spray-painted silver).

$35 later, we were wheel-borne. From a purely topographical standpoint, biking here is a breeze. There is exactly one hill in all of Phnom Penh, and someone built a temple on top of it, precluding any cycling.

Psychologically speaking, though, biking in PP is something akin to swimming up a waterfall. A urine-smelling, dusty, car horn-serenaded waterfall.

Anyone who has visited the city can tell you that there are no traffic laws here. For at least two blocks of my daily commute, I ride directly into oncoming traffic, rather than risk crossing the road.

There is no waiting for a break in traffic to cross the street here. I just shut my eyes, wade out into the stream of honking motos and Toyota Camrys, and pray that everyone will take the path around me rather than through me.

typical PP intersection

I’m told that I’ll give up on biking when it gets hot enough to melt my spokes in a couple of months. We’ll see. For now, I’m totally addicted to the near-death thrill of it.

Sihanoukville: The land that personal space forgot

Watching the sun go down amidst the soothing sounds of begging

One of the key steps to easing into life in Phnom Penh is getting the eff out of here for the weekend. With that in mind, I headed down to the resort town of Sihanoukville with nine fellow near slaves. That’s right — we live together, we work together, we vacation together. I think I have enough experience with this sort of situation to know that our future is full of rainbows and unicorns.

A weekend in Sihanoukville is basically like a weekend at Point Roberts: waking up late, investing just enough locomotion to get your ass in a beach lounger, and then gauging just how long you have to wait before it’s socially acceptable to have that first beer.

Too early for a beer, apparently

There are a few key differences, of course. At Point Roberts, strangers don’t rub your shins and exclaim over the amount of hair you didn’t have the energy to shave before leaving the city (this is of course followed by an offer to thread the stubble from your legs). No one touches your stomach and offers their opinion on its firmness. Children don’t trick you into pinky swearing that you’ll buy a bracelet from them later.

Or, for that matter, hustle you at the pool table.

'You take picture? Fifteen dolla.'

This child beat four of the grown-ass adults I was with, winning the right to sell them $1 bracelets. What can I say — Sihanoukville is a bracelet-based economy.

All of the begging and bargaining were worth it, though. We spent the weekend gorging on ‘lobster’ — probably some type of humongous prawn, though a former shrimp-boater among us called it ‘sea lice’ — and fresh mango. When we worked up the energy to go exploring, we were serenaded from above by Khmer teenagers.

'And affa all, you my wunnerwall..'

The downside of any weekend away, of course, is heading home. As we hit the outskirts of Phnom Penh, it finally hit me: Phnom Penh is my home now. Not sure how I feel about that.

Exit ghost

In a happy turn of events, I did not repeat my last escape from Toronto, and made it all the way to PP without puking in one of those cute vomit-for-lunch bags. Sadly, the attractiveness of my seatmates seems to be directly aligned with the severity of my hangover. Crippling gut-rot = adorable frat boy; sober healthfulness = pasty guy with Finding Myself beard reading the Tucker Max book. My condolences to the women of Asia.

It was one of the smoothest travel experiences I’ve ever had. No trouble with my connections, no lost baggage, and, amazingly, no jet lag. Things can only go downhill from here.

an atypically serene Phnom Penh scene

*                                    *                                   *

I don’t believe in reincarnation or spirits, but I’ve always hoped that I’ll find some way to attend my own funeral. I don’t think I’m alone on this — who wouldn’t want to see the throngs of mourners and hear the heartbroken eulogies? The best part is that all of your faults and failings, mistakes and misdeeds, will be temporarily forgotten in the immediacy of grief.

Moving to the other side of the world has meant that I got to experience all of the good vibes of my own funeral without, you know, dying. It was a whirlwind of love and free dinners, and I just want to say thanks.