Needs #
The most important thing, in any new place, is to get your needs met. It’s at this point that I had no clean shirts, no clean shirts, and no clean socks; I was clearly doing a terrible job.
I started with the laundry. There’s no laundry service at the guesthouse, however across the road, and directly next to use were signs advertising $1 USD/kg. Ironic, using USD in the same sentence as a kilogram, but that’s Cambodia for you.
I packed my backpack full of every dirty bit of laundry I could find. It was stuffed to the brim, and I walked with it to the guesthouse accross the street. Their English was poor, but servicable, and I was able to express that I couldn’t just leave my backpack, and needeed a plastic bag. I shifted the clothes over to it, and put it on the scale. 3.2kg.
They asked when I wanted it, and I said noon? They countered with 8 AM. That turned out to be good, because I was up for 9:30 AM, on the day of writing, and I very much appreciate having clean clothes to go with my hot shower.
I went to the counter to pay, and suggested $3, given it was 3.2kg. They charged me $3.5, rounding up to 3.5kg. I didn’t argue. These people are poor, and while 50c might seem worthless to most people, here that’s equivilent to 2000 Real. I ordered sausage fried rice last night from a street vendor, and paid 6000 real… They rounded up by 1/3 of a meal, and that’s the perspective I’m increasingly beginning to understand the culture here in.
Foreshadowing my impending nutritional deficiencies, I walked to the supermarket to buy a single packet of ramen for $0.85. I’ve been doing this for several days, now, and am likely to continue. For breakfast, I had a couple pieces of bread from the $3.50 loaf I bought a few days prior. Walking through another nearby shop, my eyes lit up when I saw bread available for $1. That’s what I bought today, at the time of writing, along with another packet of $1 ramen. I ate half the bread, maybe a bit more, and might finish the rest later… $2/day for my first two meals is something I can probably afford.
Phone #
Up until now, I’ve been getting by on the good grades of the offline map I downloaded of Siem Reap on my iPhone. I’ve found Apple Maps to be disappointing in KL, on account of lacking a lot of entries for a lot of stores, however one thing it does have, that Google Maps does not, is the ability to pre-load an offline copy of an area map.
That’s, however, an isolating experience. The advice I’ve received was to get the phone number of trustworthy drivers, so that you can call them to pick you up, after a night on the town. Without data, this is impossible, and so I set out to meet this need…
Given, however, that it was daytime, I decided to walk.
The walk was uneventful, if not somewhat exciting. I was directed to the Smart Shop Siem Reap (Major Cineplex) by my host, as that’s where he was able to secure an $8/mo phone plan. I made it there intact, and well, only to be asked for my passport, which I had left sitting on my desk in the Guesthouse.
So, I asked how late they’d be open (9 PM), and walked back.
Though I didn’t achieve my aim, one thing I did discover was a street lined with tables, chairs, and food vendors. Up until now, I’d been cloistered close to the guesthouse, ordering different meals from the same vendor. That was cool, but they don’t serve Pho, and I spied a vendor selling just that (at a very reasonable price).
Work #
I got back to the Guesthouse just after 4, and, still without a phone, the obvious thing would be to go upstairs, grab my passport, and head back out. I couldn’t do the obvious thing, because my host, Tomiyuki, had asked me to talk, earlier in the day, and the agreed upon time was now.
I gave him 15 minutes of break to ready himself, and then he moved his laptop over to the table I’d been sitting at, to signify his readiness.
He asked for my Whatsapp, and then sent me a link to a slideshow that described what needs to be done. I need to put together a 2-3 hour workshop, for a group of up to 4 people, advertise it, and then excute on it, by the end of the month. I need to be ready to advertise two weeks before it’s due to be put on, and it needs to be on the weekend (because that’s when children will have time to attend).
Given those requirements, that means I’ll need to schedule it for Saturday, November 30, and to be ready with a plan and advertising in one week from today.
This is new for me. I’ve never put on a workshop before, however this opportunity is rare, and this is the work I get to do in exchange for my residence here. It’s both a privilege, and an honour. The students are likely to be complete beginners, which means that it has to be a very basic project, capable of being realized within the 2-3 hour window, and also more than a simple copy-paste tutorial. It must require actual thought on the part of the students, customization, creativity, and ideally, to spark their further curiosity, and impel them to continue down this path, and to inspire them to teach themselves what they need to go further.
He also showed me another project. Optional, but available, if I’m interestede. It was a PCB board he was working on. See, the problem with a lot of the projects to be done is the labour involved in soldering. It takes time, and as a result, limits what can be achieved within a single workshop. What he’s working on is a carrier board, capable of mounting an ESP32-C6 development board, breaking out each of hte pins to a header, as well as providing built-in headers for an I2C or SPI OLED display, a mini breadboard, and a barrel power plug, to enable use of a commonly available 12V supply.
I asked him what was missing on it, and he told me that there was unused space on the board, and he was looking to add something more to it, asking for ideas. I stared at it for a while, though nothing immmediately came to mind, it would be on my mind throughout the day.
Tuk Tuk #
By this point, it was dark. I tried to go outside, however I kept getting lost… I find that when I’m feeling lost, it often means I’m doing the wrong thing, so I came back inside, went up to my room, and had a piece of bread. I was hungry, by this point, and I figured it’d help.
