I had to get on the internet to finish my report yesterday and as I was computing this little girl came by and decided to join me. Not sure what nationality she was, but she wouldn’t respond to my questions in English although she did write out the entire alphabet in English, what she wanted most was to draw on my computer.

After my little helper left, I researched restaurants and then got a Tuk Tuk to take me to a Thai restaurant, I was craving green curry and fried bananas. The driver couldn’t find the restaurant and as a matter of fact The Lonely Planet has been very disappointing in Cambodia. Nothing seems to be accurate. Anyway we were lost, so a guy that my driver stopped to ask for directions suggested another restaurant. The driver dropped me off in front of (drum roll please) “The Titantic”.

Well it’s too bad the food didn’t go down with the ship or maybe it did. And the food we were eating was actually retrieved from the wreckage. Whatever it was don’t go there, it has great atmosphere and you could go there for drinks or dessert the patio overlooks the river, but the food SUCKS.

I ordered Khmer Curry and the chicken was all boney and fatty. Then I ordered a banana split thinking that I didn’t eat that much curry, on the menu it said chocolate sauce, but it came with strawberry sauce and by the time she got back with the chocolate sauce it was half melted. In addition the bananas still had part of their peels on.

So, if you are in Phnom Penh and you pull up to a restaurant called the Titanic RUN AWAY, this restaurant should be at the bottom of the ocean. In Thailand, I didn’t have a bad meal, but in Cambodia it’s very possible as I so rudely found out last night.

I arrived in Cambodia last night at 8:25 p.m. all I wanted to do was get to my hotel and crawl into bed. The driver was at the airport to meet me, but when we got to the hotel the owner had let a guest stay an extra night and didn’t have any more air conditioned rooms. So she offered me a room with a fan but I knew I wanted air conditioning. So she sent me to a friend’s hotel. She did ask if I wanted to come back the following night, but I told her I wasn’t interested in jumping around.

After killing myself in R & R in Rome I decided to take it easy so I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and the power was off so I went back to bed. I woke up at 8:00 a.m. and the power was still off, called the front desk and it turns out the power was switched, so they fixed it, I turned on the air conditioning and went back to bed until 11:20 a.m. I was still responsible for the weekly report so I had breakfast spent 15 minutes incorporating my bosses edits and then set out to find this shop a friend had told me about.

Tabitha is an NGO and it sells handicrafts made by Cambodian women. I hired a Tuk Tuk for the afternoon and we got to the address and it wasn’t there. So we called the phone number, went to an internet cafe and spent about an hour and half looking for it. Finally I had the driver go to the sport and just drive a little bit, it was one block over and closed. So I headed for a massage.

I had an hour and 20 minutes massage from this petite little Cambodian girl, and she beat the crap out of me but man it was good I would highly recommend it. It was 12 bucks at:

Hifar Massage Therapy
142Eo11 St. 172
Phnom Pehn

The mistake I made was trying to get my hair trimmed. I told her I just wanted a trim and in the back she started whacking away at it. She ended up not taking very much off the back but a inch off the front so my hair in front is much shorter. It looks a little bit funny but it will grow out. So I guess I have to go back to only having my hair cut once a year.

I’m staying at Angfkor International Hotel, it is $20 a night, the rooms are clean and you can get air conditioned ones which I highly recommend. The lobby where you can get internet is not air conditioned, but it has a decent restaurant and the staff are very friendly and helpful.

The address is

#38-50, St. 148 Phsar Kandal
Phnom Penh
e-mail angkorhotel@online.com.kh

Tonight I’m headed out to a restaurant and then to bed early, my driver is picking me up at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow to visit the killing fields.

I’m staying at

Dedicated to my favorite graphic designer — Steve. So my mates (cause that’s how Brits refer to their friends) Katie and Russ left for R & R last Friday and Will, William, Jasper and I gave them a proper send off. I think they stayed out until about 6:00 a.m. I was in bed around 2:00 a.m. On Friday, I ran into Will and he said, “All my underwear’s missing,” “All of it,” I said. “What are you wearing,” “Well they left me two pairs,” he stated.

