Thailand = My Land

So if you’ve been reading this blog or the blogs of other SALTers I would say the word ‘routine’ is something that is starting to come up pretty often. I would guess that no matter where you live -- as long as you live there long enough -- life will start to become ‘routine.’ In Cambodia I have definitely noticed this ‘r’ word creeping into my life and that’s probably why my recent 2-week vacation with GC amigo Elijah Martens was so super duper!

About Elijah:

Elijah and I became friends while attending Goshen College finding many similar interests such as video games, dinosaurs, laser guns, etc. -- we even started ‘Dragon Club’ together (raarrrrr!). He is currently doing a similar yearlong service term (oh, us Mennonites…) teaching English in China, so we obviously had to make an effort to vacation as a team. Needless to say I was really excited to reunite with him.

Elijah at the Bangkok Zoo.

It was a warm and serene Sunday night when I picked Elijah up from the airport on the 23^rd. We took a tuk-tuk down to the Independence Monument area to find a guesthouse for the night. The reason we stayed in a guesthouse because the MCC office (which does have comfy beds) has guards who like to lock the place up and go to bed at around 10:30. If you’ve ever taken Geometry, Triginometry, or Calculus then you should be familiar with the formula:

The Dragon Formula

X = The time you ‘call it a night’ when on vacation

Y = The time you need to be back at the office (10:30)

Z = No Parents

X > Y = Z

The formula may not be necessary, and may not even make sense, but I have no shame in admitting that we had a good time when a good time was called for. We spent two nights in Phnom Penh allowing Elijah to get a feel for the riverside then we moved on to Siem Reap – a must-stop for any visitor to the Kingdom of Wonder. We spent our days relaxing and seeing the temples and our nights eating dollar tacos and getting our feet massaged by ‘Dr. Fish Massage’ – which is a tank full of small fish that literally eat the dead skin off of your toes, it tickles.

The final morning in Siem Reap we woke to realize that Elijah accidentally booked his plane ticket for the 28^th of February instead of January. Whoops? Good thing it takes 3 minutes and 13 dollars to join a Taxi headed for Bangkok. That evening I returned to Phnom Penh to catch my flight the following morning while Elijah spent the day headed for Bangkok. We ended up meeting at the bus stop the following night and laughed at how easy it was for us to reunite despite the circumstances, then we drifted into and joined the massive sea of tourist on Khao San Road, Bangkok.

Thailand

I was blown away at first at the size of Bangkok, mostly because I guess I was comparing my expectations to my experience in Cambodia. Bangkok is huge, and when I hopped off the bus at Khao San, my teeth almost exploded at the site of all the tourists. I thought Siem Reap was packed full of tourists, it pales in comparison. This road is definitely known for being a popular place for tourists and Elijah and I had no trouble fitting in. Everybody spoke English and there were plenty of ways to entertain yourself. The food was delicious, the streets were alive, the people were energetic, and the night was young.

Bangkok is a pretty cool place; I can see the many different reasons that people would come to visit (some less noble than others…). Thai people are very friendly, you occasionally run into the jagoff who wants nothing but to rip you off and take advantage of you because you’re a foreigner, but everyone is just swell! The food was excellent and diverse; I really enjoyed eating the Pad Thai dish from the street vendors that cost less than a dollar and Elijah and I found some really good Indian food.

For the entirety of Thailand, Elijah and I seemed to follow one basic rule: not to plan anything. While I can see the benefits to planning the entire trip ahead of time, I really enjoyed taking each day as it came. Most decisions for ‘what to do today’ were decided 30 minutes prior and it didn’t seem to steer us wrong. We did a lot of walking around and finding things on our own, it was nice.

