Tuk Tuk Ride - Part Deux

Since we do not have our own transportation as of yet, we use Tuk Tuk drivers on a daily basis.  Some are small and rickety and others are big and fast, there is more variety to the Tuk Tuks here than there is beer.

Here is what it is like to ride in a Tuk Tuk.  I started filming right after we left our apt building and then I ran out of space on the memory card (too many pics and video clips), but you will see a good minute of the ride, you'll also get to see me and my wife.

Below is a brief video of a Tuk Tuk ride in the rain. You will notice the canvas walls, which rollup into the ceiling, to keep you dry - some are more waterproof than others. On this trip the driver pulled over after the rain started to drop and fasten the walls and then sat in the back and bull-shitted with me in broken English/Khmer for ten-ish minutes until the storm calmed down a bit - he has a four year old girl and he's been driving for "many" years, in case you're curious.

Below are videos of us traveling home at night.  When we go out for dinner this is what it is like to ride in a Tuk Tuk. It is even sketchier than the daytime rides because you can't really see much - they have headlights and streetlights, but they are very dim. As you'll see, tour buses rule the roads in Siem Reap; if you don't back off, they'll push you out of the way. This was a tame evening, but you'll get the gist.

Now that we live here, the Tuk Tuk driver are recognizing us in certain areas of town.  When we walk past them they say things like, "Hey, I know where you live"  or my favorite, "Lay-dee and man, I know you."  There are so many Tuk Tuk drivers here, it is crazy.  It is the low season for tourism and you can sense their desperation - they pass out business cards (we have one from a driver that speaks English, Russian, Thai and Khmer) and they offer their phone numbers with a guarantee of "call me, I'll meet you in less than 10 minutes." Maybe when the town is absolutely packed with tourists the drivers will have more to do than ask us if we need a ride basically as soon as our feet leave a Tuk Tuk.

When a driver can speak English they are always nice to us, at first. They ask us where we're from and they always think America is great. If they ask what city and they know Chicago, they ask, "So... like, Al Capone, yes?" or one guy said, "Obama!" - America is still 1920s gangsters and Civil War style racism to most adult Cambodians I've met, what an impression we've made. This is something I find intriguing. After living here a short time, you can routinely see the obvious impacts of Pol Pot on the country - not educating mass amounts of people produces devastating impacts on that society. Pardon the digression. - But eventually the conversation turns to, "Do you want a Tuk Tuk to Angkor Wat tomorrow? the temples?" and when we reply that we live here and that we'll be at work tomorrow, the conversation generally ends and we travel the rest of the way in silence.

Below are the typical images we see as we ride into town via Tuk Tuk.

not  exactly the pic I wanted, but you get the idea of a family on a moto

there are 3 adults and 2 children and 1 helmet

a fruit vendor and a Tuk Tuk

A Tuk Tuk heading out of town

how to use a moto to move your belongings

a refrigeration moto

a roadside bar (for locals - I'd get sick there)

a large truck heading toward our Tuk Tuk

typical foot traffic

road construction

As I gather more footage, I'll create more posts to help those of you who have not been here see what we see. I really hope this is one of my last Tuk Tuk posts as I want to have our own transportation soon. A moto or a cheap 4x4 would be ideal for this small town. We'll see what we do in the next few weeks - I imagine that is a post by itself, when it happens.

Beer in Cambodia - Part I

I'm a beer lover.  Back home in Chicago I brewed my own beer, lambic and cider for several years and I openly professed (and still do) that I am a beer snob of the highest order.  Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy an ice cold High Life on a hot and humid summer day, but give me an imperial stout or a flemish sour any day of the week.  For the past fifteen years, I have made it my mission to try every beer I can find.  I scour menus and try to find breweries and styles that can expand my beer-loving palate.

Now that I live in SE Asia, my "beerventures" are a little different, to put it mildly. I have never been a big fan of lagers and I have certainly never found a beer from this region of the world that suits my taste buds nearly as well as ales from La Chouffe, Cantillon, New Belgium or Dogfish Head (some of my favorite breweries). Now that I live in Siem Reap, I go in markets and buy individual beers to see what is out there. Everything basically tastes the same, watery lager. To rehash an old joke: How are lagers and having sex in a canoe similar? Both are fucking close to water. (hahaha) You can get Budweiser, Heineken and Guinness here but what is the fun in that? After a few days of drinking Angkor Lager, Crown Lager, Tiger Lager and the like, I finally found a few stouts to drink. One extra stout, ABC, sits at 8% abv, and is now my favorite SE Asian beer. It is a solid stout and the alcohol makes it that much more enjoyable.

Below are the pictures I've taken of the beers I am sampling. I titled this post Part I because I hope to find more beers in the future. If anyone decides to visit from the states, I may request a mixed six-pack of some of my favorite beers.

