A Quiet New Year

About a week ago was the Khmer New Year. Most of the foreigners (aka expats) fled the country for holidays in cooler climates, and locals headed into the provinces to visit family over the holiday. I, on the other hand, opted to stay in Phnom Penh and work on my research project, furiously coding transcripts and trying (with tired eyes) to interpret my codes into a tangible story. I’m still working on making sense of the data and putting together my analysis, so I’m glad I stayed behind.

People here asked me what the city was like during the week everyone was gone. Honestly, I didn’t venture out too much because of my research, but I did go outside here and there. Simply put, it was hot and empty.

Firstly, it was hot. Of course, this is not an interesting observation; it is consistently in the 30s C / 80s-100s F. But that week was exceptionally hot – most days wavered between 39C / 102F to 40C / 104F (and that is not including the increased degrees for the “RealFeel” measurement). I hid in my bedroom with the aircon  nonstop in order to avoid melting; going outside seemed extremely unappetizing.

Also, Phnom Penh was silent and empty. The quiet meant I could sleep longer into the morning, which I found rather pleasant. And the streets were free of parked cars and people; only a couple cars would be driving down the main roads, whereas normally it’s packed and congested traffic nonstop. The reduced number of people made it easier to walk down the streets because there was no competition for space.

Actually, this walking around on the street was short-lived. Whenever I tried wandering more aimlessly up and down the street, I would get some tuk-tuk drivers’ attention. Normally, this attention includes someone shouting, “Hey lady want a tuk-tuk ride?! Where are you going??”, trying hard to make a transaction. Over the New Year, though, the attention was more tuk-tuk drivers’ adamantly yelling for me to get back on the sidewalk and put my phone away. It seems that some people take the week’s emptiness as an opportunity to speed down empty streets recklessly. Also, someone mentioned that theft goes up in the New Year because people want nice things like smartphones and will ride down the street on their motorcycles to snatch your belongings if you’re too close to the street.

The tuk-tuk drivers weren’t asking to give me rides, they were just genuinely concerned about my wellbeing. Which was a strange change of pace for me, being used to politely declining constantly as I walk down the street.

Despite the emptiness, I did have a little bit of a social life. There may not have been very many things open or people around (every restaurant I like to go to was closed), but I had a few friends who stuck around as well, and we'd go out to enjoy each other’s company over cold beverages (Brown Coffee was open, of course).

One friend had a dangerous allergic reaction to some strange ingredient in a meal while in the city that week. I tried to help that friend find an EpiPen or some allergy help so that they could figure out what happened to them. Just to let you know: Cambodia doesn’t have EpiPens. Try all you might, you will not be able to successfully source EpiPens in this country (and if you magically can, I am going to guess it’ll cost a lot). Luckily, this friend went to an embassy and sourced an EpiPens that way, but otherwise was looking at having to go to a clinic for a stab of adrenaline if anything else happened. This medical mishap was alarming for me in some way. I wonder, if someone has a child who is allergic to some food, what do you do? If someone is deathly allergic to some kind of insect or surprise allergy (and is a baby?!), what happens? It reminded me how some things that work in countries like Australia and the US are far cries from how things work in countries like Cambodia.

Don’t get me wrong! Cambodia is progressing and evolving at lightning speed. There are so many developments happening here, even for the 3 months I’ve been here! And so much is happening that it’s very exciting to be here and watch it change and morph into a new kind of society. That said, I do miss the immediate healthcare of other places. 

Field Research Fun

Cow grass

Last week I got into a quintessential expat vehicle (a white Jeep...with a driver) and drove a few hours out of Phnom Penh for interviews with local, rural government staff. Being the child that I am, as soon as the car started pushing out of the city, I fell asleep until my driver kindly nudged me awake in our first area for interviews, Kampong Speu.

During our few days in the field (meaning my friendly driver and me…and when I wasn’t lulled to sleep by the humming of the car), we spent many quiet hours having broken conversations with each other. We drove from Kampong Speu, out to the other side of the country in Kampong Cham, through Tboung Khmum, and back to Phnom Penh.

I’ve tried to learn Khmer while in Cambodia. Normally languages are pretty easy for me to grasp. Par example, je parle français (grossomodo). Some Spanish speakers have thought I can actually hablar español. I can read some Arabic like a first grader. By the end of my month-long stint around Thailand, I could hold basic conversations with people (krup koon kah). In Laos, visit to Isan proved good for me to understand a good amount of things (krup chai de). 