After seeing popular sights and visiting the zoo in Bangkok we decided to spend the longest stretch of the vacation in Chiang Mai and took the sleeper train over night. I’m glad we did too, Chiang Mai is a beautiful place -- it really is fantastic. A common hub for tourists, the city has many attractions inside the city limits as well as plenty more to do outside. I had no idea there were so many ways to spend a vacation there, if I had more time (and more importantly, more money) I could do it all again completely differently. The city itself is very relaxed and provides many options for the many wandering foreigners that surf its streets. During our stay we casually met people from all over the world (thankful for how popular the English language is) and really enjoyed how relaxed the atmosphere was. Chiang Mai is a great place to just chill out and put your feet up, a good vacation spot for sure. We didn’t engage in any of the major, popular tourist activates that most people do, instead we found our own way around. Ex. One day we rented cheap bicycles from a shop near our guesthouse, grabbed a map, and rode down the street to one of the national parks. It felt really great to just get out and explore, especially when everyone around you seems to rely heavily on tour guides to show them what to do. It’s also a great way to get some exercise; by not knowing where we were going half the time we got a pretty good cardio workout.

Doi Suthep National Park

One of the days we grabbed a taxi ride up to the MaeSa Waterfall Park where we enjoyed the many different ‘waterfalls’ and swam in the streams beneath (awesome). When we left the park we realized that we didn’t seem to be in the type of area to get a tuk-tuk, taxi, or ride of any kind – so we just started walking in favored direction. After a few kilometers an older Thai man wearing aviators (I would describe as being a ‘badass’) let us into his tuk-tuk and brought us into town to a songthaew heading back towards Chiang Mai. It ended up just being me, Elijah, and around 10 Thai women sitting in the back of a songthaew which would have made a great photo (especially since the woman across from us was breast-feeding her baby the entire ride).

What more to say? Elijah and I did a lot of fun stuff in Thailand, more than I’ll ever be able to fit in a blog post but for the most part we just enjoyed ourselves – and that’s really all I needed. Looking back now I realize there are countless, awesome things to do in Chiang Mai that we didn’t find the time for (aka didn’t have the wallet depth for) such as the popular Elephant nature parks or day-long nature treks, etc. --I technically could have even played with a baby tiger. And if I had the opportunity to go again I probably would do these things. However, I hold no regrets because I got exactly what I needed out of this vacation. 2 weeks of just hanging out with one of my best friends and enjoying life, amen to that.

Now that vacation is over I’m feeling relaxed and willing to fall back into my Cambodia routine. But not too soon, as I’ll be joining Ten Thousand Villages in a Cambodia tour and will once again visit Siem Reap this weekend. Oh, and next weekend I guess I’ll be in Prey Veng… We’ll just say that February will be going by fast for me :D

2011

Toilets can not play baseball here.

Happy New Years world! This last week has been a very relaxing one – the team and I joined up with Bryn, one of the Vietnam SALTers, and split the holiday vacation between Sihanoukville (yes, I’ve been there 3 times) and Siem Reap. This was a nice time for all of us to cool our jets a bit and lounge around in the sun, and let’s just say we lounged the crap out of this week.


Experiencing the Christmas season in another culture is a very surreal experience. Never did I really get into the holiday spirit and seemed to miss the Christmas chills that usually tingle through my spine on Christmas morning. I was very happy to get a package from both my mom and grandma this month so big thank you for those efforts and tolerating the ridiculous postage costs :D For the most part we’ll just say the traditional Christmas experience was skipped this year and I’ll have twice as much cheer for the next one. Although who are we kidding – spending a week on the beach and celebrating the New Year on the streets of Siem Reap isn’t a bad way to do things.

Us with Vietnam SALTer Bryn.

Since I’ve already been to both Sihanoukville and Siem Reap before I don’t have any reason (or desire) to talk about these cities anymore. Instead, I’ll share a few of the highlights of the trip.


1. Bro-ing out.
Not following? Let me break it down for y’all: I am a bro. Bryn is a bro. The female SALTers that I’m always around are like family to me, but they are not bros. In order for a bro to function properly there is a certain demand for other bros to be around. Making poop jokes, talking about different Pokemon types, discussing different levels of ‘awesome’ in relation to dragons, and quoting immature YouTube videos from sunrise to sundown are all examples of Bro-ing out. I don’t want people to think I don’t enjoy and value the relationships I have with the other SALTers, because I definitely do, but having 1 guy and 4 girls isn’t exactly the formula for an in-depth conversation about which Starcraft II race is the best. Let me give you a good example: in the package that came from my grandma I found a very special item that was a very important part of my childhood – it’s called a “Whoopie Cusion” (Probably credited to my cousins Cade and Caleb and not grandma, but who knows). Sitting in a circle with the others, I couldn’t wait to put it to good use. Time and time again I blew it up and sat on it, working on different variations and speeds I got some fantastic fart sounds going. Some long and squeaky, others in short successions; I was laughing pretty dang hard. While most of the others were reluctant to laugh at first, Bryn seemed to understand the humor as instantly as I did. Let’s be honest I’m kind of a super dork – so it was nice to end 2010 with another bro.


