So Long Cambodia and Thanks For all the Headaches

This is me signing off of this blog until my next excursion.  I'd like to say it was relaxing but frankly it wasn't.  I haven't been relaxed since the moment I left home 4 months ago.  My shoulders feel like small muscly bricks.  It's been a great experience for me but certainly not relaxing.  I feel that I have grown up in my time here.  I hope I'm able to revert back to my normal life, I hope I'm not too grown up for Seattle.  I almost feel selfish for wanting to come home so badly, it's almost like I'm saying "I can't see how anyone can live here, it's abysmal!"  I want to be perfectly clear that I'm not saying.  I'm not dissing life in Cambodia, I want to be with my friends and family.  I wouldn't have gone through all the mental turmoil that I did if my family and friends were here.  I'll reiterate one of my previous points, I'm not giving up.  This isn't me giving up, I'm accepting the fact that I'm not ready to be doing this at this point in my life.  Before I sign off for good I want to say that I've learned a lot and I'll miss Cambodia I suppose.  It's a crazy place of motorcycles, tuk tuks, and no traffic laws.  Cambodia, you crazy messed up place, I bid thee adieu.

Royal Palace Revisited

My second destination on my tourist day was the Royal Palace.  Quite frankly, the Royal Palace isn't all that exciting.  A lot of the nicer looking areas are closed off.  It's basically a bunch of pagodas, some have relics inside, and you can't really take pictures.  You can't take pictures because the sun is your enemy.  Nonetheless I tried.  I'm much more impressed by the gardens and plant life on the palace grounds than the pagodas themselves, that's what I took a lot of pictures of.  The place that I spent a lot of time was a small isolated pagoda up in a grove secluded from the rest of the area.  It had a lot of buddha statues and it was very quiet.  All you could hear was the cooing of birds.  Very peaceful and serene.  Truthfully, that's all there is to the Royal Palace, not that exciting.  :/

Till Next (and last) Time...

Wot Phnom Revisited

On my last day in Cambodia (not counting my current travel day) I decided to play tourist and take photos. I decided that I would revisit two of the destinations that I visited on my tour of Phnom Penh with Language Corps.  The first one being Wot Phnom which I will talk about now.  I believe I talked about it in a very early entry but I feel that a little recap is in order.  Wot Phnom was Pol Pot's (still not sure if I'm spelling that right) fortress during the Khemer Rouge regime.  Wot Phnom itself is basically one giant pagoda (temple) with several stunningly beautiful buddhist statues inside (can't take photos in there though).  Around the temple are smaller statues and pagodas, the walkway is made out of very old brick.
At one part there is a giant outdoor clock.  The clock was built after the fall of Pol Pot's regime as a memorial to all the people he killed.  The philosophy behind it was that from that point on, Cambodia would start the clock over.

I didn't spend very much time in Wot Phnom this time because I'd been there before but I had a very good time.  When I got inside the central temple I noticed something that I pointed out in an earlier entry.  There are paintings on the wall that resemble a comic strip.  I suspect that this may be one of the first, if not the first "comic strip" format painting.  It has a definite beginning, the large panel at the back of the room, and each panel was spaced evenly from the next and it had a caption.  Not knowing how to read Khmer, I had no way to follow the story.  I spent quite a bit of time in this room, I even sat and meditated (you can do that) there for a few minutes.  It was stunning.

I walked around the rest of Wot Phnom taking pictures and I was disappointed that I didn't see any of the cute feral cats that I saw on my first visit.  As I was doing one final spin around Wot Phnom, I almost stepped on a cat!  I looked down at the floor and there was a very small hole where one of the bricks had faded away with age, inside the hole was a sleeping baby feral cat!  This was the smallest cat I've ever seen in my life!  I suspect he might have been malnourished because he's feral and all, he didn't exactly look healthy either.  Nonetheless,  I snapped a picture of him and there was a leaf right next to him and he was barely bigger than the leaf!  Unfortunately, my commotion kinda woke him up and he started meowing at me.  I wanted to pet him but I think he was saying "who are you? Why did you wake me up?" In cat language and probably wasn't happy.  I walked away and let him be.  I finished my tour and continued to my next destination.  The Royal Palace!

