Some time in NOVEMBER 2008. Cambodia
Ok. Verdana it is. I'm not blogging, I'm slogging... It makes more sense to me.
Here I am, in Dodgy Cambodgy, as I like to call it. I'm staying in a lovely hotel, 50 meters from the beach. We have a full staff of Khmer's, who if you're very lucky, will produce about 3 hours of half decent work a day, even though they are supposed to work a full day (who can blame them, some annual wages would be a dinner in an up-market restaurant, and night out on the town without drugs, and by dugs I mean alcohol and nicotine). Getting them to do something how you want it done, is not unlike pulling teeth out of an abscess which has festered for weeks. So obviously, now being as close to as a Khmer citizen as I'm going to get on my business visa (import/export clothing – apparently), I'm trying to adapt my way of thinking and being to just... go with the flow: "be like the reed in the wind Lisa". Sometimes, well actually never, does anything go to plan.
Cambodia is a funny little place. It works on graft, not unlike most Asian countries I imagine. Alcohol is cheap, whores are cheap, drugs are plentiful, and you can buy anything you want, without a prescription, over the pharmacy counter... and I do mean anything (as long as it is in stock)... eat your heart out you valium freaks. If you know where to go, the food is good, at a price no one can contend – just watch for the over charging. And the 'type' of tourist you get here now, is changing. Yeah, you still get your miscreants, pedophiles, and vagrants from western countries, exploiting the young, abject poverty pussy to be had. But increasingly, since it has been voted one of the top destinations in Europe to go in recent years, generally due to it's insanely cheap prices, you now get backpackers, eurotrash (I'm talking fat, blubbery, cottage cheese whales in little g-strings – male and female), families, young couples and a variety of other people escaping the cold northern hemisphere winters, for months at a time. You come across some pretty interesting people with some wildly fantastic stories.
Temporarily living at the hotel, while I wait for my life to piece itself back together in this current economic climate, is kinda like living in a bad asian soap opera. Every day something goes just a bit wrong, and as you would expect, shitloads gets lost in translation. Don't get me wrong... even though the Khmer's have absolutely no work ethic, they are kinda humorous to watch. It's like hanging out with a bunch of sweet, naively modest but manipulative children. They love karaoke, their mobile phones, they share their food without question, even if they have nothing. They have like five changes of clothes, basically no possessions and are generally a happy bunch of little monkey's who speak a lot of jibber jabber. Their language seems non specific, picking up leaves off the beach means the same thing as picking up the plastic off the beach... they say the best word you can learn here is 'What?'... mainly so they explain it so many times that you finally understand what they hell they are trying to tell you. And that's for those who actually speak the language.
The town is so small, everyone knows your business, but really, that isn't any different from any other community I have ever lived in. Here people might know it, they just don't give a shit. I love that, oh yeah baby, thats the shizzzz.
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