A couple of weekends ago I went to Kep for a second time, this time with a whole group of girls that I had just met.

It’s too bad that I’m only catching up on this blog now because that weekend finally reminded me of the feeling that brought me back to Cambodia in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve been having fun here.  I live in an awesome place, my job is exactly what I wanted it to be, and I have been doing really fun things.  But what I hadn’t been able to recapture is that feeling of being completely in love  with Cambodia the way I had been when I was leaving the first time around.

It happened a bit unexpectedly.  On Thursday, my new friend Miti invited me to come with her friends to Kep on the weekend.  I hesitated because I had gone just two weekends ago with Grace, but in the end I decided, why not?    Even if I’m going to the same place,  I have no other plans and I might as well get out of the city.  Instead of leaving on the bus on Saturday morning, the 9 of us rented a share taxi.  It was $20 there and back and the main benefit was that we got to go Friday night (late), and come back late on Sunday (7:00 pm, when the last bus usually leaves at 1:00).  We were going to be staying at Tree-top guesthouse, right by Kep lodge, and not nearly as far out as Rega Kep (the place Grace and I stayed at, and which neither one of us liked).  We got in late (after our driver spent 45 minutes within Kep trying to find our guesthouse).  The employees were asleep because pretty much everyone in this country is in bed by 10 and groggily got out of bed to greet us.  Greeting us involved  giving us plates of fresh fruit, which was really nice because I hadn’t had time to have dinner that evening and I was starving by the time we got to Kep.  Even at night Tree-Top was atmospheric: Wooden lanterns suspended in the air, wooden bungalows and actual treehouses if you’re interested.  We weren’t awake long – we crashed maybe half an hour after getting in.

The next day we’d been planning to go to Rabbit Island but the guesthouse staff dissuaded us:  ”no no! Not safe – water to big, you have to stay there if you go.  Cannot come back.”  Instead we rented motos and drove to Kampot, and from there to Bokor Mountain!

When Grace was here, this was the place that captured her attention most.  On top of Bokor Mountain there is an abandoned Casino.  Before the civil war the rich Phnom Penh elite, and the expat Chinese population used to come here to gamble and pass the time.  Though, as an instance of poor planning the casino looks out over a cliff.  Urban legends abound about people who lost all of their savings and committed suicide by jumping to their deaths at the conveniently located cliff just outside.  Right now the building is a ghost of itslef – decrepit and abandoned.

I had really wanted to see it – much more than I wanted to see Rabbit Island and I was ecstatic that we were going.  As well, the drive from Kep was really really nice – the road was wonderfully paved, a rarity in Cambodia and it was actually that drive that reminded me why I loved this country so much.  Driving through the Cambodian countryside totally changes your mental landscape in terms of the colours and images that become available to you, and this was a particularly beautiful part of the country.

When we got to Bokor hill we were confronted with teh fact that the park had been closed to the public for about a year now because of construction.  We had known this but had asked the guesthouse to call ahead an confirm that it was open that day because it was the Queen’s birthday.  They had said that it was open.

Annoyed, but not too annoyed because this happens here all the time, we tried to pay the guards to let us in.  We started at $20, went up to $50 and even to $100 at one point.  No success.  At this point we were frustrated and sort of shocked.  Usually here when someone tells you that you can’t do something, they don’t mean that you can’t do it- they mean that they’d like you to pay them.  But the guards were having none of it.  Neither were we though – we had come to see the Casino, and personally, I wasn’t leaving without seeing it.

Eventually a man who spoke English was called (after the guards saw that we weren’t leaving) and explained that it was too dangerous for us to go up there (the guards all along had been miming something, which I now understood was supposed to be us falling off the mountain).  However, if we were willing to pay a ranger $100 to take us up there, they’d let us in.  Done and done.  It came out to $20 each.  Some of the girls hesitated but I was in full enablement mode:  leave without seeing Bokor hill because of $20?  NO.  WAY.  We climbed in the back of the pickup and off we were towards the top of the mountain.

It was awesome.  I thought it would be cool but it seriously exceeded all expectations.  I don’t want to upload each photo individually so here is the link to my Picasa album of the trip (it also includes some pictures of the next day, when we just hung around Kep).  The only thing that I would have done differently is bring a sweater next time – it was FREEZING!  The photos you see of us wearing plastic raincoats have nothing to do with the rain – it was just the only things we had that could give us some warmth

https://picasaweb.google.com/101330756159053123597/Kep2?authkey=Gv1sRgCOCp6bWfi9u-EQ

A:  This sentence says, “to do the breast milk expressing effectively it needed to have a Oxytocine/twisted shape and the good techniques”

P: yes

A: twisted shape of what?

P: to make breast milk flow, oxytocine – it is like a hormone

A:  yes I understand oxytocine, and I understand the good techniques part….but what about the twisted shape

P:  like foreplay to warm up the breast

A:…excuse me?

P:  like when we have sex with man, cannot just have sex, have foreplay

A:…um. . . .

P: so to express breast milk, cannot just express any time – need foreplay.

A: you…need foreplay before expressing breast milk?  We’re telling garment workers to fool around before expressing breast milk?

P: what is fool around?

A: you know, like, kiss…..and stuff…..

P:  no no, foreplay for the breast.  Like if someone massage your back breast milk will flow, or if you put warm towel on your breast or if you use a comb.

A: you…use a what?

P: a comb

A: *completely uncomprehending look*

P: *takes a ruler (pretending it is a comb)  and combs from the top of her breast to the bottom*  Like this it is very effective to make breast milk flow

A:  *dumbfounded silence*

Pause.

A: so…. what does this have to do with the words “twisted shape”?

P: yes?

A:  All of that sounds like an explanation of the good techniques

P: yes.

A: but what about the words “twisted shape” in this sentence?

At this point my coworker resorted to googletranslate.

P: (after a  minute)  ah…not “twisted shape.”  Wake up.

A:  Wake up?

P: yes, we have to wake up oxytocin.

A:  So. . . . what we’re looking for in this sentence is something like ” to express breast milk effectively the mother needs to use proper techniques to stimulate the production of oxytocin.”

P: yes

A:…..like a comb….

http://amapismoreunreal.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/the-last-little-bitty-bit-of-phnom-penh/

Anyways, by the time June 7th rolled around and it was time for my first research trip, I was jumping out of my skin to actually get to talk to workers.

Svay Rieng, where we were headed, is a southeastern province that borders Vietnam.  In 1969 the Americans carpet-bombed the living daylights out of it and in 1974 it was a site of battle between the North and South Vietnamese.  In December of 1977, the border dispute between Vietnam and Cambodia escalated into full out fighting.  Vietnamese troops crossed into Svay Rieng, and fought as far as Neak Luong (by the way, if you want an excellent book that summarizes the Khmer Rouge times and post-war Cambodia, “When the War was Over” by Elizabeth Becker is really good).  So even though diligently scanning the internet for things to do in Svay Rieng bore no fruit, I was still excited to go for the historical value.  We would be going in the SPG car with Virak, the driver.  Also, because Grace was in town and I didn’t want to leave her alone in Phnom Penh, and because my boss is ridiculously awesome, he let Grace tag along with us on the condition that she adhere to the same confidentiality rules that I do ( no naming factories, no naming buyers, and no details that would reveal any of that information indirectly).  He was kind of amused that Grace chose to do this instead of seeing Angkor Wat, but I would have done the same thing! Angkor Wat is not going anywhere, and especially now that Grace is in Singapore, it’s a weekend trip for her (granted, a long weekend).  Whereas this was something she would never get to do again: go into factories, listen to workers, and see a part of Cambodia that most tourists don’t get to see (and realistically, not a lot of expats either, because factories here definitely do not have open door policies).  Having Grace there was also awesome because I was nervous and a disorganized, this being my first real research trip, and she took over small tasks for me (like packing up the thank-you presents for workers and making sure I don’t forget things everywhere (my perpetual problem)).

The Journey

We set out at 8 in the morning from my office, chatting on the way about what there is to do in Svay Rieng (in case Grace got bored on the second day and wanted to look around the area).  Like the internet,   Sophal didn’t think there was much to do for tourists.  He did, however, have an insight that the internet had failed to share.