I decided that what I needed, now that my laundry was set to be washed, was a working SIM card. I’d tried once already this day, but I decided I must try once again, so I loaded up my backpack, and set off.
Shortly after breaching the gate, I was asked if I wanted a Tuk Tuk by a driver. This time I said yes, asking how much, and ensuring that he had change for the 50,000 Real notes I possessed (4000 Real is 1 USD). He said that he did, stating $2 in town, $3 out of town, and given the location we were headed, quoted me $2 for the trip.
We set off, and I’ll be honest - it was fun. There’s no seat belts, and no control - you’re at the whim of a man on a motorcycle charting the course of the cart, and the paths taken are often novel. We turned down streets I would’ve never thought to walk, seeing restaurants I never knew existed. What’s more, as we passed the street lined with food carts, I realized that it was lit up, and still very active.
We soon arrived at a place that was not my destination. It was close to my destination, and he tried to drop me off. I handed him the money, and when he askede to pick me up later, I said sure, and asked for his number. He asked if I had Whatsapp, which I did, but wasn’t able to simply scan, as the real reason I was out that night was to get a SIM card. I told him this, and the next thing I knew we were off, barrelling off in a new direction, not all towards where I wanted to go.
I asked him about this, and he said we were going to see his friend. I pressed further, asking if his friend could get me a SIM card for $8. He said yeah, sure, whatever you want to pay, and off we went.
We arrived at a place called Royal Phone, though the placards all over said Oppo. My driver had given me back my money, by this point, having sensed I was not entirely comfortable with the situation, and said he’d wait for me to finish. I went to the shop, told the man I needed the SIM, and he gave me a sheet with prices.
His prices were betteere than the shop I was taken to on my first day in Siem Reap, however they were still higher than the $8 I wanted to pay. I insisted, at this point, telling the man that I had been trying to go to a place where I knew I could get an $8 SIM, but that my driver had insisted on taking me to see his friend, and thus I was there, and I wanted to pay $8.
He said “okay, I can give you this, but the data will be slow”. I said I didn’t care, I just neeeded data, so he grabbed a SIM off the shelf, asked for my phone, put it in, and said “okay, we’re done”. I gave him the money, and he gave me the correct amount in change (I carefully counted it out, still not used to having to deal with bills for amounts I’d normally expect in counts).
I asked him what I needed to do, in a month, to top it up. He said nothing, it was automatic. He didn’t ask for my passport, so clearly this deal I’d just engaged in was sketchy, but my phone now had an active data plan, and I was able to use maps, so technically? Mission Accomplished. I told him how sketchy this seemed, but I also said that I was deciding to trust him. His demeanor lead me to believe this was a wise choice.
I returned, then, to my driver, and gave him his $2. He asked where I wanted to go next, but the truth was that I didn’t actually know, and that I’d rather walk. He was insistent, but then so was I. He offered me the opportunity to pay $15 for a joint, which I declined, and I thanked him for his time, insisting that I wanted to walk home from here.
It was a 900m walk, and it was worth seeing on foot. Being unrushed, unhurried, and unresponsible for the need for anyone else to make a living has, for me, always been worth it.
Quiet #
The impetus for actually getting that SIM had been because I’d been in touch with someone, who mentioned that them, and three friends were out on the town that night, and I realized that I’d have no way of getting in touch without a data plan, were I “out on the town”.
I never actually wound up hearing back from that person, but that was quite alright. I set out once again, only I decideed to walk, back to precisely where I’d set out towards twice that day, to hit the food vendors by the river.
I found one, and ordered sausage fried rice. They had trouble understanding that, so I found there it was listed on the laminated sheet of meals they offered, and that was enough. They providede me a seat, and a very delicious meal for 6000 Real ($1.5). That’s the cheapest meal I’ve eaten yet in Siam Reap, and it came with what I’ll say was a very delicious soup.
I finished, and walked towards home. It’s a sort of a long walk, passing many streets, and 3 bridges, but there’s a lot to see along the way. I found the Hard Rock Cafe Angkor, which I didn’t know existed, and is also the first Hard Rock Cafe I’ve seen anywhere. So that’s fun.
Along the way, I had the thought to try to find an ATM that doesn’t charge fees (after walking by a bank with Canada in it’s name). I googled it, with my new fancy data plan, and found that Canadia ATM’s don’t charge fees. There’s an ATM on Sok San Road by them, and that’s very useful knowledge, as I’ve found every other ATM to charg e me $5 USD (which, when stackde on top of the $5 CAD foreign ATM fee my own bank charges, becomes quite significant).
I got back to the Guesthouse, and, having heard from no-one, contemplated going out… It was Friday, after all, but in the end, I decided that what I wanted was a quiet night in. I explored the Makerspace, finding inspiration in every place that I looked.
I did try to go out again, but it was at this point, that I realized the gate was now closed. While it’s true, that I can just open it, what it made me realize was the difference between Evening and Night. It had been evening, and I hadn’t really needed that Tuk Tuk, earlier, but now it was night, and it felt like a wise choice.
Instead, I ate my last piece of bread, in lieu of the juice my body told me it craved, and I went to bed.