If you were keeping count, that is twenty new beers to add to the list.  I wish there was more variety to the beer here, but it makes sense because I think it is hot here (my students tell me it's winter, I do not believe that!) and I can confirm these beers are refreshing.  Last night I was thirsty and ordered a "jug" of Angkor for $4.  A jug gets you about 68-72oz of beer served in a nice glass pitcher that is low in alcohol and is served really cold.  This is not nearly as refreshing as the watermelon-lime juice I drink frequently but still does the job.

Thanks for reading and Happy Drinking!

P.S.

I am very close setting up homebrewing here. I have found almost all of the equipment I'll need and I think I can have ingredients shipped in from Thailand or Australia. Keep your fingers crossed because I've met several people who, like me, desire good beer and I hope to provide that to all interested parties.

Communication Breakdown...it's always the same

Living here has provided some fun experiences when it comes to communicating with locals, and that includes my students.  For two weeks I've been telling my students, "You may go" when the class session is over.  Recently they have been giggling when I say this so I asked them what was so funny and they replied, "You is a word we all know but in Khmer 'say' is the word for a female animal and 'go' is cow, so you've been saying 'you female cow' at the end of nearly every class."  I am extremely grateful that they are not upset at my absolute ignorance of their language. I teach nearly one-hundred students who are the most wonderful people I have ever met and had the true pleasure of knowing, some of who you can see below, and they are attempting to tech me some Khmer - it is a challenge but I am slowly learning the language.  They are teaching me words like beautiful, so I can say that to my wife, hello and goodbye, so I don't feel awkward when meeting locals, and local slang that roughly translates to cool.  There are some days when I leave campus feeling like I learned more than my students and that is what makes this job (and the students) so amazing.

Talking to the tuk-tuk drivers is interesting.  We are learning words like "right" and "left" and "stop here" to help navigate the town.  Some of the drivers speak English really well and others can barely communicate with us, hence the urgency to learn simple directions.  Our building has a driver contracted to us who speaks well and drives a motorcycle, not a scooter, so we arrive at our destinations much quicker than our friends.  It is just a matter of time before I buy a moto as they are called here, a Cambodian drivers license costs $35 and there is no test required - along with no test means no true rules of the road, it's like Mad Max at times out there - see the video below.

When I see Khmer written I think it is rather pretty, if not at times beautiful.  Since nearly all of my students are Buddhist, and I have those leanings in my personal philosophy on life, I am going to have one of them write out a Buddhist phrase I like a lot in some really nice script and when I travel back to the states next summer, I'll have that tattooed as a band below the dragon on my left leg.  I can see how some of the art here could inspire a few more tattoos.

one of my classes

view of the high school campus

view outside my classroom

view walking through my classroom and to the quad

a drive out to the country

walking a trail with colleagues to tour a rural village where some of our students live

kids started following us as we passed their houses

this house was abandoned after the floods last year

a statue in town

Juxtaposition

My posts up to this point have related to the images we see and the emotions I feel when traveling around Siem Reap and the surrounding villages.  To give you an idea of the huge gap in incomes and lifestyles in Cambodia, I thought it would be interesting to provide you a glimpse of how I, as an expat working for a well funded NGO, live in a developing SE Asian country.  At times I feel horrible because of the conditions under which my students (and most of the population of Cambodia) live.  It creates quite the mental/emotional roller-coaster for me. I enjoy my life here quite a bit right now and want to help as much as I can for as long as I can and this apt makes my life a bit easier so I can do as much as possible.  (I'm just trying to rationalize my white man's burden)

Below you'll also see pictures of where I teach - this is not a typical Cambodian school, trust me.  This school is very well funded by an American philanthropist who wanted to provide Cambodian children a proper education that will set them on the path to English speaking colleges and universities so they can help develop Cambodia into a country that will flourish like the rest of SE Asia.  I am quite passionate about my students because they are the hardest working and most compassionate students I have ever taught.  Their collective eagerness to learn is so much greater than anything I have ever experienced in my fourteen year teaching career and it humbly makes me want to work that much harder for them.  I'll never possess the capabilities to truly express how much these students are impacting me (and this is only after one week) I cannot conceptualize how I'll feel at then end of the first semester.  It's a tough job as I am the only high school English teacher for nearly one-hundred students.  English is obviously their second language and all of my instruction and material is that of an American college-prep school - this education is truly daunting for the students but they have risen to every challenge I presented this week.  This is an amazing situation and I cannot predict how it will unfold.

Also, check out my wife's blog for her interpretation of our lives in Cambodia.
http://comealongwithkathleenweil.blogspot.com

My work space in the guest room 

Laundry room/second bathroom

Kitchen area

Master bathroom

Main living space

Main living space w/ kitchen in the background

Master bedroom

The campus where I teach

My classroom - exterior

My classroom - interior