“There is not much to do, but in the rainy season, you can see some beautiful roadside Jews.”

I blinked, thinking I had misheard, then slowly, carefully, looked over at Grace.  She was smiling, but the corners of her mouth were a little tight – the only sign of how hard she was trying not to laugh.  We both looked away immediately, feeling that it would be beyond our powers to continue making eye-contact without bursting into laughter.   Meanwhile, my mind kept going through all the different words it could be: juice?  Maybe he means juice?  Beautiful roadside juice….no…that’s probably not it.

The conversation, in the meantime, had moved on to different things and I was forced to put it aside for later contemplation.  Approximately half-an-hour later we had gotten on the subject of hiking and I mentioned just how badly I wanted to go hiking in the Cardamom Mountains and in Kirirom National Park.  In fact, that was one of my main plans for when my brother comes to visit me.

“Kirirom…” Sophal mused, “yes, the Jews there are good too.” He looked pensively out the window.  At this, I almost lost it.  I could not look at Grace and I couldn’t say a word.  All of my effort was directed into my face, trying to keep my smile happy and not dissolve into giggles.  I have lost practice.  I was SO good at this in Korea.  But Sophal was not finished.

“But the Cardamoms,” he said with a wistful sigh, “now there are the most magnificent mountain Jews.”

The strain was becoming too much for me and I physically dug my nails into my arm and slid lower into my seat so that my face could not be seen in the rearview mirror.  Grace, seeing my distress and having slightly more control over herself tried to steer the conversation to a different subject while I tried to regain my composure.  And then it dawned on me.

Views.

Beautiful roadside views. There are good views there.  Magnificent mountain views.

I think Grace got it at the very same moment because suddenly her voice faltered and she began to shake silently.  Thankfully nobody noticed except for me and we both managed to calm down as Sophal began taking photos and the conversation dropped off for a bit.  We couldn’t help it though.  Every now and then one of us would lean over to the other and whisper, “the jew looks very good from this angle.”  Or, at a really inopportune moment, “wow that was an unexpectedly awesome jew!”  This line of humour culminated in a ukulele song, composed that night in our hotel room, called “Jews I did not expect.”  In order to not exclude Kunthea we had to explain Jew jokes to her and I don’t think we did a very good job.  It was even harder than trying to explain “that’s what she said” jokes to Pat the German last summer in Vietnam.  It’s possible that she now thinks we’re very racist or, at best, kind of weird.

The jews  views were pretty fantastic though.  The rainy season has begun and with it, the annual flooding. many fields  were already flooded.  You could see huge, silvery fields, with thatched day-shelter roofs breaking the surface of the water.

flooding

About 20 minutes into our drive, we got pulled over by police officers.  At first I looked for construction, thinking that they must want us to take a different way since they were pulling over other people too.  But then I noticed that they were letting others go past.  Virak opened the window and exchanged a couple of words with the cop.  Then he got out of the car, went over to a little table set up by the side of the road.

“What’s going on?” Grace and I asked Sophal.

“Oh, we were stopped for speeding.” He answered.

“So..what happens? How much does he have to pay?” Grace asked, both of us envisioning $500 fines on rich-looking UN vehicles.

“Maybe 3000 riels,” Sophal replied.

We glanced at each other in disbelief.  Seriously? Seventy-five cents?  At this point Virak had come back to the car and we were off again, though a bit slower.

“Did he get a ticket?” I asked, rather naively.

“Well,” Sophal chuckled, “sometimes if we ask for receipt, it take much longer.  We just pay, and so we can go quickly.”

Yup.  The cops sit there all day, pulling people over and ripping them off in seventy-five cent increments.

We kept driving for about an hour until we got to Neuk Leung ferry.  We waited to board, along with buses full of tourists and trucks all headed to Vietnam.  All around us, vendors milled around knocking on car windows and offering travelers snacks of various kinds.

“Kunthea, what is she selling?”  I asked, pointing to a woman with a red krama tied around her head, who was balancing an enormous basket filled with something that looked suspiciously like fried insects.

“Oh, she is selling grasshoppers.” Kunthea said.  ”They are very good, you want to try?”  Well…want is maybe too strong a word but I really liked the idea of trying fried grasshoppers.  After all, I tried frog stuffed with lemongrass already and that was great.  Maybe this would be another one of those amazing discoveries!  Also, I was still regretting that time I didn’t try centipedes on a stick at the Beijing night market.   Unfortunately, at this point Sophal intervened.

“Maybe you try on the way back? Your stomach not used to this food…”  Good point.  Trying bizarre street food of questionable hygiene right before two days of interviews specially arranged just for me – maybe not a great idea.  I resolved to do it on the way back.

the view from the ferry

Interview 1:  The Government

We got in at 10 am on Wednesday, right in time for our meeting with labour officials.  The meeting was in a house that looked pretty residential as far as houses go and there were a couple of kids running around as well as the occasional chicken in the yard.   We sat down in a sparsely decorated but blessedly air conditioned room and began the interviews.

for some reason Sophal decided to take a picture.

This particular interview was less interesting for what was said than for the context that it was said in.  It turns out that for all the money flowing into  Cambodia from governments and aid agencies, most of it stays with the national government and doesn’t make it out to the provinces.  As a result, provincial governments are grievously underfunded and have very little capacity to deal with emergencies.  Usually if there is some kind of emergency businesses step in and make hefty donations to the government – including factories.  As a result, even if monitors report consistent noncompliance with labour laws, there is precious little that can be done about it.   After all, to alienate these factories would mean risking an important source of income for the provincial government.

Of course none of this was said explicitly when I asked about what tools the labour compliance monitors had for enforcing the law.  I instead received vague, non-committal answers about filing complaints to the ministry and encouraging factories to comply.  Fair enough. What else could they say? It’s not like they could really confess that the national party is totally failing its provincial governments.

We had time for lunch before going to the factory.  I always love eating in a group with my coworkers because it inevitably leads to me discovering awesome foods that I have never tried before.

Best food of the day: duck egg omelet with dried fish, served with fresh vegetables.

the thing on the right is like an omlette with dried fish inside. You eat it with fresh vegetables. I liked it so much I spent the whole weekend trying to learn the name in Khmer (I've since tried ordering it an the waitress just stared at me blankly)

Interview 2: Shoe Factory

(Note on this part of the post: having checked with my boss, I’m allowed to write about my observations and thoughts about the factories (and I can post some pictures) but I’m not allowed to identify them or reveal the buyers – hence the lack of specifics).

After talking with the labour officials, we headed off to one of the factories that we planned to visit.  After the one that Kunthea and I visited in Phnom Penh, I had high expectations for information gathering.

The Phnom Penh factory had several powerful unions and the  union heads were very upfront about problems with maternity leave.  On paper everything looked good – there was an agreement with the union which allowed workers to extend their mat leave from 3 months to five.  Workers were allowed to do lighter work when they were pregnant, there were even some benefits provided for workers who had worked at the company for less than one year and needed to go on maternity leave (the law doesn’t require factories to do this).  But while on paper the factory seemed peachy (and in fact it was better than most) in reality many workers could not access those benefits.  For instance, for the mat leave extension, the only way a worker could get one would be by coming in at the end of 3 months and filing a form.  A phone call would not be acceptable, nor could a relative come in to file the form instead.  Thus, even though in theory all workers who were still feeling weak after 3 months could extend their mat leave to 5 months, traveling to the factory (especially those workers who live far away, or during the rainy season when the roads are washed out) is not an option for very weak workers.  The only modes of transportation typically affordable to them are motos which are unsafe during the rainy season, or open-backed trucks:

try traveling on one of these when you're really ill

As a result, if a worker felt too weak to come in she risked losing all of her benefits.  After 6 days of an unexplained absence she’d be taken off the employee list and when she came back it would be like she was starting all over again as a new employee.  This is really bad because practically all of the existing labour law only applies to workers who have worked at the factory for more than a year.  As well,  she would lose her seniority bonus (typically a couple of extra dollars a month added to the salary each year) and her child allowance (usually around $5 a month for workers who have come back from maternity leave – but again only for those who have worked at the factory for more than 1 year).

