Khmer Eats

     Cambodian cuisine is a minefield.  There are high notes, which are consistently good.  Beef lok-lak is a consistently tasty dish, glazed in something like Cambodian sweet-and-sour sauce, topped with a fried egg (runny yolk, which I prefer), and seasoned with lime juice and the culinary treasure that is Kampot pepper.  Nom pachok is a hearty bowl of soup that sits at the intersection of pad Thai and the American chicken noodle classic.  The noodles are homemade in the best instances, accompanied by a rich broth, pork or chicken seasoned with just a bit of curry, sweet basil, and a very few other spices that help to complement the homemade simplicity of the dish.  Khmer barbecue is also excellent, especially the pork ribs.  But for every great dish, there are a dozen dishes that look like it, but are either surprisingly different, or just plain terrible.  The result is that every foray into unknown dinner territory is full of trepidation, with one nervously sampling each dish that comes along, uncomfortably mindful that it could be an unknown horror lying in wait.

     I learned this the hard way.  While we were in Siem Reap for trial, some of the Khmer staff took us out to lunch with them.  It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know some of the people I work with in a casual, friendly environment, and I am both humbled and thrilled to have been welcomed into their lives that way.  Having said that, lunch was an object lesson in all the reasons not to be too adventurous with one’s food.  After being seated at a long wooden table in a little grass-roofed hut, we were served a selection of drinks which included the odd-tasting juices of a dozen unusual fruits and vegetables, including a black jelly-juice made of some sort of grass.  The main appetizer was boiled peanuts, a favorite in my Southern homeland, but they were accompanied by durian.  Durian is a fruit that has become notorious among Western travelers to Southeast Asia.  One of my coworkers perfectly summed up the experience of this mushy, fibrous fruit that looks like a pineapple and smells strongly of rotting garbage by saying, “When my people eat durian, it is a treat, but when your people eat durian, it is a punishment.”  The first thing I discovered that day was that durian tastes exactly like it smells.  Things continued along that vein for the next two hours.  Along the way, I burned a red stripe across my forehead when I wiped it with the back of my hand after squeezing an incredibly hot pepper.  I discovered that solid blocks of congealed blood are considered a good way to season fish soup in Cambodia.  I had some tasty mango salad and some simple, well-steamed rice.  I was stabbed by countless bits of bone and sharp wooden twigs out of my mouth before being told that, in Cambodia, you often have to test each mouthful with your tongue and find the shards that need to be pulled out before chewing.  At one point, I found myself wondering what part of a chicken I was gnawing on when I realized I had a vertebrae in my mouth.  As it turns out, I really like chicken necks.  Then, the beer arrived and the men began pouring cheap high-gravity beer over large chunks of ice, and not taking “no” for an answer.  Several beers, a heaping helping of spicy meat salad, a few swallowed fish bones, a generous dollop of fermented fish paste, a mountain of rice, and two chicken necks later, someone finally got around to teaching me the Khmer word for “enough”: “ban-hai.”  One of our dinner companions felt the need to illustrate this language lesson by tying a white napkin around a chopstick and placing it in an empty beer can in a passable imitation of a surrender flag.  This visual aid elicited raucous laughter from around the table, which of course resulted in more anchor beer.  So much for ban-hai. 

   

     Of course, not all surprises are bad, like the surprising depth of Kampot pepper or the pleasant saltiness of fermented fish paste.  Fried rice is a traditional breakfast food, and once you get used to it, it isn’t half bad.  When you make coffee triple strength, pitch black, and sludgy, it becomes rather pleasant if mixed with an equal portion of condensed milk and then drowned in ice.  Crickets, ants, and tarantulas are all much better and more fun to eat than you imagine.  I never brought myself to try the half-formed duck fetus that is considered a delicacy, but I’m told it’s also quite good.  Still, even the good bits are laden with surprises, so my final word on Cambodian cuisine is caveat essetor: let the eater beware.