Till Next Time...

Let's talk about memes

This is a little different than my previous entries because I want to talk about the popular internet phenomenon called memes.  The general definition of a meme is some little nuance in society, life, film, tv, cartoons, etc. that become popular.  One of the original memes was the It's Over 9000!  Phenomena from Dragon Ball Z.  Other earlier memes include Rickrolling (Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you Up), Numa Numa guy, and Star Wars kid.  They are early memes that achieved mass amounts of internet popularity.  Memes take on a different medium nowadays in the form of pictures and captions as seen below.

This meme is one of the originals called Y U NO guy.  Like many memes it has a picture in the middle and a top and bottom caption.  It's usually in the format ______ Y U NO _____________?
Memes evolved from there and as a result produced many more meme characters.  Some of the characters include Paranoid Parrot, Scumbag Steve, Foul Bachelor Frog, Futurama Fry, Professor Oak, Slowpoke, Success Kid, and Put it Somewhere Else Patrick.  Success Kid is a favorite of mine because it's little kid logic we can all relate to.  There's an example below.

It's one of my favorites but unfortunately it inspired a new meme that is the most tasteless, crude thing I've ever seen in my life.  That is the ultimate point of this post.  I give you Third World Success Kid.

Let's start at the beginning because it is wrong on so many levels.  One, third world is not a politically correct term.  The correct term would be developing country.  I'm aware this picture is likely from Africa but I am currently living in a developing country and I have some things to say.  Land mines are an issue, so don't f***ing joke about that!  On another one that I didn't mention the caption is "worked 14 hours, made over two dollars".  In a developing country, two dollars is nothing to scoff at, in Cambodia you can easily live on 2 dollars a day, and Cambodia is the second poorest country in Asia (next to Laos).  It may seem like I'm making a big deal about this (and there are only 9 of these so far) but it sickens me how some people can be so insensitive and poke fun at developing countries.  To people that think developing countries filled with land mines, naked children, and poverty, why don't you come see for yourself instead of making broad generalizations?  I've seen the poor part of Cambodia, it's a shock and is not something to make fun of, the people here aren't lazy, they're doing whatever they can to survive.  It's hard living here (or in any developing country for that matter).  Okay I have been ranting for the last paragraph but there was somebody on www.quickmeme.com that recognizes the vulgarity of this meme and produced a fantastic response.

This meme is called Push it Somewhere Else Patrick.  It originated from a Spongebob episode called Sandy, Spongebob, and the worm.  This image comes from Patrick's line "why don't we take Bikini Bottom, and push it somewhere else?"  People on the internet have called it Patrick's logic and thus it made it's way into becoming a meme.  This particular one reinforces that you don't make fun of developing countries.  My ultimate argument to this is, don't make generalizations about the real world, until you've lived in the real world.  I may not have a lot power, being armed with only a blog, reddit, and facebook but I want Third World Success Kid off of the internet.  If not, I just want it to fade into internet obscurity along with the other memes no one likes.  That's my bit of internet history and opinion for you all, I apologize if I seemed heated there for awhile but this just royally pisses me off.
Till Next Time...

Super Special Awesome Day of Awesomeness!!!

Yesterday was by far one of my most exciting days in Cambodia.  In my last few days I need to play tourist to take pictures and stuff.  My plan for yesterday was to go to Wot Phnom and Royal Palace.  I go to Royal Palace and find out that it doesn't open until 2, it was 10 in the morning.  This tuk tuk driver that was nearby decided to take me under his wing.  Initially I just wanted to go to Wot Phnom and then back to Royal Palace.  This guy had different plans, he told me about a place called Oudong up in the mountains.  He wanted to take me there, I said yes.  This was 40 km outside of Phnom Penh so it made for a long tuk tuk ride.  Part way there while in one of the provinces, his moto broke down!  YAY!!!!!!  This of course made me nervous because what if it didn't get fixed that day?  I had no idea where the F*** I was.  The driver talked to me while his moto was being worked on, he was a very nice guy, very great.  He was my bud for the day!  After his moto got fixed we got to Oudong, and I got lead around by some Khmer kids.

