There's No Place Like Home

I feel like crap.  The trip home turned out to be a lot of fun, but I'm paying for it big time now.  My flight started off at 11:30, so I had been awake for at least 15 hours already.  I didn't sleep a wink going to Seoul, South Korea which was about 5 hours.  I landed there at around 6 am, and decided I didn't want to stay in the airport for my 12 hour layover, so I went exploring in Seoul (Janet, it was awesome - thanks!) for about 8 hours (and nearly lost all sensation in my fingers when for the life of me I could not find a store that sold gloves).  When I took off from Seoul, I was at 32 hours with no sleep.  The flight to Seattle thankfully turned out to be much shorter than the flight there (why is that??) but I still only got about 1 hour of sleep on the 9 hour flight.  I had a two hours layover (43 hours and counting...) in Seattle before I returned to Portland at around 1:30 pm.  At which point, I decided to force myself to stay awake until 11 pm.  So the total was about 52 hours with 1 hour of sleep.  I figured that I would be so tired I could sleep for at least 12 hours, right?  But no, I woke up at 4:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep.  And that's the way it's been for the last 3 nights.  Work was no fun, but at least the workload wasn't too bad.  But I'm feeling like a zombie.  Tomorrow, my friends Tina and Jesse are visiting from out of town, then I have a soccer game, then a wedding reception, and then a Decemberists concert.  I'm hoping to sleep for ALL of Sunday.  

The last 4 days of Siem Reap were pretty great.  First off, the night before, I was finally the one to be leaving the group and took a flight from Ho Chi Minh to Siem Reap (1 hour flight vs 14 hour bus ride - not even a contest).  On Friday, I went to Honour Village to help assess their medical supplies and stock them with some stuff they might need, which was fairly simple since they only need to look after the health of the orphanage kids, in contrast to the Savong Medical Clinic which was serving the surrounding villages as well.  I had Saturday off to borrow a bike from the guesthouse and I went pedaling around town, going down every street I could find that I hadn't seen before.  Not all that difficult since Siem Reap is pretty small.  Someone had told me where to find a street vendor that sold fried tarantulas.  I got there and found the street vendor, but it turns out she didn't have tarantulas.  What she did have was some kind of 6 inch long cockroach, as well as some 2 inch long beetles, deep fried chicks, and blackened frogs (not just legs, the whole thing).  Okay, I waved the white flag.  I'd reached my limit.  Cambodia, you win.  Anyhow, I need to save up something to try next year.

Saturday night, I had dinner with Kate and Chris (from OXfuhd UniVUHHsity), and several friends of theirs from the hospital.  We had dinner at Il Forno which actually made good pizza.  REALLY good pizza.  So, over this pizza I got the lowdown on infectious diseases that they see and are able to diagnosis.  For the difficult tests that require immunosorbent assays (HIV) or take a long time to culture (TB), they send it to the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh which I learned is VERY well equipped and can diagnosis just about anything.  This is good to know for anyone who's going to Cambodia as a medical volunteer although I don't know if the Pasteur Institute will accept specimens from anybody or whether it has to go through a hospital.

On Sunday, I was invited to the wedding reception of Prom who is the owner of the guesthouse Golden Takeo which is right across the street from where I was staying.  Prom is a hilarious Cambodian who I got to know over the last 7 weeks and who helped me to arrange all my travel plans.  His rooftop restaurant also happens to serve the most amazing frosty chocolate shakes.  Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn't have become friends with him.  But the wedding party was awesome with terrific food and horrific Cambodian karaoke that included a Michael Jackson impersonator dancing to Billie Jean.  Okay, maybe Cambodian karaoke is an acquired taste, but I don't know if I'll acquire it in this lifetime.  Michael Jackson impersonators?  More, please.  Dancing to Cambodian music was much more fun than listening to it, but with the heat, I couldn't last more than a few songs.

On Monday, I went back to the Savong School and Orphanage to say my final goodbyes to the staff and kids.  It turned out to be a lot harder to do than I thought.  I even had a prolonged conversation with La and Liang, the two half-sisters who run the lunch stand that I ate at everyday.  For those of you going there to volunteer, you can find their food stall directly across from the Bakong Temple.  It's almost in the center of all the other food stalls.  If you tell them you know me, your meal price will drop from $4 per dish to $1 per dish.  La makes AWESOME pork fried rice.  Don't worry, it's perfectly clean and safe.  One of the ladies will also find the ice cream man if you ask.  The ice cream man is this guy who pedals around on a bike attached to a giant frozen cooler.  Yes, there's ice cream in it, but he serves it in a French baguette with sweetened condensed milk all over it.  Trust me on this - it's out of this world.

Monday night, I had dinner with the Honour Village volunteers and Prom and his new wife, before I finally rushed off to the airport.  Dorothy, Gordon, Jill, Moira, Cat, Dan, April, and Rosie - thanks for the conversations and good luck with the rest of your stay!

If I'm awake at all on Sunday, I'll try to start uploading photos and videos.