Another example of the factory getting around the labour law is hiring workers for a series of fixed duration contracts.  Since the law largely protects workers who have worked at a factory for more than one year, the factory hires a worker for 3 months then tells her to stay home for a week, and then hires her again.  Thus, her contract never officially exceeds a year (even though some workers work like this for 3 to 5 years).  If you talk to management they will tell you that the reason for this is that they have high and low seasons (times when buyers need clothes, and times when they don’t).  But if you talk to union heads or workers they’ll tell you that production doesn’t slow down in the slightest.  It’s just a way of getting the benefit of long term workers (skill, efficiency) without paying the costs.

All of this and much more we learned after visiting this factory outside Phnom Penh, so we expected to be able to gather information easily here too.   It quickly became apparent, however, that we would not be able to get anything useful.

Our first meeting was with two admin workers.  This wasn’t exactly the management interview that I was hoping for, but on the flip side it meant that they actually dealt with maternity leave on a regular basis.  Because shoe factories are not involved in the BFC monitoring network, we didn’t have any information on this one.   While the admin girls were willing to tell us things like the size of the factory and the number of male and female employees, we could not get them to reveal the name of the buyer.  They demurred, saying that at this level they did not know.  When pressed, they said that there was another factory elsewhere that buys their product, but that they didn’t know the final buyer.  Luckily, Grace and I were sneaky and during our tour of the production floor looked at the soles of the shoes for the brand.  Later that night, we googled the brand and found out who the buyer was.

We also got stuck on the suggestions question.  When asked if they had any suggestions at all for making the process of maternity leave easier, both of them said that they couldn’t answer.  It was interesting because they didn’t just say that everything was great (as you might expect them to do if they were concerned).  Instead they both made it clear that is was not ok for them to answer the question (even though we assured  them that their answers would be kept confidential).

When it was time to meet with the workers, everything got even worse.  First, the admin girls tried to stay – papers and pen at the ready.  Sophal insisted on sending them away and they were not pleased about it.  They also did not give us a room where we could interview workers in private.  We were at a big table, but in the same room where all the admin staff were working.  We were maybe 3 metres away from the admin desks, and the two girls we interviewed kept looking over and walking by us with concerned faces.  The workers were evidently uncomfortable with the whole set up, and we could not get them to tell us much.  Even though this factory broke the law and paid out maternity leave to workers only after they came back to work (by law, they get 50% of their monthly wages for 3 months in a lump sum before going on leave) the workers were adamant that their conditions were perfect and they had nothing to ask for.

To be fair, it’s hard for me to judge how much of what they were saying was actually true, and I just wasn’t believing it because I expect the conditions to be bad.  These ladies were living and working in the province where their families lived (unlike the Phnom Penh factories, where most workers are migrants), and as a result they had a lot more support from their social networks.  Perhaps it was less of a big deal for them that the mat leave was paid upon return because all of them had saved up money in preparation for delivery.  Unlike the Phnom Penh workers they did not have to send most of their money back home – so they could put money away.

Regardless of their circumstances, however, there were really obvious problems with interviewing workers in the same room as management.  There wasn’t much we could do though because unlike factories that are covered by BFC these guys had no obligation to allow us to come in and interview anyone.  They were just doing it because they didn’t want to have the appearance of not cooperating with the government (the labour officials that we interviewed specifically requested that we be allowed to come in and do this research).

There was no union at the factory (uhhh…there was one but then we don’t know what happened – was the cogent explanation we got from the admin girls) so we were done our interviews for the day.   It was time to go and chill out in the hotel before dinner.

We ended up having a quiet evening that night.  We were staying in this little border town called Bavet and it was completely dead at 9 pm on a Wednesday night.  Grace was still battling exhaustion from her trip over so she just chilled in the hotel room.  Meanwhile Kunthea and I decided to check out the casino.  After all, Bavet is known for being the place where the Phnom Penh elites come to gamble.

Virak dropped us off but didn’t come in with us.  He felt uncomfortable with an ILO vehicle being parked in such an unsavory place.  We also didn’t stay long.  There was actually nobody there.  The staff immediately rushed out to meet us, imploring us to play a game of something! Of anything!  We politely declined.  After walking around and glancing at the sad looking slot machines we peeked into the disco.  A forlorn DJ who probably wanted to be home and in bed looked really excited to see us, and dejected when we gestured that we were leaving.  He had even put on Lady Gaga just for us (actually just for us- because there was nobody else there).  At that point we gave up on finding something to do and just grabbed a moto back to the hotel where we went to bed very soon.  Surprisingly,  interviews are exhausting.

The next day was far more successful.  The factory was a lot more cooperative and it helped that we specifically requested to have a closed meeting room where we could talk to the workers.  This one also didn’t have a union, but it did have worker representatives whom we could speak with (though when you talk to them, you’re not likely to get a perspective different from management because managers treat them well and their pay is quite a bit higher than a regular worker’s).

Sophal takes these pictures because once in a while they have to create materials showing donors what the projects actually do (including research).

And on the way back I did try fried grasshoppers!

we bought a whole bag after Kunthea deemed these ones to be fresh

Grace intimidates her grasshopper

5 seconds later I ate it

Kunthea snacked on the rest, because although all you could really taste was sesame oil and salt - I couldn't bring myself to have more than one

Next culinary adventure: fried spiders (on the way to Siem Reap.  Kunthea says they’re delicious)

I have therefore totally failed to write about the awesome 10 days that Grace was here, and about our weekend adventures.  Luckily, Grace was feeling chill while I was at work and has done a lot of the work for me.  So I present to you her account of our weekend in Kep. Enjoy!

http://amapismoreunreal.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/crabby-kep/

The view from our front gate. Seriously.

we have a jackfruit tree and a mango tree! Unfortunately the mangoes are too far up for us to get. So they just hang there, mocking us.

the stairs to the balcony and the front door (which is on the second floor)

my favourite part of the house. We do a lot of chilling here in the evenings.

onwards! Into the house!

our living room. There are lots of clothes strewn about mainly because even though the housekeeper does our laundry, we're too lazy to put it away. We prefer instead to leave it in the living room and just take items of clothing when we're ready to wear them.

Our kitchen. It is lovely and equipped with pretty much anything you could think of . Downside? Ants. The ants in this country are INCREDIBLE. They will get into anything. We lost two completely sealed, unopened bags of rice before we realized that they were burrowing through the plastic.

crazy spiral stairs to my part of the house

Sienna lives upstairs, in the room with the double bed. But in compensation, I pretty much get all of downstairs to myself. Included here: the bed for visitors.

also included: an office, and some books about Jesus. Also some books about how to raise a religious baby (you know, in case I'm interested)

of course, the tradeoff is this teeny child's bedroom with no closet

I do have my own bathroom though!

The house really is incredible.  We are located on a really nice side-street, 5 minutes away from Independence monument, and right beside some really nice restaurants and cafes.  It’s almost impossible to work there though – the wooden floorboards, the garden, and the balcony all communicate “vacation!” to me.  Maybe it’s because in Thailand Paul, Abby and I stayed in cottages that looked exactly like this.  When I get home from work I immediately jump to “drinks and ukulele on the balcony” mode.

This Sunday, this is exactly what we did!

Kunthea has been promising to teach me how to make fresh spring rolls for a while, and on Saturday night when we were out with some friends, the idea somehow emerged to have a party at my house on Sunday afternoon.  It was going to be a luau.  There were gonna be spring rolls (which Kunthea and I would make), drinks (which Sophea would make, since he owns a bar at which he bartends), and ukulele songs.

Kunthea and I bought way too many ingredients to turn into spring rolls by ourselves, so the boys pitched in to help when they arrived.

Rith working his magic

making one of my first spring rolls. I must have made at least 30.

taking a break from rolling to enjoy mojitos made by Sophea (left). This man can make a drink - instead of sugar he put lychees and sugarcane in.

