Cambodia Bucket List

This week at work I've been working on the 3D Rhino model of Vann Molyvann's house. On Friday I checked some items off my Cambodia bucket list. I made the bucket list when I came back from Kep and it included:

1) Picking up custom-made shoes from Beautiful Shoes:
I ordered some custom-made shoes from a shoe place in Phnom Penh. They trace your foot and make some measurements and then make a leather shoe for you. All you have to do is bring them some pictures of the shoes you want and then they make pretty close to the same design.

2) Visiting the national museum:
Cambodia’s national museum in Phnom Penh focuses mainly on Angkorian and Pre-Angkorian art and artefacts housed in a well-designed and charming (yet small) museum near the Royal Palace. I went to the museum after having lunch with Ed and Nancy at Friends, an NGO-run restaurant that provides Cambodian street kids with training in the food service industry (partnered with Romdeng). The museum had a great little interior courtyard with fish ponds and a pavilion as well.

3) Visiting the national palace:
I enjoy visiting royal residences. When I went to the Cambodian Palace I was a little disappointed because you couldn't really go into parts of the royal residence, but could only see the royal pagodas and little temples on the grounds. There were also some exhibits of royal possessions such as the current king Sihamoni's collection of elephant bowls. There were also several monks on the palace grounds who seemed very eager to practice their english with passing tourists.

4) Going to Tol Sleng:
The Khmer Rouge torture camp in Phnom Penh was housed in a former secondary school. S-21, as it was referred to by the Khmer Rouge, is currently a genocide museum with frighteningly horrific photographs, paintings, testimonies, and an hour-long movie. I was especially shocked by the exhibition with photos from 1976 (I think) taken by a Swedish man traveling on a sort of cultural ambassadorship. He wrote that he was a Maoist at the time and believed that Democratic Kampuchea (what Cambodia was called during the Khmer Rouge) was an exemplary example of functioning Maoism. It was really creepy to walk in the torture chambers and holding cells that prisoners were kept in before being taken to Cheong Ek (?) or the Killing Fields.

5) See an Apsara Show:
Didn't actually work out because the Apsara (Khmer traditional dance) theater we were going to go to closed down the weekend we all went to Kep. They're supposedly opening again later this year.

6) Going to Louisiana Fried Chicken:
According to LP, before Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization it didn't have copyright laws and it apparently had a KFC, 7-11, and other popular establishments. Once it joined the WTO, these places changed and I think became Louisiana Fried Chicken (a.k.a. LFC) and 7-11 became "7 Elephants". I went to LFC with Nancy and Sokly before going to my last stop on my list, Wat Phnom.

7) Climb Wat Phnom to see the monkeys:
At lunch on my last day Sokly took Nancy and I on Chhoy's moto to Wat Phnom, one of the original Wats (or Buddhist Temples, NOT pagodas) in Phnom Penh. Phnom means "hill" in Khemai so the temple is set up on a little hill surrounded by a park. It's also home to several monkeys and we saw two of them. Nancy even got a great picture of a monkey mid-leap going from a lamp post to a tree.

So I finally finished writing this post after quite a long week of packing, trying to figure out my Rhino model, and working on the bucket list. It was a nice way to end my trip, but I really wasn't ready to leave yet.

On my last night, Darren was nice enough to drive Sokly, Nancy, and I to the airport. It was a dark and stormy night and the sky was crying because I was leaving. The streets of Phnom Penh flooded with water and traffic. Darren's Toyota Camry (pretty much the same model that I drove in high school, but nicer) was up to the doors at least in water while driving through the back streets of the city in an attempt to avoid the incredible traffic jam of cars, motos, and pedestrians in the now flooded city.


My friends at our last dinner together ;_;

After checking my luggage in at the airport and paying the $25 airport departure tax, I ate a quick dinner with Nancy, Chhoy, Sokly, and Darren. They all said goodbye and watched as I ascended the escalator up to the departure zone and onto the plane.

A Day at the Office

So I'm at work now, but I don't have anything to do at the moment because my computer is being fixed and until I get it back and set up AutoCAD, I can't really do much in the office. This morning I went back to the IFL (Institute for Foreign Languages) and went on the roof to take some measurements with the Cambodians in our group (Soklay, Chhoy, Pagna #1 and Pagna #3 [so called because of their year in school]). Vann Molyvann (the architect whose buildings we're documenting) did three buildings at the IFL, but we only worked on the biggest one today. It's three or four stories tall with a large inner atrium and fairly good ventilation. I wish I could post some pictures of it, but they'll have to come later. The people here are fairly friendly and sometimes speak passable English, but the Cambodians we're working with are very well educated and their English is very proficient.

