12/12/16 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Wake up. Break up with Colombian girlfriend Darly I have tickets to see in Holland. Rain. Can't go to killing fields to feel better. Sit around and write. Go for walk. Worst city I've ever been too for traffic. No abundance, but four lanes of different direction. No one giving a flying fuck about another. Cars and motobikes parked all over sidewalk between mounds of trash. Everyone is selling and begging. Almost get hit by a car pulling out when I'm 6 inches in front of it. No way to cross the fucking street. Ugly and smelly. And this is the "nice" part. Fuck Phnom Penh.
Sit around the hostel all day while it rains doing nothing. Look up "Punk Bars Phnom Penh." Go to "Sharky Bar." Smoke filled bar. Almost everyone is old and has a young hooker. They are playing 80's thrash and Neil Young though so I sit down for a beer and fries. Get the fuck out of there. Walk to “club” district. The only people out are hookers and tut tut drivers asking me if want drugs and hookers. Typical Monday I guess. Walk restaurant area. Every table is some old English guy with two or three hookers. Freak out and go back to hostel. Have a cigarette and ask the Cambodian guy working at the hostel something along the lines of “what the fuck is going on?” He smiles and just tells me a story of some dude who was staying at the hostel who got all of his shit robbed while he was sleeping with a hooker. Second of the story I've heard traveling. Head up to my room and do a good hour of reading of Cambodia prostitution. There are several types of hookers – bar girls, street girls, gogo girls, brothel girls, etc. All have different prices and techniques to pick them up but all and all if you want a hooker in Cambodia it's about $10-20 an hour. The kicker is you have to admit every bit of “good” you've ever strived for has been a lie, and you're looking at an aids rate of 20%-60%. Thank god I just pass out.
12/13/16
Wake. Get back together with Colombia girlfriend Darly. Going to Killing Fields. Beautiful Chinese girl I was eyeing last night is looking for partner to split a tut tut and go to Killing Fields. The perfect date. Hostel guy tells me this and points to her and I immediately B-line it to her past some Dutch couple who says “we are looking too.” Her name is Annie. She insists we bring the dutch couple along. I say whatever. Head out. Motoring in our chariot through a gray trash filled city. Arrive Killing Fields. A nice park with singing birds and a few roosters running around. Put on guided headset. Two hours of the saddest shit I've ever heard in my life with sites of mass graves, trees babies were beat to death on, and a tower of skulls. Meet back up with group. Everyone is quiet. Tut tut to S21 – the prison during Pol Pot's rein. Put on guided headset. Two hours of the saddest shit I've ever heard in my life with sites of tiny brick prison cells, steal shackles, and torture devices. Walk around with Annie for a while. What a lovely date.
The things I learned about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge – his ideal communist utopia was founded on targeting the poor uneducated rural peoples, convincing them that the city dwelling elite were responsible for the economic and social problems facing the country before him. These were the people he trained to be prison guards and round up those in the city and march them to work the fields and eventually kill a quarter of the population for absurd accusations of treason and espionage against the state. This was only thirty five years ago. Let's see how Trump does in the next four years.
Return hostel. Annie takes a nap. Girl I met on the bus has told me she doesn't want to see me. So much for real life romance. Go on a Tinder date. She is Cambodian. I still haven't actually hung out with a Cambodian. I meet up with her and try to hug her – this is NOT okay. She seems super cold and disinterested right form the start. I asking wheat she's reading. She changes the subject into something else. She suggests we go for coffee. Order coffee. She doesn't like coffee. Go for a walk. I'm asking her anything I can think of about Cambodia, her, her kids, whatever – answers are short or completely off topic. Laughing at all the wrong times. I have no idea if this girl hates me, or Cambodians are just still sooooo far from being able to relate to some western asshole like myself. The few things I got out of the date: a) Cambodian's political system is completely corrupt to a point where people don't even bother to vote. b) I asked her what she thought of all the prostituion, to which she replied people need the money to send home to their families, but “if a girl slept with a hundred people, would YOU want to marry her?” Looks like you still got a ways to go Cambodia. Hop on neon bowling-mat dance party double decker bunk bed night bus for Siem Reap.
