Bob Dylan Said It Best...

In an awesome and ironic twist of fate my Roomba just knocked down the only broom in the house and pushed it into the screendoor. I am proud to have such a forward thinking and zealous Roomba, though I worry what it will do with Margaret. It is not used to her and her return may spark some jealousy issues. So far Roomba and I have developed a really pleasant and friendly working relationship, but the voice that the Roomba uses to tell me things about itself sometimes makes me think that it thinks that we are more than just friends.

Oh, and Bob Dylan termed it a Simple Twist of Fate, and I recommend looking into that.

A Few Comments Regarding Woot.com and Roombas

First of all, Woot.com is the coolest thing in the whole world. Second of all, so is out new, incredibly cheap Roomba. Both are the best ever. Also, owning a robot makes me feel powerful...

Cambodian Kiddery

This little girl was my favorite. She was SO brave. All the other Cambodian kids were terrified of us, but she just came right up and played. After 2 days of her playing with us, the other kids got comfortable. Also, I think she looks like she could be a Malich. Is there a Cambodian Malich clan? I gave her her first taste ever of peanut butter, which was awesome. It was only MRE peanut butter, which isn't the greatest, but she was amazed by it.

This is the first girl's sister, I think. They were always together and I frequently saw this one, I assume the elder, tell the younger not to do X or Y. It is only an assumption, my Khmer never got very good.

This girl was one of the prettiest, but her smile was not the best.

I never really knew this guy. He did a lot of pull-ups, though.

More News For Everyone

Y'all, So there I was, straddling a 20 year old boy…, wait, that sounds wrong. So there I was, wrapped around a 20 year old on a moped… no, not better. So there was this moped. I'll start at the beginning:

Last night, after a day of boring typing and a fence-line shower, we decided to go and get dinner. There was talk that the place we usually go to, The Cambodian Cheers, was out of food. The last time we were there they only had organ meats from some animal. Supposedly it was from several different animals, but we're not convinced. It wasn't liver, it might have been heart, but there were a lot of valves and it tasted a little like… well, it was a bit tripe-ish, with some liver-y consistency and heart grittyness. I guess it could have been a little of each. No one wanted to hazard a guess what animal or animals the bits were from.

I think that we've come as a huge boost to the local economy. It will be sad for them tomorrow when we pack up and leave. I'm trying to feel sorry for them, but the thought of a real, hot, clean shower is my only focus. At any rate, we stopped at Noggin's Cambodia, but they said they only had, "a little bit of beef."

Take it from me, a little bit of meat here is the same thing as, "It's passed beyond gamey and into completely unrecognizable as food. It's a kind of cow jelly now, with hair." We had heard that there was another place up the road and to the left, so a group of six intrepid gourmets took off in the direction that some random person had pointed.

We started our trek with good spirits and every hope of eventual dinner. Had we but known the horrors that awaited us… We started to think we might have bitten off more than we could chew when we realized that there is no signage in Cambodia. Finding a restaurant here is a matter of seeing which houses have more plastic chairs in them than the others. It's not an exact science, but it tends to work. For instance, we all saw the restaurant as we passed it, but since it was on the right instead of the left, we figured we must be wrong.

We ran into many, many people on the trek. A few of them told us that there was indeed a restaurant on this road, but further up than we had gone. One fellow who spoke middling English told us that it was 100 or 200 Meh ahead of us. We took this as a good sign, until someone pointed out that we have no idea what a meh is. Someone else took this dispiriting moment to say that mile, when abbreviated, is mi. Mi could be pronounce meh. 100-200 miles seems pretty far to go to get to a restaurant of dubious merits, but we struggled on in the hopes that meh were actually meters.

When we'd gone another kilometer we started to doubt the veracity of the meh rule. Plus, it was getting dark and the people on the street no longer even understood the universal, "Hello!" At some point we realized that the road ahead of us had no light whatsoever. One of the main requirements for food preparation, we surmised, is the ability to see. So we turned around. Now the people knew "Hello!" but we were too tired to call it with our former vim. It was a long trek back. Not all of us made it to the restaurant we'd passed the same. It was our own version of the Ho Chi Mihn trail. As we trudged, heart-sick and foot-sore, back towards the camp, one of the RCAF doctors popped out of a hovel on the WRONG SIDE of the road and told us that this was the restaurant we'd been searching for.

