My "ruined" trip.

Well, I have been to Angkor Wat 3 times and about 10 other Wats (Temples) a few times, pretty cool. Some of the farther away wats lack tourists and you can lay on the wat and the jungle animals come out, it's kind of cool, you hear them first and then the monkeys come out and stuff. Never thought jungle animal sounds coming from unbeknownst places would be relaxing as I'm an hour hike from a desolate road about two hours from the closest hospital that Lonely Planet recommends to stay away from. Yes, Cambodia looks like the set from M.A.S.H. and the Vietnam jungle movie scenes combined. You know those actors slugging through the jungle with their bald heads and sweating truckloads? They aren't faking it, it's about 35-40 Degrees and HUMID!!! In the net cafe it's 34C right now and it's night.

The foods great and cheap, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian).

Tomorrow is shopping, I think, or maybe the flooded jungle, not sure, I'll decide when I wake up.

There once was a crazy man who swallowed a spider, it wiggled and jiggled...

Well, I ate a spider for lunch today, it was about the same as my airline breakfast as far as taste. It was a big spider, about the size of my hand and it was deep fried. It didn't have much taste and wasn't bad. The funny part was that before I was going to bit into it, I didn't want to pick it up with my fingers because it was gross. It looked like a bird catching spider. This town eats almost nothing but these bloody spiders all day, whatever's available.

I saw a bunch of people riding oxen wown the roads and mule and carts, I think most places don't have power or other utilities here. The houses are all up on stilts and are made of bamboo and stuff, no windows and rarely doors, but I guess there's not much to steal. More to follow, goodnight. Also, lots of amputees, sad.

Should have guessed.

Well, my list for shopping today:

Money Belt
Power Converter
Water Purification Tabs
Ear Plugs

Well, Taiwanese buy group tickets and use Visa for traveling, so no money belts to be found.

Power Converter, I found some for $40 that don't include Cambodia, almost every other country in Asia, but not Cambodia. I guess I'll have to look more.

Water purification tabs, "Why do you want to drink bad water?" I was asked. I guess an islans that's afraid of camping doesn't need water tabs, if there's no drinking water, why would you go there?

Ear plugs, this should be the least shock to me. The guys operating pile drivers at construction sites wear baseball caps and rubber boots, safety is not a problem in Taiwan, it's not even an option. I was told to bring the ear plugs for the boat, I guess mufflers haven't been introduced in Cambodia.

So, that's 0 for 4 on my shopping excursion.

Adventure awaits.

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught." ~Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1890


Well, it seems that the more I learn about Cambodia, the more of an adventure it seems to be turning out to be.

"Cambodia is the most undeveloped nation in south east Asia, with over 80% of the population living under thatched roofs." Life

Let's look at this logistically:

1. I am a foreigner = RICH.
2. They are Cambodian = DIRT POOR ($5US a week!!!)
3. 2004 was the first full year that Cambodia was war free = loose ends.
4. There are no bank machines in Cambodia = I must bring all the cash I will need and more, it must me on my person.
5. There are highway robberies.
6. Many kids have orange hair because of severe vitamin deficiencies.
7. Every time I see medical advice, it says to get the hell out of Cambodia into Thailand for medical treatment.
8. "Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world."
There are 4-6 million unexploded landmines in Cambodia = so much for going off the beaten path.
9. They have had human cases of Avian Flu.

All the sites I've looked at say that it is now safe to travel at night in Cambodia, but don't do it anyways. The mines have been cleared for where I want to go, so that is also a good thing. But I want to go out with the mine clearers for the day, talk about an experience. I can't wait to go, I think this experience will help with my "Eyes wide open" experience of the world.

"Cambodia has one of the largest numbers of landmines in the world. It's estimated that four to six million mines litter the country. They were placed there by a variety of groups, including the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian government and the Vietnamese. Since 1979, 40,000 Cambodians have had to be amputated as a result of landmine accidents. 97 percent of the victims are civilians."

If these people can't clean up landmines, build a hospital, cull the crime and have enough food, this ought to be a cultural experience to say the least.

I'm planning to do it with my backpack and the boat trip looks to be more than a little shifty, I was debating a land route, but everyone I've talked to says that I MUST take the boat, it's one of the most experiencing parts of the trip. A boat listed for 100 people, with 400 people in, on and hanging off of along with produce and goods. All for 7 hours sitting on the roof because the interior is too stuffy while trying to avoid sunburn and dehydration... did I mention Pirates, apparently, there are a lot of armed soldiers on the boat just in case and it hasn't happened for a year or so. I'm trying to pack really light so that I can be mobile and not have to make a home base. Apparently, I can get a SIM card for my cell phone, so I should have affordable communication.

