In Cambodia

The Airplanes:

My journey began on Friday, 6/18 at 10am at EUG. There, I discovered that fog in SFO delayed my first flight by 2 hours, and there weren't any flights to Asia after about 1pm. Weird. They suggested that I still fly to SFO today because there might also be bad fog in SFO the next day. I flew.

Thankfully, Nick, my roommate who lives in San Mateo, was gracious enough to pick me up for the day. It was nice to spend some time with him. We also celebrated his brother's 16th birthday and played some games.

The next day, the first leg of my journey was undoing yesterday's work: apparently, all of the SFO flights were full, so they flew me to Seattle before resuming everything.

Then, I flew to NRT (Narita airport in Tokyo). I watched "How to Train Your Dragon," "Alice in Wonderland" (no 3d glasses in the airplane), and "Wall-e." Once in Japan, I was greeted with a meal voucher: apparently, United is experimenting with how much they can delay people without annoying them. I'm not kidding. The meal voucher described how United was pleased to accommodate me because they were experimenting with "United controllable delays." Oh well. I had some good udon noodles and did some reading.

Then I went to BKK (Bangkok airport). They had free wifi, but I couldn't find anywhere to plug in my laptop (I think the plugs work without an adapter, but I couldn't find any plugs). They also had some free internet terminals. They keys on them, however, were very weird -- sometimes they would double-send a key, and sometimes they wouldn't send a key at all. Originally, I was planning on going to the airport hotel, but because my NRT to BKK flight was delayed, I would have only been able to get a few hours of sleep in the hotel, and I would have had to go through customs. Because this leg of the journey was on Bangkok Air rather than United, I didn't have my boarding pass, so an hour before the flight left (when Bangkok Air people first showed up), they printed me out a pseudo boarding pass -- it was just a sheet of paper with my flight info on it and my seat number hand written rather than a normal boarding pass. Also, United never gave them my checked luggage.

Finally, on Monday, 6/20, I arrived at PNH, Phnom Penh International Airport. I paid the visa fee, filed the lost bag paperwork, and met up with Martin who got a Tuk Tuk with me to my apartment.

Adjusting:

It is hot in Cambodia. I don't think it has been cooler than 30C, and apparently it has been very 'cool' since I arrived. Thankfully, every indoor space has industrial grade air conditioners. I still get very hot whenever I step outside. And, with the humidity, I feel wet the second I step outside also.

The heat is tiring (literally, not figuratively). It could just be the jet lag, but after I get back from work, I'm ready to sleep by around 10pm.

The apartment has two rooms, a living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. It has lots of fancy furniture, a TV (trying to change the channel from the TV itself doesn't work very well -- the channel down button changes the volume, and the channel up button randomly does channel up or channel down. Thankfully, I don't watch TV), beds, closets, and an air conditioner. I'm pretty satisfied with it. The one thing that it lacks is internet. There's a paid wifi network, but the links seem to be broken. I have a 3G modem for if I ever need to use the internet, but 1MB costs 10 cents, so I try to prepare myself for offline computing while at the apartment. They did say that they were installing internet there, though, so in a few weeks, I should be able to plug in. EDIT: I recently invested in a SIM chip from Smart, which had a package deal of $10 for 1GB. The coverage isn't amazing at the apartment, so I get something up to ~3 times dial up but less reliable.

I'm located by the Orussey Market and the Olympic Stadium.

Speaking of phones: I'm using Martin's old one (he recently got an Android phone). I picked up a Mobitel SIM chip with $5 on it, which will probably last me at least half of my stay. I think that all of the phone plans are prepaid -- it's a much nicer system for people like me who don't spend all of their waking minutes on the phone. I think that on AT&T, I have several thousand rollover minutes, and I bought the cheapest plan. It's also nice because if you only want to use a little bit of a data plan, you can just use it; you don't need to

There's a phone store on every street with SIM chips and phones. Apparently, phones are a status symbol, so people will buy fancy phones even though they don't do anything aside from talk on them (apparently, the mentality that causes people to buy iPhones in the US also causes people to splurge on phones elsewhere).

The First Day:

At my insistence (Martin suggested that I rest), I went in to InSTEDD's office on the first day. Also at my insistence, we walked there (I wanted to learn how to get there). It's a fairly straight shot: I just have to go south to Sihanouk street, go East until I get past the independence monument, and then go into the Phnom Penh Center. The entire high tech sector is in the Phnom Penh Center: Chris, from the UK, came to Cambodia 7 years ago, got married, made his own tech startup, and then tried to build up the tech sector in Cambodia by starting social businesses (social meaning for-good), encouraging Cambodian businesses, and teaching them about programming methodology.

