Freshening Excellence Wipes

They gave us these wet towels on the plane:

Freshening Excellence Wipes, is manufactured by Freshening Singapore under stringent hygiene standards. Utilizing world-class wet towel technology and facilities, Freshening's products are manufactured to the highest quality standards. Safe and gentle for use on the face, hands and body, it is the perfect companion for personal cleaning and grooming.

For external use only

Made in Singapore

Discard wipe in trash. Do not flush in toilet.

www.fresheningglobal.com

Quick Note

I'm in Cambodia now, paying a buck an hour for internet. I'm a little over halfway done my trip. A few quick thoughts:

Cambodia is a lot like Vietnam and Thailand, not surprisingly, but it has its own flavor and quirks. I can't seem to get a proper Vietnamese coffee here, though, with the condensed sweetened milk. I'm pissed about that.

Cambodians hate their own currency. They prefer American dollars, crisp ones. They give change in riels (the local currency). It's 4000 riels to the dollar, and riels are a closed currency. Thus, any leftovers I have will have to go in the ol' scrapbook, because they're WORTHLESS and not accepted outside Cambodia.

My bill at the hostel in Phnom Penh came to $14.10. I tried to give the chick a dime, and she laughed and marvelled at it, then asked me for riels instead. Apparently it's a no-coin country. Even the riels seem to only come in bill form. I've seen as low as 100, a couple cents.

The vendors here are all about making you promise that if you DO get a manicure, or you DO buy a bracelet, that you'll go to them, not anyone else. One chick made me pinky-swear today. I bet she'll recognize me the next time I'm on the beach and call me out.

It's pretty cheap here. I've been averaging under $5 a meal, except at my second location at a pricey floating ecolodge that I mentioned in a previous preparatory post. Even there, though, I got free breakfast, and my lunch and dinner totals were under $20 a day. I was shocked.

I haven't bought anything yet. I was only in Phnom Penh overnight, and I was worrying the whole next morning about how I would get to the lodge; then at the lodge, there was nothing to buy and noplace to go. I'll buy some things here in Sihanoukville, though.

I took a three and a half hour bus trip today, for $6.25. There was no official rest stop, so I had to ask the driver if I could use a toilet when he dropped someone off, after I'd been holding it for two hours. The toilet was a bush.

I'm kind of afraid to carry around my camera here, being a chick alone, so I won't have as many pictures as on my other trips. I did meet two nice families at the ecolodge, though, who took some pictures of me, probably the only pictures of me I'll get on this trip.

Tomorrow I'll go on an excursion to Reap National Park for jungle trekking and beachy stuff. I think it'll be the only day trip I do, since I'm leaving Saturday and I want to have time to get a massage, enjoy the beach nearby (I just peaked at it today), and do a little shopping and relaxing.

More blogging to come on Sundayish. Happy New Year.

Birth-Giving

My birthday started on Thanksgiving Proper, since one of my classes whose students really like me (and having parties) doesn't meet on Fridays. Most of the kids came equipped with food for everyone: we got an ice cream cake, fried chicken with little rice bits in the batter; cups that had soda on the bottom and a long straw that goes up along the side of another cup full of chicken nuggets, nestled into the larger cup; fried potatoes cut into spirals on a stick, shrimp-flavored chips (gross), plus I had made chocolate pudding. We were all ludicrously full after that. I got presents from some of the kids, as well. Andrew's mom brought some flowers when she brought the potato sticks, Ashley gave me some potted flowers, which I still have on my window sill at school, and Melanie gave me a set of three little bags in varying sizes, for makeup and sundries.



Here's the ice cream cake:




Ashley's flowers:



Here's where Danny took over on the camera for me. He really loves that camera.



Then on Friday it was my real birthday and I had a party all day at school. There was a lot of food that day, too.


Here's my first class, Sean, Erin, Lucy, Albert, and Eric, watching the Simpsons. Those big cups you see are the chicken/soda cups I was referring to above:




Lucy gave me some earrings and a handkerchief set. I never know what to do with those things. The kids always give them to me. Albert gave me a back scratcher with a big stuffed heart on one end. I think you're supposed to pound yourself in the back with that part. Something I can actually use.