To Bring:
2 pants
3 shirts
lots of fresh socks and undies
sunscreen
mosquito spray
a hat
iPod for my music and camera
my camera and some equipment
chargers and power adaptor
a flashlight
Lonely Planet Book (Cambodia, of course)
Money Belt
Water Purification tabs
AK-47 Assault rifle

Hope I brought enough but not too much, this scheme worked for Thailand, but I used a home base because I brought all my diving equipment. I might bring a small backpack In case I do decide to leave some stuff around. I will only need to take my iPod, Camera and cash,the rest isn't worth anything... beyond replacing.

New York Times article on Cambodia

P.S. I hope the weblinks worked.

The Lost Post

While I was digging through my computer and "To-do" lists, I found a lost post.

From January 8th, internet problems.

"Well, it was Chinese Paul's birthday tonight, so Cherie took him out for Japanese all you can eat at Soto. While we were there I saw a beautiful girl sitting a couple tables away who seemed to be having a blast with her female friend. I said that that's the kind of girl I want and Cherie asked if I wanted her to "scope her out." Luckily, this beauty went to the bathroom and Cherie soon followed. They both came out and Niki turns out to be 21 and single. She even speaks English, but it's not much compared to my "Welfare" Chinese, which isn't much. So, we stuck with Chinese and she tried to speak some English, which helped. Cherie was a good translator for the tough stuff."

Update:
Niki never panned out, I think the language barrier is far too much. I can't read very well in Chinese and I can type even worse and she doesn' know much English. Whatever, I saw a cute happy girl and took a shot, she was too far away.

Movie Day.

In leiu of the Colonels retreat this morning, I decided to celebrate with cinematic festivities today in class. I felt fine today, I even went out early and helped my bosses deliver flyers to an Elementary school, it's paid voluntary work, and yes, I do get an option. So, when I felt sick yesterday, my boss said I should just watch movies... nah, I taught, if I'm going to be miserable, my kids might as well be, too. But today, I brought my laptop and my SCUBA diving DVD from Thailand. Myu kids laughed at me and when we were naming all the sea creatures, I came up as "Handsome People Fish."... I've been called worse. They even named the Lion Fish, I guess it's the same in Chinese. They thought it was cool but I think it will bite me in the ass. One of my kids (Vincent) is going to Thailand for Chinese New Year and I now think he's set on SCUBA Diving... he's 11 years old. I think his parents had other plans for their trip. "Can we swim with sharks now? Can we swim with sharks now? Can we swim with sharks now?"

What else? Not much. But I'm feeling fine, I think it was food poisoning as I wasn't feeling sick except for those damn kids blowing up balloons in my guts.

P.S. I'm sorry for not proof reading my last post, but hey, no one's paying me, are they? Donate a comment.

Mystery solved: Colonel Saunders, in Asia with the bucket.

Well, I decided to pay a solitaire game of murder mystery last night. Ii was itchin' for some grub and so I thied a little of everything.

My order:

A 6 piece bucket of Chicken from KFC (Spicy and Regular)
Salmon, chopped veggies and rice from a Japanese grill.
Mango milkshakes from the "Taiwanese juice guy down the street."
Chocolate fugde mousse cake from a French Bakery.
Rye and Coke.

Someone tried to poison me as the mystery begins.

Well, the Taiwanese have always loved foreigners, so that rules out Juice man. If it were the Japanese, they would have just sent a Ninja in my sleep. Canadian Rye, well how could I possibly point a finger at something so pure? The French love their baking and if I die, who will buy all their cakes? This leaves one group left...

The bloody Americans, KFC has never been a safe food in any country. They sent their top Colonel to get me, I must know too much. Colonel S. tried to kill me with a slow agonizing death. It must have been bad, because as thousands will attest, I have an iron stomach, lined with lead, just incase.

I ate this global feast and went to bed... after sleeping for about 2 hours, my Spidey Senses started to tingle and my gut was playing bumper boats. I got up and went to the washroom to ease a "little off the top" and before you know it, I was sitting in a full pot of Chicken soup. It sucked. I spent the rest of the night on the can at 15 minute intervals and went to work today with tanks staging the Battle of Normandy in my gut (I hope that wasn't a sea battle). My boss told me I should have stayed home, not my style anymore. However, tomorrow, I think we might watch my scuba diving video for 30 minutes in each class... a quiz will follow, of course.