Throughout the day, I suffered from jet lag. Perhaps I should have relaxed. By the next day, I was mostly fine.

I met everyone. They're all very friendly. Everyone speaks English (probably a little better than I speak Spanish). Two people from Argentina and one who went to school in Cuba speak fluent Spanish. Everyone except for me and the Argentineans speaks fluent Khmer. Every day, there is an exchange of languages (teaching a few words of Spanish or Khmer).

I can do little in Khmer other than navigate and say "yes" and "no," but my Spanish is getting a lot better. Two things help. First, I can passively listen to Spanish conversations and ask about words to learn. Second, I understand grammar a lot better now than when I was taking Spanish classes, so when I identify "lo" as a direct object pronoun, "se" or "le" as an indirect object pronoun and "él" as a subject pronoun, the distinction makes sense.

The office has drinks, water, air conditioning, some programming books, and occasionally fruit. There is a ton of very good fruit that I have never had before (ie, Dragonfruit, which is like a black and white Kiwi), and all of the restaurants have good fruit drinks.

The Streets:

There are plenty of differences between Cambodia and the US, but the one that has been most apparent to me in Phnom Penh is the traffic.

Their conventions are similar to those in the US - travel on the right side of the road, stop at red lights - but in Phnom Penh, they are more conventions than laws. Thus, it is common to see vehicles going two ways down any road (though most will go one way).

The reason that this can happen is that most people drive motorcycles rather than cars. There are still plenty of cars (mostly reserved for wealthier people), but there are many times more motorcycles. Transportation for people without vehicles is not taxis, but on the back of a motorcycle or in a Tuk Tuk (a motorcycle that has a cabin in the back).

There also isn't much parking infrastructure. In some of the larger roads, there will be one or two lanes that are completely occupied with parked cars (I'm not sure how people get their cars out when they're completely surrounded by other cars). Most sidewalks have parked cars on them.

Everyone (pedestrians included) needs to keep their wits about them at all times. That means looking in all directions at all times. Crossing the street as a pedestrian involves walking slowly (so that motorcycles and cars can avoid you easily) across the road while cars and motorcycles are coming at you (and possible from the other direction too) and waiting for gaps to appear so that you can continue walking. Think Frogger.

It was surprisingly easy to get used to. And now I feel like I could navigate a city in the US blind (in fact, many people do navigate cities in the US blind).

The saving graces of Phnom Penh traffic: people drive slowly, and people use their blinkers. Because of that, I think that I see more accidents in a given period of time in the US than in Phnom Penh.

Navigating the streets is a mixed bag. Their street numbering system, unlike the US system, is sane. In the US, a city might have north/south streets numbered and east/west streets named. If I don't already know the entirety of a city, seeing a named street won't tell me how to get to another named street. Names are not ordered. In Phnom Penh, north/south and east/west streets are both numbered. As you go west or south, the number increases. East/west streets are even numbers and north/south streets are odd numbers. A numbered street can also be associated with a name (so you can still honor parts of your culture using streets), but every street has a number, so orienting yourself in the city is much easier. However, there aren't street signs on the corner of every street. They are present on most major streets, and many houses and businesses compensate for the lack of street signs by posting the street number with their address.

Addresses are the downside. Just like the US doesn't have a complete street numbering system, Phnom Penh doesn't have a house numbering system. Every house will have an address, but they are assigned ad-hoc. That means that addresses don't act as unique identifiers for houses and don't contain metadata about the location of houses. Take, for example, the address "323 N 8th St" in the US. That address is a unique identifier for a house: there will not be two houses that are "323 N 8th St." That address is at the opposite side of the street from "322 N 8th St." That address is near "322 N 8th St." That address is between "321 N 8th St" and "325 N 8th St." The address is also 3 streets away from the 0 street in the east/west streets. That's a lot of metadata stored in one address. Phnom Penh addresses have none of that metadata. Addresses are not necessarily unique. Addresses do not indicate one side of a street, what street the address is on (ie, many addresses are between 0 and 100 rather than going up by 100 at every street), or how far along in a street the address is (that is, addresses are not necessarily in increasing order).

If only the two systems combined.

I got moderately well acquainted with the streets by getting lost on my second day. The first day, I walked to work and back with Martin. The second day, because Martin gave me his phone but hadn't get given me his charger, I didn't have a way to call him to meet up or to ask for directions. It was a fairly straight shot to work, so I felt fine, but I still managed to take a wrong turn. Walking out of my apartment, I'm going east. I thought that walking out of my apartment, I was going south. Thus, when I turned left on the first major street, I was going north on Monivong rather than east on Sihanouk.

