Cambodia: Day 45

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Om Loon's House in Phnom Penh

8:33 AM

Well, I'm back an entire day early from Pursat. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty happy to be leaving that particular province. It's not that I didn't like the province or anything, because I actually loved it (the rural parts, at least). It's just that Phnom Penh is kind of like my home away from home now, a place where I come back and feel like I belong...

Yesterday morning I woke up and quickly got ready for the day. The night before, Tuni and I ate dinner at a noodle house a few blocks away from the place we were staying. Before I went to bed I started to feel a little bleh. You know what I’m talking about, the kind of bleh where your stomach doesn't hurt, but you feel like you want to throw up anyway. It was almost like the food I had for dinner was stuck somewhere between my mouth and my intestines and couldn't make up its mind which way to go. Needless to say, every time I thought about food I felt worse and just attempted to sleep it off.

It didn't work. Every time I woke up in the night, which was multiple times, I felt gross. In the end, I think I was just very dehydrated; my legs kept getting a little cramped up and restless, a tell-tale sign of dehydration.

This leads me to my next adventure. Ready for the day, Tuni and I headed downstairs, my first objective being to find water. I wasn't feeling any better; if anything, I was feeling worse. All I wanted was water. I knew that the guest house left free bottles of water in the room every time it got cleaned, so naturally I went to the front desk and asked for some.

"Do you have any water?"

Blank stares.

"Umm … Water?" I pulled out an empty water bottle from my backpack and held it up. There was some conversation between the employees behind the desk and next thing I knew, the guy was on the phone calling for backup.

What is he doing, calling the police? It's just water. Not more than five feet away stood a small glass refrigerator with precious water inside.

A boy from the restaurant came walking in and up to us. "What do you need?"

"Do you have any water?"

Blank stares. Again.

"WATER. DO. YOU. HAVE. ANY. WATER." I tried to be as calm as possible as I held up and pointed to the empty bottle again.

"In the restaurant."

Of course it's in the restaurant.

Tuni and I made our way over to the restaurant and sat down. Smells wafted from the large dark kitchen in the back, enhancing my sickness and curbing any appetite I had left. We were there for a good ten minutes before our orders were taken, me making sure to order a large water and rice with pork. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to eat it, but I thought I'd try to anyway.

I got my water and began watching the clock. We had to be at the RACHA office by eight, and the current time was 7:30. Perfect, fifteen minutes to eat and then we'll be on our way.

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Umm, how long does it take to shovel some rice into a bowl and cook up some pork?

Tuni called the waitress over and asked where our food was. She looked at us as if we were crazy, then looked down at the table and noticed there was no food there. She rushed back to the kitchen, yelling. Thirty seconds later she was back.

"I'm sorry, we have no pork."

Of course you don't.

"You have omelet instead?"

By this time we just agreed to whatever. Five minutes later the omelets were on our table and I was eating the little I could. A woman gently walked into the restaurant, carrying her small toddler in her arms. She went around to the tables begging for money.

While beggars are a normal sight in Cambodia, I still have yet to feel comfortable when put into such a position. I was sitting there, eating my breakfast that would total to only two dollars, not even able to finish the whole thing while this woman stood over my shoulder, watching me and hoping I would pull out my wallet. It's a moral dilemma; yes, I feel bad for their lot in life, but at the same time I don't want to prove to them that begging for money works. I can't make that judgment, though. Maybe it really is all that the woman could do to survive. I pulled out 500 Riel (about 12.5 cents in American currency) and handed it to the woman. She walked out the door and her son grinned at me from over her shoulder, his eyes sparkling; it had been all worth it just for that...

Anyway, we finished and Sophal came and picked us up from the hotel in the car so we didn't have to walk to the office.

Now, I know that I sound like a snooty high-maintenance American tourist when I tell this story, but you have to understand that I was not feeling good at all. All I felt like doing was sitting in my room and getting water pumped into my body.

We drove out to the villages and started the survey. Two villages were completed by 12:45 PM, with 16 women interviewed. We got back to the hotel and, after some debate, decided we'd take a taxi home that night instead of waiting around to ride the bus the next day. Sophal helped us out in the process and we were home by 6 PM.

Some statistics from today:

1 - The number of dog fights I witnessed.

3 - The number of packs of crackers I downed for lunch.

3 - The number of liters of water I drank throughout the day.

1 - The number of cows Tuni accidentally called a horse.