We entered the glorious peace of the restaurant and found seats. Gombio almost sat on a baby, but they scooped him, er… the baby, up and ran him to another seat. We all collapsed into out chairs and tried to sort out ordering food. Fortunately for us the RCAF Dr. helped us get our order straight. When it came to ordering beers, all we wanted was cold and in a bottle. We asked for Angkor Beers, but they only had cans. We were willing to go with anything else, but they only wanted to give us Angkor, since we'd asked. Cambodians can be remarkably hard-nosed when it comes to Angkor Beer, apparently. They insisted it was possible, if we were willing to pay, to get Angkor. We WERE willing to pay, so we whipped round and tried to give them the money, but no, it was not that sort of deal.

One of us would take the money, with the kid who was going, and pay for the beer at the shop. Guess who was the only one to volunteer? His name starts with O. So I followed the kid out of the restaurant, over to his moped and when I realized that we wouldn't be walking I got a little nervous. I mean, roads are things that happen to other people in Cambodia.

The road here would barely be called a path in the US. Wealthier folks have this sort of "road" through their gardens where I come from. To be flying down one of these roads, strapped to a kid, legs flung out in front in the hopes that my feet would not touch the ground left me feeling forklempt. Thoughts like: "Dying for a beer, eh?" And: "How exactly will I explain my violent injury to Margaret?"

By the way, at this point I'd like to interject that there are photos up at flickr.com/photos/cip08 Feel free to go and take a gander, when you get the opportunity.

We drove over potholes that don't really do justice to the term pothole. They were more like kettle holes, tureen holes, holes that if they were pot, then were cannibal pot. Upon arrival at the little shop that was going to sell us our beer we found them all out of Angkor Bottles, so we took a case of cans and went back to get dinner. Once again, as the little moped ramped up through the gears and the thousands of tiny, blood-sucking, itch-inducing midges splattered against my teeth, I thought: Does anyone need beer this badly?

After we'd been back at the restaurant 10 minutes I was finally calm enough to sit down at the table. It took quite a while because my heart hadn't made it back into my body. Do you remember the cartoons where the cat falls asleep next to the dog and when they return to their bodies they get mixed up? My heart felt a bit like that. As if the speed of the moped taking off had left my interior person up the road at the shoppette.

Dinner was quite good and on the walk home, after finishing our case of beers, we all, including the female, stopped in the bushes for a pee. We had a patient today complaining of salty urine. I'll let you all ruminate on that one for a while. Today we're mostly packing up, seeing a few patients, trying to get rid of our remaining medicines. If we can get rid of all the meds sooner, we can be done sooner. The moment there are no more meds, we can start taking down the tents. When we're done taking down the tents we can pre-stage the gear to put on the trucks tomorrow. When we're done pre-staging then we're just waiting to get the closing ceremony over with in the morning and onto the bus to the pretence of civilization that is Siem Reap. More to come, but we're closing on the end. There is Angkor Wat and the flight home. I haven't got the passport photo that I am apparently supposed to have, so I might be stuck here. But hopefully not, and hopefully you'll see the rest of the story here, instead of on Drudge Report.

Another One to Everyone

Have you ever had a really bad hangover? Have you ever had a really bad hangover and then had to sit in oppressive heat and take blood pressures of smelly people all day? How about this one, have you ever had a really bad hangover, had to spend the day taking smelly blood pressures and then had the tent you are under collapse over you? Welcome to my Friday!

Thursday night was a celebration of sorts. Dr. J, our veddy British doctor, was leaving us on Friday morning and we were sending him off in Cambodian high-style. By which I mean, there were almost clean plates to eat off of and people who had had the foresight to bring their own booze from home broke it out. The misty, finger stained glasses at the restaurant were the perfect counterpoint to our fine Scotch whiskey, and in true Navy style we shot the two fingers of 22 year aged Glen Fiddich. Then the good Dr. broke out his private stash of Bacardi and we got down to a serious goodbye. It was in the midst of telling a story that I realized that my tongue was no longer under my control, and it was then that my friend Thompson and I decided to stumble back to out tents.

