On the Road (April 16, 2007)

Being on the road and traveling through different countries I find that I'm not afforded the time to properly allow my thoughts/ideas to congeal into forms that even begin to approach the sorts of things that make for good blog posts, so instead, I'm going to offer a series of 'snapshots' in the form of various recent notes from my baby blue scribble-journal-jobbie.

1) "I take out the Swiss army knife, find some plastic on the pavement, wipe my brow and set to work. Miraculously, my McGyvering worked and we burned rubber to the Phaxuam cliff."

2) "She emerged with iodine, hydrogen peroxide, bandages. She then ushered me though her living room and smiling family and out to the back yard to the tap and a small bucket of what looked like laundry detergent."

3) "Her [Kasuma's] real name is Tiffany and she does great, sad impressions of her father."

4) "He isn't fat but he has breasts (...) I ask why the monkey doesn't bite him and the herm says 'I am zee chief!'"

5) "Being whipped in the sweaty face with burgundy polyester is never pleasant. Finally, mercifully, the bus stops. In Snoul."

6) "[blah blah]...since the dawn of class, but I can't help it, there's a shame I feel. Grown men who have seen wars, fathered and lost children, created works and managed great families - men of character, virtue and experience are approaching me, a young dumb Canadian, on the street and asking for money."

7) "He [a Cambodian police officer] makes a brief walkie call. Then he ushers me away from his desk, I oblige happily and we are handed a form by a young, colourfully clad officer and sit at a desk donated by a Korean man named Seo Yu Won."

8) "Oh, natch, we saw Tom1 and Tom2 in backpacklandia. 'This song is so misawggonist' (overheard re: Smack My Bitch Up)."

9) "Tonight, check out Khmer/French vamp-dance drug-rock trio 'Kampuchew' at NETH, 9 sharp, and tomorrow night it's happy hour from 6-9, two for one absinthe and orange moss at KEOSLAPECH with DJ Apocalypse."

10) "Because of the casino's approximation to one of the greatest cliffs around (seriously, we saw the clouds part for a moment, the jungle a kilometer below!), people would often hurdle themselves off when they found themselves in a losing streak."

11) "Even as I write this, the next morning, a sudden 1000-insect alarm has been sounded and we cannot hear anything else."

12) "Hermit crabs, tiny as anything, sea urchins engaged in epic battles with crabs, unexplained and unidentified spiny objects and starfish the size of hams."

13) "On my first morning in Cambodia I am waking up with a sore esophagus and a missing pillow."

14) "[Her b-day, La Caravelle hotel, Saigon. The guidebook described it as 'gastro-cinematic'] Let's see, we ate: smoked salmon, smoked _______, three kinds of roe/caviar, crab-stuffed artichoke, breads (insane), cream of turkey soup, sushi/sashimi, eggplant/scallop salad, jumbo prawn, river prawn, lobster, oysters on the half shell, beef tenderloin in a fois gras pureé, roast beef, suckling pork, seared salmon, roasted duck with sun dried tomatoes, pork tenderloin wrapped in smoked bacon, unlimited French wine (tasty!), no less than 15 kinds of French cheese (most of which we had never heard of), parma ham, prosciutto, dried fruit, mango, kiwi, dragon fruit, six different kinds of chocolate cake or brownie, banana torte, mango cheesecake, dark chocolate fondue and a home-made ice-cream sundae. With M&Ms."



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