Today in between my classes I rode my bicycle to the US Embassy to get some new pages for my passport. I have had my passport for less that 4 years and I have already filled up the pages. This was my first time visiting an Embassy. The US Embassy is right next to Wat Phnom, and I had seen in before but never visited. Like all things American it is huge. I don’t know what it is about people who work for Governments but they are the most miserable unpleasant people in the world, and they seem to enjoy making other people miserable too. When I first arrived at the Embassy they had bike racks in front to my surprise. But they also had a cop in front to make sure that nobody looked their bike to them. After chaining my bike to a tree across the street I had to go through 3 checks points and then go to a window, to fill out a form and wait about 45 minutes for them to tape some new pages in my passport. I had to interact with about 10 people and none of them were pleasant. They all seemed frustrated that I was not familiar with all the policies of the embassy (which door to go through which line to stand in ect.) All of the people who I interacted with were Cambodians and they were all dicks. I have said it before that Cambodians are the nicest, friendliest people in the world, but not the ones who work at the embassy. They are really similar to the people working at immigration at Phnom Penh airport and to people who work at the DMV or the post office back home. I guess some things are the same where ever you go, a pig is a pig.
While waiting for my pages to be taped in I sat in the waiting room (I am a patient boy…). Most the other people waiting were Cambodians trying to get Visas to go to the US. A fellow American struck up conversation with me. He told me he was trying to get a visa for his fiancé. He was very clean cut, he told me that he was from Utah, and that he met his fiancé while he was here for 2 years. Morman Alert! It was actually a while until he mentioned that he was on his mission when he was here before, even though I had already figured that out. He was really pleasant and didn’t try to push his Religion on me which was nice. I felt sorry for the guy, he said it is about a 4 month process to get the Visa I couldn’t imagine spending anymore time dealing with these people.
I also met a traveler from Minneapolis who also needed more pages so that he could go to Vietnam, his bus was leaving in an half an hour so they rushed his through. I think mine got done a little faster too because mine was done about 5 minutes after he left to catch his bus.
So I got my pages and hopefully it will give me at least another 4 years before I have to go back to an embassy and deal with career hall monitors.
However I will be back to the embassy in less than a month for a 4th of July Party, that I am attending with several of the other volunteers. Should be interesting.
To be continued…