We shared theories on who might have taken it, Russ and Katie had burst into his hutch at 5:00 a.m. on Friday morning and he felt that Russ was the culprit but then you can never be too sure that they haven’t been lost in the black hole of the laundry. He e-mailed Russ, but so far no response, he checked with Katie who denies any and all involvement. I told him he should check with the laundry, but he doesn’t want to go that route because he truly things its Russ.

So in addition to missing his underwear, when my visiting colleague and I went to visit him, on Sunday night, he looked a bit dejected.

He said, “Mate, I had the most awful shower,” When I asked what had happened he explained, that he had been enjoying his shower, when he turned around and his butt hit the temperature control and turned it to scalding, so he got hit with super hot water right in his “play area.” “Then I was standing on one leg soaping up my foot when I fell on me bum,” he shared. By this time my stomach hurt from laughing but that wasn’t the end. After his shower he was headed back into the bathroom for more grooming and he stepped over the door jam and his foot hit a puddle or water, his front foot went sliding and he did the splits. Every time I think about that story I just bust up laughing.

The other day at the gym I was thinking about just cracking up on the rowing machine. Poor Will.

Well it’s been an interesting week. First off my friend Tom received the package I sent him, it contained a T-shirt, the front has a South Park character I think its Kyle, the kid that wears the winter hat with the ear flaps, and it says, “You sent me to Iraq, You Bastards!” Then below OP-Telic which is the name of the British operation. On the back it says:

“We are the unwilling, Led by the unqualified, Helping the ungrateful, In pursuit of the dream.”

Tom also has a mid-life crisis lounge, with a bar, a life-size cut out of Buffy, all his marathon medals etc. And when I was staying there the mid-life crisis lounge was invaded by the ironing board. Here on the base, you can buy a lot of posters of scantily clad women, cups where the women is wearing a bikini and becomes naked when you add hot water, posters with sex positions on them, cards with photos of breasts and all sorts of dirty magazines. So I bought Tom and ironing board cover with a bikini clad woman on it who loses her bikini when it gets hot. I sent it with the t-shirt. I sent him an e-mail to ensure he received the package his response:

“The t-shirt is great. I’m not sure what to say about the other thing. I am thinking of reporting you to some Mullah or other in order to punish you for your decadent Western ways. Please forward the name and address of an appropriate religious fanatic.”

In addition this week my colleague Roland who was a city manager for years and is here to help train local government got an e-mail from home. He has three kids, a son in college and a daughter and son in high school. The e-mail was from his youngest son and was short and to the point: “Come home Dad. Mom lies.” I guess it was some sort of high school drama, but we had a good laugh over his son’s e-mail.

I had a very exciting Thursday night, my friend Jasper , a New Zealander, who works PSD (personal security detail) and I decided to play Scrabble. At first he was kicking my butt, but I made a slow comeback. I had just placed a word on the board, when he yelled at me, “Get down on the ground!” I thought wow, he’s a bit of a competitive Scrabble player, my word wasn’t that bad. But it wasn’t that is was incoming. Four hits, reports say near the Helo Pad, no injuries or fatalities. Jasper told me that if you are near a bunker you should duck into it, but if your not it’s just better to stay on the ground. Once the alarm goes off you’ve got 4 seconds according to Will. They are expecting an increase in attacks, because the Americans are taking over the base the end of March.

With the recent increase in attacks we’ve been talking about it more and one night standing outside the mess hall with my mates, Will, Russ, Jasper and Kate, right near a bunker, Russ remarked that if we had an IDF right now, I would really find out who my friends are. He made like he was dashing towards the bunker and said, “Don’t worry I’ll save you a seat.” He later assured me that he wouldn’t leave me behind.

