Snakes On A Stick.

I should preface this entry by saying that due to the particular nature of the details within, photos and miscellaneous anecdotes will serve to further enhance your reading experience, and I have decided that including these as appendices would serve our purpose well. I don't know how to do superscript numbers like you see in legitimate publications, so I have developed my own slightly different (and inferior) system. Whenever you see a bold letter in squarish brackets, such as [x], you know my system is at work.

Well, Brother Josh [a] has been visiting for just over a week now. He spent most of last week at two WR offices a few hours from Phnom Penh, where he was working on computer stuff with the staff, giving them bits and pieces of his computer engineering degree from RIT [b] for free. I, meanwhile, was here in town, working hard to crank out the final stories and especially a brochure.

Friday night, as per Engchy's recommendation, we went to eat at an Indian restaurant called Chi Cha's [c] near the riverfront. My only regret is that I didn't know about this place sooner. For two bucks, you get all-you-can-eat rice and that amazingly tasty Indian bread, along with whatever meat dish you want, a bowl of lentil soup, a plate with some mixed vegetables and then another plate with tomatoes and cucumbers. For an extra 25 cents you can add a bottle of Fanta. As if the food wasn't enough, the oscillating fan mounted on the wall above the table had a remote control for Pete's sake [d]. Just before leaving, the waitress gave us their business card, saying we should know they did free delivery. I asked if they delivered to America, and she said no, just Phnom Penh. I am not sure if she knew I was joking or not [e]. She didn't look very Indian, but then again neither does my Indian friend Rebecca in Lancaster, so I went ahead and asked her if she was Indian. She kind of laughed at me like I was dumb, and said she was Cambodian. I was hoping she could have taught me some words in Hindi, but it was not meant to be.

The riverfront area in Phnom Penh is where the young people all go in the evenings with their special someones. They park their motos and sit on the little ledge overlooking the river and it is all pretty romantic, until a guy a few feet away, oblivious to the idea of ambience and public etiquette, lets loose and starts urinating. Josh and I walked down along the riverfront, and after stopping for fraps at a trendy café I like [f], we continued on past the royal palace before turning around and walking almost all of the way back to the hotel. We were talking about all kinds of things, including theology and community development, so we just kind of last track of time I guess. Josh noticed, and I photographed, cooked snake on a stick, all zig zagged and crispy [g]. We were walking back on Street 70, north of Boeung Kak lake, and shortly after I told Josh how this area had traditionally been brothel central until it was forced underground, down hallways and such, we passed a bonafide brothel right out in the open, complete with scantily clad teenage girls sitting under a fluorescent light glowing red. At about this time the area delved into a deeper level of shadiness, so we got on a couple of motos for the remaining part of the trip. Back in his hotel room I showed him on a map just how far we had walked, and it was concluded that we'd walked more than a quarter of the way around the perimiter of the city, which is pretty impressive [h].

Early the next morning we got on a bus and headed to the beach at Sihanoukvile, which, if you have been reading my blog with any regularity, has been mentioned a few times before. This was my third time there, but I never tire of it. We stayed at the same bungalow place where I stayed my first time down there [i]. This time the wooden thatched roof bungalow we got was half-way up a hill and raised up on stilts, allowing for a pretty cool view of the ocean. I read one and a half books over the weekend, and while the currently jelly fish-infested waters didn't allow for swimming, God put on a pretty remarkable show for us with wind and rain and a rip-roaring but brief thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon. You don't normally think of the words rain, beach and good as belonging in the same sentence, but sitting in that little beachside open-air thatched roof bar, safe from (and yet exposed to) the elements, and watching the islands in the distance disappear into the mist struck me as about the coolest place in the world to be at that moment.

I was feeling sick over the weekend, with a fever and aches and such. I was fearing that my negligence in taking my malaria meds [j] had caught up with me, but fortunately today I feel just about back to normal. It did occur to me, however, that if one has to be sick, the kind of sickness I experienced was just about ideal. I was tired and achy, but it was not miserable. It was the kind of thing you can comfortably sleep off. So I did just that, sleeping maybe 11 hours Saturday night and then another 9 or 10 last night, not to mention some dozing off on the bus.

On Sunday, before returning to PP, Josh and I went to the Snakehouse for lunch [k]. The Snakehouse, as the name would suggest, is pretty much a house with a lot of snakes. They say the owner goes out into the jungle and catches the snakes. I can think of about six billion occupations I would prefer to the one he has chosen for himself. Looking at snakes from behind the glass is creepy enough, if you ask me [l]. And what was even creepier still was how every few cages you'd see the sign for a pit viper or whatever and there was no snake to be seen. Sure, it is possible that the snake had died, but that kind of thing still does make you wonder what kinds of critters happened to be lurking in the gardens around the path you're on [m], preferring freedom and access to human flesh over glass boxes.

Insert Twilight Zone music here.

APPENDICES!

[a] This is Brother Josh purchasing papaya for himself yesterday while I sit in the shade because I am sick.

[b] RIT = Rochester Institute of Technology (www.rit.edu)

[c] The sign in front of Chi Cha's:

[d] That's right, Pete. That remote-controlled oscillating fan goes out to you.

[e] This is a loose reference to a film I recently saw, titled Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Much of it takes place in India where an American comedian realizes his sense of humor is not funny to Indians. You can watch the trailer here.

[f] Cafe Fresco (www.cafefresco.fcccambodia.com)

[g] Snakes on a stick.

[h] This map of the city shows you the basic route we walked, starting with Dot 1, Chi Cha's restaurant, then down to Dot 2, Cafe Fresco, then eventually back up past Dot 3, snakes on a stick, and then to Dot 4, moto pick-up. The grey line then follows the moto route back to the hotel where Josh is staying, and where I had left my backpack, represented by Dot 5. Finally, the blue line is the moto route I took to get home, at Dot 6. Stalkers and other unsavory creatures, Dot 6 is not placed exactly in the right place, so as to throw you off. Don't even try to find me. I blend right in with the locals anyway.

[i] Coaster's (www.cambodia-beach.com/coasters.htm)

[j] Geof, health advisor and male nurse, who knows more about these things than you and I, said that taking malaria meds in Cambodia this time of year was a waste of time.

[k] In the photo of the dining room below, please note that the under the glass on the table is a big ol' snake to further enhance one's dining experience.

[l] One of many slithering serpents to be seen.

[m] See what I mean?