20 random things i recently learned about me and cambodia.

people travel for two reasons: to learn about the world and to learn about themselves. usually they end up getting a combination of both. i'm on a bus to ho chi minh, leaving beautiful cambodia. being stuck on a bus with chinese music playing for 7 hours gives you plenty of time for reflection. here is what i have learned about the world and myself in the past weeks:

1. pringles are a completely acceptable breakfast choice.

2. i'm more easy going than i thought i was. i know when to take my time out, but usually and when not hungry i'm quite happy to go with the flow. i have met some real princesses on this trip and i wasn't one of them *pads own shoulder*.

3. the content of my backpack seems to be growing though i haven't bought anything. i am wondering if there is a traveller's secret to this that i don't know about?

(the above was a lie. i have bought three kromas for myself and one silkscarf in pink for my mother and a whole bag of spices that i have no idea if i'm allowed to import them.)

4. monks go commando i was told my multiple sources. not sure why i needed to know that, but our tour guides apparently deemed it important so i'm passing on the wisdom to you.

5. the one luxury i don't want to live without is face spritz. i lost my rosewater in bangkok and have been unhappy ever since about it. yesterday i shrieked in delight when i found evian spray at a pharmacy and promptly spent a little fortune on it to make it mine.

6. things don't make people happy. doing things that you love makes people happy. smiling makes people happy. i was told planting rice with your family during the rainy season makes people happy.

7. if you have ever spend a night in the cambodian countryside you will learn that crickets can be bloody loud and not very romantic and you will not go out and buy yourself a sound machine with jungle noises because you miss that sound so much. at least i won't.

8. sometimes doing really touristy things can be loads of fun. like doing a group cyclo race in really hectic traffic. especially when the locals around you don't mind.

9. traffic in cambodia is manic. i didn't see a single accident and still don't know how that is even possible. it seems to be an intricate system of organized chaos an outsider cannot understand.

10. i can live without wine. well, spider wine doesn't count and there is always beer, but still...who would have guessed?

11. i'm completely mesmerized by rice paddies and the harvesting of them.

12. kids are kids anywhere in the world: some are cheeky, some are shy, there is always a leader, one with pigtails, a big sister bossing a little brother. i like that certain dynamics are the same wherever you go. same goes for men and watching sports.

13. i need to spend more time by the beach. i become a different person when there is sun and salt on my skin (and yes, minus the sunburn obviously!).

14. i still need to find the balance between when to take pictures and when to put my camera down and just absorb. i think i miss out experiencing when i see through a lens too much.

15. i'm a hair tier upper. always. sorry. even with my new short hair the tropical whether just calls for it.

16. i am really really afraid of snakes. i won't eat one (and mind you i have eaten a spider leg) and when we were on the tonle sap lake and a boy in a small boat with a snake around his neck came close to ours i almost jumped into the water.

17. travelling puts me in a bubble. while that can be a great thing of living in the moment at times, i also need this trip to spend some time thinking about where i'm going and what i want out of my life. i haven't done that at all. then again, i tend to overthink everything so maybe it's a good thing to just be for a bit.

18. food! i get ridiculously excited by the local menus. i usually want to order everything. the best part about any town for me are the food markets and thai basil is the bestest of all herbs. 

19. i love lotus flowers. i almost bought some to put in my hotel room, but then sanity prevailed. lotus flowers don't like 7 hour bus rides very much.

20. i do like going away and coming home equally.  

Rain, vacation and now I want chicken McNuggets.

This is for my sister and my Dad and a box of Pringles, my good companies on a dark New Year's Eve. I love you guys!

 

I overslept this morning by two hours. My co-worker texted me at 09h30 asking if I was coming in. I think my boss must have thought I wasn’t sleeping alone, because she just greeted me with a big grin when I finally stumbled into the office. Nice of her for not scolding me, but unfortunately I managed to oversleep all by myself. What a waste...

Now a few hours later I am still tired, it is still grey outside and I dream of Africa. Better said of vacation in general. To cheer me up I made the grave mistake to look at vacation pictures, which made my mood worse and now I’m crying. I want to go away! I want, no I really, really need a vacation. Just a mini vacation. A little weekend somewhere else by myself, just a tiny road trip. Pretty please, because my self-portrait vacation collection needs updating*. Common sense is prevailing, because I need to save my money and spend it wisely on:

 

a. Spare tire

b. Cirque du Soleil ticket

c. Dinner at The Roundhouse with RG

d. All of the above

 

Not really a question now, is it?

 

Anyhow, so I came across my pictures from last year’s vacation in Namibia with my sister and Dad. I thought I should share some of our memorable moments. For example when I taught my Dad that he mustn’t indulge in the German cliché and take his socks of when he wears sandals.

My proud Dad - isn't he cute?

He did not know that as he didn’t previously own a pair of sandals. He adapted quickly to the newly learned fashion wisdom and managed to look quite dashing in his Yves Saint Laurent-esque safari outfit with sandals sans socks. Unfortunately he also managed to get sunburn on his feet. I managed to get a lizard stuck on my ear; in fact he was biting it.
Our tour guide thought that would be hilarious for everyone to watch and make a good photo op. I must agree he was right.

 

Noteworthy also on this trip were the lessons we learned regarding celebrating New Year’s Eve in a place like Walvis Bay. We learned the following:

1. If you see some bottles of Dom Perignon the day before New Year’s at a lovely French restaurant, ask them if you can buy them. Pay any price! The restaurant will be closed on 31st, but at least you have something decent to drink. Otherwise you will learn the hard way that:
2. Namibian supermarkets only sell J.C. Le Roux. That should be forbidden. By law or something.
3. Buy enough juice to make the J.D. Le Roux drinkable.
4. Say no, when your guesthouse host asks you whether you want tickets for the Portuguese New Year’s party at the town hall.
5. If you do end up in the town hall (because you didn’t listen to point 4), take your own wine. They may run out an hour into the event. Know that Portuguese are worse when it comes to punctuality than Capetonians, so come full.You may have to wait for 3 hours till they serve dinner as they need to wait for the last Portuguese to arrive.
6. Portuguese are easily impressed – everyone was in awe when I carried three plates at a time out of the kitchen to our table. And no one seemed to mind that the meat was greyish. Maybe that’s a good thing in Portugal.
7. Take the tea light candle decoration to make it worth the R 350 per person you spent (excluding wine – so there was really no good excuse whatsoever for it to run out) and to give ambience to the real celebration later.



The real party starts here!

8. Walvis Bay, please build a 24 hour Mc Donald’s! I don't want to eat any more Pringles as my New Year's Eve feast.

This is a true story. So next time you think you New Year’s sucked. Think again.

 

 

January 1st - better food = more fun.

 

*An annoying habit of mine, which others don’t mind, because they don’t know about it as I only do it when alone for obvious reasons. No results on show here as they always turn out crap. My nose grows by 50% in any given self portrait.