By the time we had finished making the spring rolls all of us were full from eating as we cooked, and definitely past tipsy.  We then made our way onto the balcony with the food, the drinks, and chilled for the rest of the evening.  At points we were singing so loudly that we could see people on the street peeking in trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

And, to top off the night:

Squeeee!

Sothy brought me flowers for hosting the party!

All in all: a fantastic Sunday.

Saturday Adventure:  ZOO

MONKEY!

On Saturday Sienna (my roommate), JP (her friend from McGill – also a law student), Borai (Sienna’s friend from work) and Kunthea (my friend and lifeline at work) decided to head out of Phnom Penh.  Borai and Sienna took Borai’s moto, whereas JP, Kunthea and I took Vanna’s tuktuk.

Vanna is the tuk driver that Sienna and I typically use here.  He’s the driver of the people whose house we’re subletting, so we try to give him as much business as we can so as not to create a financial gap for him over 3 months.  On any given day we find him parked outside our house, chilling in his tuk, occasionally sending us text messages: “Alice/Sienna, you want to go somewhere today?”  Vanna’s also speaks incredible English, which makes it generally more fun to go with him, especially on day trips.

Our plan was to go to a temple, Wat Phnom Tamao, and then have lunch by the river and go swimming.  Driving out of Phnom Penh was bumpy and dusty.  We were often passed by factory trucks, which sent big black clouds of exhaust our way and Kunthea and I spent a lot of time with our kramas pulled over our noses, trying to keep the dust out.  Luckily, the rainy season is not yet in full swing, otherwise these dirt roads would be practically impossible to traverse.  Despite the dust and the bumps, the 40 minute trip out of the city was fun.  I love being on a motorbike, but I have to admit that it was nice to just chill in the tuk and talk instead of having to focus on potholes.

JP. Being French.

Kunthea and I: protective road gear in the form of silly plastic sunglasses and kramas

When we got to the temple Borai revealed the great surprise (or maybe this was revealed before, when I wasn’t listening):  there was more than just a pagoActually, you wouldn’t call it a zoo exactly.  Phnom Tamao is in fact a wildlife sanctuary.  Animla trafficking is a problem in Cambodia.  Cambodia happens to be home to a number of dwindling animal populations.  Some of the trafficking occurs for commercial ventures.  For instance, Safari World in Koh Kong is now on the hook for illegally importing orangutans from Thailand and using them to put on the kinds of animal shows that are illegal in most countries (i.e. boxing matches).

Aside from the demand coming from the entertainment and tourism sectors, the trouble is that often these animals figure prominently in traditional medicines.  This isn’t just traditional Khmer medicine.  There is a strong market for the same kinds of flora and fauna in China (and there is evidence that much of Khmer traditional medicine came from China and was adapted to local customs and belief systems).* As well, the Chinese living in Cambodia are the second largest ethnic minority after the Vietnamese, so there is a strong market for wild plants and animals both for local use and (though the numbers on this are uncertain) for export to China.

As a result endangered species can fetch a hefty price on the black market (Sun Bear bile, for instance, costs about 1000 USD/kg in shops around Psar Orussey in Phnom Penh and is used to treat fevers).  In principle it is illegal to capture, possess, transport or export endangered species.  Those who are caught are supposed to be fined three times the commercial value of the animal/product and the animal/product is supposed to be confiscated.  The trouble, as usual in Cambodia, is that the application of the law is left to each provincial office of the Forestry Administration.  Low salaries combined with poor training mean that at times the people who are responsible for applying the law don’t even know which species are endangered.  It also results in unofficial fines that simply become the price of doing business for those involved.  However,  Occasionally traffickers are caught by police and the animals confiscated.  Some are released back into the wild.  Some, however, are severely injured by their captors and are no longer capable of functioning in their former habitats.  It is these animals that end up at Phnom Tamao.

After you turn off the main road, there is a dirt road 2 km long leading to the entrance of the sanctuary.  Because this is also a temple reasonably popular with Khmer families, beggars line both sides of the road.  As we drove they threw water on the ground in front of us from bowls that they held on their heads, “to take away the dust from the road,” Vanna explained.   At the entrance to the sanctuary we were surrounded by little girls selling bunches of beautifully woven little baskets filled with sticky rice, 1000 riel (25 cents) for a bunch.

these baskets aren't easy to make and none of us wanted to tear them apart in order to get to the rice

Sienna and JP trying to get into their sticky rice

The ticket into the sanctuary cost $5 each for the foreigners and only about a dollar for Kunthea and Borai.  That’s the case with most things here, from admission prices to moto rides and food prices at the market.  It makes a lot of sense considering the difference in income between even the poorest backpacker or intern and the average Cambodian.  Though, as Sienna and I have discovered, as soon as you start speaking Khmer, prices start to drop for you.  When you invest in the country by learning the language people are a lot less likely to just see you as a source of income.  People have been asking us why we are putting in so much effort into learning Khmer if we’re only going to be here for three months, but it makes such a difference to how people interact with you that it’s worth it (especially since Khmer is a comically easy language to learn in comparison to, say, Korean).

In front of the sanctuary we purchased a whole bag of bananas and numerous bunches of sugar cane on sticks.

picking food for the animals

sugarcane!

There were several boys  around the entrance who volunteered to carry our bananas for us and be our guides.  Aside from the boys, we also attracted the immediate attention of some deer looking to score some sugarcane.

Sienna makes a friend

Most of the animals at the sanctuary were in fenced off areas (mainly for safety) with the exception of deer and long-tailed macaques which ran rampant all over the camp.  To our total delight, the monkeys followed us throughout the entire (huge) sanctuary, taking pieces of banana straight from our hands.  They weren’t afraid and so they would eat them sitting right in front of us on the ground or on the fence, giving us a chance to observe their incredible dexterity.

We saw a lot of really awesome animals, including Siamese Crocodiles and Malayan Sun Bears.  We also saw a lot of injured animals.  There was one stork missing a wing, and a limping bear with a broken paw that healed crookedly.   Overall though, the animals seemed healthy and the conditions were far better than you’d usually find in a zoo in this area of the world (though,  I suppose that’s not saying much).

We did see one awful cage, with a bunch of pythons.  The pythons are fed live chickens, which would not be so horrible except the chickens are just kept in the cage with the snakes.  So you see a whole bunch of pythons sleeping, and around 5 chickens huddled at the furthest edge of the cage where they have to wait until the snakes decide they get hungry.  Yikes.  Would it really be so hard to keep them elsewhere and then let them in when it’s time to feed the pythons?

The sanctuary was far bigger than I expected and after walking around for 3 hours in the sun, we were in no mood to climb up the mountain to the temple.  We decided to skip the temple and head straight to Tonle Bati for lunch.  On the way we passed some street-food stalls and had to stop because I wanted to know what it was.  It turned out that it was skinned frogs stuffed with lemongrass and grilled over charcoal.  Obviously had to try it.  It was one of the more delicious things I’ve tasted in Southeast Asia.   Maybe soon I will graduate to eating crickets and grilled spiders like Kunthea.  I’m working on it anyway.

Tonle Bati is a really small lake around 10 km from where were were.  It’s not a place where you would go if you were in Cambodia for a week, but if you’re living in Phnom Penh it’s a worthwhile day trip.  All around the shore there are small wooden houses standing on stilts in the water.  You can rent one for the afternoon and spend your time lounging, chilling in the hammock or swimming.  The first thing we did to cool off from the heat was jump in the water.

Of course, seeing as this is Cambodia and having no desire to piss off the other tourists, Sienna and I jumped in with shorts and T-shirts over our swimsuits.  Most Cambodian women go swimming fully clothed and unless you’re in a hotel pool in Phnom Penh, it’s worthwhile not stripping down to your bikini unless you want to make people really uncomfortable.

We swam and hung out until our food came.   There were 6 of us including Vanna, so we ordered a chicken, which they fried up and brought to us with rice and vegetables.  Boats kept floating up to our picnic spot to sell things so we also bought some mangoes and a watermelon.  We must have spent 2 hours there, drinking beer, eating, napping and generally chilling out.  It was awesome.