Singed Armor

     Most of the guys I know have some kind of deep-seated hero complex, and I am no exception. Movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy are so popular because so many of us want to carry huge swords around, ride horses, wear shiny armor, and defeat monsters in battle. But something that I never realized before this summer is that when you battle fire-breathing dragons, you end up with a singed and dented helmet. Of course, I intellectually understood that there are always casualties in battle, but taking a punch mostly sounded to me like a good way to get a cool-looking black eye. Looking back, the naiveté there seems obvious. Even the latest Batman movie uses Bruce Wayne’s growing catalogue of crippling injuries to show that fighting crime takes its toll, and heroes get old. Yet the price of saving the day is so entirely overshadowed by the glory of the triumph that I never truly understood before that if you ride to the ends of the earth to slay the creatures that live beyond the edges of the map, all those months on the road will give you saddle sores. Blades get rusty. No one tells you that when a claw tears open your shield arm, the wound can get infected. In the last month, I’ve seen that being a hero can be glorious and fulfilling, but you mostly spend a lot of time brooding in the bat cave and getting hunted by Gotham's finest. We all want to vanquish evil, but it gets ugly when evil fights back.

     

     While working at the District Attorney's office, I met two men who first demonstrated this fact to me. One was the guy I worked most closely with, a D.A. who handles a lot of cases involving child victims. This guy spends every day protecting the most innocent and vulnerable citizens of my hometown from some of the worst predators imaginable. More than most men, he walks into deep darkness and tackles the things that go bump in the night with incredible energy and skill, and is often successful in his fight. It was exciting to be part of that mission. But, by the third day of this work, most of what I had done was spend a couple of days thinking more deeply than I ever cared to about some of the worst acts humans can commit. Eventually, that gets to you. When this man wins a case against these monsters, it isn't over: he then has to go home and try to enjoy his hero's welcome with a head full of intimate knowledge of things that most people would rather pretend could never be true. The other guy was a federal agent who is every inch the hero. He wears cool suits that he accessorizes with a handgun, he's in great shape, and he spends his time hunting down terrible bad guys. But a lot of his work boils down to looking at pictures of children being abused. Even though he's doing it for a good cause, and approaching it as a professional, he still has to spend hours every week staring at kiddie porn. It turns out that when you do battle with monsters, you end up spending a lot of time with demons.  

 

 
     I've seen this in Phnom Penh, too. The veterans here have spent a decade or more working against trafficking, fighting one of the most noble and critical battles of our time. But what most people don't realize is that a lot of guys who do this work eventually become addicted to alcohol or sexual vices, or have marriages that are falling apart. These men are going into abominable establishments on a regular basis and saving young girls, but that translates into spending a lot of time hanging out in perverse brothels. Now, there are a lot of ways to help cope with these issues, and I have been deeply blessed to be led through this bog by people who know where the quicksand is. The D.A. I worked for talked a lot about the importance of leaving work in its place every day, and going home to spend his afternoons and evenings with the people he loves. Likewise, my organization here in Cambodia is adamant about the importance of staff care and the dangers of secondary trauma. You can clean your wounds when you get them and repair up your armor as you take hits, and you'll be alright. Furthermore, I have met a lot of guys who, by being diligent in these precautions and safeguards, have managed to sustain this fight throughout a whole career. Still, I have been forced to see this summer that slaying dragons means getting burned, and it was a harsh and unexpected lesson.

Phnom Penh Journal, Issue 3

Friday, July 5 - One of the aftercare workers made the coffee this morning. She called it, "The Poo Poo Coffee." Being culturally sensitive, I did not giggle to myself at this funny coincidence of language, but rather inquired as to what set it apart from regular coffee. It was explained to me that this particular coffee is the increasingly-popular Vietnamese delicacy where coffee beans are fed to weasels, and then collected from the weasel defecation, rinsed, and sold as specially filtered coffee. "Poo Poo Coffee" indeed. That's what I get for being culturally sensitive.

Saturday, July 6 – Independence Day at the foreign embassy. After a week of typical Khmer life and a morning of working on school assignments, it was good to spend some time at an American party. I was struck by the thought that I was officially standing on American soil as soon as I passed through the gates. My joy was made complete when I feasted on Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dairy Queen, and was not altogether spoiled by the heavily-Khmer accented renditions of “American Pie” and “Achy Breaky Heart,” nor the Peace Corps’ decision to sing Katy Perry’s “Firework.”

Sunday, July 7 – Spent the evening in a cool theater watching a dramatization of the true story of a Khmer reporter who suffered under and eventually escaped the Khmer Rouge. It was a sobering experience, but gave me a deeper appreciation for the Khmer people.

Monday, July 8-Tuesday, July 9 – Normal work days, preparing for a trial in the major provincial town of Siem Reap. I had Khmer lunch with the national staff on Monday: sweet soy tempeh, fermented fish paste with green papaya, wine-soaked yeasty rice, salt-cured pork, and tarot root dumplings. Surprisingly, the fish paste and papaya was perhaps the best part.

