I'm a day late, I know. Although I did have my computer with me the past four days spent in Kampot in a beautiful guesthouse right on the river, I used it to skype my family and check Facebook. I quite ambitiously brought a book, my notebook and journal, and some markers with me, thinking reflection would come in the form of words, but as it turns out there was no reflection and more of just staring at the world going by.
I'll publish a 2012 year in review in a bit here, but I will say that it has been one year of complete insanity, and I haven't stopped moving since Christmas last year. This vacation -- somewhat ill-timed as there still remains a shit ton to do and projects in full swing and projects just getting started -- was so, so necessary. I needed the four days of not thinking, which was startlingly successful consider my usual issues with remaining thought-free.
It was a great vacation. We rented motos and puttered into town about once a day, exploring the villages and the salt flats in the area or just poking about Kampot, which is a very sleepy, small town, where the most activity happens on the trampolines randomly set up in the middle of town and everything is 'close to the durian," a large and random sculpture of a durian in the middle of a roundabout.
The rest of the time was spent at the hotel, eating or sitting by the pool, or talking, or swimming in the river. We swam across the river one day, which was lovely. And eating. There was Christmas to be had, and a huge barbecue that included an entire pig, a tree to be trimmed, Christmas cookies being baked by a couple other guests (who were actually some friends of mine -- small world here!!), skype calls to make, greetings to be had.
The motos, by the way, were fully automatic, which means you sort of perch on top of them. Both hands have brakes and the right hand has the accelerator, which I found confusing. They are also much heavier than you think, and especially compared to a bike they are much less agile, however much they look like toys in the hands of the teenage drivers. Figuring out the balance was a challenge, especially on the very bumpy dirt roads from town to the hotel.
So naturally I had to bail a couple times as I was learning how the thing worked, one time when I was trying to turn for the first time (oops), once when I was trying to pass a bike on the tiny backroads in the little surrounding villages and discovered I was heading directly for a very unflexible looking piece of palm tree, and stopped too quickly, and once when I apparently revved at precisely the wrong moment on a piece of mud and dropped the moto on my foot -- and sliced it open from sole to heel on the inside of my ankle.
So there was a trip to the hospital in there and a lot of blood, but six stitches and some bandages later I was patched up nicely and busy thinking how I might get in the pool while leaving one foot out of the water. It is still quite sore and quite annoying, and I still get the willies looking at it (fortunately I don't have to, it's covered most of the time). I suppose I could take it as a sign to never get on a moto again, but I don't think I will. I've never done it before, I don't know how to deal with mud and dirt, and I'll probably learn.
Also, better to get the crashes out of the way first, right?
Foot cut open or not, it was a lovely, lovely Christmas and vacation. Kampot is much, much windier than Phnom Penh and therefore much cooler (I wished I had brought a cover up for the evenings!). Amazing how different weather can be just a two hour drive away. There were even hills there, adding some texture to the incredibly flat landscape around here. The dirt was this lovely burnt orange, there was real grass and actual birds, and getting back into Phnom Penh today was a shock of people and traffic.
The only thing wrong was not having my family around and I missed them terribly, especially with my sister having some serious health issues and the family kind of tense, worried, and waiting. Still, through the miracle of skype we were able to spend my Christmas morning and their Christmas eve together. It wasn't perfect, but it was still beautiful.
It was my first Christmas in the blazing sunshine, certainly.
I've sent most of my Christmas greetings already from email and Facebook, but just wanted to post it here. Here I am, in Cambodia, celebrating Christmas in 90 degree weather.
Craziness.
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