Around 4 we finally got off our butts and made our way over to Ta Prohm, a small, Ankor era temple by the lake (not to be confused with Ta Prohm near Siem Reap, of Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider fame).  The temple was nice but underwhelming if you’ve been to Angkor.  Kunthea introduced us to sugarcane juice (freshly squeezed at the sugarcane juice stall), which was incredibly delicious.  Sienna and I hung out and sipped our juice out of little plastic bags while Borai and JP took pictures of the temple walls.

After Ta Prohm we headed home, once again Sienna and Borai on his bike, and the rest of us on Vanna’s tuk.   All in all, an excellent Saturday.

Adventure 2: Running with the Phnom Penh Hash House Harriers

My boss Undraa introduced me to the Hashers, who are basically a running club that drinks a lot.  They map out a route each Sunday in the countryside, anywhere form 6-12  km, and run it.  It seemed like it would be a fun break from the city runs Sienna and I have been doing because it just gets so damn boring running to the riverside and around Independence Monument.

The crowd there was pretty interesting. It was mostly composed of men in their 30s, 40s and 50s who are long-term expats here in Cambodia.  Many of them have been here for more than 5 years and were married to Khmer women (who also came out but walked instead of running).  We met at the Phnom Penh train station as usual.  $5 covered transportation to the running site, water and beer.  We were going to be running through a village about 20 minutes out of Phnom Penh.

The run was not as challenging as I expected.  The pace was really light and even though it was midafternoon (2:30 to be exact) the weather was extremely mild since it was about to rain.  As well, the dirt roads were far more forgiving on the knees than asphalt.

As we ran, whole families came out of their homes to look at us, and we heard exasperated and amused sighs about “barang” (foreigners).  At times though we just ran past fields with nobody around.

Because I have a hard time running without a beat, I had brought my Ipod.  All was going well until at one point I noticed motion out of the corner of my eye.    I looked up to see a cow, a field away from me, galloping towards me at a surprising speed.  Not particularly alarmed I shrugged it off and kept running for about 5 seconds until, through the sound of Lady Gaga in my ears,  I heard yells.  I turned around and finally noticed that I was the only one still running, and that everyone else was standing there yelling at me to stop (which I promptly did).  At this point the cow was the length of two tuk-tuks away from me.

It turns out, as my boss explained to me after, that Cambodian cows are not like your average cow at home.  Nope.  These cows get freaked out when anyone is running and their best response is to chase the offending individual and try to gore him or her.  Good thing I stopped in time, those things are skinny but really tall and probably stronger than me.

Don’t mess with Cambodian cows, you will lose.   Lesson learned.

Halfway  through our run it started to rain which turned the dirt roads into muddy goo.  We finished the run regardless.  When we got back there was a pool waiting for us, and an entire cooler of beer.  It was election time for the club, which meant a small resort with a pool, as well as a free dinner.  We hung out in the pool (fully clothed as usual) for a couple of hours (being a virgin Hasher, they made me and the other law student who had also never done a Hash run chug a lot of beer.  It was like being back at frosh week at McGill), had dinner and then went home.  Undraa and her husband gave me a ride.  I’m not entirely sure if I’ll go back – I liked the running and the company but I actually didn’t like the drinking afterwards so if the drinking is mandatory I might reconsider it.  But it is a really nice change of pace to run in the countryside and you do get to see parts of the country that you never would get to see otherwise.

All in all, kind of an awesome Sunday in Cambodia.

Next weekend:  Kampot or Kep with GRACE HUTTON!

*See TRAFFIC’s  report on the use and trade of plants and animals in traditional medicine systems in Cambodia, definitely a worthwhile read.

After this weekend, I have totally reconsidered Bangkok.  In fact, it is now definitely on the list of cities where I would enjoy living long-term.

I think the following factors were important in shaping my opinion of Bangkok:

1) The Heat:

The last time I was in Bangkok was February 2010.  I remember the heat being absolutely oppressive to the point where I would need to stop activities and go into air conditioned spaces.  At the time, it was still freezing in Korea (as I discovered while running through the snow to the airport bus stop near my house in shorts and flip-flops while fascinated Koreans looked on).  Coming from such a cold place, I had not had any time to adjust to the heat.

This time, the heat wasn’t bothering me at all.  I asked the staff at my hostel whether this was the cooler season and they looked at me like I was a crazy person.  This is the hotter season by far.

The difference is mainly in the fact that I’ve been living in Phnom Penh for 3 weeks.  The first couple of days in Phnom Penh the heat was unbearable.  The first 2 weeks I could barely eat 2 meals a day and even that was because I knew I should eat something and would force a bit of rice down.  Whereas now I’ve adjusted pretty well to Phnom Penh and as such, the heat in Bangkok doesn’t get to me. I guess I’m one of those people who doesn’t adjust to immediate changes in temperature very well (especially if they’re extreme changes).

Last time, because I was going through that adjustment period as I was travelling, my experience was affected.

2) Tourist Season:

Because this is the hot season (and the beginning of the rainy season), the vast majority of tourists stay away (the same thing happened in Vietnam last summer).  This has a couple of effects.

First of all, the crowds are gone.  The crowds in February were incredible.  Take Times Square on a busy day, expand it to the whole Rattanakosin neighbourhood, and put the heat up to 35 degrees. It is really horrible to be in a sweaty, stuffy crowd of tourists all trying to head in different directions.  I remember getting into a taxi just to remove myself from this moving mass of B.O.  Even at night in Chinatown you would have to move through the market at the speed of the crowd because people were so tightly packed into the narrow lanes.   

Now the crowds are gone so you can walk around the popular area  and be able to breathe.  Also gone are the touts and vendors that are inescapable during the high season.  One of my strongest memories of Bangkok is being unable to walk 2 minutes without yells of, “Lady where you go?” “Tuk-tuk!?” “Where you go? I take you on tour all day, 20 Baht!”  Any time you approached a popular attraction there would be at least one or two people who would try to tell you that it’s closed today and that you should instead come to a different, more interesting place (a really common scam here).  Having to constantly deal with these kinds of accosts leaves a bad taste in your mouth (because you have to be reasonably on your guard at all times and you can’t ask people for help because such a large number of them are actually there for the sole purpose of scamming tourists).

It’s not that all of them are gone now.  There are a couple of vendors in front of the royal palace, and 2 people in my hostel fell for the annoying 20 baht tour trick (they get commission for bringing you to different stores between temples).  But the numbers are a lot lower.  It’s not worth their time to stand around the palace all afternooon when they might get 30 or 40 people a day as opposed to a thousand or more.  It means that getting to the places you want to go is a far more pleasant experience.

Finally, the lack of tourists means that you can really appreciate how beautiful some of these buildings are.  The Royal Palace, for instance, really is spectacular.  But when you are surrounded by people everywhere, it breaks up your field of vision and you can’t appreciate the images in front of you (I think, for instance, that the great wall of China remains the most spectacular thing I have ever seen in my life in part because we were the only ones there.  When I look at photos of the wall covered with tourists, it just isn’t as visually stunning).  I went back to all the main temples and it felt like I was seeing totally different places because they were empty and I could take in the architecture fully without the visual distraction of other people.  I was far more impressed this time around and could appreciate the details far more.

3) Overpacked scheduling

Bangkok was my first real taste of travel and I made typical rookie mistakes like packing my schedule super tight in a way that didn’t allow for unexpected delays.  This meant that if anything went off-track, everything went off-track and I would get really frustrated.  This time around, having seen all of the important sights already, I didn’t feel pressured to be as GO GO GO as I usually am when I travel.  I could take the time to go see Pirates in 3D at the Siam Paragon (RAD.  Got the awesome VIP seats that are more like couches with blankets; stood up for the national anthem before the movie), I could take more time at the Chatuchak weekend market, and I could pop into cafes and read and write for a while when I was feeling tired.  It  made the whole experience a lot more pleasant – not being a bit stressed out about keeping to a schedule.

