Emmy Appleseed

7/7/10

—> It is July 7th and I sit here in an eleven dollar fifty cent hotel room scratching at my mosquito bites and hoping for breakfast.  Last night after our bus drug us into Phnom Penh, we went to Dream Bar (LP recommended) where the Westerners were plentiful.

What else?           [A sickening crunch I can’t forget in downtown Phnom Penh, watching as a motorbike merged into where the left wheel of our gas-gulping bus was, the motorbike vanishing in my blind spot, a telltale crunch and a couple of bumps and forward we went.  The ladies sitting across from me had a look in their eyes that requires no translation.  Elisa looked at me, wide-eyed, “Did we… ?”

“Yea, I saw the bike turn left and merge on to the road until … crunch.”  

We decided to not believe it, but I’m fairly certain some part of that motorbike, human or metal was left mangled by the rear wheel of our giant bus.  Away we go.

We pulled into a bus stop area and everywhere men with laminated maps with hotels circled in black swarm those exiting the bus.  I’ve yet to put on my armor and chat with a guy about getting a ride, Elisa and I had decided to stay in a hotel (LP recommended o course) on the Tonle Sap River, a veritable hotspot of hotels and hostels.  She asks the bus driver, who directs her inside and she’s making a call to a verifiable taxi company while I tiptoe over broken English with my prospective taxi driver.  Elisa secured us a ride and the cab arrived immediately.  My cabbie suitor glared us over as we entered the air-conditioned cab.  

“Fuck U S A!  Fuck America!  America is crazy!”

And that was the worst anti-American sentiment I heard the whole trip, in Cambodia of all places as opposed to Vietnam.

I shook the insults off me (as any patriot would ) and we glided over to the tourist part of town—so grateful for a safe ride that we tipped the cabbie one dollar for a three dollar cab ride.  

That’s over 16,000 riel.]

The boardwalk reminds Elisa of Cuba and me of a more exotic Puerto Vallarta.  Angkor beer is the brew that bubbles round these parts and last night I downed two for sixty cents a piece while Elisa and I nibbled peanuts and watched a not-so-much attractive Cambodian whore proposition a rather dashing Aussie dude.  Such is the stage of Dream Bar.  

We’re living frugally, but springing for $12 hotels instead of $4 hostels.  

Our room has 2 twin (hard) beds, linoleum and thankfully no creepy critters.  Our bellboy sprayed the cracks and floorboards when we walked in, lingering longer than likely necessary to ogle at that odd yellow hair. 

Today will be my third “official” day here but we did so much yesterday, it feels like many more.  Elisa’s tastes are very humble, our meager dinner on the bus yesterday sustained us all night (save for some bar peanuts and a couple of Goldfish before a platoon of critters usurped the rest while we had our passports stamped).  

There really aren’t too many Americans over here— Brits, Irish, Aussies, etc. and according to Elisa’s boyfriend who traveled these roads circa o seven, many other Westerners assumed that people in the U.S. vacation only in the U.S. or Mexico.  In many ways, they are right.

But me no.  I love this travel, where I am forced to come face-to-face with my own absurdities, how our inflatable pillows and iPods are odd to many, how their sitting on brightly colored plastic children’s chairs while cooking on the sidewalk is odd to me.  

I love it though.

This ‘I’m out of my element experience’

though it occasionally frightens the fuck out of me.