After about 2km, I realized that I should have arrived already and that I was seeing lots of landmarks that I didn't remember. I didn't want to call a Tuk Tuk because I likely wouldn't be able to communicate to the driver where the building was, and they would probably not let me know that they didn't know where the building was. I knew that the office was by the Independence Monument, but "Independence Monument" doesn't translate well into Khmer, and the people that I asked didn't speak very good English. Thankfully, I realized that it would be easy to orient myself if I could find Sihanouk street, and "Sihanouk" does translate well.

I ended up getting to work about an hour after I had planned arriving. The office has a relaxed environment, though, so as long as I'm putting in some hours, the exact time that I arrive isn't a big deal.

One thing that I notice when going around the streets is people's dress habits. Most people dress the same as me for the climate: a t shirt, shorts, and sandals. There are a few noticeable differences.

First, there is a significant number of people who wear pseudo-surgical masks (those things that go over a surgeon's mouth so that he or she doesn't breath out any particulates when someone is getting cut up and is without the protection that skin normally provides). I think that they're worn as a personal health precaution. If you aren't breathing in other people's particulates, then you won't get respiratory diseases from others (like SARS or Bird Flu). Now, though, those diseases aren't very prevalent, and most of the masks aren't surgical quality, so they would only reduce exposure. EDIT: alternately, I have heard that they are fairly common in Asia out of politeness and to reduce the spread of more common diseases like the flu.

Second, some people wear long sleeves despite the heat. I hear that this is because light skin is supposed to be a sign of beauty, so people want to minimize exposure to the sun. EDIT: alternately, a sign of wealth, since poor people tend to work out in the sun.

Third, monks have a distinctive look. They all wear orange robes, and sometimes they use yellowish umbrellas. They have shaved heads. They're also usually some of the only people that you see walking -- everyone else is on a motorcycle or bike or in a car. I don't think there's a rule against them taking motorcycles because I have seen a bunch riding as passengers.

It's also hard to miss the economic difference. I feel like the amount of people begging for money in Phnem Penh is about the same as in the US, but the amount of people trying to make a living in the streets is much higher. There will be someone offering a Tuk Tuk ride on every block. There is a security person of some sort on every block. Some are police, some seem to be privately hired. The most common thing I see them doing is helping people park on the sidewalk (or helping to stop the traffic while someone gets out of their parking place). Off of the main streets, there are also people building things of all sorts, and it's common to see someone doing some soldering. In the US, we have public and private infrastructure -- what economists call 'capital' -- and we hide away all of our workers inside offices. In Phnom Penh, you can see labor happening.

Despite the harsh economic situation, the next generation is looking bright. I don't see many kids on the streets during the day, and I do at night. During the day, they're in school.

Day Two:

My luggage came in on the second night. The airport gave me a call, said that it came in on Bangkok Air's night flight. They had someone deliver it to my apartment. The security was pretty good. The person had me fill out my passport information and had me bring a copy of the form that I got at the airport before he would give me my bag. It was nice to have a change of clothes.

I also checked out Lucky Market. It's a western style supermarket that's between my apartment and work. They're pretty much the same as a western supermarket.

One of the differences is the brands. They have most of the western brands, but they also have lots of imitation brands. They have Pringles, but they also have Ligos. They have Lays, but they also have Mr. Potato. They have Frosted Flakes, but they also have Larry's Arctic Flakes. The imitation brands are usually about half the price of the western brands, and their ingredients are also healthier: nothing that I can't pronounce, and usually only three or four ingredients. I wish they had an imitation Sun Chips -- they only have the real things.

The prices are also much more variable. Stuff that is uncharacteristic of the area and not easily packaged, shipped, and stored -- ice cream and cheese -- are about double what they would be in the US (though there are also generic brands that are pretty reasonable). Western brand name stuff is between half and full price of what it would be in the US. Stuff from the area (or easily produced in the area) is at most half of what it would be in the US. For instance, Dragonfruit and Passionfruit are very cheap, as is French bread (as a former French colony, they have a lot of French bread. A decent sized and good quality baguette costs about $0.60)

Their donuts are a little bit lacking. In the US, donuts have tons of frosting and sugar and sprinkles on top of them. The donuts in Lucky Market seem much more sparing with their toppings. Then again, I haven't actually tasted any of them.

Day Three:

Having my luggage was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I have a change of clothes. On the other hand, I have my Birkenstocks. Apparently, they are too big for me when I'm not wearing socks. Thus, when I wore them to work, I had a few sores, and I limped around all day.

Thankfully, one of my coworkers offered me a ride home, so I didn't have to walk back in the sandals. In case you hadn't guessed from reading this far, his mode of transportation was a motorcycle. It was a little bit terrifying, but everything was fine. And I doubt that it's any more dangerous than walking.

When, in the future, I wore them with socks, they were perfectly comfortable.