7-18-09 11:05 AM

So I am in Cambodia. It’s more than a little surreal, especially because I have mostly been e-mailing people and trying to comprehend the fact that I am actually here. I went to sleep at about 6 PM last night, and woke up at 6 AM. So far my achievements for the day have been reading several NY times and The Atlantic articles, and eating breakfast. This was my favorite article, I thought it was fascinating - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness.

Yesterday was a pretty big day, since I bought some food, bottled water, and looked into buying a cell phone. I also tried to call a friend’s friend, and briefly talked to an angry Cambodian man. Who knows if I can keep that up for 9 months! Today I hope to continue my furious pace and actually buy a phone, and contact people who are in this country. Oh, I also would like to learn where to do laundry, buy clean water in bulk, get a motorcycle/scooter, use the internet outside my hotel (preferably for free), rent an apartment, source a translator, and find a pharmacy to buy shampoo and soap. This actually does sound like quite a bit. We’ll see how it goes.

Currently, though, I look out the window of my hotel and see what I believe is some sort of palace. It’s rather odd, after being home and across the street from a high school. Overall though, things are much more comfortable than I anticipated. I have not yet seen the poverty that I was expecting, and in fact people in cars seem to be driving Toyota Camry’s and Lexus SUV’s, the former being the same car that drove me to the airport. I’m sure this will change once I see more of the city, and be even less true outside of the city, but for now the initial transition has been easier than I expected (famous last words, especially considering the breadth of my Cambodian experience). I think the most annoying thing is that when I leave my hotel room, I am about as far from anonymous as possible. I’m used to being in cities like New York, where you have to be pretty direct when you want someone’s attention, and otherwise you are just another person. Here I walk down the street, or are just in line of sight, and guys are asking if I want a Tuk-Tuk, moto ride, etc. Hopefully I will become less self-conscious of my “noticability” as time goes on.

The whole car scene was actually the first thing I noticed, unsurprisingly. In a state of delirium brought on by 19 hours of flying (this does not include layovers, strictly time spent in planes) and about 4 hours of sleep, I was blown away by the cars, motorbikes, and their interactions that could only loosely be described as a “traffic pattern”. People fortunately drive quite slowly, but there is pretty total disregard for anything resembling a rule of the road. I don’t think the situation can be adequately illuminated in writing. I’ll try and take some video. It’s a good thing I brought a helmet and jacket from the states.

Getting back to the cars - yes, lots of people ride motorbikes of various makes and models that I’m sure I will get to know quite well, but there are a surprising number of cars. They also all appear to be made by Toyota, except for the odd Mercedes and a Range Rover Sport that I saw. Maybe Toyota built the “Japanese-Cambodian Friendship Bridge” that is labeled on my map (another accomplishment I forgot to mention, finding a map), and therefore secured a near monopoly on cars sold here.

A final word that actually has something to do with my project – I have walked (and been driven) past several repair shops, for both cars and motorbikes, and was comfortable with what I saw. Some were in buildings, some were on street corners. Many of them had people swinging large blunt objects into motorbike parts. I saw one shop that had half a dozen shiny new dirt bikes and a superbike outside! I was pretty shocked by this. I think it was a GSX-R, also known as suicide by extremely fast vehicle, especially with such lax traffic laws. I hope to navigate my way back to it at some point to see what the hot-rodders of Cambodia are up to. Anyway, there is a wide range of shops and skill levels, so whatever this projects leads to will probably not be massively weird to people. I found that encouraging.

Ok, I need to stop dilly dallying and go do some “work”.

First though, I really need to thank the people who have made it possible for me to be here. Some of them are, in no particular order, Mom, Dad, Biz, N+P, Q+K, M+P, Betsy and Neale, Michael and Jo-Ann Rapaport, Tom McEvoy, Hal Fried, The Lightman Family and the Harpswell Foundation, The Rotary Club of Schenectady and Mark Sheehan, Prof’s Bruno, Madancy, Anderson, and Brison, The Thacher School and my classmates from it, Quentin Keynes, and many others to whom I apologize for not including. I am in your debt.