2. Snorkeling
We spent one of our beach days on a boat and jetted over to three of the neighboring islands for some sand time and snorkeling. I’ll be honest to say the Snorkeling really wasn’t super great, the water was pretty muggy, the fish not too various, and a few too many sea urchins for my taste. However it still was snorkeling and a day trip on a boat, so pretty great. I did a lot of cannonballs.


3. Some interesting people
The vacation wouldn’t have been complete without the funny characters we ran into on the way. Bren and I saw some hip old dude dancing around his cycle, which had a boom box mounted on top of it. Apparently he just rides around Sihanoukville and just decides to dance wherever the heck he feels like it. Swaying from left to right and bobbing up and down like in a manner that makes you say, “I kinda wish I was more like that guy,” he pointed to passerbyers and even gave Bryn a high-five. I was totally jealous. Hours later we found ourselves in a restaurant where an old man behind the bar resembling a Japanese monk from some sort of awesome Samurai flick gave us a huge smile and double thumbs up. Afterwards he pulled out a jug that appeared to contain a scorpion, several snakes, a spider, and whatever else you could guess, and then poured Bryn and I a drink of whatever was inside explaining only men were supposed to drink this as he raised his arms and flexed with a slight barbaric grunt. It didn’t taste good, but I think it may have increased my life span by a few years. When we got into Siem Reap we went to see the free Apsara show which features a range of traditional Khmer dances complete with costumes. During ‘The Fishing Dance,’ one of the male dancers was in a rather giggly mood that night and just couldn’t manage to keep from laughing during the entire show. This was particularly entertaining as it was a public performance and everyone else was trying to be serious, but like us, couldn’t stop giggling at this guy the same way people do on a really funny SNL skit. The best part of it was when we ran into him on the street the following night, which also happened to be the New Years celebration. I gave him hug and got a photo with him.

Fish Dancer (right) for the New Year.

Other than that I did a lot of butt-sitting and forgot about the world for a week. It was nice but I’m glad to be back. Coming home and saying “Happy New Year” to my Khmer family reminded me of the comfort I have in family and community.

Bieber no show, disappointment

The sole point of this blog post is to disappoint you.

There was no Beiber performance at my church. After rehearsing the song a bit Samuel and I decided that we didn't quite have the voice to sing that high for so long so we thought it might no be a good idea. In the words of Samuel, "I think we should save face, and maybe do it another time." So maybe another time, maybe not. Sorry to all my fans out there but it was a no show.

How do you say 'Santa' in Khmer?

I hope I’m not letting anybody down, but there are currently no new massive adventures to report on, I’m thinking my raft adventure will be hard to follow anyways. However, just to keep my homies all updated this is what’s going on:
 

For those of you who haven’t heard, I accidentally deleted my entire iTunes library. You’d think that the ‘IT Support Specialist’ would know how to not delete an entire music collection on accident, but here we are. Perhaps it’s a reminder to the world that I’m really not that much of an ‘IT guy,’ it’s more of a hobby than anything really; but I do love the work I’ve done here. Thankfully a few of the other MCCers have similar music tastes (as in awesome) as I do and have helped me get both old and new artists in my library. To my delight, one of them was Sufjans Stevens’ X-mas album. It’s a great CD and was a complete reminder to me that it’s actually ‘Christmas Time.’ In Phnom Penh you’ll find a few western shops and offices try to imitate a few decorations and jingle bells as reminders and there’s even blowup Santa Clause next the Russian Market right now, but to be honest it all feels a little out of place. It’s pretty amazing how stimulated we are by decorations and atmosphere back home. The snow alone is a symbol of the holidays, so here I just don’t even seem to react to the idea of Christmas. Which is probably a good thing because I’m not going to be celebrating it in the same sense that I’m used to. No decorating of a tree, atmospheric Christmas music resonating through the house, or smell of delicious holiday-themed treats floating round the kitchen. I admit for well that I’ll miss the family gatherings and spending time with relatives in Illinois and Indiana, but to my comfort I’ll be spending the last stretch of December back in Sihanoukville (again) and then to Siem Reap so Merry Christmas!
  