Here are Antonio, Steve, Ally, and half of Jane in my next class:




They brought more fried chicken, juice, cake, and tea, and I bought them sweet buns from the bakery nearby--Rotibuns, they're called.


Lucille set this little birthday wish up:



And they had kicked me out at the beginning of the class so they could do this and sing to me:

Lucille, and the cake Jane brought:

Ally:

Jane:

My next class also brought me a cake, and forgave me a year:

These are Monique, Ruby, Aimee, and Lilly:

The cake after the candles:

The boys in that class also brought me some individual snacks, like cookies and candies and such. Jimmy got me some lotion and body wash, and Ruby got me a whole bath set. Monique made a little stuffed dog for me, Lilly got me a warm, wide scarf, and Aimee made me a little card.

Here they are--Harry, Jimmy, Jeff, and the girls:

And from this angle you can see the last boy, David. He's just a peanut.

My next class is all boys--Dragon, Sean in the back, Charlie, Tom, and Jack's hair.

These guys gave me all these high-brow present ideas they said they would get when I mentioned my birthday previously, like manicures and makeup, but I think they were thwarted by their parents. I did get a little headband from Sean, and Dragon brought a cheesecake. Funnily enough, I didn't have any cake on my birthday, even though three kids brought cake, and I bought one of my own for my last couple classes. I was just too full from all the chicken and pizza all day, plus I find Korean cake infinitely disappointing. I like a nice, rich chocolate cake. White cake is a waste no matter what country it's from, and Korean chocolate cake just tastes like air. Stupid.

Jack, Dragon, Charlie, Alex, Tom:

I think Tom's going to be a little heartbreaker in like four years.

Cheesecake. It might be better than the other cakes, but cheesecake without fruit topping? Screw that.

Here are my last couple classes. I got multicolored pens and cell phone charms from Diane and Tara, but the older kids tend to be less givey. It's okay. I get the pleasure of seeing their shining faces three times a week. Joy.

Because there was so much cake from previous classes, we didn't even finish it, and I saved the cake I bought for my Thanksgiving dinner the next day at Heather's house. I'll have to save that story until next time. I'm leaving for Cambodia in a few hours. I'll czech back in after the holidays.

Japanese Souvenirs

I managed to bring back some pretty cool stuff from Fukuoka. Here's a little print I picked up. It reminds me of a pteradactyl, though I think it's supposed to be more like a raptor, or even some other nondinosaur creature.




Here's a flyer for the band we hung out with on Saturday night:


These are their cartoon representations:



This is a cool think I never saw before, although I've started to notice it around Korea a little bit, and on packages from home and such. It's a data-matrix code. You just take a picture of it with your cell phone and it takes you to the website. It seems to be exploding into use.

This is a stuffed doll from the coolest thing I saw in Japan. I was looking around this store called The Loft, where I got the print above and some other stuff. They had this display of these characters called Mame-Shiba, and were playing 30-second spots on a little tv. I watched it for a long time. It was very funny. They were animated commercials, in which some person was in a normal situation, eating. Then a little live bean would fall out of a bag, or get picked up on a spoon, and say something to the person. I didn't quite understand what the beans were saying, but it would deeply affect the person, so he wouldn't be able to eat his food. After looking around at the merchandise and seeing shirts and caps saying "Did you know...?" in English, I figured the beans were giving some disgusting fact about the food on the plate.

Since I've been back, I've used the internets to figure out what the beans were saying, and I was almost right. They just give somewhat random gross or weird trivia facts that don't have anything to do with the food they're in (are), but still make people lose their appetites. Here's a link to a Mame-shiba video on Youtube. There are links to other videos there, as well.

http://www.youtube.com/user/mameshibavideos#p/a/4F7D4F3F2B624714/0/Ss6d3ogxfXc

Here's the jacket I bought in a mall there. I think this is probably the first item of clothing I've ever bought purely for fashion. The sleeves are only elbow-length, so it's not very functional. But it has lots of zippers and snap buttons, and it also has wires in the collar and along the length of the zipper, so I can shape it. It's cooool. There are pictures of me with it on in my last couple posts.