Global issues vs. cake

Well, it certainly is nice to have a job again. After the Let’s do it-project finished, I was unemployed for a little while. I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t pretty. I lost all sense of purpose, spent my days in the local restaurant, drank so many cappuccinos and passion fruit shakes that they refused to serve me any more. I hit on all the waitresses and the chef, before they threw me out on the street. No, not really! I just spent more time on Facebook and watching Masterchef Australia, an excellent show. Appeals both to your heart and your palate, and I’m actually serious now, it’s a remarkable program. Got me through the rough patch.


While taking my morning shower the other day, I met a lizard. First I thought it was dead, then it started to crawl around in the water. I will admit that I was startled, I had to splash water on it with my foot to keep it from charging right at me. I though we had a deal, Mother Nature, no creepy animals before 9 a.m! I’m just not mentally ready before breakfast and a cup of coffee. And in the shower! Maybe it was cleaning up to go on a date with the cute lizard in my kitchen. Share a breadcrumb on the counter, have a romantic crawl up the fridge, enjoy the view?

Afterwards I sat at my local café, eating a piece of cake and thinking about the lizard encounter. I was sitting alone, and a conversation to my right caught my attention. Three white ladies were using big words and dramatic hand gestures, talking about social problems in rural Cambodia. “The poor thing”, they said, “of course that will mess you up”, “that is so heart breaking”, I just got bits and pieces of their conversation. “You know what the real problem is?”, one of them said in a pensive way. They looked up at her, and I paid attention. Yes, what is the real problem? “They just don’t fear God”, she said sadly. I watched the other ladies, wondering how they would respond. Laugh? Get upset? Poke her with a fork? “Yes, you’re right” they said, nodding thoughtfully.

“Wow”, I just had to think. There are four pink people in this room. Three of them are conjuring up ridiculous conclusions to world problems, over their after noon lattes. And the fourth one is too busy eating carrot cake and combatting tiny reptiles to deal with the real issues at hand. This isn’t helping, people! The folks in rural Cambodia have many problems, but fearing the man in the sky with the long beard is not one of them. (Growing a beard could be one of their concerns, at least for the guys. Not a lot of facial hair.)

Some people finds these big subjects so complex and difficult that they feel overwhelmed, they're not even sure how they should approach them or where they should start. Well I know exactly where: Global issues, global problems, it takes so long to say. I would like to launch two new terms for this, and I hope they will catch on: 

glissues

and

globroblems

Glo-bal-iss-ues is four syllables, while gliss-ues is only two. (Even one if you say it really quickly, GLISSUES! Make sure you don't spit.) That is 50 % more efficient than its predecessor. Globroblems sounds a bit like an ethnic group in a Harry Potter book, but that just gives the term some extra charm.

I will follow up on my efficiency thought there, and address the matter of speech in general. What if, during big meetings and conferences where development is being discussed, everyone spoke 50 % more quickly? We would have 50 % more time to discuss the glissues, and a 50 % increase of solutions to them. The topic of development would get a huge competitive advantage to snail speed subjects like business, sports, entertainment... Eat our dust, suckers!

One problem with this is of course that people from non-English speaking countries often speak English more slowly than others. So my question is: Do they really have to be there? Many countries have English as their first language, England, USA, Canada, Australia... And Singaporians speak great English, so Asia is covered! Maybe the lingually impaired countries can pay a foreigner to speak quickly for them? Rent-A-Brit. If they were short of cash, I'm sure the richer countries could lend them the money. Because poverty is globroblematic, and it concerns us all.

Well this is enough development work for one day, I'm exhausted. In stead I will tell you about something that happened to me. A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a very strange coincident. In my plastic jar of multivitamins, there was exactly as many vitamin pills left, as I had days left in Cambodia. What are the odds!? (Yes, I counted my multivitamins for fun. Don’t judge me, I was unemployed.) These little things in life…moments you will remember. I was sitting on my unmade bed in Phnom Penh, without a job and without a clear idea of what the future held for me. But I had a few dollars in my pocket, the exact number of multivitamins that I needed, and I was happy.

