It's a zoo over here.....

I am coming to understand that normal rules don’t really apply in this country. Monday, we took a trip to the zoo (we got the day off work in honor of the venerable Visak Bochea—I have no idea who that is, and ironically none of the local Buddhists do either). It fell a bit short of the paved walkways and very large fences that are so ubiquitous in the zoo’s American cousins. Also absent were the balloons, goldfish pond, and cotton candy that complete every five-year olds idyllic dream. This experience was actually more closely related to a petting zoo—replace the goats with the ‘common Asian dear’ and the bunnies with pelicans and storks, and you’re in business. Behind a short chain-link fence, we found the crocodiles. I could easily have stuck my hand through the mesh to touch the thing, it was so close, but that didn’t seem advisable. However, for a small fee, you can buy a live chicken to throw into the pen. In the section with monkeys, there were more monkeys out of the cages than in them. This one just wants to hold hands. The Asian black bears will whine until you throw a coconut their way, but the otters squeal (they sound like they are in pain nigh unto death) until you feed them fresh coconut slivers piece by piece through the fence. They stick their paws out and grab the food right out of your hands. The elephants would dance, take money from your hand, and play soccer. The wire fences containing the panthers, lions, and tigers looked woefully inadequate, given that the thin wire chain link fence, the kind your dog always bent and dug under to escape the yard, is the only thing standing between you and this beast that looked so much more friendly in the Disney movies.

The middle of this walking tour featured food stalls, with four options: on the left, we have fried frog, on the right, charred fish, bottom left is boiled freshwater crab, and not pictured bags of chips that contain more air than substance. We passed on the food stalls and waited until we got back into town.

Friday was another national holiday (this time, I believe we were given the day off in honor of the Royal plowing festival—the fifth national holiday in the last 3 weeks. There isn’t another until September, folks.) and so we took off for the beach. Four hours and five dollars later, the bus dropped us off in Sihanoukville, Champong Sam Province on Cambodia’s south coast. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, I’ll just leave a few of those, with the small addition (probably unnecessary) that it was a glorious weekend.

Work is coming along splendidly—despite the plentiful Holidays, I do actually have something useful to be doing. Next week sometime, after I finish with preliminary research and design my survey, I take off for the provinces to collect data. The nerd in me recognizes this set up as the living manifestation of the empirical researcher’s wildest fantasies. The rest of me is just thrilled to be here, experiencing something so entirely new.