What you can buy with $50. Are you for riel?

A commonly asked question I get from my peeps back home is, “What kind of money do they use over there?” Over there implying Cambodia, the other side of the world, and/or space.

It’s an interesting system of bartering, similar to fur traders of the colonial times, and you can pretty much use whatever you like to pay for a good or service. I tend to sing for all of my meals, but sometimes I’ll give them a palm reading depending on how well I’m in touch with the spirits that day.

Actually, they use the US dollar.

And these bills for change. Whoa! I’m loaded.

Instead of carrying around 11 lbs of coins, I can rid my wallet of pennies for riel. I’m thinking of using this as the title to my next rap album, penniez fo riel.

It’s about 4,125 riel to a dollar, but everyone goes by the 4:1 ratio. I like to think I’m clever handing someone 4,000 riel when they ask for a dollar. Surprisingly, less than a nickel loss doesn’t bother anyone too much.

But what does a dollar actually mean in Cambodia?

I’ve come up with a list of some very important goods and services under $50 in Phnom Penh, so if you’ve got a fifty and some time in this city you can:

1. Have the ladies at Luna Boutique make a dress for you.

I needed to play the role of English teacher in the upcoming film “Real Life” so I found a dress shop around 51^st and Sihanouk to make my costumes. Every dress in the store is $45 and that includes alterations. Ta da!

 

2. Stock the kitchen and buy groceries for a week.

A pan, pot (not that kind), spatula, spoon, knife, cutting board, silverware, plates, and pitcher

+

my groceries—use your eyes

=

$45

 

3. Get really really really drunk. Riel-ly. I’m done, I swear.

Let me break this one down for you with a general list of prices for happy hour and also happy hours that you just have to pay more for.

Draft beer: $.50-1.50

Cocktails: $1.75-3.50

Shots: $1.00-2.00

Limes: free with salt

If you spend more than $50, you were pick pocketed.

 

4. Relax at Riverfront

Although this is an extremely touristy area, I won’t act like it’s not fun.

There are approximately a gazillion restaurants. They’re all about the same price with, unfortunately, about the same menu, which includes pizza, hamburgers, and typical Khmer soups, fried things, and steamed things. All very good. Lunch and dinner shouldn’t cost you more than $15, though—unless you’re including #3.

After lunch, walk across the street and watch the boats go by or the kids playing.*

*This activity is free.

Once watching the kids playing has worn you out—children make me tired just looking at them—you can go back across the street to get a massage.

There are more massage parlors here than there are Starbuck’s in the US, so don’t worry about trying to find one. Same goes for mani/pedi salons.

And of course . . . shopping!

Any good you want, they’ve got. T-shirts, movies (bootlegged of course), jewelry, books, and buddhas.

If anyone would like to provide me with $50 to do more of these activities I am always taking donations.

 

A classroom in Cambodia

Any idiot knows what happens when you assume. So why do I keep feeling like the only ass here?

My latest blunder came from teaching at an orphanage. I assumed I’d be teaching little darlings. But I was what, class? Very good, kids, I was wrong.

Part of our training for the LanguageCorps certificate included two weeks of student teaching. For three of us who stayed in Phnom Penh—some moved to either Thailand or Vietnam—we were assigned to teach at an orphanage called SSD.

This was my classroom.

The extra students in the back . . .

and the ones who came and went as they pleased.

Forget about the eight-year-olds trying to concentrate, I couldn’t figure out whether I was supposed to teach or feed the chickens.

After pulling myself together, I wrote my name on the board, gave them my warmest Fraulein Maria smile and tried to start at the very beginning. Clearly, I hadn’t yet shaken my delusion of eight studious children hanging on my every English word.

And then in walked James Bond.

Cambodian kids have a habit of nicknaming themselves after celebrities and, lucky me, I had a self-proclaimed 007 in my class.

He was just that. I would turn around for two seconds and he’d have disappeared leaving a wake of disruption, beat up one of the little girls, or managed to take apart an entire computer keyboard—where he procured it is still a mystery to me—and pass out the parts like tokens.

This all happened the first day. In one hour.

After the class from hell, my supervisor told me that Bond, James Bond wasn’t even supposed to be in my beginner class, but the intermediate. So the next morning I put on my big girl panties and kicked out that mothe— I mean, that dear, sweet boy.

These were my other students.

With a bit of seat rearranging (boy girl boy girl), they sat with their hands clasped and eyes bright to learn fruits, vegetables, and meals. Over the next week and a half we smiled, laughed—ha ha ha—played joyful games, sang “Kum ba yah,” and sobbed and sobbed when it came to an end.*

*Now would be the part of the cartoon when you pull out an oversize needle that twinkles at the end emphasizing the sharp point and tap my dream bubble, bursting it into a million pieces. POP!

When James Bond went to kill a different class, I assumed (again) that my class would be perfect. Really, kids are all insane and the only way to control any of them is with straight jackets and muzzles. I’m aware of how that sounds.

The alternative is playing lots and lots of games. They also loved rewards like Hello Kitty stickers and stars by their name on the board. And, little by little, I started to notice they were actually a pretty good group of kids.

This is Sannara Pa. She was one of the youngest, but by far the smartest. Very clever. Too clever. She also erased the board for me every day after class, so obviously she was my favorite.

This is CL. If you’re familiar with the K-Pop group 2ne1 then you already knew that was the name of one of the singers (I know you already knew that). She was a smarty too, and a definite diva.

This wise guy is Kammara Streymon (another celebrity name). For the entire two weeks I thought he said Freymon and no one corrected me because that’s rude. Makes sense.

Aw, Raksmeg. She started coming to class halfway through the first week, but she caught on quickly. She was a giggly thing—I’m beginning to understand why I was a difficult student.

And Pa. This kid is the embodiment of the phrase “ants in your pants.” During the entire two weeks he never stopped moving and he learned one word: green pepper. He liked saying it over and over. At first I tried to get him to learn the other words, but then I realized green pepper is actually a pretty fun word to say, so if you can’t beat ‘em . . . green pepper, green pepper, green pepper, green pepper.

I’m going to break my vow of anti-assuming, but I’m going to assume that kids act like kids anywhere in the world. They get bored easily, want to joke with their friends, love playing games and hate taking tests.

After accepting these facts, I figured out a successful class is made up of two words:

Controlled chaos.

It took a few days, but fun and rewards equaled moderate attention spans and happy maniacs kids. What more can you ask for?

Standing in front of things

I’ll preface this post by explaining why I’m randomly in Cambodia. I closed my eyes, spun my obscenely large globe that I definitely own and am not making up, and then blindly stopped it on the country of the Khmer people.

That’s sort of true. I’m also studying with 19 other people to become an English teacher abroad with a group called LanguageCorps.

Our first day together.

We’re one week in to our four week certification program and for our first outing this past weekend we made a six hour bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. Angkor Wat baby, where I proceeded to get multiple standard tourist pictures. Just standing in front of things.

Standing in front of the first temple of the morning.

Standing with Asian people wearing costumes. You must pay them a dollar. They won’t tell you that until after you’ve taken the picture, though.

Not standing for a pretty sweet optical illusion. I, of course, could not sit with a meditative gaze.

Another temple. I’m going to tell you now they all start to run together.

Standing in front of trees. That’s pretty neat.

Standing in front of lakes.

Standing in front of Angkor Wat. The big Kahuna.