Have you ever slept on a spinning cot before? It is most unpleasant. The normal discomforts of camping are nothing until they are combined by a really good, beer, scotch, rum-drunk. I may have thrown up some rice, organ meats, random unidentified vegetables, the four massive Angkor beers I'd had before the scotch and then all the liquor I've ever seen. I may have thrown them up into a water bottle. It may have been an unfortunate water bottle to discover when I woke up in the morning. And when I say it may have been these things, I guess I mean it was so. Not that I am trying to duck responsibility for my actions or anything, I genuinely made the incredibly foolish choices that led to this miserable end, but there were extenuating circumstances… I really hadn't liked being sober the day before.

That morning started at about 0230. After having voided my entire body cavity at about 1030 I fell into a fitful and feverish doze. At 0230 one of the other fellows in my tent lost his iPod earbuds and blasted the rest of the tent with the supremely restful sounds of Minor Threat, or perhaps it was Social Distortion. At any rate, the group that played had a name that brings to mind the overthrow of governments by violent means. They are a loud, obnoxious, spirit-rending musical group and they were played at decibel levels that explain this fellow's general inability to hear orders when shouted at him. Finally we resolved the earbud issue and fell back into the snooze that had been formerly denied.

Within 40 minutes the local roosters started crowing, their internal alarm apparently set several time zones to the left of their actual location. When they ceased crowing the rise of the sun in Alabama there was a scant 20 minutes of rest before some spirited Cambodian mistook our tents for the home away from home of American Idol. He burst into frenzied song for 40 or more minutes, during which time I lay in a stupor of illness and fever. While I prayed that the singing would cease so that I could once more pretend that sleep was possible I envisioned a massacre. I saw myself wielding a bloodied machete, with the blood of a thousand roosters and all amateur vocalists, the world over, staining its blade. If I had had a machete, and had not been so given over to ensuring my continued breathing by intense concentration, what a legend I could have been.

When the local Cambodian William Hung finally ceased his endless rendition of "She Bangs Cambodia" I allowed my breathing to take over and slept the 10 minutes that the local populace allowed before their early morning horn and Caribbean steel drum chorus took over the musical duties. Might as well try to sleep at CBGBs. I wrestled myself from my mosquito netting and stumbled around in the remains of my dinner while using baby-wipes to clean the more egregious filth from the floor and my body. After a miserable shave and morning toilet I ate some MRE bread and jam for breakfast, drank some luke-warm bottled water and started taking morning vital signs.

The Cambodian people are not regular bathers. I have had experience with people who rarely bathe. The detainees in Guantanamo Bay are not, as a rule, the most hygienic of men. This did not particularly bother. They have a spicy smell, those detainees, they are a human curry. A rich mélange of spices and bodily oils. Afghanistani people are the spice of life, however evil and insane they may be. Cambodians, on the other hand, are like an armpit. Perhaps like an armpit that has not learned to adequately wipe its bottom, if your mind can conceive of such tortured anatomy. There is something in their odor that makes one wish for almost any other scent. Pure toilet filth has it over Cambodian peasant in the pure toilet filth is a distinct smell, not a mixture of foulnesses. Perhaps I overstate this, but there is truth in it.

Take this unpleasantness on top of already being filthily sick and repulsed by one's own smells and the day becomes an unpleasant admixture of nausea. It's also impressive how, in a country absolutely rife with skin diseases, parasites, amputated limbs, gross deformities and dengue fever there is daily someone who combines all of these features into so startling a visage that comment is forced from you. In so much as there are general unfortunates and general combinations, and the wearying morass of humanity parades before you without pulling one up short for comment, the ones that really stand out stand out in such a grotesque way. Your hand, reaching for their wrist to check the pulse, draws back in horror and then, nerve overcoming distaste, returning to the sore-encrusted member and squeezing for the heart-thumping pulse. All the while your mind screams for release and your hand shivers at the oozing pustules that are in its grasp. The milky, dessicated eyes that stare, unlevel, out of the too cheerful face, the toothless, rotten gum-landscape of their mouth. Unforgettable, and yet always topped within the day by some horror more grotesque. Dr Treves would have been beside himself here, so many discoveries for the Academy. The poor elephant man would have been only one in a crowd.

