It’s official. There is not enough water in this whole country to replace what I sweat out in a day. This picture was taken in the amount of time it takes me to sweat a gallon of water while outside of any air conditioned enclosure.
Ok, in a remoter area with limited access. Dropped my iPad and shattered glass making it very interesting to write this. Spent part of last night killing some large moth in my sister’s room while she ran around with a towel over her head. Place we’re at has can of Raid instant bug kill in each room. Guess that’s part of the jungle experience. Beautiful setting, sleeping under mosquito netting and being very careful about walking across floor because of what also might be walking across floor. Woke up to birds and roosters and then thunder and lightning and rain
Went to Cambodian circus. Like the Cirque de Soleil but the male acrobats did not look like steroid freaks and the women looked like they actually ate every day. All was fine until the bug fell out of the ceiling and onto my head. It bounced off me and hit the two ladies sitting in the row below me. Luckily it was dark so I couldn’t actually see what it was thus saving me from running screaming out of the stands and causing a panic.
Ok,I may already have the illness I usually get AFTER I return from a trip, but I’m loving Cambodia anyway. What wonderful people. Went on a boat ride to a village built in a lake on stilts above the water. When we got to the boat area, our guide told us to get in the boat next to where we were standing because, he said, it was the easiest way to get to the boat we’d be traveling on. So we clambered into one of those shallow draft river boats with a roof to protect us from the sun and
So it turns out I should have read the material for this trip a little closer. It seems the home stay in Cambodia is not a guest house. It’s literally someone’s home. Someone’s home in which all twelve of us plus the guide and driver sleep in one room on the floor with mosquito nets, no electricity and… well, need I go on. I played my little old lady with diabetes card and the very nice guide is booking me into a nearby hotel while apologizing for the possibility that it might cost as much as $45 more for the
Made it in one piece. Xanax on 14 hour flight made all the difference. Slept the whole way and arrived feeling fresh… Almost… And human. Now off for a massage to take away the plane kinks. $10 dollars for an hour. How can I refuse that offer.
Freedom Hotel, Siem Reap
Lodging · Siem Reap, Cambodia
Tomorrow’s post will be a little out of order. It’s about my visit to a facility called COPE in Laos that was later in the trip. The sequential posts will resume on Friday.
Another reason I love Alaska Airline. Getting off the plane in San Francisco and a pilot who had deadheaded on the flight got off in front of me. I had my usual dazed and confused look. I didn’t have a boarding pass for the next flight on Cathay Air and only had a seven hour layover to figure out how to get one without going back through security. He noticed my uncertainty and came over, asked if he could help, and pointed me to their boardroom and suggested even if they didn’t offer a day pass so I could wait
I have the privilege of feeding Bird TLC’s education bird, Denali – The Golden Eagle, while he presenter is in Mongolia learning even more about golden eagles. He is holding his quail dinner and, I would guess from the look on his face, thinking, “Back off, puny human. This is MY quail.”
And it was 43 years ago today that I arrived in Barrow. My first experience was asking for a bathroom in the old hut that counted as the airline building. Ose Matsutani, who was there to greet me with other staff from the hospital, looked a bit taken aback and then said, “She might as well experience it now as later.” And that was my introduction to a honeybucket system of sanitation. Why I didn’t run back to NYC at that point will always be a mystery to me. Glad I didn’t. I had some of the greatest adventures of