In similar news, my Church is doing some sort of Christmas-celebration-thing on the 10th and 12th and once again I really don’t have any idea what it actually is – my Khmer is still improving slightly but when it comes to listening to church meetings in Khmer I’d have a better chance of learning how to do kung-fu by magic than to actually hear and understand what people are saying. Then it happened. If you read my blog post about ‘Friendship Camp’ in Sihanoukville you’ll be familiar with my Justin Beiber/Sean Kingston performance. Well turns out they want an encore for the Christmas bash. This time Samuel and I are doing the song ‘Enie Meenie’ karaoke style on a stage in front of dozens of Khmer kids. My host brother emphasized that it be a good performance since there were going to be non-believers there. He went on to ask me if ‘Enie Meenie’ was a Christian song. “Not in this universe.” “Well, what’s the message,” he asked. I responded, “Ummm, it’s kinda about girls who play around with this guys heart. But he wants a girl who will love him for real.” Then my brother smiled at me as if he had a solution, “Ok so after the song you can give a testimony talking about how sometimes girls will play with your heart and give you love that’s not real. But Jesus’ love is real and he will always love you and never play with your heart.” And the go-ahead has been given, I will rock the house with all my heart and soul on the 12th of December, that’s a promise.
  

Aight so that’s enough talky, here are some bullet points to give a little more detail to what’s new:
  

I’m back in Prey Veng right now for 3 days to do some computer work. We drove out to a school in the rural parts to have a meeting and the way there I got to ride in the truck bed the entire way and then we got stuck in the mud while passing through one of the villages. I got to get out and help push. It’s a total off-roading adventure because the ‘roads’ have all kinds of imperfections and would actually be a great place to bring some 4-wheelers or dirt bikes. Confirmed: I am a country boy at heart and wish I were spending more time out here, the villages are so beautiful.
  

I’ll be starting my web design class soon, I’ve gotten word that I have 5 confirmed students. Need to write my own lesson plan, should be fun.
  

The honeymoon stage of SALT has started to wear off, but I don’t expect the depression stage to really sink in. Phnom Penh has lost it’s initial excitement for me but I’m not ready to go home by any means, there’s still a lot of experience to be had.
  

The other week I was walking down the street and a man wearing a shark costume came up to me and asked me in Khmer if “I’d be interested in learning how to make hammocks.” He said he was going to travel around the countryside and sell them to villages and he wanted an apprentice. I told him I was interested and he took me to a small stand in the Russian Market where he worked. But everyone there was wearing hats with frowny faces on them.  He had one for me and told me to wear it, I told him that “I’m not the kind of guy to wear these hats because I’m a happy person.”  He frowned at me and told me there is no room in his hammock team for someone like me. Oh well, maybe some other day.
  

One of the bullet points I made is not real.
  

Ok well I hope everyone is doing well and in good health. I know I’ve made half-ass plans to skype with some people and I’m sorry for not making it happen for real. So if you’re one of those people who want to skype I am definitely down, send me an email or something and let’s set a time :D

The Raging Mekong and recent events.

It's only been a few weeks since my last post but already so much has passed by that I haven't gotten around to. I've had a few incredible weeks here as of late but this post will focus primarily on my 2 week old river adventure (Nov 13-14). One of my fellow MCC worker-friends named Daniel invited me to join a group of expats in Phnom Penh that was planning on doing a rafting adventure down the Mekong River. The Mekong is a huge river that tears through SouthEast Asia (see the wikipedia page to learn more.) As I talked to Daniel I found out that we were not only trying to raft down the Mekong river, but we were going to aimlessly drive 100 kilometers away from Phnom Penh, jump out at a farming village and ask some random local to teach us how to build a raft out of banana trees, build the raft, float down the river all day, then spend the night in the wilderness sleeping in hammocks. I said I was interested.

Note: Sorry I don't have good quality photos of this event, we all took video and are hoping to compile the footage sometime.