12/14/16 – Siem Reap, Cambodia
Wake. Bus arrives 5:20am. Plan was to sleep on the bus and not get a night at the hostel. So fucking tired from the Valium I took that got a bed for a few hours anyway. Wake again. Not a day for the temples – most famously here is Ankor Wat. Rent a scooter. Bust around the city for a bit. I love scooters. Cruise down some windy river roads. Take a detour down some dirt roads with colorful patched together houses on stilts where skinny dogs and cows and chickens run about. Everybody, especially the little kids, are shouting “HELLO!” in English. Get out of town a little more. Road sandwiched between a lily pond which claims a hut which always claims a hammock (everything, including tut tut taxis, all have hammocks). Climb a hill with some goats and look over the flat wet lands. Determined to get to “floating village” everyone tells me I need an expensive tourist boat to get through. Get to the end of the paved road which turns into a mud road. Peel out for a while down the mud road. Look over a few floating houses, of which one is being pulled around by a boat. In the foreground are girls playing a ball game with a twisted up plastic bottle they are heaving at another. Get to end of road. Full market of plastic junk, cigarettes, and lots of fish. My guess is the fishing community said fuck it to the mud road commute and just built houses that can float.
Turn back. Get lost in some dirt road neighborhood turn offs. Trying to be as respectful as possible invading on these people's homes. Eventually get to junction. Group of Cambodian dudes tucked in the back yard of a house listening to techno cheers at me. I smile and ride away. I say “wait...” and come back. They smile and cheers me again. I walk up to them and say “...hi.” They say hi and give me a plastic cup and fill it with a cloudy white substance. I say “Cholmuy” (which is one of two Cambodian words I know and is absolutely not spelt right) and we all cheers and drink. I realize that every time I say it everyone has to drink and I'm getting all these dudes a little drunk. I ask what it is and they point to a palm tree about ten feet away and then point to their friend who is busy cooking it. I ask them what they do, wondering what kind of job lets them all hang out and drink on a Wednesday afternoon, one guy says “electrician.” I smoke a cigarette and a couple glasses in I have them stop filling my glass and say goodbye.
Ride away a bit tipsy. Go to hostel. Go to bar. Meet some Europeans at the bar. Talk for a while about global economics or something. Share Adderall with the dude. We go to the “party strip.” Terrible bars for white people blasting Eminem songs. Stand there not knowing if I should drink heavily until it's fun or just leave now. Get a few drinks. Crazy attractive too young Cambodian girl is sitting alone at a table. I oblige. She seems really happy to talk to me and is touching my leg a little. This should be a red flag, but she is explaining this is her second night out in the three years she has lived here and is with her friends who are partying pretty hard. I sit with her and aderall talk with her for a while. She moved here to do massage, and from what it seems, is legitimate non-happy ending massage. We finally dance a bit. Paint each other's face with glow paint. More touching. This goes on for a few hours. White guys are getting more abrasive with everyone, She goes to the bathroom. I talk to some Portuguese guy. She disappears. I say “oh well.” Bar closes. Go to the last open club. She is there. I say “hi.” She gives me an “oh, it's you” sort of look. I say whatever. She is dancing with me and touching again either because she likes me or to get away with the drunk white vultures. Every dude is just taking turns touching her and her friend. This seems extra bad because maybe this whole “whores everywhere all the time” thing is making dudes feel like every girl can just plucked. Portuguese guy I bought a drink for says in frustrated tone out of nowhere “if you don't go for her, I will.” I roll my eyes. She says she's got to go. I ask her for her number and give her a kiss on the side of the head. This isn't cool. She takes off. Portugal is talking to a hooker. There's hookers everywhere. I find economics guy I went out with originally. He is talking about how all these girls want to fuck him but for some reason won't fuck him. Are these dudes all out of their mind when it comes to picking up girls or am I out of my mind when it comes to picking up girls? Go back to hostel. Pass out 5am.