But when it comes to Khmer, even though it is of the originating family from which Thai and Laotian stem, I am utterly useless.

Khmer, for me, is incredibly difficult. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to remember the complex pronunciations and complicated consonants that surprise me when I hear people talking. I’ve managed to clutch clumsily around a handful of words - “Hello”, “Thank you”, “Stop”, and “Turn”- but for the most part what words I am taught dribble out of my brain as easily as football statistics. And it infuriates me!

This is especially problematic when in rural Cambodia, where English is not as important as it is in the city. Here, I am in the wrong for not trying to learn more Khmer, and I agree with that – I should be much better at the language by now. Alas, my brain has shut the vaults to Khmer, and my attempts to use Thai words as alternative vocabulary are kind of silly.

One instance while in Kampong Cham that was amusing around my inept Khmer skills was around my breakfast. My driver, bless him, after I rambled on about wanting bobor (aka rice porridge) found a place in the city where I could order it for breakfast. I have discovered a deep love and affection for the comfort food feel I get when eating it. They put ginger and scallions in it, and often meats, which make it basically like eating a nice, creamy, thick soup. 

I go into the restaurant and order a bobor. The waitress, being a good and thorough waitress, started listing off in Khmer the bobor options they had at the restaurant. I panically ask for, “English?”, which gets me a chuckle and more Khmer words thrown at me that lodge into my pride. A meekly repeated request for “Bobor….?” was met with the repeated list of options I couldn’t understand. I started to cluck like a chicken, using my hand to represent a beak, in hope that it would give the effect of my desire to have chicken in my porridge. After a pile of waitresses and patrons finished their giggling at the stupid foreigner’s chicken impression, the waitress gave me a knowing smile and walked away from me.

Soon after, I received my bobor, only with fish instead of chicken. Don’t get me wrong, it was a tasty dish! But after my embarrassing attempt to impersonate a chicken, I felt baffled that my performance was received with an animal that did not make any sounds at all. I went back the next day to try again my request for chicken in my bobor, armed with the word chicken from my caring driver, and I was successful in eating bobor muan.

Another amusing language mishap that happened in the field was a bit more costly for my interviews. Well, I have not confirmed that this is why the complications occurred, but I am assuming that this was the hiccup. 

Anyways. 

So, my name is Kim. Of course, in the Anglophonic world, my name is short for Kimberly, which usually doesn’t cause too much confusion about my identity. In Cambodia, however alarming, I have been mistaken for Korean a couple of times. If you know me, I look in no way Korean, nor Asian by any stretch of the imagination. I burn in 10 minutes, in the shade – my hair is a mix between blond and brown – my hips are most certainly not of their typically sleek physiques. And yet, I have had people ask me to my face if I am indeed Korean, upon hearing my name. It is a phenomenon that floors me every time.

How does this relate to my interviews? My interviews were arranged with the rural districts via email, where my name was indicated as “Kim” (because that is how I identify in correspondences). Kim, it so happens, in addition to being a Korean name, is also a common nickname for a few names in Khmer. It is not, apparently, a common name for visiting Westerners interested in going to rural areas to talk about government. 

Despite my supervisor’s Virak request for a translator for me, I think my name made that important request not register for people. I arrived to each district with a request for translators, and people looked stunned that I was who I was, and that I did not have a translator with me already (or speak fluent Khmer). 

Every district scrambled to find the most English-speaking staff member they had and thrust the poor soul in my direction. Some of the translators were good and knew how to navigate my questions for me in both language. Some of my translators were shaking a little bit as I spoke to them in a very slow, simplified version of English. Some of my translators kept apologizing, which did not boost my faith in their skills. Even so, they all did a decent job in helping me collect my data, and I thanked them for taking time to interpret the conversation between me and groups of government staff.

Oh yes, there’s that other thing, too. I had asked for one-on-one interviews with certain government staff, because it would make my data collection and analysis easier. All of the districts did not understand that, though, and my interview participants would end up collecting a few more relevant staff people to join us in the interview room. Stunned, I decided it was disrespectful to forbid the other people to participate, and my already anxious translators didn’t need to feel more stress with having several different conversations between me and other people (the less I talked, the better). So, in each of my surprise focus groups, I had everyone sign a consent form, and rolled with it. 

