Friday, January 6, 2012

Busy boy

Heres a recount of my last two days.
What a crazy time.
Danced on the beach under the moon to Thai DJ'S with about 1000 people till 2 am, then set my alarm and awoke at 530 to return my motorcycle, pay for the bungalow, and still have time to wait on the road for a local pickup truck "taxi" to come by, so I can jump in the back of the truck with my pack and ride 20 minutes to the local pier, where I then try to find which boat I'm supposed to board and I can't read sh!t, so I stand in wrong line until the last minute when two thai guys look at my ticket and shove me out a gate saying "you go there!" then I take a 2 hour boat ride sitting on the wet floors because they sold more tickets then seats, where I to try not to puke from jumping waves in 100 degree temps until I fall into a sweat drenched sleep and awake red as a frigging chilli pepper, then I wait in a line with about 300 people for a 4 hour bus ride to the Cambodian border.
Dragged my pack and guitar around for two hours while I dealt with immigration and dodged hustlers.
Then I rode, crammed in the front seat of a little Mazda, for a 2 hour drive to siem reap, cambodia, with pack and guitar in my lap. I learned to say hello thankyou yes and no on the way.
Had a drinking bout with crazy Cambodians and then toured the markets where I got taken for a ride over and over till I learned to be rude and walk away. (very aggressive price haggling here.)
It took me a whole day to understand the currency.
They know tourists don't know how much they are paying so every purchase starts with me saying
"how much?"And they say "how much you want pay?"
Tricky tricky.
So I had to quickly learn that 4000 riels is equal to 1$ Then I had to ask several people what a normal price is for tuk-tuk driver, or food, etc., so I could keep from being ripped off here. The people are much poorer here so the scams are more common.
I was walking home from dinner and two little boys, maybe 6, came running up, skinny, super dirty, and grabbing at my leftovers, and begging in their language. So I gave them my food and they ran away laughing and yelling, very excited.
I've had kids beg for money before and I knew they were doing well, but I never had two kids come up and beg for food like that before.
I've already seen a million things here that I've never seen before...

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