They took me around the ancient Buddhist temples and I took pictures, they took a couple of pictures of me.  It was up really high and the temples were beautiful, you could see Phnom Penh from up there.  I took many pictures and then we went back down the 502 steps it took to get up there.  I saw MONKEYS!!!  The best part was I got some really good pictures of them.  I only took maybe an hour or so to tour the area, it was beautiful, and it was well worth the extra long tuk tuk ride out there.  This day trip wasn't exactly cheap, we travelled about 80 flipping miles by tuk tuk, I talked him down to 50$ versus 70 but it was definitely worth 50 dollars for that.

Oh the day wasn't over, far from it, after that I went back to the guesthouse to decompress for awhile.  I got some dinner at the Indian restaurant close to the guesthouse and then walked over to Stephanie's house because we were going to a party at Andre's house (an ex-coworker of mine).  After we all got together we went there, his house is near Russian Market and a lot of people were there, it was very nice.  I actually stayed there for a very long time before getting tired and leaving at 1 in the morning.  Phnom Penh is freaking terrifying late at night, there are no motos, tuk tuks anything.  The only thing I could hear (which admittedly was kind of cool) were my new boots clunking on the road, causing kind of an ominous yet awesome sound.  Eventually a moto driver found me and I got back to the guesthouse alive.  I ended my amazing, awesome day, by going to sleep for a very long time.

Till Next Time...

Cambodian Innovation

There are several unique things that you see in Cambodia that would actually be really amazing for the United States.  The first (and probably the most notable) is drink transportation.  When you go to fast food restaurant, you get your food in a bag and the drink in your hand.  The drink most likely freezes your poor hand.  Cambodia has the perfect answer for that.  Every restaurant and drink vendor has s strip of plastic that attaches to the top of the cup (just under the lid) and it makes a handle!  You can carry the drink by the handle and not freeze your hand or dangle it off of a moto.  They have the same thing on large bottles of water, there is an extra dealy that acts as a handle so you don't have to carry a big bulky bottle of water everywhere.

Another is general transportation, motos are the only way to go!  Need to go somewhere?  Grab a moto!  Why wait for a bus?  Have a bunch of stuff?  Tuk tuk away!  Transportation is fantastic here and I really will miss it (stupid busses).  Street vendors are also innovative because it makes food so readily available.  Buyer beware, if you buy any meat, it may not be the best quality.  Having street venors and motos all over the place in the US may not be feasible but for the love of god, give us the drink handle thing!

Till Next Time...

Wow! Moving out is stressful!

On Sunday, I successfully moved out of my apartment.  If only it were that simple.  To make the whole process less stressful for me, I did a little bit every day.  I started by clearing out the trash, then I washed my kitchen, then I started packing.  Actually going about it very lazily made it not stressful at all but then some things changed.  Tabitha (who moved into my apartment) checked it out on Saturday and said she wanted it.  I said, you move out on the first right?  She says she moves out tomorrow (Sunday), my reaction is O_O.  I tell her that works but she needs to come back at 5 PM the next day.  Fast forward to the next day, I'm running around, sweeping, packing, and mopping like a crazy person.  That day I had a wicked stomachache and I was dehydrated (I was completely out of water).  By the time I finished, I nearly fainted on my freshly made bed, shortly after, Tabitha arrived and I helped her get her bags in the apartment.  I signed the lease over to her and got my money back.  I went to the guesthouse which is okay, it's livable, and I just watched some TV and fell asleep for 12 hours.  I was exhausted.
Till Next Time...