So, with my game of Clue wrapping up, I have decided it was Colonel Saunders in my gut, with the bucket of chicken. Now it's my turn to seek my revenge.

A New First in Foreign Dining.

Well, it was Chinese Paul's birthday tonight, so Cherie took him out for Japanese all you can eat at Soto. While we were there I saw a beautiful girl sitting a couple tables away who seemed to be having a blast with her female friend. I said that that's the kind of girl I want and Cherie asked if I wanted her to "scope her out." Luckily, this beauty went to the bathroom and Cherie soon followed. They both came out and Niki turns out to be 21 and single. She even speaks English, but it's not much compared to my "Welfare" Chinese, which isn't much. So, we stuck with Chinese and she tried to speak some English, which helped. Cherie was a good translator for the tough stuff.

We had a great talk and she seems great... but she was busy tomorrow with her friend but wants to do something next time she's in town. Yes, sadly enough, she's form TaiJung, about 4 hours away by bus, the same city as MeiLing (the girl I fell head over heels for last year who then moved to University).

Anyways, we swapped numbers and emails...

This was kind of a cool first for me, I picked up the best looking girl in a packed restaraunt of about 300 people. Next time, I'll try to order a more local dish. But, this kind of gave me some confidence and maybe I just fluked big time. I'm tired of potential that never seems to take shape... so, I'm going on the aggressive and I figure an hour of dreadful coffee is the worst I'll have to endure from this as I feel I am big enough to fend off any accidental jealous boyfriends.

Later tonight, I went to a new lounge on the pier and had a blast with Cherie, Paul was tired, so it was just Cherie and I. I drove from her house to the Pier by the sea and we went to the lounge, it was opening night. It was the classiest place I've ever been into. It seemed like Club 54 from the movies, but was a hundred times better. They had live bands all night that weren't straining the speakers and their English songs sounded like Englsih, although they were a little 90's, but only the best. They sang Chinese and Japanese songs, but none of it was heavy metal or anything, all of it was easy to listen to.

Cherie got drunk for the first time ever and she was really giddy on the drive home. We had fun. Her friends who invited us out didn't speak a lick of English, so I did some serious brushing up on my Chinese, I really had a great time and I am feeling more comfortable using Chinese as a sole language. I chatted for 5 hours in Chinese, I know I didn't speak English because they wouldn't understand it. Cherie helped me out a little, but not much. Had a great talk and ate some good food.

By the way, I found out why the beef in my absolute favorite food (Tomato beef soup) is always the same size and round with some cartilage in the middle... it's the tail of the cow. Whatever, I've never asked, and I'll never tell, I still love the soup.

Also, my Canada trip really gouged me for finances so I paid for my Cambodia trip in Canadian funds. That sucks. "I'm off to see the wonder, the 2nd wonder of the world. Because, because, because, beacause! The wonderful things I does!" Angkor Wat, here I come.

ESL Joke of the day.

I have achieved the impossible. I have instilled humor into my students.

One thing my first boss in Taiwan told me was:
"First you feed them and then you pull it back out."

Well, I have been feeding like crazy and now one of my students spit something up.

Jimmy: "Teacher, what's a monkey plus a monkey?"
Me: "I don't know... you?"
Jimmy: "No, Monkeys!"

Ok, so I'll admit, I hope like hell that THIS isn't exactly what I've been feeding my kids, but it's a start. A baby's first step is never a gracious one.

On a positive note, it can only get better... I hope.

I wanted to go to the waterfall where the rockslide was, I can finally get to the top of the mountain now that all the trees have been abolished. But it's too cold and no one is stupid or strong enough to go with me. I guess I'll go later. Paul (Vancouver) is probably the only person in Taiwan who knows where it is, so if I'm never heard from again, he can probably help.

I might wait till next weekend, Paul might come with me, then there'll be NO ONE to come collect our corpses.

It's Chinese Paul's birthday, so we are going to SOTO Japanese all you can eat buffet! Wahoo!

My Life Flashing Before My Eyes

Well, I got off the stinkin' plane, caught a nap, unpacked some stuff and then taught English.

Some things I've learned:

1. Only 80% of glass beer bottles survive trans-Pacific flights. (8/10 ain't terrible)

2. Santa visits less than 5% of Taiwanese kids, rumor has it that he was sick this year.

3. 63% of all statistics are mad up on the spot.

4. 100% of painting easels get damaged after customs or security screws with the crap in your suitcase and don't take time to put it back properly.