Wednesday, July 10-Sunday, July 14 – Went to Siem Reap for trial. Trial was delayed, which was awful, but the time was not a total loss. After wrapping up court on Thursday, my boss invited myself and the new legal fellow to have lunch with his extended family. I felt like Indiana Jones, not for the first time that trip, exploring a lost dungeon: there was much treasure to be had, in the form of reclining in hammocks at under the woven grass roof, as well as the culinary pleasures of roasted chicken, sweet cakes of rice and banana wrapped in banana leaves, and tender fish soup, but also booby traps aplenty, since every dish was a murky mix of tasty morsels hidden among scraps of bone, pastes of fermented animal meat, and fruit that smelled like dirty goats. That evening, there was another, much better Khmer dinner.

We spent the rest of the weekend exploring temples. On Friday, we saw the Bayon, a mysterious and unique stone temple adorned by dozens of carved faces, each wearing the five foot granite equivalent of a Mona Lisa smile. At one point, I looked down from the gaze of one of the heads to find myself staring into the gaze of an Aisan tourist’s expensive camera. It took me a minute to remember that simply being white is photograph-worthy here.

On Saturday, we rode in a rickshaw for hours through rice paddies and villages to reach Beng Melea, the real-life version of the “Legends of the Hidden Temple” set.  The ruin is full of crumbling galleries, collapsed towers, and carvings rendered incomplete by looters, all covered in vines, jungle trees, and the moss of several centuries.  The place is only fit for crawling over and realizing childhood fantasies of being a rouge archaeologist and temple raider, which suited us just fine.

On the way back, we realized we were running out of gas when our rickshaw driver stood halfway up on his scooter and began to push off the ground like he was driving a giant four-man skateboard.  I encouraged him with renditions of Carrie Underwood’s “Sure Hate to Break Down Here” while looking around nervously at the deserted landscape.  Thankfully, our relentless driver managed to find a hut that had a two-liter bottle full of petrol for sale.  Good enough.

            Sunday, we visited the famous Angkor Wat, which was mostly just imposing.  I preferred our next stop at Ta Keo, an ancient stone pyramid with incredibly steep stairways up the several stories to the top sanctuary complex.  The climb is severe enough that it keeps out the vast majority of crowds, so by the time I reached the top, there were only seven other people to share the temple with—a vast improvement over the thousands swarming over Angkor Wat.  It was peaceful, if exhausting, and dangerous enough to be thrilling.  I got the hang of climbing the ruins after falling a couple of times on the way up, which could have turned out much worse than it actually did.  I expect I will long remember scaling the fallen stone corners of a temple five stories above the jungle floor.

Monday, July 15-Tuesday, July 16 – Scrambling at work these days to catch up from being gone.  I’m starting to feel the pressure of having only a month left here.

