Since we arrived in Phnom Penh and had no idea what to eat or what to do, we had began to see a similar theme of the same Asian cuisine and poorly interpreted "Western" food (although much of it was pleasurable to the palate). After consuming the same noodles, fried foods, and Fish Amok for a week, we began to have the typically cravings for sandwiches, soups, pasta...normal daily life food. On top of this, we were beginning to get tired of feeling like tourist. Understandably, there are things you must see in Phnom Penh, but we didn't know the secrets of the city quite yet. We wanted to start grocery shopping, doing laundry, and getting back in the groove of living but had little to no direction in how to do so in this foriegn country. Luckily, Dr. Bazzano to the rescue.
Dr. Bazzano is our advisor and professor at Touro who has set up this whole project. After a long battle with the administration at Touro University, they finally bought her a plane ticket to Phnom Penh in order to introduce us to our pilot field study and the city itself. Dr. Bazzano first met up with us on Monday to take us to our first meeting with RACHA for our field study. Afterwards, she began to give sus her helpful tips and tidbits, not to mention exposed us all the cute nooks and cranies around Phnom Penh. We realized that you could easily live like we were used to in the Bay if not better. There were places you could go for tea/coffe with long bed type benches to lounge on with a lap table in order to do work. There were salad bars that you could pick your own freshningredients, even make a wrap if you wanted to. There were smoothie cafes and phenomenal ice cream. And the shopping??? Outstanding. Many of the places resembled small botiques that are tucked away within our home cityscape that we usually just look through and run our the door as soon as we see a pricetag. This was one gigantic sale on quality and quaint clothing. An Anthropology dream sale. And this wasn't just one store, they were EVERYWHERE. How we managed to miss these I still have no idea...
One of the restaurants we went to was an NGO sponsored place called Romdeng. We went here for one primary reason, the fried spider. Common cuisine of the Cambodian people, and as courageous as we all are, none of us could suck up the nerve. On the other hand, we had them bring out the tarancula in order to see him. I mean you can't play with your food and eat it too, right?
During lunch on Friday, the whole Touro group grabbed a some food, some brews, and a boat and went off for an hour and half lunch time cruise along the Mekong River. I sure have seen some dirty water before, but this was the murkiest of the murky. The boat itself was a "double decker". It was a wooden boat with a table in the middle that we all enjoyed lunch at and a "deck" on top covered by a blue tinfoil slate that burned your feet if you walked without shoes on. We sat on a couple of the makeshift benches that were screwed into the roof and observed our surroundings. As we looked around, disparity stared us right back in our faces. There were huge elaborate houses neighboring broken down wooden huts. All of our studies thus far were becoming a reality. We would always leave class and talk about how depressing many of our topics were and how we never discussed solutions. After our pleasurable but knowledgeable boat ride, we saw the scale of what we are up against and why solutions were never really discussed. No matter how much effort is put in, unless you can change the way people view their fellow man and the compassion they feel for one another, the crosscutting aspects of public health will always be difficult to deal with. The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming for both the people who see the larger picture and those who are oppressed by it. "No money, no honey" as our Sihnoukville taxi driver would say.
On a lighter note, after the boat ride, we went in search for a place in which Dr. Bazzano heard took traditional Khmer photos. There are many photo shops around town and most offer traditional Khmer wedding photos for a cheap price. This is no take your picture in some dress up clothes with some cheesy background (although they do insert the cheesy background later). These are pictures in which you get your makeup and hair done in Khmer style following by a 10 minute dressing in order to make you look like you were going to be married in a traditional Khmer wedding. The process takes around 30 minutes per person and the pictures are even more difficult to take. You have to hold Khmer poses, which for an unflexable human being like me, is extremely strenuous. Our final copies of the photos were hilarious. They photoshopped Cambodian landmarks in the background and made us all, even me, look even whiter than before. It was an amazing experience to see their precise attention to detail from head to toe. As soon as I find a way to transfer the final copies of the pictures to the computer, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be up here!
Although this post is called the comforts of home, one thing that does not offer us this feeling is the fact that we have to do our own laundry by hand. Rebecca, Ruchi, and Lauras hotel room mirrored that of a sweat shop by the time all of us were done. So please, appreciate your local laundry mat because...hey....at least you don't have to hand wash it all:)
Until next time....Chom moy! (Cheers!)
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