After work friday night the four of us expats hopped in a cab and headed up to Kampong Cham, a small city on the river bank where we would wake up at the crack of dawn and start our adventure. After clearly eating someone's leftovers for breakfast at a nearby market we grabbed food and water for the trip and jumped on some motos and headed into a nearby village. Now just so you all know -- Daniel and one of the other expats, Steve, speak pretty good Khmer so we were able to make pretty clear conversation with the locals. This was absolutely necessary because English is pretty rare in the more rural parts of Cambodia (obviously). So after telling our plan to the villagers we got laughed at quite a lot. "Chquet," which means "Crazy," was a pretty common word used to describe us. It took some warming up to (and some money offers), but eventually the locals gave into the idea and agreed to help us build a raft. We ended up following this old woman who looked to be probably 150 years old into her back yard where we found a nice selection of banana trees. I've come to learn that banana trees are absolutely perfect for making rafts which was great for us because they were plentiful out here. The next three hours were spent working and learning how to make a raft. I must say it really was an incredible process to watch and the raft turned out fantastic. Using only a machete, axe and line of string, the whole lot of us were able to construct a ghetto-looking raft out of banana and bamboo trees. We even got a makeshift sail up and it was buoyant enough to keep the four of us afloat as long as we stood in our respected corners of the raft.

Raft construction while the local children watch and laugh.

We pushed off the shore around 10:45 and waved goodbye to our raft-making teachers and new friends feeling content with how kind and helpful they all were. At this point we were all on top of the world because it had actually worked out, perhaps even better than we originally hoped. Our raft was badass to say the least. We were slowly cruising down the Mekong on a banana raft and it felt awesome. Most the day was spent swimming along side the raft, abandoning ship to jump on the shore to see how ballin' our raft looked and do some cliff jumping, relaxing, enjoying the view, and simply being totally cool white people. We waved to the people along the coast who were washing their cows and horses in the river and talked to fishermen as they cruised by our tiny (but respectable) watercraft. Every conversation ended up in laughs and giggles as we told people we were trying to take the raft all 100 kilometers back to Phnom Penh. It's not everyday 4 white guys sail down the Mekong river on a banana raft so we had a lot of fun with it. We were at the mercy of the Mekong and it was very kind to us, perhaps a bit too gentle actually.

My three shipmates swim to shore to cliff jump as I man the raft.

Unfortunately, we were quick to discover why people thought it was so crazy for us to want to float all the way to Phnom Penh. The Mekong river, which was supposed to be fast-moving and slightly dangerous, was more like the lazy river you find at a water park. Our average trip speed was something like 1.5 kilometers an hour. As the sun was going down we had only traveled 14 kilometers -- only 14% of the way there. We had all figured we weren't going to actually make it to Phnom Penh, but it wasn't really too heart breaking. At this point the sun was going to set soon and we were in the dead center of one of the worlds biggest rivers. We needed to get to shore within the hour and didn't have way of effectively getting there. We all jumped off the raft and did the only thing that seemed to get that fat little raft to move -- we got behind it and pushed. Now for those of you who know me, you know I'm super duper strong and have monster biceps (for those of you who don't know me, I'm kidding). It was exhausting and I'm not sure I've ever done that much swimming before, but the four of us managed to get the raft to shore before the sun went down.

More raft construction, I was doing more watching/less working at this point.

Our original plan was to set up camp in the wilderness and spend the night in our hammocks. Unfortunately, in our current location we were surrounded by small farming villages so we didn't have many options as to where we would dock considering we couldn't be on the water with the sun down. For a moment I want you to think what you would do if you lived in a rural farming village in Cambodia, had never seen a white person before, and had been told a banana raft with 4 white men on board was about to touch shore in your backyard. What would you do? The correct answer is watch, and that's what the entire village did, I'd guess close to 70 people stood on the bank (including naked babies, but no monkeys) and stared in awe as we walked our tiny raft to shore (I kind of felt like Christopher Columbus, but without the intention of taking all their land). After a lot of talking and a crap-ton of being stared at we eventually got the situation under control. There was a guy in the village about my age who was attending university in Phnom Penh and spoke good english who must of felt like a total super hero because he was our link to the village and form of communication even though Steve and Daniel speak good Khmer -- they'd rather have a Cambodian do the translating. We were offered dinner at his sisters house and talked about getting a ride back to Phnom Penh in the morning since he just so happened to be going in a van the next day - worked out pretty well for us. After snarfing down a bunch of onions, eggs, and MSG whilst being stared at by 50 villagers (we counted), we were then all questioned by the 'village police.' I can't imagine these guys had a very exciting job and they were all over us and our situation. The whole process got kind of annoying even though they just wanted information, but we really didn't even want to stay in the village and just wanted to go to bed. After all, we were pretty beat from the recent water aerobics. We set up our hammocks, talked to the police and hit they hay.