I snapped this sunset with my phone the other day. I will miss my street!

Travel advice

Now that I have 2 weeks left in this wonderful country, it struck me that I should write a list of tips that I wish someone could have given me. So here it is! This will be interesting to read if you're coming here, and maybe not so interesting if you're not coming here :)

My Incredibly Intelligent List of Cambodia Travel Tips:

Packing

Most things you can get in Cambodia! So don’t worry about leaving clothes behind.

If you have some books in English that you don’t need, you should bring them to Cambodia. Many people want to learn English, and orphanages often want books for the kids there.

Bring 25 USD and a photo for when you’re buying the visa you need. (If you don’t have a photo, you can pay them a few dollars to scan your passport in stead.)

Visa

If you buy a visa upon arrival at the airport, you can only get it for 1 month. Tourist visa is 20 dollars, business visa is 25 dollars.

If your visa expires, you pay a fine of 5 dollars for every day it’s overdue. There are travel agents everywhere who can extend your visa for you, but sometimes mistakes can occur. Check that you get the right visa with correct dates, and get a receipt.

You can extend your visa to 1, 3 or 6 months. The 6 month one is a multiple entry visa, for the other types you must buy a new visa if you return to Cambodia after a trip abroad.

Note: If you extend your tourist visa with a new tourist visa, you have to leave the country and then come back after the two months have expired, to get a third visa.

Getting around

There is no convenient public transportation in Phnom Penh, so unless you get your own bike, you can take a moto taxi (a guy on a motorbike) or a tuk-tuk. Remember to arrange a price before you go, and it’s always good to have the exact amount of money ready.

Bring - a - map! You will be lost without a map. Sometimes streets with consecutive numbers will be next to each other, sometimes they will be on the opposite sides of town. Sometimes your driver will know the address you're going to, sometimes he won't have a clue.

The numbers of the houses on the street can also be pretty random, house number 7 can come after house number 36, and most of the time there's no sign that says which number it is. The best way to find a place is to know the street, and know which street crosses it where you're going. For instance: St. 51 by the corner of st. 63. To have the phone number to the place is also good.

Health

My Norwegian doctor told me that there was risk of getting malaria in all of Cambodia except for in Phnom Penh. But both locals and expats who live here, say that the risk of getting malaria in cities like for instance Siem Reap, is extremely low. When it comes to the more remote areas, you should talk to someone who lives there about the risk, and decide whether or not you should take anti-malaria drugs. I have met very few people here who take them over long periods of time, they can be rough on your body.

My doctor also scared me with stories about dengue fever, which you can get anywhere from the daytime mosquito. I hardly ever get mosquito bites during the daytime here, and the people who live here don't consider dengue to be a very dangerous illness for adults. You can feel really bad for maybe two weeks, and you should go to a doctor, but it's no crisis.

It’s fine to brush your teeth in the tap water, but you shouldn’t drink it. You can get a water company to deliver 20-liter water tanks to your apartment, it’s cheaper and better for the environment than buying hundreds of water bottles. Plastic bottles and bags is the biggest trash problem in Cambodia!

There are many counterfeit medicines and drugs in Cambodia. If you need to buy medicines at a pharmacy, U-Care is the best one.

If you need to go to the hospital, the Royal Rattanak Hospital is the best one in Phnom Penh. The best clinic is the SOS Clinic, which is open 24/7.

Social behavior and etiquette

It’s not common for Cambodian women to show a lot of skin, foreign girls should be aware of this. It is not seen as impolite to wear a short dress or low neckline in public, but you might attract a lot of attention.

Cambodians often speak English well. But if you say something they don’t get, they won’t always admit that they don’t understand you. So if you’re arranging something important, like a high price or certain dates or times, you should make sure you understand each other. It can be useful to write things down for them.

If Cambodians are embarrassed they will often smile or laugh, this doesn’t mean that they’re making fun of you.