12/15/16
Wake 8am. Annie from Phnom Penh and I kept in touch and she is meeting me at my hostel. Say what's up. Hang out. Plan on going to temples. She says “we can rent a tuk tuk” I say “we can rent a scooter” with this idea in my head of doing 60 mph down jungle roads with ancient temples and her soft arms rapped around my chest. She says “okay.” Rained out. Can't go to temple. Sit under awning with old sarcastic Utah dude who has just the best dad jokes. Ex. “I think there is a fire works show tonight... all the tut tut drivers keep asking me if I want boom boom (paid sex).” Scooter to National Museum. Museum is tight and has lots of Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and histories of the temples. We are making jokes the whole time. We are so in love. Leave go to legit Cambodian place to eat. BBQ platters with ice cubes on them is a thing here. She goes to take a nap. I go back to the bar. Am yelling at dutch bartender lady about good porn I know. Annie doesn't feel good. I go on date with really cute Japanese girl. She works as an ambassador for an NGO resolving conflict in the area. I do.... nothing. I feel like my profile is misleading. She has never committed a crime in her life but tries to impress me by saying when she was very young she stole the colonel from a KFC before returning it. I tell her about getting arrested in Russia. This is not going anywhere. She leaves. I head back to hostel. Drink some more. Talk some more shit. Pass out
12/16/16
Wake. Temple day. Meet up with Annie. We rent tut tut because clearly her throwing her arms in a fit of passion isn't going to happen. Go to Angkor Wat – biggest religious monument in the world. I have my doubts about the insane amount of tourism stealing whatever magic there is. Walk up to the main wall. I'm fucking blow away. There's no way to describe this place, but every inch of every wall has such an immense amount of meticulous detail. You can get away from the crowds by turning off the main path and be with the silence and rock for a little while. The way it's designed is a model of what they saw as the universe – the massive center being the mountains, the outer walls being the earth, and the man made lakes surrounding it being the cosmic oceans. I would give anything to kick everyone out of there, eat acid, and wander around for the day.
Go to four more temples and walk around, including the temple from Tomb Raider, which has massive trees breaking apart it's walls to climb for the sun. Buses full of Chinese tourists would literally trap you if you were there when their bus arrive so it is a game of timing. Everyone trying to get pictures to wait for other people to get pictures so it looked like no one was there taking pictures. Little kids selling post cards chasing and haggling with you while you don't say anything was maybe the saddest thing I've seen so far.
Return to hostel exhausted. I haven't slept well in days. Try to nap. Can't nap. Annie wants to go out. I feel like I'm going to die but I love her so I need to go out with her, and also because it's my last night in Cambodia and my flights early in the morning so that makes sense. Go back to tourist strip. Go back to “YOLO BAR.” More shitty music. I'm dancing with Annie. It's pretty clear at this point she is she a good wholesome girl looking to have fun and doesn't want to fuck me. Sigh. She's beautiful AND smart. Some Israeli guy keeps dancing and talking at her and she clearly doesn't want it, but is too young and coy to say anything. He is now asking me if I date her and how he can get her. I say, “you know man, I don't really think it's up to you to get her.” More of this shit for a while. She says don't leave me. We are with an 18 year old girl from the hostel who is drinking like a fish. Annie can't finish a single beer. I make homies with the 18 year old and just sit at the bar doing shots trying to enjoy more Eminem. Dance or whatever for a while. Repeat the night earlier essentially. I say, “let's go,” she says, “okay.” I'm wasted dealing with one hundred abrasive tut tut drivers trying to get us into their chariots. I just give them all cigarettes and they turn into the coolest dudes ever. On the way back to hostel we stop in at an unguarded fish foot eating tank. We all sit with the fish eating the shit off our feet. Some dude gets mad. I'm drunk trying to convince the girls it's a really good idea to get naked and swim in the hostel pool. Not a chance. Go to bed. I drunk text Annie a bunch because in my experience there's a solid 10% chance last ditch efforts work. Not a chance. Set my alarm for about an hour from now. Pass out.