4) Lack of Time:

I think cities require more time than other types of places.  There is so much going on in a city and so much filler, that sometimes it’s difficult to absorb everything in 2 or 3 days and it’s hard to find the cool and interesting things because they’re often spaced far apart.  Having 3 days and no main attractions to tick off the list, I had the chance to discover that Bangkok is actually an incredibly livable, charming city.

Here is why Bangkok is awesome.

The Parks:

I don’t usually work out while travelling but I’ve started training for a marathon which makes skipping workouts a lot more costly (as in, if I don’t do my 75 minute run today, I’m screwed for next week when I have to go up directly from 35 to 95 minutes).

As well, Sienna pointed something out to me which sold me on the idea of running while travelling.  Usually when you’re in a city you just go to the main attractions.  Knowing that you have to run a reasonably long route encourages you to check out an area of the city (or of the countryside) that you probably never would have seen.   I had never thought about it this way but it is totally true, and it proved true in Bangkok.

Before leaving I googled “running in Bangkok” and came up with a place called Lumpini Park, which is in a business district in the South – an area I would have no reason to go to normally.  The park had a 2.5 km loop, a man-made lake, bathrooms, canteens selling water, and other workout amenities.

By the time I got there at 5 am on Saturday, Lumpini park was already filling up with people.  Just like in Phnom Penh you see people by the Independence Monument doing Tai Chi in the morning, so here you could see lots of old men and women doing mild calisthenics to the sound of Thai pop.

Exercise in Southeast Asia is done outside.  In Phnom Penh, nobody but the expats (and the very very rich Cambodians) can afford the $100/a month you need to spend on an air-conditioned gym.  Bangkok, a much wealthier city, has many more gyms but they are still accessible only to the elite.  As such, public parks are presumed to  be common exercise spaces.  Lumpini park had an entire weightlifting area in one corner of the park.  There were all the same types of machines that you would find in the weight room at most gyms at home, except they were outside and for public use.

It was really great to run in Lumpini Park.  At home all Sienna and I can do is either run circles around Independence Monument on Sihanouk Boulevard (which becomes almost unbearable after 40 minutes because you get so bored) or run to the riverside (slightly less boring).  There are certainly no public weight rooms around.  I think this is in part because of the poverty – people would definitely take the equipment and try to sell it for scrap metal.  In Bangkok most of these parks have guards to make sure that they are safe and the equipment stays put.

The much smaller park that I went to for my Sunday run was a smaller version of Lumpini – there was a guard, there was a weight-lifting area, there was a fenced off soccer field, and there was a fountain and some sculpture.  I was a bit of an idiot to choose the smaller park for my longer run because it got pretty boring towards the end, and it also became evident that most people there thought I was crazy for running for so long.  The soccer team would pause their game to stare.  Regardless it was nice to see that even a  smaller park in a slightly more remote area still had all the amenities of a bigger park in the business district.

Later in the day on Sunday, after going to the Chatuchak weekend market, Maura (a girl from my hostel) and I ended up Suan Rot Fai park.  It was like a Northern version of Lumpini, except that the track was a bit longer (3 km), you could rent bikes, and there was a free butterfly garden.  We also saw a Guana (I think we did – at least Maura seemed certain it was one).  In any case, it was an enormous lizard hanging out in this park like it ain’t no thing: just chilling with the butterflies.

I miss having public parks.  I didn’t take enough advantage of them when I lived in Korea but now that I’m trying to run outside on a regular basis in a place where there are none, I’m feeling the lack.

The Malls

On Saturday, after going to the Tailing Chang floating market early in the morning I decided to pass the hot afternoon hours checking out the upscale shopping area around Ratchaprasong intersection.

It was hard to believe, watching teenagers saunter by with hands full of shopping bags, that this area was so central to the protests last year and witnessed some of the most intense violence.  Central World, the shopping center I was going to, had only reopened in late September 2010 (in fact, the parts that were most affected by fire have not been reopened).

The violence did leave it’s scars on the area.  You cannot walk into Central World, into the Siam Paragon, or into any other mall in the vicinity without going through pretty intense security. At almost every entrance to the malls you can find a police officer from the anti-detonation department.  The memory of the July bombings is still strong, and the measures reflect that.

Central World Burning

The malls themselves were pretty interesting for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s interesting to see how the basic idea of a mall gets re-imagined in Asia (I make this generalization because I saw a similar trend in Korea and Japan.  It’s very possible that there are malls in North America that do this too and I just haven’t been to any of them).

The Siam Paragon was less a building devoted to shopping, and more like a general lifestyle center catering to the needs of established and aspiring wealth.  Wandering around, I saw an enormous area called “Genius World.”  When I walked in I found lots of schools offering every possible extracurricular activity imaginable.  Among others, there were piano lessons, Taekwondo, English classes, and different kinds of dance.  The idea is that parents can drop their kids off for their lessons, and spend that time shopping.

On the bottom floor of the mall there was also an open ice-rink where boys were playing hockey as some parents watched.  On the top floor there was an enormous aquarium  (Siam Ocean World).  There was also an IMAX movie theater.  Between the Siam Center (an affiliated mall) and the Siam Paragon there was a stage, and on Sunday on our way back we saw an awesome dance performance.

One could easily come and spend a day here.  If bored you could walk by way of the skywalk to Central World which has its own activities, or to Siam Discovery which has a bizarre wax-figure museum.  These malls are built like the kind of space where a whole family could spend an entire day without getting bored, and everyone would find something suitable to his or her taste.

I hesitate to call this an Asian phenomenon because I haven’t been to many malls elsewhere in the world.  I can say that in Korea, in Japan and in Bangkok I’ve observed a focus on making shopping malls into general entertainment centres.  At the very least I don’t think that this could be said of most Canadian malls (with the exception of the  West Edmonton Mall).  I think only the most devoted shoppers could spend a day at the Eaton Centre in Toronto without getting extremely bored.  I certainly can’t spend as much time in a mall back home as I spent at the Siam Paragon on Saturday.

The other reason that I found the malls interesting is because it brought home to me just how much wealthier Thailand is than Cambodia.  I know this seems like an extremely obvious statement and it’s not that I didn’t realize this.  It’s just that the images I had from Thailand and the images I had from Cambodia on my last trip blurred together for me.

I only spent 2 days in Bangkok.  I spent them in the historic district where all the palaces are, and the housing in between the attractions is pretty decrepit.  There were also a lot of beggars, touts, tuk-tuk drivers vying for your attention and street vendors (none of these things gave you an impression of wealth).  Then we peaced out to Kanchanaburi, which is one of the least developed areas of Thailand.  There people were much poorer than in the city (though not anywhere close to as poor as rural Cambodians) and you could see a lot of the same things as you saw in Cambodia: 5 kids on a motorcycle, the eldest being 13 or 14.  Night markets, farm animals, few cars.

And then Phnom Penh and Siem Reap brought similar images as  Bangkok: hordes and hordes of tourists, shops upon shops of souvenirs, restaurants and patios catering to the backpacking crowds.

It is only now when the tourists are mostly gone, and when I’ve had a bit more time to look around both cities that I’ve begun to fully appreciate just how vast the differences are. Beyond the quaint, relatively well-off center, Phnom Penh quickly devolves into slum housing.  Particularly depressing are the neighbourhoods around garment factories which have cropped up haphazardly to accommodate the thousands of young women who work there.  Even more impoverished are the areas on the outskirts that house those families who have been displaced from their lands by any number of causes (such as sugar plantations, and the developments around Boeng Kak Lake).

Bangkok, on the other hand, is a city of enormous skyscrapers and hugeluxury malls like Central World.  Unlike Phnom Penh where the vast majority of vehicles on the road are motos in Bangkok  there are only cars on the road (I tried to find a moto taxi out of curiosity and it took me a while).  There’s a subway, a skytrain, and a bus system (all non-existent in Phnom Penh).  This is not to say that there is no poverty in Bangkok.  There definitely is.  You can see it pretty clearly on the outskirts of the city, as well as along the canal system (if you take a boat somewhere instead of the bus, you’ll see that the communities along the canal are very very poor, rivaling in appearance the slums of Phnom Penh).  You can also obviously see it in the brothel areas.  Still, every city has poor neighbourhoods.  The difference is in degree and proportion.  In Phnom Penh, the vast majority is exceptionally poor, where as in Bangkok, poverty doesn’t seem to be the overwhelming norm.

