Getting Used to Things

Before I moved to Phnom Penh, almost everyone I spoke with who had lived in Cambodia (my Khmai tutor excluded) had intended to only live here for two-three months and ended up staying for years. I'm getting used to this, and I could stay a lot longer than the time I have allotted (until December, for now). I like a lot of different things about Phnom Penh, but I think what I like the most is how open the ex-pat culture is to people coming and going. It's a rare and really fortunate experience to meet people and feel instantly connected -- whether through shared experiences living abroad (I know, Geneva is really boring!) or through similar urges to pick up and go every six months or so... living somewhere completely new, starting over, but hopefully staying in touch with everyone (all right, maybe not everyone, hence the beauty of moving) along the way.

I went to the cultural/ film center of Phnom Penh tonight, Meta House for a documentary on the shift to privatization in the Hospital Industry (aaaand the blog gets boring again). In a few months, I imagine the fact that there's a cultural center, as in singular, might get frustrating, but for now, everything is new and interesting, and for such a small city, Phnom Penh really has a lot going on. It also seems to draw an interesting mix of ex-pats: the escapists, some of whom are twenty or thirty years into the scene, whose ratty ponytails and perma-bermuda shorts mean they may never be fully at home at home out of the tropics again. I'll spare you the other sort of escapist, the old disgusting men with beautiful young Khmai women. Maybe it's love, maybe it's convenience, it's not my place to judge, but it is pretty foul. Then you have the young idealists, the NGOers, the volunteers, the drifters, the backpackers, the lifers, the spouses, the diplomats. We're all here in Phnom Penh, frequenting the same spas and lounges, creating and re-creating a Western-hybrid existence in a city slyly open to both.