Here!

We made it! I’ll try to keep up this little blog for all of you that are obsessed with my every move…. Maybe a good first entry would be a recap of the past week. Apologies if this is a little dense, but everything we do seems different, so I’m not sure what to leave out at this point. I think for this first one I’ll stay away from all of the more intense aspects of things (crushing poverty and environmental degradation) and get into that later.

Gavin got to Phnom Penh from Hawaii on the 31st, and I left 9/1 morning, arriving on Sunday the 2^nd. We were able to get right into our house, which made everything so much easier. Apparently a lot of people are stuck in hotels or other temporary situations when house timing doesn’t work out. When I got in late at night, the city was very quiet, with only a couple of mopeds driving around. Late night Phnom Penh has nothing on daytime PP….

Our house is in a neighborhood called Bassac Garden City. It’s a fairly new gated community against the river, and is very quiet compared to houses that are closer to the heart of the city. It’s a pretty mixed neighborhood, but definitely high on the income earners scale, as the houses are each walled and gated and quite big. Our house is 2 furnished bedrooms and a huge office that could serve as another bedroom, with 4 bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, giant kitchen, separate laundry house, and a small yard. It’s pretty surreal to live here after cramped and pricey US city standards. Everything is marble and concrete, with full basic furnishings (although we have to give a lot of stuff back to the Embassy once our things get here).

Our first couple of days have been a blur of tuk tuks, food, hunting for coffee shops, and worrying about getting Daisy finally. Getting around is fairly easy, but takes a lot of patience. Cambodians seem to be very friendly, and everyone speaks at least a word or two of English, which is fantastic because Khmer is so far the hardest language I have ever tried to learn. I’ve gotten really good at saying “Thank You” over and over while doing little bows, in order to keep things humming awkwardly along.

The biggest wow so far has been the getting around part of things. The roads are an explosion of civilized chaos. At first it doesn’t seem like there is any real order, but the more you’re part of it it’s clear that everyone respectfully just does their own thing and all the rest work around it. Almost all of the cars are SUV’s, barfing out exhaust, and every other inch of road space is filled with motorbikes and tuk tuks. We’ve been warned constantly not to get rides on the motorbikes, so I just take tuk tuks everywhere. Gavin is a fancy man and is picked up every morning and dropped off every evening by a car from his work. The tuk tuks have been a constant source of excitement. Aside from the basic issues like a conviction that you could be killed at any moment, and the ravaging of whatever attempts at cute hair and makeup are made, there just isn’t any way to be sure when you tell the driver where you’re going that you will actually get there. Every time I have gotten in one, I end up within a couple of blocks of where I want to go, so that’s good I guess? We finally seem to have found "our guy", Thol, who picks us up and takes us out on his tuk tuk when needed. He's really nice, knows his way around, and speaks a fair amount of English. Walking is kind of a dicey adventure, but not impossible, you just have to be very aware. 

We've spent a lot of time at the US Embassy, which is kind of an oasis in the middle of the city. Our sponsors, Mike (Gavins boss) and his wife Angie, have been unbelievably helpful both before we got here and now that we’re here even more irreplaceable. It doesn’t hurt that they are also very nice and fun, and Gavin and Mike are working up a solid man-crush that should work out both socially and professionally. They brought us to the Embassy and took us through the painstaking process of “Check In”, where we received our security briefing (purse snatchings), medical briefing (diarrhea), and other basic information (you can have ball gowns made for you!).  The Embassy itself is beautiful, apparently one of the nicer ones in the world and the blue print for any new ones. 

We’ve been fighting pretty hard against jet lag. A fair number of nights we've woken up at 2:30am, not fun. We're doing much better now, adjusting to Gavins work schedule, and getting Daisy last week certainly helped with the falling back to sleep! We picked her up last Wednesday at the Thai Air Cargo, in their warehouse, with the serious assistance of one of the NAMRU2 (Gavins job) drivers, Chan Ra. They brought her out on a forklift and when she realized we were there she lost her mind yelping and banging around. As soon as we got her out she went to the bathroom and went nuts over a bottle of water. Poor little girl. I honestly cant even imagine how stressful the whole thing was, but I am pretty sure as she lays passed out on the couch next to me that we made the right choice to bring her.  Walking her around here will be an adventure, and we’ve already faced the two sociopathic dogs next door that seem to have serious territory issues. I used a broom handle to scare one off, so maybe that will just be my new crazy-white-lady look in the neighborhood.

Food so far has been fantastic and REALLY cheap. Typical cafe breakfast is an omelet, a French bread roll, Khmer coffee and a bottle of water for around $2.50. We have had mainly Khmer/Thai food for each meal. The food seems at first to be a lot like Thai or Vietnamese, and there is a lot of “cross-pollination”, but Cambodian food has its own spices and is a little sweeter and saltier than the other two, with a little bit less chili automatically included (although they give plenty on the side). We also found a Dairy Queen, so I am cataloguing that for desperate moments.

I have a feeling this is getting a little bit long, so I’ll wrap it up with some pictures of the house and Daisy, of course. We keep forgetting to bring our camera out with us, so picture taking has been kind of lame. A lot of these were taken on my loaner Nokia (the worst), and are very low res. Working on that. I'll fill in more details about work, etc soon. Hope everyone that reads this is doing well. We really do miss family and friends, a little more instantly than I had imagined... Big hugs from this crazy city!

Dr. Ford representing the new home town.

Clowning.

Sunset over the river.

DAISY!!

Gavin and Daisy next to the river.

Tuk tukking around.

Our new best friend Thol, getting home after Daisys first tuk tuk ride! (terrible quality picture, obviously not my fault)

Daisy cruising!

From our balcony, looking towards the river.

Dining room.

Downstairs "formal" living room.

One of the guest rooms.

Balcony overlooking the hood.

Kitchen.

Laundry "cottage", aka, the hottest place in Cambodia.

Monsieur and Madame's room.

Front hallway

Upstairs TV room, where Leah-no-job spends some time watching Asian music videos.

Back yard (we just hired a gardener to help fix this up!)