Now there are a few mysteries I've come to find in Cambodia. A new one I discovered this particular night was, "How in all that is holy do people in the village sleep?" A group of men (most drunk) having a long, jolly ol' conversation. A woman with a crying baby. A man with cell phone and a friend who apparently likes to make calls at 4 in the morning. A rooster. Cows. The sound of a generator. Rave music. These things along with a few other sounds I honestly can't even describe equal my sleeping experience. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep that night, but I was definitely ready to get in that van at 5:30. At this point the adventure was over and our mission may not have been 'accomplished' but I would definitely consider it 'complete.' We built a raft from scratch and floated down the Mekong river all day long, how cool is that? We slept in some rural village and hitched a ride back into Phnom Penh the following morning - who does that? There's probably plenty more tiny things that could be said about this trip but I'll just leave it be for now. Bottom line I had an adventure and it was so good. And I managed not to get eaten by a shark or some crazy river dragon.

That's the word. What else to say? This past weekend was Water Festival (4 day weekend with 2 holidays) in Phnom Penh where people from all over Cambodia come to celebrate the end of the rainy season and have boat races, concerts, and a whole bunch of other fun things. I however, decided not to join the festivities due to the fact that it is apparently always overcrowded and these 4 days were just begging me to go to the beach. So I went back down to Sihanoukville for some winding down, and it was fantastic. Had a great weekend but came home to some very sad news. On the last day of the festival there was a stampede on one of the bridges by the riverside and some 450 people have been confirmed dead. Glad I ditched town this weekend, but hope we can all be praying for the families of those who were killed or injured. Tomorrow has been a declared a national day of mourning which happens to also be Thanksgiving. A bit strange to tell people I'll be giving thanks on the day of mourning. Anyways, hope everyone back home has a great turkey day and that all is well.

Peace.

The Beaches of October

I haven't written in a while so I made it long.

Last weekend I was invited by my host brother to go down south to the beaches of Sihanoukville with a group of Cambodians from various local churches. Originally I didn't really know what to expect from the experience. I was told that this was a "youth camp" (also called 'Friendship Camp') with "kids." As I've learned so far, in Cambodia it's best not to make expectations because they've never been very accurate. I actually initially thought this camp was going to be on the weekend before it actually was - I've learned that leaving on "Thursday" doesn't necessarily mean "this Thursday" (this has happened on several occasions). I also ended up coming home a day earlier than I thought - I didn't really find out until we were boarding the bus home - "oh we're going home now? Whatever you say."

Anyways, Thursday morning I find myself hopping on a bus with about 25-30 Cambodians who all look between the ages of 16-25. These were the "kids" I was going to be joining for "friendship camp." The idea behind friendship camp is for the older kids (21-25) to be friends with the younger kids (15-20) for the weekend and have a space to worship and learn about Jesus - I ended up being somewhere in the middle, mostly as good company. On the bus, we were joined by 9 adults from Singapore that were sponsoring the event and brought a lot of leadership and energy to the group. So as the bus was nearing the final destination I was content knowing I was in the company of friendly, loving people that were all excited about the gospel - what a great place to be.

Friendship Camp 2010. Can you find Waldo?

We all stayed at a hotel called 'Holiday' which was a 5 minute walk from the beach and spent most of our time in hotel meeting room singing songs and praising God. Anytime there was a moment when someone would ask the audience to volunteer or share something, most the Cambodians nervously looked around and would always say, "Michael! Michael!" Being the only white kid in a group of 30 people has it's baggage, and makes you a very popular figure (especially if someone needs to be singled out!). But I didn't mind, I actually thought it was quite fun to be involved as much as possible, and Cambodians have become well known to make sure EVERYONE is involved. I would get stares on the beach when people would walk by this massive ball of Cambodian youth acting crazy only to see a white kid in the middle of the cluster acting just as crazy as everyone else. It felt good.

