How to Celebrate Thanksgiving, or Not

Thanksgiving does not exist outside the 50 American States. I keep saying this to Americans in America because it's true. Maybe Thanksgiving extends some influence to US protectorates such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. Here in Cambodia, I get holidays like International Human Rights Day, the kings birthday, the queen's birth, the kings's father's birthday and the three-day Cambodia New Year but not American Thanksgiving (even working for a bi-national American-Canadian organization).

Thanksgiving is far too American, steeped in a culturally specific story of manifest destiny, sporadically observed religious tradition, stupid culturally specific sports, and foods high in carbs that don't exist in other nations. Thanksgiving only goes as far as the American's who desire it will take the holiday. Thanksgiving came to Phnom Penh, only because Americans brought it and honestly, we only bring the food. We take it with us because it's part of who we are, it's part of a calender we find comforting, encourages a spirit of gratitude we understand as important, and because eating those high-carb foods brings a sense of stability.

I had a reverse Thanksgiving break this year. I got Monday and Tuesday off for Water Fest. And ironically given the stampede tragedy, we got Thursday off as a national day of mourning. So we actually got Thanksgiving off. I didn't do much. I was feeling tired so I hibernated with a book and a movie and eventually took a three-hour nap. As it is, we had our own Thanksgiving several days later, the expat staff and some of the interested national staff. It was delicious! We had stuffing (or dressing as some people call it), an actual turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, a pretty salad, Russian Mennonite Zwieback, apple cider, tropical fruit, and apple crisp and two types of pie. It was as close to a Thanksgiving in my global nomadic experience; good food and good people. It's what you make it and what you know.

I'm not exactly sure what to make of Thanksgiving sometimes. Remnants of culture to which I supposedly belong and links to food which I either dislike, can't access or are too high in carbs that I wouldn't eat anyway. I understand the significance of giving thanks. I made a list of 25 things which I'm thankful for, beginning with good health and ending with the people I love. I am thankful, but I suppose I don't have much need for a day to remind me of that when it's mixed with confusion and a lack of belonging. I count my blessings every day.

How Cambodian Water Festival Varies

Sunday morning when I googled Water Festival Cambodia, google fetched me fabulous pictures of boats, lights, floats, and fireworks. Today I made the same search. Along with the former photos were new pictures from Monday night and the stampede off Diamond Island. If I had written about Water Festival on Monday, this post would look different. It's Wednesday and given that around 375 people died and an estimated 750 were injured, I don't know exactly what to write.

Water Festival is one of the biggest holidays on the Cambodian holiday. Some suggest it's even bigger then Cambodian New Year or Chinese New Year (no one cares about the January 1st new year). Water Fest is a lunar based three-day holiday marking the Makong and Bassac Rivers reversed flow after the end of the rainy season. Over 2 million people converge on Phnom Penh from the provinces to watch the boat racing on the Phnom Penh rivers. The visitors camp out along the river, setting up mosquito nets and makeshift camps along the river front. Cambodians aren't exactly competitive people so Water Fest isn't really about the racing. It's about the makeshift markets along the river with deep discount and bargains on everything from tires to fruit. It's about the fireworks and nighttime floats with lights. It's about three days off from work. It's about spending time and eating with family and friends.

Phnom Penh residents and expats try to leave the city. It's congested and packed

and the river front area is blocked off from cars and motos so the crowds can flow better. Some of my coworkers left the city and the rest of us filled out time cooking, relaxing and "interneting."

I did make it down to the river front Sunday night. It was amazing! The high energy, the packed crowds, the sales and deals, the lit-up floats each representing a governmental office and looking very much like Disneyland, the 30 minute long exquisite firework display, the fountains with music and lights, the concerts in front of Independence Monument, and then trying to stay together with my coworker and her Cambodian sisters. It was like a rock concert meet 4th of July meets an amusement park. Several hours later I was tired of people shoving against me, but it was one of those overseas experience you slightly loathe but absolutely have to do once. Getting home we got stuck in traffic for over two hours. The crowds even then worried me. So Tuesday morning, sadly I wasn't completely surprised even though the scale was horrifyingly large.