By the third surprise focus group, I was hardly surprised.

In the end, I now have twice as many interviews than I had expected, and I was successful in collecting some pretty interesting data from my field visit. Overall, a success.

Other things that I would like to note about my trip into the field for data collection:

• I am left handed. I know that I am, but I didn’t remember that Obama is, as well. One of my translators remembered that, though, and mentioned it almost immediately after I picked up a pen to write down a note. “OH! You write like Obama!” It took me a few beats to figure out what he meant by that. I remembered some memory from seven years ago when someone mentioned to me that Obama was a southpaw. I wanted to ask him how, in all of the vast ocean of knowledge to remember, did he remember that one pretty obscure fact about POTUS?
• I was interviewing people about their work around improving rural sanitation. At about half of the places I visited, I was surprised to see male staffers urinating either on/by one of the buildings, or on a neighboring tree on the compound. At one district of these districts I also asked to use the toilet. They hesitated uncomfortably, informing me that their toilet was not working very well. I found this ironic (and unsettling), considering the reason for my visit. I went into the broken toilet and did what I had to do as hygienically as possible. It was an interesting observation to have while working on sanitation-related research.
• Something I love about Cambodia is the style where women where brightly-colored, fully-matching button-down pajama outfits while out and about in the steamy days. Some of them have penguins or flowers, depending I suppose on the person. They are always colorful and look nicely pressed when I see women in the pajama sets. Sometimes I’ve seen children in pajamas, as well, running around and hopping into motorbikes in superhero patterns. My hypothesis is that pajamas are cool and airy enough for the hot tropical weather…and they do have a certain pleasant air to them. It is unsurprising they are colorful, as everyone had to wear black pajamas during the gruesome Khmer Rouge regime.
• While we drove, we went by countless weddings on the sides of the road, under wedding tents with vibrant colors and upbeat bands playing. Considering the dreadful heat and dust in the dry season, I asked my driver why weddings seemed so popular right now. He explained that people would rather be hot at a wedding than soaked/flooded by the rainy season, so dry season is the only decent time to celebrate marriage.

Stopped in Singapore

I went to Singapore for a few days last week. People ask me why I went, and I could give a few answers…truly, it was merely a visa run. I would be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t also eager to explore another nearby country; I could have just as easily booked the visa run in Thailand, but I chose Singapore. And I wanted to meet up with an organization. And I wanted to see an old friend I knew while in Kigali (Singaporean Kiran – who let me crash her couch while there). Lots of reasons.

I arrived in the middle of the night and took a speedy car through the wide highways to Kiran’s home. I then quietly slipped into the couch covers for a brief night’s sleep, before my busy 3-day schedule.

To me, Singapore could fit very nicely as a big city in Australia, if only it was closer. I felt like the city that was a mix of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. In fact, if Singapore called itself Australian, I don’t think it would have phase me. And yet, it was still very much Asian. It’s hard to adequately explain my feelings.

If I had to sum up Singapore in 3 words, they’d be comprehensive, clean, and baller.

Now, hear me out.

Firstly, Singapore is pretty comprehensive in the sense that it’s a tiny country, yet it packs a punch. One minute I was walking downtown between skyscrapers and the next minute I hopped off a bus and ended up at a bay with gardens. Thirty more minutes and I was in front of a massive reservoir where people were fishing in a densely forested area (only a few blocks away from apartment complexes and restaurants al fresco). Kiran lives in a very sweet suburb area with beautiful little houses and a bunch of charming shopfronts. I was impressed with how much stuff is in Singapore, and such diversity in a small plot of land.

Second, Singapore is clean. Very clean. I know it’s famous for its cleanliness, but I have to verify this truth. In some ways, I felt like in some areas it was the kind of cleanliness you would see at an anal retentive cleaner's area (bleach bottle and all). Some areas were not as immaculate as this, of course, but a lot of it was very well kept. The UNESCO-endorsed Botanic Gardens, as an example, was extremely well managed but not sterile. 

I must admit that it was hard for me to remember all of the rules in Singapore in order to maintain cleanliness, such as no food or drink in many public areas and absolutely no chewing gum. Still, it was a really nice place to walk around because it was so clean in many different ways – I could walk around freely without being worried about getting hit by debris or people (then again, it was a weekday period, not weekend).

