Day Three: Milking the Tiger

12:30 a.m. - I'd been asleep since 7 pm by this point; five and a half hours. (my body is still not quite adjusted to Thai time yet). I wake up and Allie and Andrea are asleep. While I was sleeping, my hat and camera had been relocated to a safe place on a shelf, as I had fallen asleep with them earlier. I'm not tired enough to go back to sleep. I bide my time, editing some photos on my computer that I'd taken yesterday. Suddenly, to my left there is a bright flash of light and the jolting sound of an electrical power surge. Andrea's converter that had been plugged into the wall, charging her Mac has fried. Neither Allie nor Andrea are awoken by this, so I shake Allie awake, who had been sleeping right next to the converter, to tell her about what just happened. She unplugged the converter. It was hot to the touch. Macs convert voltage automatically to the appropriate voltage it needs, no matter your region. Lesson learned. When charging a Mac in a foreign country, use an adaptor, not a converter. Or else it will be converted twice. Or something.

6 a.m. - ring! ring! We're awakened by the abrupt and harsh sound of the hotel phone by the bed. Allie answers it.

"It's six o'clock!" the voice on the other end announces in a very thick Thai accent. It is the man at the front desk. Mike had ordered a wake up call for us. Allie thanks him and hangs up. There is good news today: we found Judah! There had been a misunderstanding with the meet up date, but at least he is finally here. He arrived late last night from Cambodia, and is here to bring us back there.

We shower and get ready. The thing about humidity is that no matter how much you towel off, you're never dry. Our skin is in a perpetual state of hot and sticky. The bug spray and sunscreen we apply every morning only make it worse.

Our hotel serves breakfast. It isn't free, but everything is less than 150 baht, or five U.S. dollars. We sit at a table and begin reviewing the menu. Something small on the table moves and catches my eye. I look and notice the table is crawling with ants. I point this out to the group and for some reason, no one else seems to mind. I feel stupid for pointing it out. I already have the reputation with this group of being the "girly-girl". I try to hide my really girly side. It's a good thing we haven't encountered any giant bugs or spiders...yet.

I order some toast, hot chocolate, ham & scrambled eggs, and a plate of fruit. It is a lot of food, but I hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, so I am famished. The hot chocolate tastes like tea with a hint of unsweetened chocolate flavor. It's not terrible. My favorite part of the meal is the fresh pineapple on my fruit plate.

I feel like there are ants in my nose.

We pack up and leave the hotel in two taxis. Our destination: the bus station. We need to take the express bus to the border of Cambodia, a six hour drive. It is hot and humid outside, and the air conditioning on the bus doesn't seem to work all that well. I take some Dramamine and try to get some more shut-eye. I wake up to a really weird part of a conversation that Allie, Andrea, and Landon are having. Something about girls pretending to be lesbians to get guys' attention....by this point in our trip though we've pretty much covered all other subjects, so I guess it is only natural for the topic to head in that direction. If nothing else, let's talk lesbians.

4 pm - We arrive at the Cambodian border. We go through the motions and wait in line, show some officials our passports, wait in line again, show some more officials our Visas, all the while hauling all of our equipment and luggage. We enter the city of Poi Pet.

Cambodia is VERY different from Bangkok. A lot of the roads are unpaved. There's garbage everywhere. EVERYONE is on scooters. Remember a few years ago when some papparazzi caught Britney Spears holding her baby on her lap while driving her car? And how everyone made such a big deal about it? Well here, they fit four people, including young babies, on one scooter. And no one cares. I really don't think they have any safety laws here.

It is incredibly hot, we're exhausted and drenched in sweat, and we haven't eaten since breakfast. It is Chinese New Year though, so not every restaurant is open. We take another bus that takes us a few miles into Poi Pet. The cars here drive on the right side of the road, unlike Thailand. We exit the bus after a few minutes, and then it's back to walking some more. Soon, we come to a coffee shop. Judah removes his shoes and enters the cafe. The rest of us follow suit. A man named Cham No owns the cafe and is a friend of Judah's. He takes us to another restaurant that he owns down the road, and feeds us there. Because I am afraid of the other items on the menu, I order grilled cheese, a decision I regret the instant I finish eating it and realize that I am still starving. Perhaps it isn't hunger that is making me weak, but rather heat exhaustion and lack of water and sleep. Allie generously shares some sweethearts and laffy taffies with me, which helps boost my energy levels immensely.

We have to push through the tired, because we're not on vacation. We've got work to do. Our next stop is the orphanage that Cham No owns. It is a gated farm with several fish ponds, banana and coffee trees, chickens, geese, and ducks. This orphanage houses 32 children of different ages. We interview him as he is fishing in one of the ponds at sunset. He has an amazing story to tell, but it's too long to share here.



The sun sets and it's time to go. Andrea finishes recording the ambient noise of the farm (birds and crickets chirping, water splashing, ducks quacking) and we set off for Siem Riep by van. It is a two hour ride. At least we had some really good air conditioning this time. We get to the Angkor Tep guest house and Judah books four rooms. There are seven of us. One of us will get their own room. Abraham and Landon decide to share. Judah and Mike take another room. Which means one of us girls gets our own room....so I call it. I really do love and get along with everyone in our group, but I need some alone time.

We each find our rooms and all of them are hot, just like the rest of this place. We see that there is an air conditioner in each room, but none of us can figure out how to work it! I volunteer to go ask the man at the front desk how to work the A/C.

I keep telling him, "Air conditioning. How do you turn it on?" he doesn't understand. "Air, cold!" I say. He leaves the room and I am thoroughly confused.

Man, this communication barrier is frustrating.

Then Judah comes downstairs and I ask him to ask the man how to work the A/C. The man from the front desk is back with his wife. They are carrying a mini fridge to bring upstairs to my room. Judah straightens out the situation for us.

It is now ten pm. We eat dinner at the restaurant just outside the guest house. I don't remember really being there at all, because I'm beyond the point of exhaustion. I sit in my chair, staring blankly at a wall. I've mentally checked out.

We get back and the four of us group members, Landon, Allie. Andrea, and I, meet up in the girls' room to discuss the focus of our documentary and what we want to do tomorrow and for the rest of the trip. It is productive, aside from all of the giggling. Again, we're way beyond the point of tired. And with that, I'm going to pass out now.