No one knows what happened on Monday night. Diamond Island is Phnom Penh's newest hottest destination. You haven't been to Phnom Penh until you've been to Diamond Island. It was built on Bassac River silt several years ago and is accessed via two narrow bridges. At night, the bridges are decked out Vegas-style in massive multicolored lights, one of them even has a giant gold swan protruding upwards, longer then the actual length of the bridge. Too many people on Diamond Island, too many people on a bridge that's really only 30 feet-wide, too many lights that don't meet safety code...it didn't end well.

So that was Water Festival. It's a massive high energy festival. And it was also the lowest point in decades for national morale. I'm glad I experienced the good parts! And next year, I'll take my four day weekend and head out of town. What will Water Fest look like next year? No one knows.

How Holidays Have Mixed Connotations

I think you must be getting old when you don't care much for birthdays. I'm not even that old, but apparently I'll be old very soon. I've learned I can live a very well-adjusted life nearly anywhere. I wake up, find the sunshine or breath in the rain, and proceed to live my life as a series of days filled with good people, good food and good reflection. 

Except then there are holidays. That's when I want to be with people I love, and sometimes that's all I can think about. I value so many precious people, scattered across the world who I so rarely see. I think about where I was the previous holiday, and how things have so drastically changed and nostalgia morphs into self-pity. Sometimes I fall into good holidays, but that always hugely unplanned. I try very hard to ignore holidays, and when that fails, I try very hard to be apathetic, and then I decide to just have a lousy day, just that one day. Everyone else gives Christmas, Thanksgiving and birthdays positive connotation but I've attached mixed meanings. 

I haven't fully learned how to have good holidays overseas. Now I'm on a solo adventure I'll have to create my own traditions and make new meanings. Perhaps one day I'll be able to turn holiday sadness into a matter of bullet points when I have the answers. Realistically, I can't expect to have answers when I've lived a mere quarter of the average life-expectancy for North American women. And perhaps putting it in perspective, if I can live more or less content except for a handful of holidays, that's not so bad. Wednesday was a challenge. Thursday was good...and Friday...and Saturday...and even Sunday...so if anything, we can count our blessings. I'd rather have good days, and the occasional day in solitary reflection.

How to Drink Coffee (Cambodia Edition)

I was prepared for a return to a tea-based life in Cambodia. Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese...all the places I know in Asia drink tea. With the exception of Ethiopia and the USA, the entire world I know drinks tea. Tea stirs up thoughts of fuzzy nighttime routines, formal high tea with biscuits, African women heaping sugar into chai, and old Pakistani men staring on street corners. This is tea as I know it. It can be a beautiful thing. But on some days I self-identify as a quasi-American from New York. The Americans I know from New York drink coffee. I don't know many Americans from New York...but that's not the point.

I was not grieved to learn that I can drink lots of coffee in Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh is Southeast Asia's NGO Mecca because visas are so easily obtained. The capital city's economy caters to this massive foreign population clustered across the city from every Western destination known to mankind. Foreign influence aside, even Cambodians drink iced coffee. Coffee is rarely if ever served hot. It's also fixed with sweetened condensed milk making it ridiculously sweet, so you ask for "fresh milk" for a less milkshake-tasting morning beverage.

I've found iced coffee on literally every corner at any type of local restaurant, such as the place down from my office where I try not to watch how the dishes are washed. I learned the straws are rewashed so I haven't been back. I've yet to learn how it's brewed because the normal implements are nonexistent, God-forbid it's boiled, yet this might be true. It's not exactly good coffee but it's on ice with lots of sugar.

I've learned if I walk 20 minutes to the Russian Market, there are an abundance of the foreigner (or brongs in slang Khmer) frequented coffee shops. There I can pay more, but it will be hygienically appealing and I will be consuming my cappuccino or iced mocha with other brongs in an air-conditioned environment. I can even pretend I'm in France, or Zimbabwe, or Pakistan....or any other foreign hang-out I grew up in. Everyone else looks just like you so you don't feel foreign.