Wake up. Break up with Colombian girlfriend Darly I have tickets to see in Holland. Rain. Can't go to killing fields to feel better. Sit around and write. Go for walk. Worst city I've ever been too for traffic. No abundance, but four lanes of different direction. No one giving a flying fuck about another. Cars and motobikes parked all over sidewalk between mounds of trash. Everyone is selling and begging. Almost get hit by a car pulling out when I'm 6 inches in front of it. No way to cross the fucking street. Ugly and smelly. And this is the "nice" part. Fuck Phnom Penh.
Sit around the hostel all day while it rains doing nothing. Look up "Punk Bars Phnom Penh." Go to "Sharky Bar." Smoke filled bar. Almost everyone is old and has a young hooker. They are playing 80's thrash and Neil Young though so I sit down for a beer and fries. Get the fuck out of there. Walk to “club” district. The only people out are hookers and tut tut drivers asking me if want drugs and hookers. Typical Monday I guess. Walk restaurant area. Every table is some old English guy with two or three hookers. Freak out and go back to hostel. Have a cigarette and ask the Cambodian guy working at the hostel something along the lines of “what the fuck is going on?” He smiles and just tells me a story of some dude who was staying at the hostel who got all of his shit robbed while he was sleeping with a hooker. Second of the story I've heard traveling. Head up to my room and do a good hour of reading of Cambodia prostitution. There are several types of hookers – bar girls, street girls, gogo girls, brothel girls, etc. All have different prices and techniques to pick them up but all and all if you want a hooker in Cambodia it's about $10-20 an hour. The kicker is you have to admit every bit of “good” you've ever strived for has been a lie, and you're looking at an aids rate of 20%-60%. Thank god I just pass out.
12/13/16
Wake. Get back together with Colombia girlfriend Darly. Going to Killing Fields. Beautiful Chinese girl I was eyeing last night is looking for partner to split a tut tut and go to Killing Fields. The perfect date. Hostel guy tells me this and points to her and I immediately B-line it to her past some Dutch couple who says “we are looking too.” Her name is Annie. She insists we bring the dutch couple along. I say whatever. Head out. Motoring in our chariot through a gray trash filled city. Arrive Killing Fields. A nice park with singing birds and a few roosters running around. Put on guided headset. Two hours of the saddest shit I've ever heard in my life with sites of mass graves, trees babies were beat to death on, and a tower of skulls. Meet back up with group. Everyone is quiet. Tut tut to S21 – the prison during Pol Pot's rein. Put on guided headset. Two hours of the saddest shit I've ever heard in my life with sites of tiny brick prison cells, steal shackles, and torture devices. Walk around with Annie for a while. What a lovely date.
The things I learned about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge – his ideal communist utopia was founded on targeting the poor uneducated rural peoples, convincing them that the city dwelling elite were responsible for the economic and social problems facing the country before him. These were the people he trained to be prison guards and round up those in the city and march them to work the fields and eventually kill a quarter of the population for absurd accusations of treason and espionage against the state. This was only thirty five years ago. Let's see how Trump does in the next four years.
Return hostel. Annie takes a nap. Girl I met on the bus has told me she doesn't want to see me. So much for real life romance. Go on a Tinder date. She is Cambodian. I still haven't actually hung out with a Cambodian. I meet up with her and try to hug her – this is NOT okay. She seems super cold and disinterested right form the start. I asking wheat she's reading. She changes the subject into something else. She suggests we go for coffee. Order coffee. She doesn't like coffee. Go for a walk. I'm asking her anything I can think of about Cambodia, her, her kids, whatever – answers are short or completely off topic. Laughing at all the wrong times. I have no idea if this girl hates me, or Cambodians are just still sooooo far from being able to relate to some western asshole like myself. The few things I got out of the date: a) Cambodian's political system is completely corrupt to a point where people don't even bother to vote. b) I asked her what she thought of all the prostituion, to which she replied people need the money to send home to their families, but “if a girl slept with a hundred people, would YOU want to marry her?” Looks like you still got a ways to go Cambodia. Hop on neon bowling-mat dance party double decker bunk bed night bus for Siem Reap.