The structures are also there in Bangkok for getting out of poverty.  In Phnom Penh, even if you manage to send your child to a decent school and to university, quite often there’s still not much that she can do.  Kunthea, for example, has a degree in accounting.  So do many of her friends.  She is working as an admin for the ILO because there is not much for her to do here with an accounting degree.  A kid who goes to med school here is still very limited in opportunities because hospitals are scarce and inferior (the medical knowledge in this country, including at the med schools is very sparse).  Anyone that needs anything done flies to Bangkok, and those who can’t afford Bangkok go to Saigon for treatment.  Only those who can’t do otherwise use the medical services here and doctors aren’t paid that much.   Government officials can make a lot of money but only through taking bribes.  The best opportunities are in agencies like the UN.  The UN is one of the only places you can make a decent living without being corrupt.

At least in Bangkok there are payoffs at the end of the struggle.  It may be extremely difficult for a poor family to put a child through med school, but at least once they do they can be assured that the education the child received is excellent and that there are hospitals where she can work.    It may be hard to get into university and pay for it, but at least there are good jobs to go into after.  In Cambodia there are very few options for graduates with education (in part because the education is bad and as a result foreign investors bring in expat management instead of hiring local graduates).  In Bangkok you can imagine that your kids might have a better life by going through the system.  In Phnom Penh that’s not the case.  Every family that can afford it sends children to Singapore and the U.S.

The Street Food

The last main thing that makes Bangkok a wonderful, livable city in my opinion is the street food.  The last time I was here I didn’t get a chance to fully appreciate it.  First, because as usual, it takes me a while to adjust to the heat and while I do I have absolutely no appetite.  Second, because at that point it was my first time in Southeast Asia and I wasn’t sure if it was safe.  It is, in fact, perfectly safe.  Also absurdly delicious.  One of the things I loved most in Korea was street food.  I missed it so much all year this year. I wanted Dokbokki, or Sundae, or anything that’s not a hot dog.

Phnom Penh also has street food but it’s a lot less safe, and a lot less hygienic.  Street food is mainly eaten by people who can’t afford to eat other food.  In Thailand, everyone eats street food, just like in Korea, and as a result there is a huge amount of variety and turnover.  Most of my meals this weekend (except for dinner on Friday and dinner on Sunday) were street food.  You can get delicious kebabs, bizarre salted eggs on a stick, mussels inside fried eggs, noodle soups, all kinds of fruit, spring rolls, wraps – anything you want.  The vast majority of it is perfectly safe.  There’s no 100% guarantee, but neither is there one back home.  You can always eat something bad and get sick.

This is just a personal preference but I love eating outside, crouched on tiny plastic stools around equally tiny plastic tables.  Across the street there will always be other people eating and there will be people walking by, perhaps vendors selling things.  You can always pop into a 7/11 and grab a beer to have with your meal.  You don’t feel isolated while you’re eating; you’re right in the middle of everything and it’s nice. It brings the communal experience of eating out into public spaces instead of moving it inside (though sometimes, I definitely appreciate getting to take a break from the hectic outdoors  by ducking into an air-conditioned restaurant).

I was surprised to learn that not everybody shares my extreme like of street food.  I was also surprised to learn that I don’t get along very well with people who don’t.

I went out on Friday night with people from my hostel but was forced to excuse myself an hour into the excursion because one of the guys was driving me up the wall. This rarely happens to me.  I usually like most people I meet, so I don’t have that many tools for dealing with people I dislike.

His name was Konstantin and he was from Germany.  He seemed ok at first.  He had been travelling for 6 months already (always a good sign) and Southeast Asia was his last stop.  Konstantin, Giselle (a Taiwanese girl staying at the hostel), Maura and I decided to go grab some drinks.   We headed out to Khao San Road (would not have been my first choice,but everyone else seemed pretty keen on it).  Konstantin was hungry and Maura and I wanted some food too, and there is an incredible amount of awesome street food on Khao San.

My warning bells started ringing when we got off our tuk-tuk.  The choice was amazing food was almost overwhelming.  There were stalls EVERYWHERE and people sitting around them happily eating delicious things.  Maura and I quickly started pointing to things that looked awesome.  ”Ooh that looks good!” “Or how about that?!” “Ok, we have to get this! It’s mandatory.”   Konstantin, however, looked unimpressed.  He would walk up to every stall, spend a couple of minutes grilling the vendor on what was in each particular food, think about it for a minute, then walk away.

“Konstantin,”  I asked, confused as to why he was doing this, “do you have some food allergies?” If not, then why not do what everyone does in foreign countries?  Just point to something that looks good, and find out as you eat what’s in it.  ”No,” He replied, obviously not getting where I was coming from.

After another 10 minutes of this we passed up an incredible-looking curry place, a stall with tom yum soup, a kebab stall, and a grilled fish stall.  I was starting to get frustrated.  He would ask me to recommend something and then, without any particular reason, say that it wasn’t for him.  OVER and OVER again.  Exasperated, I asked, “well, if you’re not feeling like trying new stuff today and you’re hungry, why don’t you get pad thai?”  Maura nodded.  She was getting exasperated too.  We were met with a blank stare.  ”You know what pad thai is, right?”

He didn’t.  He was willing to try it though, but not at any of the places I wanted to eat.  Eventually, fed up, I was just like, “look Konstantin, you’re the hungry one, why don’t you choose where to go?”  We walked around for another 10 minutes until Konstantin managed to find the most boring, kitschy, touristy restaurant on Khao San Road.  I’m not exaggerating.  The restaurant was attached to a package tour agency and aside from us there was not a person under 50 at the tables.

Once we sat down, Konstantin deliberated for a long time about what to get.  Eventually he decided against the steak sub, rounded up all of his sense of adventure and ordered a chicken pad thai.  Then, visibly proud of himself for being so flexible he proceeded to tell us all about his plans for the next couple of days (to take a 2 day elephant riding tour that also promised “lots of opportunities to meet the locals off the beaten track.” Vomit.).  He also told us that he had gotten lucky today.  Apparently today was a special government promotion where all tuk-tuks were 20 baht for the whole day.  But gee, the weird thing was that the tuk-tuk driver kept taking him to different stores between temples, and he kept being pressured to buy things.  Isn’t that strange?

At this point I was expending a fair bit of effort to keep my hands in my lap instead of tearing hair on my head.  When you read your lonely planet, the writers always try to use this trick: they create a mythical “tourist” – someone who is completely ignorant of every scam, unwilling to try anything new, and thinks that when he goes on structured organized tours he is getting to see the “real Thailand.”  Then the book tries to sell you most destinations as places where those people would never go.  Except, until I met Konstantin, I didn’t really think that those people existed.  Every other place I’ve been, every other traveler I’ve met has usually been a pretty cool person.  They usually have traveled for a while and have awesome stories, or they’re just starting out but they want to see everything and do everything.  This guy was the mythical Lonely Planet tourist through and through.

I don’t know if the things I’ve mentioned really convey this, but everything about him betrayed a lack of flexibility and a fair amount of ignorance.  How is it possible to fall for the tuk-tuk scam?  It’s on the first page of every lonely planet you read about Bangkok!  Granted, Grace and I totally got duped in Beijing when we thought we were making friends.  That was ignorant of us – sometimes it is probably best to be less open to people.  But Konstantin’s ignorance wasn’t of the open and curious kind.  There was no sense of excitement to explore a new place.  He didn’t even want to walk around that evening and check out the surrounding market which is actually pretty neat – he just wanted to sit, drink beer, and tell us boring things.