The second day two foreigners approached me during breakfast wondering what the heck I was doing with all these people and if there were other foreigners with me (they saw me on the beach). I explained to them my situation and they eventually told me that one of them was a Clairvoyant (look it up) which was a neat experience in itself, there aren't exactly a lot of them walking around the beaches of Cambodia these days. After morning worship we went to a local restaurant which would become very familiar - we went here for every single meal during the retreat, thankfully they had a variety of food. Sihanoukville is well known for it's fresh seafood and everyone laughed and watched as I had to guess how to eat a crab.

On the second day we went to the market after lunch to get some food for a big BBQ we were planning on having for our final meal on the beach and I was invited to go so I could 'site see' also known as 'we need someone to carry the food.' But it was a cool site, almost a bit like an aquarium but the animals are either dead or about to die (I saw a shark lying on a table, still alive but probably not for long). To get home we decided that there was no reason for us to take more than 1 tuk tuk for the seven of us and the giant cooler of food (a tuk tuk usually fits 4). I sat on the outside of the cart on something that definitely wasn't a seat holding on to the roof as it was the only support I could find. I had fun talking to the moto driver who spoke good english but also encouraged me to speak Khmer - we had a nice conversation and he eventually asked me where I work. It's hard to explain in a new language so I ended up saying, "I work for a Jesus organization." The funny part came next; he then told me he knew Jesus and that Jesus teaches him Taekwondo. I think we know a different Jesus...

Back to the hotel and back to being a friend. Over the week I got to know many of the kids better and now have good friendships with many of kids who attend my church. One specific bonding experience was with the church drummer Samuel who likes to listen to american pop music. I wasn't proud to represent that music genre but I definitely know the songs, and we sang them together in the hotel room as I did the robot. He likes Justin Beiber and the song 'enie minie' just came out -click here to listen- we grooved to the Beibster. I learned that by being myself helped the others feel comfortable around me and they were entertained by the idea of this slightly crazy american hanging out amongst the group. I also ended up having a group of girls around the age of 16 flirt with me - I usually didn't know what they were saying but lots of giggles - nice! "Michael do you know what 'Sraalan' means?" It's the verb for, "to love." Don't worry everyone, I haven't gotten married yet and I'm not pregnant.

So now we tell the final tale of the adventure, my favorite part. The last night eating BBQ on the beach. We swam, we played soccer, we played the guitar, and we played games. Then we fired up the grill and got our fill of squid, shrimp, pork, fish, coca-cola, pineapple, and other tasty sides. This is where things quickly escalated from awesome to super awesome. To my right kids started shooting off fireworks in honor of the Kings birthday. My left was entertained by monkeys swinging in a nearby tree as a local started doing some form of fire juggling. The sun was setting in front of me and I was surround by great company - then we started passing out glow sticks. By body nearly exploded from shear amazement. "This is all the stuff that's awesome, how could this night get any better?" After walking the beach with Samuel and another friend we returned to find the rest of the group had started a big singing and dancing ball of wonder. We marched in a circle clapping, laughing and singing (or pretending to sing, I don't know many Khmer songs). Small children and a baby with only a t-shirt found that glow sticks and a white kid was a great source of entertainment, the basically naked baby chased me around the circle for hours poking my leg with a glow stick, I couldn't stop laughing. Then it was my turn to contribute to the circle of song and dance. "Michael do you know the song 'Beautiful Girl?'" It took me a while, but they were talking about Sean Kingston, and they wanted me to sing the song in the middle of the circle. I only know the chorus to that song and can't say it's on my iTunes - with that in mind i said, "of course I'll sing it!" - I was high on life to the max. I sang the chorus 3 times and danced in the circle and everyone laughed, then they wanted another song... this is when I made either the best decision or worst decision in my life. Looking to Samuel in the crowd I said let's sing 'enie minie' together. The circle was clapping and we were stars, again I only knew the chorus "Shorty is an enie menie miney moe lova" so I didn't know to what to do for the chorus, because Samuel definitely knew it - so I did what I always do in this scenario - I laid down a fat beat. Beat boxing in a circle of Cambodian high schoolers is a great experience and I recommend it to anyone who gets the opportunity.