12/14/16 – Siem Reap, Cambodia
Wake. Bus arrives 5:20am. Plan was to sleep on the bus and not get a night at the hostel. So fucking tired from the Valium I took that got a bed for a few hours anyway. Wake again. Not a day for the temples – most famously here is Ankor Wat. Rent a scooter. Bust around the city for a bit. I love scooters. Cruise down some windy river roads. Take a detour down some dirt roads with colorful patched together houses on stilts where skinny dogs and cows and chickens run about. Everybody, especially the little kids, are shouting “HELLO!” in English. Get out of town a little more. Road sandwiched between a lily pond which claims a hut which always claims a hammock (everything, including tut tut taxis, all have hammocks). Climb a hill with some goats and look over the flat wet lands. Determined to get to “floating village” everyone tells me I need an expensive tourist boat to get through. Get to the end of the paved road which turns into a mud road. Peel out for a while down the mud road. Look over a few floating houses, of which one is being pulled around by a boat. In the foreground are girls playing a ball game with a twisted up plastic bottle they are heaving at another. Get to end of road. Full market of plastic junk, cigarettes, and lots of fish. My guess is the fishing community said fuck it to the mud road commute and just built houses that can float.
Turn back. Get lost in some dirt road neighborhood turn offs. Trying to be as respectful as possible invading on these people's homes. Eventually get to junction. Group of Cambodian dudes tucked in the back yard of a house listening to techno cheers at me. I smile and ride away. I say “wait...” and come back. They smile and cheers me again. I walk up to them and say “...hi.” They say hi and give me a plastic cup and fill it with a cloudy white substance. I say “Cholmuy” (which is one of two Cambodian words I know and is absolutely not spelt right) and we all cheers and drink. I realize that every time I say it everyone has to drink and I'm getting all these dudes a little drunk. I ask what it is and they point to a palm tree about ten feet away and then point to their friend who is busy cooking it. I ask them what they do, wondering what kind of job lets them all hang out and drink on a Wednesday afternoon, one guy says “electrician.” I smoke a cigarette and a couple glasses in I have them stop filling my glass and say goodbye.
Ride away a bit tipsy. Go to hostel. Go to bar. Meet some Europeans at the bar. Talk for a while about global economics or something. Share Adderall with the dude. We go to the “party strip.” Terrible bars for white people blasting Eminem songs. Stand there not knowing if I should drink heavily until it's fun or just leave now. Get a few drinks. Crazy attractive too young Cambodian girl is sitting alone at a table. I oblige. She seems really happy to talk to me and is touching my leg a little. This should be a red flag, but she is explaining this is her second night out in the three years she has lived here and is with her friends who are partying pretty hard. I sit with her and aderall talk with her for a while. She moved here to do massage, and from what it seems, is legitimate non-happy ending massage. We finally dance a bit. Paint each other's face with glow paint. More touching. This goes on for a few hours. White guys are getting more abrasive with everyone, She goes to the bathroom. I talk to some Portuguese guy. She disappears. I say “oh well.” Bar closes. Go to the last open club. She is there. I say “hi.” She gives me an “oh, it's you” sort of look. I say whatever. She is dancing with me and touching again either because she likes me or to get away with the drunk white vultures. Every dude is just taking turns touching her and her friend. This seems extra bad because maybe this whole “whores everywhere all the time” thing is making dudes feel like every girl can just plucked. Portuguese guy I bought a drink for says in frustrated tone out of nowhere “if you don't go for her, I will.” I roll my eyes. She says she's got to go. I ask her for her number and give her a kiss on the side of the head. This isn't cool. She takes off. Portugal is talking to a hooker. There's hookers everywhere. I find economics guy I went out with originally. He is talking about how all these girls want to fuck him but for some reason won't fuck him. Are these dudes all out of their mind when it comes to picking up girls or am I out of my mind when it comes to picking up girls? Go back to hostel. Pass out 5am.