So Monday night the IDF (Incoming Direct Fire) alarm went off and then I heard two loud explosions. It was mortars, I dropped to the ground right outside the bathroom, but I didn’t wait three minutes. As soon as it sounded clear I went to the nearest bunker but there was no light in it and it was filled with Iraqi men.

So, I probably shouldn’t have but I made my way to the next nearest bunker where my colleague Roland was ensconced. We were in there anywhere from 15 – 30 minutes and then we heard another announcement come over the system is, the problem is you can’t hear what is being said. All you hear is waah, waah, waaah, waah, like the adults in the Charlie Brown shows, so it is difficult to know exactly what you are supposed to do and where you are supposed to go.

The next morning my friend Kim, who is an AP reporter in Baghdad e-mailed me to check on it, they had reported on the incident. The mortar actually hit in another contractor’s compound about 200 meters from my compound and one civilian was killed, a third party national which usually means a Bangladeshi or Indian. So I reported back home to everyone I was o.k., but the American news didn’t pick it up.

They are expecting more IDF once the Americans take over.

This post is dedicated to Steve F. and you know why. So my trailer is right in front of one of the parking lots where the Personal Security Details (“PSD”) stage in the morning. Sometimes I get woken up at 5:00 a.m. sometimes 6:00 or 6:30 a.m., but they are all yelling and making a lot of noise one man sings, they are just very inconsiderate, and no matter how many times you yell, or ask politely it’s just a noisy place to have your trailer.

In addition a lot of the PSDs use Iraqis and lately in the mornings when I walk out of my trailer I’ve come face to face with a whole group of them and they just stare at me. I’m pretty well covered, but you have to understand Iraqi women show their faces, there hands, but not above the wrist and sometimes their toes, period. So, not only am I a 6 foot blond pretty modestly dressed my American standards, I show my ankles, my arms sometimes and my neck, face and hair, for them it’s a ton of skin and every morning when I’m greeted with their stares I have to double check and make sure I put my pants on, because they are looking at me as if I’m not wearing any.

I’m still in the same routine, but last week we started Arabic on Monday. It’s stuff I’ve already learned, but the practice is good.

I have been dropping some weight through my exercise, but this week have a sore throat and possibly a lung infection. I tried to see a doctor yesterday, but I went to the British hospital and they wouldn’t see me, they sent me to the American clinic. When I got the American clinic they asked me my nationality and when I said American, the woman said, “You’ll want to see the American doctor.” Hmmmmm, I don’t think there is a huge difference between the British human body and the American human body, but maybe they know something I don’t know. So after all that I didn’t get to see the doctor because they don’t see patients on Sunday; however the medic gave me some medication which took away the pain in my throat and told me to come back on Monday.

Lately in the gym there have been a lot of Iraqis and it seems a little bit like they are coming to check me out because they don’t really lift weights. I work out in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt which is like being naked here, but before Saturday it was mainly Western men in the gym, but this Saturday there was a whole influx of Iraqis. One got on the treadmill and went for about 10 minutes, about 5 others came in, looked around hefted a few weights and then left, except this one guy, who went through a really odd weight routine. His form was terrible and I know he didn’t really know what he was doing, but there was no way as a female I was going to correct him. It really became evident that he had no clue, when he picked up the weight collars and started exercising his hands with them. I just put my head down and chuckled to myself. He made sure he was working out directly in front of me the entire time. (Big eye roll here.)

The mornings have gotten even noisier, but the camp manager has promised to move me as soon as there is space available in a quieter part of the camp. My mate Will got promoted to team leader and I continue to hang out with him and Russ, both Brits, Russ does great imitations of me, side-splitting funny. My colleague Java refers to Will and Russ as Will and Grace.

This week we start a Train the Trainer course, we are teaching our MC Mobilizers how to be good trainers. The American trainer who is supposed to do the training is not arriving until noon today, so I will be covering the morning material with my colleague Roland. It’s a good thing that I’ve been working out because I can barely get into my suit.