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.