Finally, Singapore is baller. I know, this is an odd adjective to describe a city, but I kept thinking it when I was visiting. Singapore is baller because it’s got a lot of fancy things, and it’s super expensive. It’s, of course, the most expensive in the world today, and I choked back some tears when I went out for some meals and electronics shopping (A $35 burger?! really?!). 

But, it also has a lot of very nice things. Very, very nice things. The cars, for one, are fancy. And, the country is kind of like a massive, beautifully designed mall. Malls are omnipresent in Singapore, and a lot of the shops are luxurious. The less-expensive places I went into, even, were done out really glamorously – kind of like there’s a mindset of “go big or go home” to how business works here. 

It’s also baller because it’s clearly got so many model aspects to the country – the economy is a model for some countries like Rwanda, their wastewater treatment is world-renown as the best of the best, and even the gardens are created to be state-of-the-art and award winning. Kiran and I talked about this, and she explained with a sigh that the country is run like a business to the extreme; everything needs to be optimized, and everyone is on board. I could see what she means in the country’s overall aura of almost dogmatic efficiency, but I must say I’m still impressed.

But I did stuff. Let me share.

My first day was a work day. I went to the World Toilet Organization to network with the staff and chat about their role in and perceptions on the future of WASH. Afterward, I traveled to the incubator office called Impact Hub - I often work in the Phnom Penh office, and was able to arrange a desk for a day while in Singapore. The Phnom Penh office is intimate and a lovely space to connect with other entrepreneur spirits; the Singapore office was like being in a member’s only club! They had a nap room with beds and pillow-full couches, a kitchen with free ice-cream, several different areas for working, and a full-on café area where you could eat gourmet food while talking to people on sleek couches (this is also what I mean by baller). I got to network with a bunch of really interesting people doing very similar work to what I hope to do in the nearby future.

Also, I made sure to nap in the designated room after I finished up my working for the day.

I ate at a hawker stall for lunch, too. Hawker stalls are kind of like food court vendors run by small families, (cleanly) crammed into small spaces together. It was tasty and affordable, don’t worry.

A lot of my trip was around shopping for electronics. Part of this was intentional, since I was in need for a charger and some earphones that would last past my trip to Cambodia, and I got those things. I also had to get a new phone because early into my trip my phone decided it had had a good (albeit far too brief) life and pulled its power cord permanently. Many hours between Kiran and me were stuck in Samsung waiting to see if there was any hope of revival. When there wasn’t, we spent more hours hunting down people selling their unused phones on and in local marketplaces. We walked through the labyrinth of massive interconnected malls from one meet-up spot to another, searching for phone sellers. Fortunately, I got the same model as my own phone, but it wasn’t without some suffering (and sweating).

Oh yeah, Singapore was in a heat wave while I was there, so there was much sweating.

On my second day, I walked around the arcades of Burgis Street, roamed a bit of CBD, and walked through Little India for some sightseeing and eating. I also strolled up and down the shopping hub of Orchard Road while hunting for electronics.

I walked around the massive quay called Marina Bay Sands. It’s essentially another massive high-end hotel and mall – with a Venetian-inspired boating experience in the middle of it! – that hosts a lot of water-inspired art throughout the place. I admired the skyline, and ended up going to the Art Science Museum to escape the heat. 

Going to the museum might have been the best decision of the entire trip! The museum had an interactive exhibit full of bright colors and fun creative installations that allowed me to draw my own art and have it become part of the display for a little while. There were walls that changed shapes when touched, and brightly-lit balls that changed colors when rolled to hit each other. I cannot remember the last time I felt such childlike joy.

The museum was followed by a brief visit to the Gardens by the Bay. By this time I was getting tired of walking around and took a bus ride through the major center of the country before heading over to the Singapore Zoo for a tour of the Night Safari. This zoo area is specifically open at night only, where you board a tram that trucks you around the zoo to see the more nocturnal animals in dimly-lit open enclosures chilling out. It was a pretty neat idea, though unfortunately I had the luck of going the one day the zoo was having a children’s overnight party, and there were screaming/crying children surrounding me in this what-should-be-adults-only zoo area at 9:30PM.

A final note: would I live in Singapore? I’m not sure. I loved visiting the place, and I would love to visit again more to explore it in more depth. Living, there, however, would be a different story, I feel, and I’m not entirely sure I’d survive in such a pricey place. Also, I'm not sure my quirky lifestyle and crunchy needs would necessarily fly in such an economic masterpiece. But really, who knows?