Driving Lessons, Part 2: Social Responsibility Meets Rush Hour

Last time, I wrote about how reckless Cambodian drivers can be, and what it takes to survive that recklessness.  Now, I’d like to consider a realization I had once I had become accustomed to Cambodian driving.  At first blush, Cambodian driving is madness.  After all, what could be more dangerous than sitting on a motorbike, with nothing between you and the concrete but a helmet and a cotton shirt, weaving in and out of lanes alongside a dozen other motorbikes all doing the same thing and a half dozen SUVs pushing along with no regard for any of you.In the midst of this trial of my self-preservation instincts, I began to wonder how it is that Cambodian highways aren’t strewn with the bodies of morning commuters.  Then I realized just how remarkable that was.  After all, if even two or three people on a single morning simultaneously behaved on a busy American interstate in the way that virtually all Cambodian drivers behave every day, there would be an unprecedented number of wrecks and traffic casualties.  Imagine if the majority of Americans one morning just decided to stop wearing helmets, talked on cell phones while riding motorcycles, drove in between and across several lanes, crossed over the median for convenience, and generally disregarded all traffic laws.  Yet that’s exactly what happens in Cambodia every day, and the number of traffic accidents, if higher than in the United States, is nowhere near what it would be if Americans were driving like Cambodians.
Now, part of the reason for that is that Americans are accustomed to people driving in a predominantly orderly fashion, respecting our functional system of traffic laws. Americans are able to get where they’re going faster, and often more efficiently, than Cambodians.  But American driving habits are not entirely superior.  Part of what allows the American system to function is a sense of entitlement that also gives rise to road rage, and makes accidents which would be minor in Cambodia fatal in America.  The dependability of American traffic laws removes social responsibility.  Instead of each driver being responsible for the safety of other drivers, each driver is entitled to his own rights, and others who infringe on those rights do so at their own risk.  Theodore Roosevelt’s rugged individual, behind the wheel of a Ford, believes in the rules that his democratically elected officials have handed down to ensure traffic safety, and believes that he is entitled to expect other drivers to abide by those rules.  The lines on the road are definitive statements about what part of the road belongs to him, and where others ought to confine themselves.  He chooses whatever car he likes, whether a ridiculously large truck within the city limits of Nashville or a not-all-it’s-cracked-up-to-be Prius in the suburbs of Boulder, confining himself only by the rules of the government that say his show of force can only be so large, his four-wheeled environmentalism statement only so bizarre.  This American individual goes driving down the road, and becomes infuriated when others drive in the left lane, his imagined "passing lane," or when he gets pulled over for going five miles over the speed limit because cops are really only supposed to stop you when you're doing ten over and everyone knows that.  These are the rules that he individually decided are correct, under the influence ofhis friends and neighbors and an understanding, which may not be accurate at all, of what the rulebooks say.  Yet, in all of this, his deference is not truly to the rules: the rules only lay out the boundary lines of his rights.  His preference for vehicle, his speed, his method of driving are tailored to his individual tastes, and confined not by the needs and best interests of those around him, but only by what he feels himself entitled to within the bounds of what the law requires of him.  Everyone going faster than him is a maniac, everyone going slower must be eighty years old or else a racial minority, and either way they had better stay out of his lane.
In contrast, Cambodian driving habits, while seemingly reckless, work fairly well.  I think the key to this is the Cambodian notion of social responsibility.  In a place where deferring to one’s neighbors and caring for the community are among the crowning social virtues, it is perfectly fine to walk out onto a busy six lane highway, as I have become accustomed to do.  There is no problem with driving on the opposite side of the road for a while so that you can make your left turn more easily.  These things are true because no one is going to run you down for being in their lane, heedless to the fact that you are a human life worth protecting.  To the contrary, recognizing that you are a neighbor and a fellow member of the community, drivers will do what they must to accommodate you, even when you are in the wrong lane or even on the wrong side of the road.   Here, drivers accept as axiomatic the idea that they should be able to trust the other people around them to be aware of what they are doing, anticipate their moves, and act with due care and respect.  It turns out the seemingly chaotic patterns of Cambodian traffic aren’t the result of a total lack of order, but rather the sign of a different kind of order, based on different beliefs.  If a Cambodian motorbike driver drives over a double yellow after signaling that intent, the illegality of the action is irrelevant.  He has communicated to his society, depending on their deference and respect, and anything he does after that point is perfectly valid.  Here, driving isn't about a system of government enforcing rules made for optimal efficiency of each individual, it's about society enforcing its own order, established through long personal tradition.  Certainly, the risks and dangers seem much higher, but then, driving here is also more interesting, and the accidents which do occasionally happen are mitigated by the way in which people anticipate such accidents while looking out for their fellow drivers. The whole system is more organic, more dynamic.  Recently, I heard our field office director call it, "Flowing, like water--it's actually kind of beautiful." To get the best feel for this, you can just walk out onto a major highway.  You stare into the oncoming motorbikes and SUVs as you make your way across, and you watch the wall of oncoming machines part and move around you, making room to accommodate your actions.  It may be risky, and American traffic may be more efficient, but when was the last time you looked at an American interstate and thought of it as beautiful?

Phnom Penh Journal, Issue 2

Wednesday, June 26 - Spent all day trying to stay awake at a conference.  If I don't find a way to work out here, despite the sweltering air and lack of convenient gyms, I'm going to start falling asleep on my desk. 

Thursday, June 27 - More of the conference, but the sessions were more engaging this time, so it was easier to follow and stay involved.  The rains hit unusually heavy right in the middle of my afternoon ride home, so I was completely soaked from my white dress shirt down to my leather business shoes, and my motodup drove the wrong way down the highway, presumably to avoid sitting in the rain any longer than necessary.  Got to have dinner with a friend and play soccer with a group consisting of various English-speaking Western nationalities, some local Khmer, and a Korean guy. I'm still not any good at soccer, but it was fun to run around with other guys, and soccer and trash talk are universal languages.