Me and SoKun sippin on a cup of good times.

We left the next day renewed in our experience and happy to have made new friends both from Singapore and Cambodia. This weekend taught me a few things that I can carry throughout Cambodia. We can be in our home congregation or we can be halfway around the world listening to a sermon we can't translate. We can be at home enjoying the company of our close friends or we can be on the beaches of Sihanoukville making new ones. We literally can be on the other side of the world and we can still be ourselves. No matter where we go or how we conduct our business we can find the love of God and the love of others. It's mighty powerful.

Siem Reap

Looking super fly in front of one of the famous Angkor Wat temples.

Oh hey it's me again, this time writing about a great vacation to Siem Reap, famously known as home to Angkor Wat. So the trip was awesome if I really need to tell you. We got to Siem Reap after a 6 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh on Wednesday - the following Thursday and Friday were national holidays so we were off of work, we couldn't get a bus ticket on Thursday so had to convince ourselves to go a day early, wasn't too hard.

Siem Reap was definitely a change of scenery, lots and lots of tourists. This atmosphere made it even more comfortable for us. All kinds of restaurants lined the streets with foods you don't really find in Phnom Penh and everyone and their dog spoke some sort of english. We were actually praised for being able to speak Khmer - lots of, "Your Khmer is very good!" (it's not). As I stated in a previous post, you don't get any mexican food in Cambodia, but sure enough there was a restaurant in the downtown that served dollar tacos. To me finding dollar tacos is probably the same feeling that Indiana Jones had when he found the Holy Grail. Makes me miss Goshen a bit, and of course late night Tbell runs ("Tbell runs," as in going to taco bell to get tacos, not the morning-after effect).

Siem Reap also has a pretty hopping night life as you could expect, Pub street is packed every night with all sorts of foreigners and fun things to do. It's a nice way to get away from Cambodia and feel like your in *insert big US city*. It was also a good time for us SALTers. Just like when you get to college you learn to live by a 'no parents' mentality (which is an important part of college life and good way to make mistakes), Siem Reap was a bit like the same experience where MCC and our host families would be our 'parents.' Whether it was staying up past 12, eating as much junk food I wanted, or having a few more, uh, sodas than usual - I got to feel like my college-loving self for a few days, which was really nice.

Awesome Awesome Awesome Awesome

We went to see the temples on Friday, which was my main reason for the vacation - a similar feel to what Machu Pichu was in Peru. The temples were absolutely beautiful, I recommend seeing the photos I'll soon post on facebook in my Cambodia album. What didn't go as expected was the experience with the tour guide. Now this is a very interesting story indeed. If you were going to a world famous tourist location to see one of the most beautiful constructions on earth, you would hope to pay for a tour guide that is informative and very helpful in showing you around the sites. Is that what we got? Well if by 'informative' you mean sexually frustrated and by 'helpful' you mean constantly inappropriate, that's what we got. Before we got to the site, he smoothly changed his speech about Hindu Gods into a reference to the "snake in my trousers" comfortably referring to me and pointing to my crotchal region. Yes, I admit I laughed a bit at first, as it was funny and unexpected. However, the series of events that were to occur crossed the line over and over. I was mildly annoyed, but I shared this tour with 3 girls and how that changes group dynamics on such a topic. So it tainted the experience a little bit but it did not make the temples any less beautiful, really they were breathtaking. There are plenty of things that could be said but none too helpful. We are also to blame for not directly telling him to stop. Oh well, I do plan on getting a chance to visit again so I'm not to worried about it.

Amazing Amazing Amazing Amazing

So to sum it up, I had a great 4/5 days relaxing in Siem Reap and found the temples to be absolutely fascinating, anyone who plans to visit Cambodia has my recommendation to go see them. The city is a great way to let off some steam and feel like a foreigner and I hope to back sometime in the future. Now I'm back in the MCC office working away, thanks to everyone who have been sending me email and keeping in touch, I really appreciate it. Miss you all, take care, God bless.

There goes the some, here awakens Pub Street