Miserable hang-over days are the longest ones, and it proved so on Friday. Though I was sitting next to my dear friend Thompson I still failed to appreciate the day as I have hitherto. Misery, heat, sweat, despair, the four horsemen of a Cambodian hang-over.

In the early afternoon a wind kicked up. When I say a wind kicked up I want you to imagine a scene from Pecos Bill, the tornado that Bill roped and rode was not less forceful than the wind that kicked the patient waiting-area tent off the ground and dropped it back onto the poor Cambodians awaiting treatment. In the second of time I had to react I started towards the people who were being endangered, which I will always feel was a heroic impulse, but our LT called us all to leave the tent area. In the moment of hesitation I was lost and by the time I had turned back to help, all help had already been rendered. I was only able to assist in the tent remediation, and even that I was not much use. My friend Thompson managed to give a local woman heart failure when he scooped her up from her peaceful seat and carried her bodily out of the imagined harm's way. She was never in any danger other than death by Thompson, but he wasn't to know.

After the eventual re-setting up of the tent there were many quiet hours of vital signs, punctuated by kids with large upper arms, friendly babies, pretty girls, and the occasional semi-human golem. We saw 987 patients on Friday and it was a long, long day. When the patients were finally gone we all had a medication sorting party until around 8, at which point I took my fence-line shower, read some Paul Johnson and collapsed into bed. The day over, I could finally reflect. Never again, I decided, never again. I don't care how many British doctors are leaving my life forever, I'm not mixing 151 and Glen Fiddich for anyone. And let that be a lesson to all of you. Much love as always and more to come.

Cambodia

To the whole damned lot of you: Well, it's just past the half way point of this Cambodia trip that I'm sure you've been curious about. What? You didn't even know I was going to Cambodia? Well, I've been here 6 days and I have about 5 more to go. It's been a heck of a visit and I have to say that while I might be willing to return to a tourist center, I will not be looking to return to Th'mir Pouk any time soon. The kids are really cute, but cute kids do not a wonderful experience make. I don't care what you've heard to the contrary.

We left from Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa on Friday the 25th. It was a reasonably pleasant flight over. Only about 4 hours in the air, turbulence-free. We arrive just outside of Siem Reap at about 1100. The airport will be featured on Flickr, when I eventually get back to civilization. It's two hours different, so it was 1300 our time, and we were getting hungry. We'd eaten at about 0430, at Kadena, from a hotbox van; one of those driving junk food things that you see on union job sites. Unpleasant food for unpleasant people, we wolfed it down. We had to do a whole bunch of work at the airport, not the normal customs things, but loading and unloading our own luggage and equipment, getting it all onto trucks.

I almost passed out from something very like heatstroke. It was a close run thing. We started moving these large, flat metal pallets which were very, very hot and I started to get woozy. I stumbled over to a grassy knoll and upchucked. Unpleasant. They gave me some water and made me sit down for a while. I got a little better and it was time to head to the hotel. We drove around, looking at the wandering cows and the incredible number of Buddha statues everywhere.

The squalor, even in the relatively cosmopolitan Siem Reap, was intense. People sitting in filth, cooking in filth, hell, cooking filth in filth, it was depressing. We got to our hotel, which I can't recall the name of, but you'll see it on Flickr and I recommend it if you are planning trip to Cambodia. It is probably the most luxurious place I've ever been or even seen in real life. The photos can't possibly do justice to the feeling of exotic comfort. From the shrine in the lobby to the 50 channels on the TV in the room, there is nothing you can recognize as Western. I watched a kids show about Krishna and a band of demons. All with live action actors and not one thing that happened made sense. Possibly the best 20 minutes in front of a TV ever spent. The salt-water pool is a delight, warm as a baby's bath and so salty that it puts the ocean to shame. The actual hygiene issues involved with a salt-water pool are questionable, but it felt too good to care. The bathroom in the hotel room… I have been without a bathroom for several days now and so I hesitate to let flow the incredible details that seems so fresh in my mind. Let it simply be said that the torrent of complimentary details cannot hope to match the torrent of water that needles into your pliant skin in the shower. I didn't take a bath, figuring I'd hold out till I really want one, i.e. when I get back from my dirt bath. It was a good choice, I have no doubt that the bathroom will once again wow me, but holding off makes the expectation much greater. I don't know what I've missed. I have to imagine that it's great.After a few hours at the hotel, without eating anything, though I did drink my first Angkor Beer, we all met up to go with the Non-Government Operators (NGOs henceforth) for dinner.