Cambodia appears to have pleasant relations with many other nations as there are monuments to friends such as Vietnam, Thailand, a center for Korean Friendship, and a Cambodia-Japan Connection Center or something like that (they call it the CJCC) on the campus of the IFL. It was done by a Japanese architect and is a typical Japanese building with fine proportions and made with that grey stone ubiquitous to the Tokyo scene.

One important fact to know about Cambodia is that the wattage is 220V (I think. Whatever's the higher one than in the States) and since I'm currently using Nancy's computer with the charger that's used to US voltage, her computer is supercharged and prone to shocking me if I touch any part other than the keys. It's actually a bit unpleasant.

My other impressions of this developing nation include the following:
It's really frightening to cross the street
Riding motos is nerve-racking even if I know the driver, even more so if I don't
They really like crispy money here
The "new rich" as they locals call them love to drive Lexuses and Land Rovers and plaster huge stickers on the side of their cars with the logo and name
The fruit is exotic and okay, even though I've had some of it before at home. It all seems to be less sweet than what we have at home, but perhaps that's because I don't know where to buy the good stuff. One of my new favorites is dragonfruit.

I guess that's it for now. Nancy, Yasemin, and I are leavin for Siem Reap tomorrow morning to see the ruins of Angkor Wat and other stuff too. I booked a hostel last night on hostelworld for $7.50/night because the place that Nancy and the grad students previously stayed, the Golden Banana, was all full.

It's almost time for lunch here, so I think I'm going to go on a lunch break and then I get to go to the National Stadium in the afternoon for the first time! Apparently I have to measure some dimensions for the pool building.

First Few Days in Phnom Penh!

The flight was a long one from Maui to Oahu, then from Oahu to Kansai where I had a 5 hour layover. Then from Kansai to Bangkok where I had another 5 hour layover because my flight got pushed back a couple of hours later. The flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh was nice and I sat next to a Khmer man and his daughter who live both in Switzerland and Phnom Penh. Nancy and Yasemin met me at the airport and we traveled by tuk tuk back to the house where I unpacked and unwound.

A nice 2 or 3 hour nap later, we went out to dinner at Romday (?), a restaurant/NGO that trains waiters in a nice villa that serves delicious Khmer cuisine. I had Tonle Sap fish Amok, the national dish here, which was yummy! Then we went out for a night on the town to some bars where sleezy old foreigners were taking advantage of poor Cambodian prostitutes. We didn't like the vibe there and went to a different fancy bar and then to a nighclub called Heart of Darkness. It was a hip scene with bumpin' music and good times. After a bit ó drama outside the club, we went home to sleep.

The next day, we just slept in and hung out. Nancy took me to the market and we bought some food and I purchased a new wallet because I don't want to carry around the fancy Coach wallet that Aunty Tina gave me for graduation because nobody accepts credit cards here anyways. It baffles me how they use both dollars and Khmer real for all transactions here even at the grocery stores and stuff. The price comes up in both dollars and real and they give you change in a combination of the two currencies, which can get confusing sometimes >.< Yasemin, Nancy, and I went for a promenade around the park to see the Independence Monument and saw children flying kites and playing ball on the grassy sward. We also went to two Buddhist Temples, or Wats and poked around. Dinner was at a nice little restaurant that had two cute puppies, but during the course of our meal there was a power outage and the whole city went black. We ended up finishing our food by candle light and enjoyed some fresh fruits afterwards. The DVD store across the street was where we purchased the new Harry Potter movie for $2 and we watched it when we got back to the house that evening.

Today was the first official day of work and I took my computer to the repair store where they said it would take two to three days to fix. I came back on a tuk tuk and haggled with the driver for a good five minutes after I got home. From then, I went on a site visit with Sookly and Pagna #1, two of the Cambodians who are working on the project with us. The site was neat at the university and we hung around there taking pictures and failing to get on the roof to take some measurements, but it was okay. It rained a little and when it stopped we came back to the office to have some lunch while Nancy and I ran a couple of errands getting her phone minutes and some new soymilk because the stuff we bought yesterday was pretty gross. In the afternoon I did some CADding until Chidimma from Yale came knocking on our door around 6:30. It was great to see a friend from Yale and I really missed her for the time we've been apart. It's just so strange not to have all our friends so close to us anymore. Chidimma was traveling with two of her Yalie friends from China, Alex and Eric and they were in Phnom Penh just for tonight. They stayed for dinner and we caught up with a nice visit afterwards. Dinner tonight was fantastic as we had the cook come tonight and for $4 per person she cooked up a storm of fabulous dishes including some of the best Amok I've had so far! Now it should be off to bedtime because Yasemin and I are going to try to go to a soup place for breakfast tomorrow morning which means waking up at 6:45!