5. Travel screws up computer stuff, bringing me to this post.


Well, I plugged in my external hard drive this week and it didn't show up on my computer. So, I tried the other one... the same. What the hell, maybe it's the adaptor? So, I brought one of the hard drives to a computer store and hooked it up and it was DOA. Crap, so Ii brought the other one that had all my important stuff on it... it worked, soo happy, so I bought it home and it didn;t work again. Have you ever taken your car to the mechanics and it ran better than it ever did? Did it immediately screw up as soon as you were out of the mechanics parking lot? Yeah, dumb question, huh? Sort of like, "Is water wet?" Anyways, I think I might try a new adaptor. I went to get one tonight, but the store was expensive and they don't believe in refunds. I'll go back downtown tomorrow and deal with it.

My life flashed before my eyes, this drive has everything in it. It has all m y pictures, school stuff, stories, essays, music, all my music, I love my music when I travel, it can make time fly and can pretty much fuzz life out when you need it. On the good side, the headphones seem to almost work by themselves, whenever I wear them, people don't seem to talk to me, even if the other end is plugged in to my belly button, makes no difference. If anyone ever needs a break, just buy some cheap but comfortable earphones, no need for expensive CD players.

So, before I left Canada, I backed up my Simpsons and Family Guy episodes onto DVD and never bothered with my pictures. My mom said I had given her some CD's of my pictures, but they were only the condensed slide shows. She has about 10 CD's of mine, and I had about 40 CD's worth of pictures.

Tomorrow, I will trek through the bowels of computerville looking for solutions to my problem, hopefully, it will wind up as a $40 new case for my hard drive, to replace the 6 month old $40 case I already own.

Alternatives:

1. My life down the tubes.

2. Pay some rich guy in the states $3,000 US to peel the data off my busted ass hard drive, now he's an even richer guy.

3. Buy a new hard drive and re-tour Asia with my camera and replace the pictures that way. This would be much more fun... and quite possibly cheaper! (I'm serious)

4. Find other peoples pictures and paste my face on them to make them my own.

5. Buy a new $40 box and hope like hell it works. (My favorite option)

6. Build a time machine, go back to Christmas, back up my crap, go back to 1996, buy a whole bunch of BreX, go to 1998, sell my BreX right before the crash, come back to now and sell the machine for a huge amount.

7. Pretend Asia never happened.

Well, off to bed, I have an early start of building up on stress just so I can take it out on my students. Tomorrow, I will have a date with my DVD burner doing some backups of pictures, or I will start on my time machine, I hope it's the burner.

Interesting thing today:
I was getting juice from my roadside juice stand and the little boy was pissing around with the cooler, the mother reached behind somewhere and brought out a willow stick and threatened him. He still did not stop, so she "switched" him into a better understanding. As she did this, she just smiled at me and laughed a little at my amazement. It's not strange here, it's the norm. The other customer didn't even pause in his speaking.

Gonna be a LOOOOONG day.

Well, I woke up at 11:00AM (after going to bed at 4:00AM) on December 31st, 2005... I will be going to bed at 8:30PM on January 2nd, 2006. That means that today is 57.5 hours long!!! Ok, so timezones play a part, so, maybe that add jetlag to the equation.

Anyways, travel sucks, but intoxication helps the time pass, and then you have plenty of liquids and time to get your levels back. A Stewardess referrs to this as "time juice."

Well, I guess I have to teach today, I'd rather fire up the Skidoo and have a snow fight. Yuck, I'm not in an energetic place right now. Nope, but the seat today felt alot better, I didn't have to lie on the floor and the food was ok. I'm so glad to have my iPod that can pump tunage into my skull for 12 hours straight. Somehow, I lost my computer dvd's with all my Simpsons and Family Guy stuff on it, so much for watching hours of cartoons. Maybe I'll go lay infornt of the door at my boarding gate so that they can't load without waking me up.

Stupid head.

Well, travel sucks.

I went to Edmonton and the check in girl said my bags were 70lbs and I could only have 50lbs or pay $35 each. After an hour, she realised that she was wrong... stupid head.

Other than that, the flight sucked but I slept for most of it and missed the free champangne, so, I slept, better than being concious.

Whatever, I'm too grumpy to write nice stuff but Christmas was mostly awesome other than being plagued with bumps and falls (grandma, father, remote controlled race cars, father (just incase the first broken rib didn't take), favorite ornaments).

Bah, 12 days was wayyyyy tooo short and waaaaayyyy too expensive, but something I needed.... did I mention cold?