Siem Reap at night is impossible to imagine. I told Margaret that it was like something out of Deerhunter, and that's true, but it's so much stranger than that. Being in Cambodia at night is like living a PJ O'Rourke essay. (This is HIGH praise, from me. Coming from other people it might be a negative position. I suppose you'll have to go read some PJ and then decide for yourself.) We went to dinner at a place called Dead Fish. I had heard about this place before I came. Each table is on a separate level, for privacy. It's a neat system, though it really wastes a lot of space. We fit 30 people around a long table on a high level and half of them never got the food they ordered. I felt their pain, I never got my seconds. The food was very good. Kind of like Thai food, which I like very much, but a little spicier, or differently spice. Like when Mom puts too much cinnamon in the chili. You still know it's chili, but the taste is just different. At any rate, the food was tasty, but not filling. There were crocodiles inside the restaurant that you could feed fish for $.50. We didn't do it, but we watched a French couple do it. They seemed to be really happy doing it. We were just happy watching the crocodiles eat the fish. There was a floor show of traditional Cambodian ceremonial dancing, which I thought was dull. Then there was a couple of overweight American kids who came out and sang 90's hits. Since I am all about 90's hits, this went over big with me. My loud clapping irritated them, though. (They have no appreciation of virility in tourists.)

After dinner we decided, and when I say we, I mean my friend Cranston whose bank I am while we're here, to go to Bar Street. It's this crazy little street with lots of , wait for it, bars. It's cordoned off by police, though. They make sure that none of the little kids who beg can come onto the street and beg from you. The first place we went to was called The Temple. Again, there are Flickr images coming, but it was a cool place. We hung out there for a couple hours. We met a guy who works for Homeland Security, which was cool. He was drunk and said some things he probably shouldn't have, unless they were lies. But it was fun all the same. Then Thompson met up with this girl named Annie. At least, I'm guessing that's how she spells it. She pronounced it Annie. She took us to another place.

This other place was off Bar Street and a lot less… it was a whore bar. Apparently Annie asked for no money at the end of the evening and Thompson still has his passport and both kidneys, so maybe she just likes to hang out there, but it was something else. They don't have strip clubs here, it's not acceptable behavior. They DO have dancers though. These young girls who act like they are about 8, but look like they are older, if you see what I mean, dance around fully clothed; at least, fully clothed for them. The big question of the night was which of them were actually men in drag, it's shockingly difficult to tell with your basic Occidental face. I was coerced into a little dancing with one of them, but it was my usual awkward dancing and I think she got the worst of it. It got a lot of Cambodian laughs, but was not successful as a form of seduction, on either of our part. We stayed there for a while, until I finally was just done.

I gathered up half our party and took off, back to the hotel. We had to be up at 0445, so being out passed 1100 wasn't on for me. As it was, I got to sleep at almost 0100. I was sleepy when we got up the next day and boarded our bus for Th'Mir Pouk. This turned out to be a bad move on my part. Roads are something that happen to other people in Cambodia. The basic design of a road here is a pothole with no paving for miles. Several times I thought my coccyx was going to be fused to the metal of my seat. Most unpleasant. After 5 hours of miserable driving we finally found ourselves at the appointed place. Now, a few of you might have heard that we'd be performing our medicine inside of a Buddhist temple, and indeed, that was the plan. However, it turned out that our advance party had counted its chickens before they hatched and we were not going to be able to use the temple.