Friday, June 28 - One of my regular morning motodups showed up today while I was trying to explain to another motodup where I wanted to go and making no progress. I got on my usual guy's bike (he's an older Khmer man that I have nicknamed "Alfred"), and he seemed to have been successful in explaining to the younger guy the confusion.  Then, the younger guy circled back around and hit my motodup in the face before speeding away!  This country can be brutal, and it gets to you. Continuing that vein, a case went south today, and we went into overdrive. I was looking up laws, writing reports, and putting together legal memos like a banshee; you know, a banshee with a single year of law school under her belt.  Dinner at one of the best restaurants in Phnom Penh, a non-profit business called “Friends,” and then a Canada Day party, which was terribly unpatriotic of me, but it's not my fault that no Americans were throwing patriotic festivals in the middle of Cambodia. Big fun earlier this week: got to go along with investigations and run surveillance in the red light district; it was exciting, if not as fruitful as we would have liked.  If you’re inclined to pray for IJM’s work, our investigations team could use some divine help on this one.

Saturday, June 29 – Went to visit the palace grounds today.  Most of the architecture here is, to be frank, unremarkable, but the roofs of all of the state buildings, temples, and other well-funded, traditional edifices have beautiful sweeping curves that arc upward off the peaks of every gable, and often have the Khmer version of gargoyles supporting the roof, which are two- or three-foot carvings of mythical warrior figures.  The palace is replete with these, plus has the only green space in the city, and the so-called Silver Pagoda or Temple of the Emerald Buddha, a temple featuring several thousand pounds of silver as floor tiling.

Sunday, June 30 – Anglican church again, brunch with friends, and movies in the afternoon at the local theater.  The Khmer subtitles weren’t too distracting, and tickets, popcorn, and a coke all cost $6 together, so I have no grounds for complaint.  Dinner on the roof of my house, overlooking the Russian Market and the surrounding neighborhood.  Nighttime on a roof is about the only time the weather is comfortable here, but it’s quite beautiful.

Monday, July 1 – Training for the internship all day—it was belated because I arrived two weeks before the rest of the new interns.  Peanut butter and jelly for lunch.  Spent the evening watching Anchorman in a little indie theater.

Tuesday, July 2 – More training, and more PB&J; learned a new joke from one of the Khmer staff: “What do you call an everyday potato?” Answer: “A commentator!” (common tater).  If you’re not a big fan of puns, try listening to them in thickly-accented English by someone who is laughing at her own joke before she even finishes the setup.

Wednesday, July 3 – Eight hours at my desk working on my major case project for the moment.  Had two dinners, because the investigation staff invited me for Round 2 of that awesome barbeque place around the corner, and then my Khmer roommate invited me to get Indonesian food with her.  Hey, what’s the point of being American if you can’t occasionally demonstrate to Asians the reason that our country is shockingly overweight?  And, if you had access to Kampot pepper, you’d eat as many meals per day as you could so long as they provided you access to this stuff. It used to be the gold standard of pepper in the world, and for good reason.  If eating normal black pepper were like listening to a radio (pleasant to the senses, but basic), then eating Kampot pepper is like going to one of those Fourth of July fireworks shows where the local symphony comes out to play and you get to gnaw on a corn dog.  There’s just so many elements to the pepper, and yet they all blend together so nicely.  Plus, I came home to the sound of Coldplay being sung in a thick Khmer accent: “Nobody say it were easy…” Talk about a feast for the senses.

Thursday, July 4 – Happy Independence Day, everyone.  For dinner, we went to a bar called “Free Bird,” which was covered with red, white, and blue décor and American military memorabilia.  We sat at a table with an American flag on it and a watermelon carved with the words, “Happy Fourth of July.”  After a dinner of burgers, fries, baked beans, and beer, we were reclining at table when an Asian couple came in and sat down.  The male of the two saw the flag on his table, said some unflattering things, and unceremoniously dumped the flag into the chair beside him.  Wrong move.  We responded in thoroughly American fashion by exercising our freedom of speech.  Actually, one of the other guys and I considered responding in a manner more fitting with America’s history in Indochina, but as we got up to share our feelings with the guy, one of the girls in our group reminded us that the Cambodian justice system would probably dump us into a prison cell until we could come up with a few thousand dollars to bribe a police officer if we got into a bar fight.  So, we settled for walking over, taking his discarded flag, planting Old Glory atop an upturned beer glass on our table, and treating his unpatriotic self to several tone-deaf renditions of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “America the Beautiful,” “Wish I Was in Dixie,” and a whistled chorus of “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Oddly enough, he got up and left hallway through the glory, glory hallelujahs. Score one for the First Amendment.

