As a final goodbye to beautiful Cambodia, here’s my last list for Asia!
Things I’ll miss about Cambodia:
1. The ice cream and bread carts that play “The Virginia Company” tune from Pocahontas over and over and over and over…and over and over…
2. The sense of triumph you get from successfully exterminating 95% of the ants invading your fridge for the day.
3. Sitting at work and hearing three different languages being spoken among five people, and none of them English.
4. Convincing moto drivers that the fair price to take you where you want to go is in fact half of what they’re insisting.
5. DVDs at $1 each. Now really, is it illegal if it’s the only option in the entire country?
6. Getting whacked by police officers with a stick when you drive by on your moto (well, maybe I won’t miss this one much).
7. Watching monks hop onto motos in twos and threes, all dressed in bright orange drapery with neon yellow umbrellas.
Monks on their morning walk
8. Counting the number of monks you see on your walk to work (I’m up to 8 – and it’s a 10 minute walk!).
9. Daily snack time at the office, precisely 2pm, at Sophal’s desk: coconut, grape-like furry red and orange and purple balls of goodness, jicama, fried bananas, mangoes, entire cobs of buttered corn...
10. The 12 minutes of public campaign time candidates get per day (man, wouldn’t that be nice in the States…).
11. You can get a killer tan in 30 minutes flat.
12. My small group is with people my age from all over the world.
Just a pretty park!
13. Fried smashed bananas at any time, any place.
14. This place has fruit that’s fuchsia on the outside, white and black on the inside (?!??!!).
15. Lizards that sound like an engine’s being revved up when they start their nightly croaking (again, ?!?!!!).
16. Where else can you buy spiders and crickets for a street food midnight snack?
17. You can say things like “meet me on the lawn of the royal palace” in passing and it’s not a big deal.
The Royal Palace
18. Spanish is considered an exotic language. So I taught one of our interpreters the words to a few Shakira songs. ;)
19. The huge smiles of recognition from local shop owners around my neighborhood.
20. Heat indexes of 111F.
21. My many furry and not-so-furry apartment friends.
22. My landlady dropping by at any time of day for a one-two hour chat.
23. Going to a church whose congregation represents over 30 countries (!).
24. Being a cultural minority at work.
25. The insistent instruction on how to properly peel fruit that I thought I’d been properly peeling all along (oranges, jicama, mangoes, bananas…).
26. The (at least) 3 power outages a week in our apartments and 4+ outages at the office.
27. Haggling over vegetable prices at the local market in very, very limited Khmer.
28. Comparing how many Cambodians vs. how many Westerners you can fit in a tuk-tuk.
29. Eating multiple sticky rice and pumpkin cakes (condensed, jellified, sticky mounds of sugar wrapped in banana leaves) in one sitting is perfectly acceptable.
30. Sochiet’s insanely amazing lunches at work.
31. The fact that pumpkin and egg go together beautifully.
32. You get to ride around on motorcycles all day. And you're only legitimately fearful for your life half the time.
Me with a goofy "yay I'm on a moto" smile on my face
33. My moto driver friend at the end of my street now picks me up when it’s raining and I’m walking home from work. Yay. :)
34. Mangoes.
35. Riding on a cyclo with my housemate because, well, we can!
Angela on a cyclo (I'm on one next to her!)
Other side of the Royal Palace
36. The sky going from sunshine to tornado-thunderstorm in literally ten minutes.
37. Boiling all of your water in a 1-quart pot before it’s safe to drink (no, I’m not actually going to miss that one either).
38. Little kids running up to you during your walk to work trying to practice their incredibly limited, hardly intelligible English.
39. Drinking palm sugar juice (or whatever it is the cart guys sell) from a bag with a straw.
40. Espresso with sweetened condensed milk is perfectly normal (they call it Vietnamese coffee).
Back in the States on the 14th! Please pray for safe travels for me and my dad this upcoming week, and can't wait to see many of y'all soon!! :)
Blessings,
Stephanie
