One minute I'm completely amazed by certain elements of Cambodian culture, while the next minute I'm gritting my teeth with frustration and annoyance. Not sure what I'm talking about? Here's a little glimpse:
Yesterday I saw 5 people packed onto one single motorcycle. This was not a giant, super-sized moto with a banana seat. This was a regular ol' moto with 5 actual adult-sized human beings riding one in front of the other and booking along at a pretty good speed too. Amazing! How do they do it??? When I ride just with the moto driver in front I feel like I'm going to fly off the back. How in the WORLD did FIVE people stay on that thing???
The most annoying question I hear almost every other day, in one variation or another, is "How much did you pay for that?" I could be walking to my apartment carrying a juice I just bought & the guy who lives nearby just HAS to know how much it was. Dude, it was about 27 cents... is that okay with you? Or I could be walking through the lobby to get to my apartment carrying groceries and the staff wants to know, "How much did you pay for that?" How do I even answer that question? Do I start pulling out the individual vegetables I bought and itemize everything, or give a rough estimate of the whole bag? And do they even know what's IN the bag? And... here's my question... does it really matter? Really? Or I'm in a tuk tuk in a different city of Cambodia riding to my hotel & the driver asks me how much my hotel costs per night. Okay, that's an acceptable question you may think, but how do you answer it when you KNOW that you're paying more for your hotel room than the tuk tuk driver makes in a day, and as soon as you hit them with the shocking news that foreigners actually have that much money (well, HAVE is relative... SPEND is probably the more appropriate word choice), he keeps talking about it for the entire drive to the hotel... "Oh wow! Why you pay that much money? Too expensive! How much money you have? Too expensive! Too expensive! Wowwww! Why you stay there?..." (side note: on that particular trip, I did pay the most amount of money so far that I've spent for 1 night on a hotel - it cost a whopping $20). In summary, it doesn't matter what you buy - get a haircut? rent an apartment? buy a hammock...a snicker's bar...a baguette? Inevitably, every time, someone WILL ask you, "How much did you pay for that?" So yeah, it gets just a little bit ANNOYING! Not the question so much as the long response you'll get once you give an answer. It doesn't even matter how you answer the question - a response is coming, like it or not. One question I do opt of entirely is how much I get paid. Eiyieyie...I don't even want to go there.
On a slightly different note, there's a restaurant here called the Pizza Company. It's a super big corporate chain, but I have to tell you they have the most incredible stuffed crust pizza! I feel like I may have even blogged about this before, but it's definitely on my AMAZING list! And the complicated method Cambodians use to make their salads at the salad bar there is nothing short of amazing, amazing, amazing... It costs $3.50 to go to the salad bar once. So what people do is purchase one little salad bowl to share among the whole table. They use their super creative, ingenious little salad making skills to create an initial base of long carrot sticks fanning from the inside of the bowl. Doing this first actually make-shifts an even bigger space you can dump salad into. Of course, they don't just dump the salad in.. there's a specific process of certain veggies that create layers and layers on top of more layers, and I have no idea if you will have any visual idea of what I'm describing because it's a little hard to imagine without seeing it, but in the end, they turn the small salad bowl they are given into this HUGE amount of salad that 10 people can easily share. It's amazing!
Treehouse bungalows in the jungle - AMAZING!
Beaches lined with hammocks - AMAZING!
Being able to see happy, peaceful little monks walking around everyday dressed in bright orange and carrying orange umbrellas throughout the city - AMAZING!
But please don't get me started on the construction that's going on right now across the street from my apartment... it's endless! I literally have dreams at night about creeping over there and stealing all of their hammers while they are on break so they have no choice but to stop. It's so annoying!
On the other hand, the evening exercise/sports rituals here are definitely a cool sight. Every night before sunset people gather in swarms to do synchronized exercise dances just out near the streets all throughout the city. I haven't joined in on one yet, but it's definitely on my to-do list. Along with the synchronized dance groups, you'll also see pairs of people playing badmitton & groups kicking around this little thing that's kind of similar to a hacky sack only that it's plastic, super light, has a little tail, and you kick it from behind you so that it flies up over your head to the next person... all of this I find pretty entertaining and happily add to my 'amazing list.'
Another 'amazing' that I can't fail to mention is the Cambodian way of re-using and recycling EVERYTHING. Things that we would just throw in the trash in 2 seconds without a thought in the United States, people will look at you like you are CRAZY for being so wasteful with. There have been a few different occasions where I have thrown things away in the trash can in my apartment, and after the cleaning ladies come, there I will find it, resurrected, waiting for me, staring at me in the face, saying, "How could you throw me away? I'm not done yet!" So I'm catching on & learning a lot and I have to say that when I blew out my hair straightener about a month ago, I didn't throw it away :) I'm currently making a pile of my junk and broken tidbits that I will soon take to one of the heaps of stores that exist around here to fix these random things... Why send these to the dumpster when they can be made as good as new?
Bottom line: the amazing stuff still outweighs the annoying stuff by a landslide, which I am truly happy about. I'm thankful to be here, thankful to be having all of these experiences (the amazing and annoying ones!), and thankful that I get to stay even longer so I can keep on adding to my random little lists ;)