Driving Lessons, Part 1: Detached Defense

I’m going to do a couple of posts on the things I’ve learned by travelling in Phnom Penh traffic.  The first is a lesson on detachment.  Today, riding home, I found myself clinging to the back of a motorcycle, cruising down a major highway during an afternoon storm in the early part of the tropical rainy season, with no jacket, being driven down the wrong side of the highway by a Dutch woman who started this mad escapade with the simple caution of, "Forgive me."  While my dress shirt and leather shoes became utterly sodden, and I stared into oncoming traffic and slid along wet pavement, the only thought I could fixate on was, "If they would just use coins instead of paper bills for their small currency in this country, I wouldn't have to worry about my wallet getting wet."  Nevermind the monsoons and imminent collisions, I was worried about my lunch money. Yes, it’s absurd, but it’s also a typical experience for most people who have travelled in developing countries.  In the Dominican Republic, myself and the missions team I was with sat in the back of minivans and watched our driver dodge cows and motorbikes plastered with pictures of Christ and the Virgin.  In Kenya, I once saw a bus driver lean out the window, while driving in heavy traffic, and conduct negotiations with the other drivers around him, through shouting and hand signals, to decide who would go first through the bottleneck.  It’s just part of driving out here, and you eventually get tired of tensing up at every pothole and road-rage fiend, so you just go with it.  But just going with it isn’t a pure act of exhaustion.  There’s also a strange detachment that comes on you when you’re sitting in the back seat and someone else is driving.  I’ve even experienced it riding in the back of a taxi in Nashville, where drivers come from developing countries and don’t bother to adapt their driving styles to a civilized highway system.  

My pet theory, which has no scientific basis, is that the detachment is partially due to the visual effect of the interposition of another human being between you and the threats that are ahead of you.  I think the brain interprets that body in front of you as a sort of total wall, as if to say, "Well, that guy (or lady) is the one who’s going to get obliterated when that truck hits this motorcycle," totally oblivious to the fact that his (or her) tiny, squishy body just might not absorb all the force of the diesel-powered behemoth barreling toward you.  

But it’s also a mental choice.  If I so chose, I could focus on the traffic scenarios unfolding around me, and be terrified on every morning and evening commute.  Instead, I choose to focus on the detachment that arises from the mental illusion I’ve described, and use it as a mental defense.  It preserved my sanity when my motodup swerved around a stopped dumptruck at the last moment, and leaned us toward said truck so that my head passed within centimeters of the bright orange, solid steel corner of the bed at twenty miles per hour, or the time that another motodup jumped a curb, dodged a fruit cart, and took a shortcut through the twenty inch gap between a telephone pole and a concrete wall. And, any motorcycle rider can tell you that you need a certain amount of detachment and boldness to preserve your safety in a situation where hesitation can mean getting run over, or dropping your bike doing forty.  I would have collapsed into a panicked mess a dozen times already if not for this aloof response. 

That detachment-as-defense is what I’m driving at (heh) here.  Like choosing to ride a motorcycle at all, it presents certain clear and significant risks.  However, if one must ride in Cambodian traffic, it is necessary.  Similarly, it’s easy for people who are conscious of the world’s problems to get caught up in the sheer magnitude of the threat surrounding them and their fellow people.  That goes double for those of us who are actively engaged in fighting perpetrators of crimes against children.  We could be engaged all the time, and, as one district attorney postulated to me, we might even be more effective for putting in all the extra hours and effort.  But, as the social workers in my office constantly remind us, we would also burn out rapidly and probably pick up mental illnesses along the way.  Instead, we have to practice a certain level of detachment from our work in order to protect ourselves from it.  That can come across harsh, or uncaring, especially considering the nature of what we do.  But people in a position to know tell me that it’s healthy, and everyone has a story about the mental breakdown that happens when you don’t practice this detachment.  That principle is useful for the non-professionally engaged as well.  I’ve heard many people over the years express guilt when they encounter stories of the global violent abuse that many people live with every day.  That kind of concern has its place, and can be a healthy motivator, but Phnom Penh traffic has taught me that you have to eventually draw a line and choose to detach yourself from the threats and the powerlessness, so that you can keep functioning. After all, someone who can function can keep fighting; the same cannot be said of someone who has become consumed with frustration, guilt, and helplessness over the magnitude of the world’s problems.