Don't touch people’s heads or point your feet at anyone, especially people that are older than you. Touching people on the head is a common sign of affection in many western cultures, but in Cambodia this is a holy part of the body. (But if you know the person well, they probably won't be offended.)

Always take your shoes off when you enter somebody's home or a temple.

It is not considered as rude to ask people about age, income, if you're married or not, if you have kids... So be prepared! :)

There are many monks in orange clothing in the streets. It's considered rude to take photos of them without asking (as it is with other people too). They will often be happy to take a photo with you, but especially women should not put an arm around them in a friendly way, monks shouldn't have any physical contact with the opposite gender.

June

I got sick not so long ago, and I was of course sure that it was something serious. After my fever passed 40 degrees, I went to the doctor. I took off my shirt, and she looked at me and listened to me and pinched me a little. I was lying there nervous for what she would say. Was it dengue fever? Malaria? Something even worse? “I think you have chicken pox!” she said. “Excuse me?” I asked, trying to sound cool and collected (which isn’t easy when you’re lying on a hospital bed in your bra). I explained to her that I was 100 % sure I had it when I was a child, so she just gave me some paracetamol. That evening I got itchy red spots all over my upper body, and I called my mother for a serious chat. She could inform me that I probably never had them when I was little.

What kind of freak child doesn’t get chicken pox! Did I not socialize with the others? I have distinct memories from kindergarten, that I’m sitting surrounded by friends and drinking mud water from a puddle to impress them. That sounds a bit sad now that we’re grown up, but it felt great then, they all thought I was cool. Maybe they were imaginary? That definitely sounds sad. I know I had a boyfriend there, but we rarely got very close (he had cooties after all). After a few days, the red spots disappeared without having had any of the characteristics of chicken pox, so it probably wasn’t that after all. My friends now call the incident my “dengue pox”, which totally isn’t funny. I didn't exaggerate, it could have been super serious!

I'm sure glad I'm not in kindergarten anymore, where I had to drink from puddles to get friends. The friends I have now just make me eat crickets and silk worms in stead.

Fried insects! Disgusting! But surprisingly fun as well, when you're in a dodgy beer garden with friends.

An interesting fact about the word cooties, is that it’s probably derived from the Malay word kutu, which is a parasitic, biting insect. Creative! In Norwegian the kids just call it jentelus and guttelus, girl lice and boy lice. So now you know how to impress the opposite gender in Norwegian, you’re welcome.


The rainy season has come to Phnom Penh, and the bad weather comes in quickly. This was my view yesterday:

Run for cover! Watch out for the lightning! Not that street, it's flooded! Yes, that one too!

A while back I went back to Boeung Chhouk to visit SCAO. It was strange returning there from my modern apartment in Phnom Penh.

The clothes come in all colours, just like the people.

This was the room I stayed in

It was nice falling asleep to the sound of the women speaking together in low voices, it made me feel safe and far away from home at the same time. In the morning we would wake up to the rooster and the cheerful sound of children’s feet on the wooden floor. My first meeting with this country.

When the border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand flared up, the women listened to the radio the whole night. (It struck me that my grandmother probably did this too, when the Nazis occupied Norway during World War 2.) Tens of thousands of people from both countries fled from the villages along the border during the fighting, but started returning after the tension had eased in May. The most important place they’re fighting over, is the Hindu temple Preah Vihear. It is on Cambodian territory, but Thailand believes it should belong to them.


So, where did the time go? When my schedule got tighter at work, the time to blog simply disappeared. But the good news is that the Let’s do it-project was very successful! I’ve had several workshops with Cambodian university students, and it had been a lot of fun! My topic was “Environmental challenges in Cambodia”, and the students were very active in discussing the different problems. April 23rd we had our big clean up day, and 2400 volunteers gathered in a joint effort to clean the streets of Phnom Penh. Very inspiring! Here is a photo of my group, we were in Tuol kork:

Section D, baby! I was very impressed with the commitment and the enthusiasm the volunteers showed, and they came in all ages and with all backgrounds. We had a lot of coverage in the media, even Xinhua in China wrote about us. The project also had it's own song.