Or, I can buy the canned Nescafe iced coffees which aren't either bad or expensive. Vietnam produces quite a few decent canned ice coffee mixtures, one of the larger coffee producers in the Southeast Asia region, some of which are not entirely bad. They'll shoot you up with caffeine and sugar just like a red bull, very unglamorous. Cambodians say that Laotian coffee is the best, because everything negative is associated with Vietnam.

I've learned that coffee at the grocery store is mostly instant which inspires many strong negative feelings which I often express vocally with great passion.  I may never drink hot coffee in Cambodia, which makes it easier to run down to the sketchy local coffee shop then ever brew it myself which just might happen.

Thinking of coffee and tea overseas constantly reminds me of a dear friend my family knew from years ago...."in 50 years, you're going to have Pepsi declared the national drink. You'll have folk songs written about drinking Pepsi and there will be books with titles like, 'Three Cups of Pepsi.'" Noah's not entirely wrong. That could happen for Cambodia. Globalized beverage preferences are hardly new...the quest for tea took Europeans East...and now Asians go West for coffee...and Justin Bieber.

How to Survive A First Week in Phnom Penh

Most global nomads know the different between surviving and thriving. There are books about it, talks about it, awareness of it...but everyone agrees survival alone is perfectly acceptable for your first week in any new place.

So I survived a full week in Phnom Penh. I forced my eyes open and stood speechless before all the noise and chaos while my eyes and mind accepted to process the images, smells, sounds, and faces passing before me in rapid procession. Some call it culture shock. I call is processing. Culture shock has so much baggage attached to it. I'm just processing, categorizing, sleeping and imaging myself in a new place. It's part of a normal process. I know this process. I excel at this process. I love this process! So I survive the first week, with some crucial survival stories.

I survived the initial discovery that coffee is generally bad, but specialty coffees and iced coffees are respectably good.

I survived two pork and bean breakfasts with iced coffee for $1.25 is a good deal, and a very culturally appropriate morning meal.

I survived traffic, and learned I'm only responsible for the three inches in front of me, and nothing else. It's fine if the motos also clip me, as long as they don't full out hit me.

I survived doing business in two currencies, because the riel and the dollar share power, very democratically.

I survived meeting my new colleagues, getting over jet-leg, learning to roam the windy neighborhoods, and finding where the good local coffee shops, grocery stores and markets are located. I survived the inertia when  my fast post-college life came to a screeching halt upon arrival, and the realization--even permission--to return to a slower, more socially based and more contemplative life. And I think, three years? I finished college in three years. In Phnom Penh, three years is totally thrive-able. 

How I Got to Phnom Penh

My sejour in the United States involved some travel. Idaho, home for Christmas, DC and back (twice), Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia... It was altogether quite easy. I learned to travel in carry-ons, liquids in one-quart zip-lock, and that a drivers permit is a perfectly acceptable form of ID. Traveling domestically is easy, so I learned. And with an Ipod and some good new music, it's even easier.

Alas though, those days are over. I will miss being charged for food, the stewardesses unkind words, and the TSA people telling me to throw out my toothpaste. I will miss the short flights where five hours is suddenly epic and 20 minutes is normal. I will miss seat-mates who wear deodorant and the feeling of racially integrating because everyone else looks just like me. Traveling in America is easy.

Because for now, I'm in Asia. Flying out here was 20 minutes, 14 hours, and 5 hours. Korean Air was nice to me, except for the lousy food, and quite amusing to me was the stewardess who didn't know enough English to tell me to turn off my Ipod. I found myself wandering the terminals of Dulles and Seoul with the rest of the international travelers, me in my Keens, the Asian businessmen in suits, and knew I was not among the ranks of American travelers off to see family and friends. I saw "the missionaries;" a stereotype applied to those who aren't missionaries but carry generic backpacks, wear sneakers and shorts and express a look of complete exhaustion. I bet I even looked like one. Traveling internationally isn't always easy. More then anything else, it's just utterly completely and inexplicably exhausting. 

I had no problems getting to Phnom Penh. My problems lie in the fact, that I am chronically tired. Jet-lag for 11 time zones is terrible which I have only just begun to discover. Yet at the end of the day, I can comfort myself in the knowledge that I won't have to make that trip again for many moons. Any local travel, will be on the back of moto, or in a smelly bus.