Phnom Penh Journal, Issue 1

Hey, everybody, here's an update on my activities over the past few weeks.  I plan to post these with some regularity to keep you in the know.  I also plan to be posting more regularly, so keep an eye on the blog.

Friday, June 14: Ventured out on my own today, got lost in the city, and sweat enough in the Cambodian sun to have real fears of heat exhaustion.  Braved the market by myself, and got a good meal of fried broccoli and bell peppers, and a not-so-good sniff of dead ducks, heads attached, hanging in tropical sun all day long.  Yum.

Saturday, June 15: Had breakfast at a little Khmer noodle shop: tasty nom pachok, because pork and noodles is the typical Khmer breakfast, with Kampot pepper, which used to be the international standard for peppercorns before the Khmer Rouge halted the exports, but the stuff still deserves its rightful place of global acclaim.  The a manager of the shop is a Khmer Christian who adopts street children to give them a future that he almost didn’t have, and he took me down the street to his noodle-making factory.  It was a great insight into Khmer food, with dozens of vats of soaking, boiling, draining, and pressing rice, and way too much fire for a country this hot, although I think one can safely add rice noodles to sausage and legislation on the list of things not to watch being made.  Dinner with new coworker-friends at their place, the interior of which is decorated like a haunted opera house.  Outstanding peanut butter cookies, along with delivery Indian food: this climate is too hot for naan and curry, but the Bailey's in the lukewarm hot chocolate and the Twilight Zone reruns made it OK.

Sunday, June 16: Had my first decent burger in Cambodia, which was NQR (the local slang among Westerners for Western products which are a bit off the mark; it stands for “Not Quite Right”). Hour-long sermon at church, from a really goodhearted but long-winded Indian priest who has a fascinating story and gave me a lot of hope for the future of religion in Cambodia. Church is a mix of Singaporean staff, the Indian priest, and Khmer and Western attendees, all tripping through the Anglican Book of Common Prayer together.  Moved into my new home, which is like a Cambodian version of the Girls' House, only without air conditioning and with a rooftop patio that belongs in Agrabah.

Monday-Wednesday, June 17-19: Days kind of ran together.  The language barrier is getting to me.  Preliminary research for work, which wasn't easy to stay awake for. I'm tired of reading, and bored.  But, my roommates are fun, and hospitable. I'm going to have to fire my afternoon motodup: on Tuesday, he nearly crashed my head into a dumptruck that was in our way, and on Wednesday he made a 120 degree turn across six lanes of traffic.

Thursday, June 20: Got to have a delicious Asian barbecue (beef jerky-brisket, pork short ribs, squid, and blue crab) at a street vendor with the investigations team.  Bought my ticket for the big Independence Day celebration at the American Embassy.  Started really working on cases: nothing really exciting, but it was satisfying to be doing work that seemed useful.

Friday, June 21: Normal work day, largely uneventful.  Dancing late in the evening at a Samba club, where I met a French woman in her fifties who alleged she couldn't dance, but shortly proved that this was just a gesture of modesty.  A movie with friends, and off to bed way too late.

Saturday, June 22: Spent the day running back and forth between the market and my house, buying a fan, cell phone, food, and other necessities.  Managed to bargain a decent price for everything.  I’m becoming more comfortable communicating. Evening out at a tapas place, followed by a night on the town in Phnom Penh, culminating in a midnight snack at a combination tuk-tuk and pizza kitchen called Katie Peri Pizza, where a nice old lady offered me opium, which I politely declined.

Sunday, June 23 - Monday, June 24: Church at the Anglican congregation here, then off to the provinces to observe police training in the outlying areas.  Got to see villages, rice paddies, and the Mekong River, a giant and thriving ecosystem that looks rather like the mighty Mississippi back in the States.  Had the national dish for dinner Sunday (fish amok), but I'm not sure it was made properly: it was more like a Thai Tom Kha with fish than the fish-Khmer-spice-mousse that an amok is supposed to be.

Tuesday, June 24 - More work on a brief we've got coming up, and a letter to the Ministry of Justice, which I'm drafting solo (I'm a proper barrister now).  Had a going-away dinner for a friend, which included rose gelatto (floral, slightly vanilla, quite refreshing).