Happy Thanksgiving.
Many thanks to Peggy, Marie, Dern, Whitey, Priscilla, and Mom and Dad for the e-mails and continued support while I'm away.
I am also thankful for my lifestyle, education, and wealth. Today, I ate vegetable noodle soup and drank a can of Coca-cola for my thanksgiving meal. People at the roadside looked at me like I was a king. Every two minutes a mother, a child, an amputee, or an elderly person approached me begging for food or money.
Krista and I are slowly on our way to Laos. We have to pick up her visa at the embassy today. The Lao embassy has ruled our lives for the past three days. The workers are very slow and have limited work hours. Commies.
But, I have a little secret: I like going to the Lao embassy. First of all, there's no security there. You just walk on in. It seems nobody has a grudge with Laos. I like their set up, too. They have a paved courtyard with a badminton net and about a hundred shuttlecocks on the ground, but no rackets nearby. They also have lawn bowling in a sand pit and a resident cartoon ant colony on one of the lamposts (cartoon ants: huge red ants that are so big, I swear you can see them make facial expressions).
When I'm waiting for the embassy people to open up, I like to throw the bowling balls around or do little experiments with the ants. I find if you put your finger right on their working trail, they won't even bite. They go back a few inches and call a huddle with the other ants. After much discussion, they'll send someone to get a closer look. He'll turn around to the others, wave his antennae and a couple of more will follow. They'll go up the lampost and right around the finger. Now, if you slowly take your finger away while he's still in the huddle with his buddies, they'll later come up to where your finger was, stop, and look around incredulously, as if thinking "Hey, there's no finger here! He lied!". It makes me giggle inside.
Cambodia is not an information society. If you want to travel somewhere or buy something expensive (like a visa), you have to talk to fellow travelers, visit agents, and read from a guidebook just to get some kind of fuzzy picture on how much to pay or how to get there from here. Nobody pays the same price for anything or takes the same road. It's like trying to find a garage sale without a classified ad. And once you find a garage sale, the owner doesn't have prices listed on any of the items. It's exhausting.
Worthy of a note:
Yesterday, we stumbled upon Nancy Griffith playing her guitar and singing at some benefit held in an old warehouse down the street from our hotel.
Nancy Griffith here singing "From a Distance"?
Surreal.
Many thanks to Peggy, Marie, Dern, Whitey, Priscilla, and Mom and Dad for the e-mails and continued support while I'm away.
I am also thankful for my lifestyle, education, and wealth. Today, I ate vegetable noodle soup and drank a can of Coca-cola for my thanksgiving meal. People at the roadside looked at me like I was a king. Every two minutes a mother, a child, an amputee, or an elderly person approached me begging for food or money.
Krista and I are slowly on our way to Laos. We have to pick up her visa at the embassy today. The Lao embassy has ruled our lives for the past three days. The workers are very slow and have limited work hours. Commies.
But, I have a little secret: I like going to the Lao embassy. First of all, there's no security there. You just walk on in. It seems nobody has a grudge with Laos. I like their set up, too. They have a paved courtyard with a badminton net and about a hundred shuttlecocks on the ground, but no rackets nearby. They also have lawn bowling in a sand pit and a resident cartoon ant colony on one of the lamposts (cartoon ants: huge red ants that are so big, I swear you can see them make facial expressions).
When I'm waiting for the embassy people to open up, I like to throw the bowling balls around or do little experiments with the ants. I find if you put your finger right on their working trail, they won't even bite. They go back a few inches and call a huddle with the other ants. After much discussion, they'll send someone to get a closer look. He'll turn around to the others, wave his antennae and a couple of more will follow. They'll go up the lampost and right around the finger. Now, if you slowly take your finger away while he's still in the huddle with his buddies, they'll later come up to where your finger was, stop, and look around incredulously, as if thinking "Hey, there's no finger here! He lied!". It makes me giggle inside.
Cambodia is not an information society. If you want to travel somewhere or buy something expensive (like a visa), you have to talk to fellow travelers, visit agents, and read from a guidebook just to get some kind of fuzzy picture on how much to pay or how to get there from here. Nobody pays the same price for anything or takes the same road. It's like trying to find a garage sale without a classified ad. And once you find a garage sale, the owner doesn't have prices listed on any of the items. It's exhausting.
Worthy of a note:
Yesterday, we stumbled upon Nancy Griffith playing her guitar and singing at some benefit held in an old warehouse down the street from our hotel.
Nancy Griffith here singing "From a Distance"?
Surreal.
posted by c. @ 10:19 PM
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