We are using the local governor's compound, instead. This is a little bit of a blessing, as it means that there are police around all the time and we don't have to set up our own guard system. That's nice because it means that we can sleep all night, instead of only in shifts. The downside is that there is no way to keep people out. (Don't ask me why not. There are gates and everything, and did I mention police? Yeah, I have no idea how that works. At any rate, it's a pretty nice place. Not great in so far as normal amenities that we enjoy in the West. The toilets are all bucket affairs. After you do your business and bag your toilet paper/baby wipes, you take a bucket of water and pour it down the spout until it finally flushes. Not pleasant. There is no shower capability. We use bottles of water and the back fence line.

Directions for a water bottle shower: Take 3 or 4 bottles of water, wear skimpy shorts, dump one bottle all over yourself, get every area wet. Soap up, don't drop the soap in the dirt! Use the other bottles to rinse the soap off after you drop it in the dirt, walk, covered in soap, back to the tent with the water and get more so that you can rinse off. Endure the taunting yells of your friends, also catcalls. Repeat every other day, when your own stink overwhelms you. Take care to avoid random dogs, chickens, children and Cambodian locals who would like trip you, watch you shower, or just plain lounge near you.

It took us most of the early afternoon to set up our tents and when we finished there were already 200+ locals outside, just waiting to be seen. So we took the late afternoon to see patients. I did vital signs at the start. It was fun. We had to see the 200+ before dark, so we had to move really quickly. The vital signs team had to keep ahead of the triage officer who had to keep ahead of the doctors who had to try not to overload the pharmacy. It was a mildly complicated process, and I enjoyed it. We ate our MRE dinner and went to bed, exhausted. In fact, I Think it might have been the most exhausted I've been in years, probably since boot camp. I did not dream. Wake up a little before 0600 and for many an MRE breakfast. Your intrepid author managed to go without food, though. MREs are foul at the best of times and not to be countenanced first thing in the AM. I require a soothing cup of tea and perhaps a quiet period of reading and a contemplative poop. These, unfortunately, are not an option in the field. I settled for sitting and making fun of my fellow early-morning risers.

A full day of seeing patients, I think we saw over 700 that first full day. The vitals team and I learned a bit of Cambodian and I entertained the crowd at lunchtime with all the hand motions and faces I could think of. The "living hand" thing didn't go over as well as it always did with me, but then I would be the first to admit that I lack the stage presence of a Chico Marx or a Bruce Campbell. The kids here, as I said, are adorable. Utterly, utterly adorable. I think that there is something in the water here though. The little girls are unutterably gorgeous, as young teenagers they have a grace that is not found in Western teenagers. But by the time they are in their mid-twenties they look like life is over for them. I was saying the other day that if this is how everyone used to age, in the old days, then no wonder they married so young. It's shocking, honestly. I have seen a couple of twenty-something girls who are still pretty, but there is a feeling of tenuous timing, as if their days are numbered and everyone knows it.

Several days went just like that, showers when possible, the bucket toilet, vital signs and vital signs and vital signs. We are all ripe, the smell in the tent where the enlisted guys sleep is something like what you'd imagine medieval moat to smell like. Spirits are pretty high though. We are all getting along well. There are two restaurants nearby. We have adopted one of them as our home away from home. I go every other night. We have Angkor Beers and Lohk Lahk. (Or it might be Lahk Lohk, we have not had a satisfactory explanation.) We ate frogs there the other night and bugs that they caught around the lamps. It was pretty special. The fruit! That's what I needed to tell you about. First of all, you have never had a real mango. I don't care where you think you had a mango, you're wrong. Real mangoes are sold, hot off the tree, at stands on the side of the road in Cambodia. And there are mangostines, I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, but they are delicious. There are many different kinds of things that are similar to gnapes. I guess frogs don't count as fruit, but those were good too. So far every growing thing we've eaten has blown us… away. At any rate, like I say, there will be more coming, there is still half a story to tell and part of it will take place in Siem Reap. Hopefully some of it will also be taking place at Angkor Wat. There will be photos and fun details for people in specific. Look forward to more.