moderatelyExcessive

I still haven’t made it out of the city, as I’ve been busy securing necessities for the new apartment, seeking additional employment, and scheduling meetings with those who I’ll be developing/designing the Friends, International websites.

I finally took the camera along to the Central Market, an incredible art-deco building which houses countless vendors hawking everything from jewelry to electronics to edible insects. The are hundreds of individual vendors, which makes things slightly difficult when you have to bargain with each of them in a language you can barely speak. But like many before me, I brought along a Khmer friend who managed all my negotiations for the price of a $2.50 pair of shoes. Some things at the market are extremely cheap (like the shoes and other clothing), and some things not quite so (a fitted sheet and a few pillowcases for $14.00?!). In the end, I think I made out well, but the truth is that I don’t have the slightest clue.

My studio apartment is now starting to resemble a place someone actually lives, which is a good thing, as I felt like a squatter for a couple of days there. The highlight is certainly the views from my patio. A panoramic photo isn’t really possible, due to the odd configuration of the patio space, but I do have great views in all directions. This is no more apparent than when the daily storm passes through (they always seem to arrive around 4:00 pm,and end sometime around 6 or 7). When it rains particularly hard, children immediately come to the park across the street from me to play soccer, splash around naked in the muddy puddles, or even swim in the flooded street in front of the Royal Palace. It is also at these times I realize how short-sighted I was in leaving my Aerobies at home. They’d be perfect for this place.

I have my first Khmer language lesson tomorrow, which I am just too excited about. It has been fun mimicking the things I hear others speak, and I am often being told how well I speak Khmer though I know perhaps only a hundred words or so. I think the compliments come from the fact that there are many Westerners who have been here for years and still haven’t bothered to learn a single word.

It is clear that many of the Westerners who come here approach this place with condescension and an expectation of constant service from the Khmer — certainly remnants of Cambodia’s colonial past. As I sat at a bar the other night, a Japanese man and a French woman introduced themselves and invited me to stop by the shop they just opened down the block, an ‘exclusive’ ‘gourmet’ cookie store which combines ‘Western baking techniques’ with ‘characteristic Cambodian flavors’. I had to choke down the words, “You’ve come here to Phnom Penh, and looking around, you found that what this place needs is cookies?”

On a lighter note, I was speaking with a moto driver the other night as he drove me home from work, and hearing I was American, he asked me if I liked Lionel Richie. I hadn’t the time to say ‘no’ before he began singing:
Fuck you.
Fuck me.
Fuck it together, that’s the way it should be.

Anyway…
On Tuesday, I will finally be making my way to the town of Siem Reap (”Siam, Vanquished”), and the nearby temples of Angkor. In reading about the temples, I came across the name Yama, which is the Hindu god of death. In Cambodia, the drug Heroin is also referred to as Yama. Another mystery solved.