12/15/16
Wake 8am. Annie from Phnom Penh and I kept in touch and she is meeting me at my hostel. Say what's up. Hang out. Plan on going to temples. She says “we can rent a tuk tuk” I say “we can rent a scooter” with this idea in my head of doing 60 mph down jungle roads with ancient temples and her soft arms rapped around my chest. She says “okay.” Rained out. Can't go to temple. Sit under awning with old sarcastic Utah dude who has just the best dad jokes. Ex. “I think there is a fire works show tonight... all the tut tut drivers keep asking me if I want boom boom (paid sex).” Scooter to National Museum. Museum is tight and has lots of Hindu and Buddhist sculptures and histories of the temples. We are making jokes the whole time. We are so in love. Leave go to legit Cambodian place to eat. BBQ platters with ice cubes on them is a thing here. She goes to take a nap. I go back to the bar. Am yelling at dutch bartender lady about good porn I know. Annie doesn't feel good. I go on date with really cute Japanese girl. She works as an ambassador for an NGO resolving conflict in the area. I do.... nothing. I feel like my profile is misleading. She has never committed a crime in her life but tries to impress me by saying when she was very young she stole the colonel from a KFC before returning it. I tell her about getting arrested in Russia. This is not going anywhere. She leaves. I head back to hostel. Drink some more. Talk some more shit. Pass out
12/16/16
Wake. Temple day. Meet up with Annie. We rent tut tut because clearly her throwing her arms in a fit of passion isn't going to happen. Go to Angkor Wat – biggest religious monument in the world. I have my doubts about the insane amount of tourism stealing whatever magic there is. Walk up to the main wall. I'm fucking blow away. There's no way to describe this place, but every inch of every wall has such an immense amount of meticulous detail. You can get away from the crowds by turning off the main path and be with the silence and rock for a little while. The way it's designed is a model of what they saw as the universe – the massive center being the mountains, the outer walls being the earth, and the man made lakes surrounding it being the cosmic oceans. I would give anything to kick everyone out of there, eat acid, and wander around for the day.
Go to four more temples and walk around, including the temple from Tomb Raider, which has massive trees breaking apart it's walls to climb for the sun. Buses full of Chinese tourists would literally trap you if you were there when their bus arrive so it is a game of timing. Everyone trying to get pictures to wait for other people to get pictures so it looked like no one was there taking pictures. Little kids selling post cards chasing and haggling with you while you don't say anything was maybe the saddest thing I've seen so far.
Return to hostel exhausted. I haven't slept well in days. Try to nap. Can't nap. Annie wants to go out. I feel like I'm going to die but I love her so I need to go out with her, and also because it's my last night in Cambodia and my flights early in the morning so that makes sense. Go back to tourist strip. Go back to “YOLO BAR.” More shitty music. I'm dancing with Annie. It's pretty clear at this point she is she a good wholesome girl looking to have fun and doesn't want to fuck me. Sigh. She's beautiful AND smart. Some Israeli guy keeps dancing and talking at her and she clearly doesn't want it, but is too young and coy to say anything. He is now asking me if I date her and how he can get her. I say, “you know man, I don't really think it's up to you to get her.” More of this shit for a while. She says don't leave me. We are with an 18 year old girl from the hostel who is drinking like a fish. Annie can't finish a single beer. I make homies with the 18 year old and just sit at the bar doing shots trying to enjoy more Eminem. Dance or whatever for a while. Repeat the night earlier essentially. I say, “let's go,” she says, “okay.” I'm wasted dealing with one hundred abrasive tut tut drivers trying to get us into their chariots. I just give them all cigarettes and they turn into the coolest dudes ever. On the way back to hostel we stop in at an unguarded fish foot eating tank. We all sit with the fish eating the shit off our feet. Some dude gets mad. I'm drunk trying to convince the girls it's a really good idea to get naked and swim in the hostel pool. Not a chance. Go to bed. I drunk text Annie a bunch because in my experience there's a solid 10% chance last ditch efforts work. Not a chance. Set my alarm for about an hour from now. Pass out.
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