I left.  I was pretty abrupt about it – it’s not like me.  I just made the excuse that I have to get up early tomorrow morning for a run, put some cash down for my drink and went to find other friends before they could decide to follow me.  It has really been a while  since someone’s every sentence annoyed me this much.  I also think that in most other circumstances I wouldn’t have been this pissed off but I feel VERY strongly about travel.  At this point in my life it is the thing I feel strongest about – nothing makes me happier.  This dude was getting between me and an awesome evening in Bangkok.  So while usually I’d probably be fine with spending one evening hanging out with a person whose approach to life seems fundamentally boring to me, when he gets between me and great travel experiences all of my patience vanishes.

Luckily, as Maura told me on Sunday, he didn’t pick up on anything.   She on the other hand had kinda wished that she hadn’t been too polite to leave since he spent the rest of the evening talking about all the different ways he got drunk when he traveled in Australia.  Man, it was like discovering a new species.

All in all, except for that hour-and-a-half with Konstantin, the trip was a huge success.  I kinda want to live in Bangkok for a couple of years.  A lot.

So I spent a good part of  Sunday coming up with a project proposal.  During the partner meeting on Friday, one gentleman had asked the presenters whether or not they had baseline information about the actual demand for the services that they were providing (such as STI checks, etc.).  None of the presenters had been able to answer concretely (it was exactly the kind of scenario William Easterly described in “The White Man’s Burden,” – NGO’s providing what they deem essential services without really asking the beneficiaries what they think is essential).  My proposal was basically that I would look at what the demand for these kinds of services is.  This would put me back on track with the kind of stuff I want to do, which is field research.  I spent a couple of hours laying out a plan, including costs, procedures and relevant literature that I had already skimmed (the only type of reading I know how to do after first year law).

I came in with it Monday morning to our meeting and walked Sophal and Undraa through the general plan.  They both thought that the research question was too broad, and not really feasible in the short time that I have.  But I think they were impressed that I had done the work, because they gave me the exact project that I proposed with a much narrower question.

What I’m doing in the end is going into 8 factories (4 from Sophal’s BFC project, 4 from SPG) and reviewing maternity leave policies.  Cambodia has laws on the book for maternity leave and BFC monitors ask questions about maternity leave on their visits to factories.  But companies also have internal regulations (these are documents that have to be approved by the ministry of labour) and policies (sometimes these are written documents, sometimes they are verbal agreements and general practices) that haven’t really been looked at in depth.  My job will be to look at them in depth.  I’ll have to go in and interview managers, shop stewards, union representatives, and workers.  Then I’ll synthesize the data into a report about how the process of taking maternity leave actually plays  out in garment factories.  I’m supposed to be on the lookout for things like discrimination against pregnant workers, or non-payment of wages during maternity leave (women are supposed to get %50 of their monthly wages), as well as things like loss of seniority status upon returning to the workplace.

I was pretty thrilled because not only would I be engaging in the kind of process I really wanted engage in, but I’d be doing work that actually needed to be done.  Sophal needs someone to review those policies and get that information – especially in light of the fact that during the economic downturn compliance with maternity leave laws dropped significantly (while compliance with most other laws stayed the same).   It’s not just busy work for the intern nobody knows what to do with.

The only thing that really worried me was that my supervisors didn’t seem to be too concerned about methodology.  There are tons of variables that could affect the answers to our questions.  One such variable is the nationality of the factory owner (the vast majority of these export factories are owned by either Chinese, Taiwanese or Korean owners).  As well there is huge variation in size, with factories as small as 300 people or as big as 3000 people.   For Sophal’s 4 factories I had no choice which ones I’d take (and two of them weren’t even garment factories,  they were shoe factories).  And Undraa didn’t seem to have any preference: she just told me to pick 4 at random.  Furthermore, even if  I could have all the choice in the world for picking factories, I’d still only be looking at 8 out of more than 300 that are registered with BFC.  With such a small value, I couldn’t see what value my report would have but Undraa and Sophal did not seem to be too concerned with that.

Then I had a meeting with Tuomo – one of the main people at BFC and he solved my problem for me.  The first thing he said when I told him about my project was, “8 factories, isn’t that a bit shallow?”  I nodded, thinking, YES THANK GOD FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE THINKS THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM!  He thought about it for a minute and then came up with a solution.  Apparently the ILO has a database with a ton of information from monitoring visits from basically the last 10 years.  From there, I could get see what the trends are in the industry for my questions over the last 6 months.  Having that information, I could then just use the 8 factories as case studies to add texture and narrative to the numbers.  I couldn’t have access to the database.  First of all I didn’t have the security clearance and the information is relatively sensitive (it’s actually owned by the factories and can’t be released without their consent).  Plus, let’s be real.  I probably would not be able to actually extract the information I need from the database.  So instead Tuomo just offered to have the ILO resident computer nerds run the data for me.  SCORE!!!!

So that’s the latest on what I’m doing.  In the next couple of weeks I should start visiting factories and speaking with management as well as setting up times when I can do focus groups with the workers.  I’ve been reading a lot about the industry, as well as social studies of the garment workers. I’ve been trying to pay a lot of attention to the methodologies of these studies (though a lot of them had a lot more time and resources than I do).  In any case, it’s kind of a relief that I’ll have all of this data for the industry.

The next step is figuring out how to get access to the factories.  For Sophal’s project it’s no problem, he just called up the ministry and they gave us permission to go in.  But SPG is not a project that collaborates with the government, so Undraa can’t just call up the ministry of labour and get them to let us in.  At the same time a lot of factory managers are generally hostile to people coming in and poking around their factories.  As a result, I don’t yet have a way of getting in to the 4 factories involved with SPG.  I have a meeting about that tomorrow with a woman from BFC who was heavily involved in doing the maternal nutrition report (which I thought I was going to do).  She will probably be able to help me with this and then I can get the ball rolling and start going to factories.

Day 1: I find out about the existence of international labour statisticians. 

My first day of work I arrived at the ILO.  It wasn’t that hard to find.  I work in the Phnom Penh Center which is this enormous building 5 minutes from Independence Monument.  It’s a block long and it houses 2 universities, a bunch of organizations (including the Phnom Penh post) and us.  The only ones there to greet me were Kunthea (the admin at my work who has been dealing with all my visa stuff) and Undraa (one of my bosses).  Everyone else, it turns out, was at this “very important workshop for the ILO.”  They assured me that tomorrow everyone would be around to brief me (actually, maybe not because the workshop was supposed to last 3 days) but for today I could just relax.  I had, after all, a desk, a computer and an air conditioned office which I share with a woman named Pheary.

“Undraa,” I asked, “if this workshop is so important and I have nothing to do, can I come?”  Undraa looked delighted as I had just solved her problem of what to do with me.

“Yes! Of course you can! What a great idea!”  We would be leaving in half an hour.  This was my first indication that this would be the kind of internship where I would have to take a lot of initiative if I didn’t want to spend a lot of time in my office on facebook.  It felt very different than coming into Jungpyong Middle School two years ago, where the expectations for me were SO high (which may have had something to do with the fact that in Korea I was actually being paid to do a job).  This was less stressful, but more disconcerting.

In 30 minutes Undraa came to collect me, as well as a woman named Gloria and we headed downstairs.  As soon as we stepped out the door, a cream coloured SUV pulled up and we got in.  “This is Virak,” Undraa explained, gesturing at the young man driving the car.  “He’s our ILO driver.”  This was my first taste of the luxury that comes with working for the UN.

“Our driver?” I clarified.  As in, not just a driver we hired for the next half-hour?

“Yes.” Undraa confirmed. “He drives us anywhere we need to go.  So if you have a meeting somewhere, you can just ask him and he will drive you and pick you up.  Like tomorrow, you’ll have a meeting at the other BFC office, Virak can drive you.”

Just to clarify:  The ILO has many projects in Cambodia.  One of them is called Better Factories Cambodia.  It’s an initiative that just celebrated its 10 year anniversary and is recognized pretty widely as a success in improving conditions in Cambodia’s garment factories.  BFC has recently created a side project called SPG (Social Protection and Gender), which aims to deal with issues in factories surrounding the health of workers (who are largely young women). SPG tries to give women who are pre-industry (haven’t started working yet) tools to help their migration to the city be a smoother one.  When women are in the factories it tries to provide them with health services and education (in particular, reproductive health services). Finally, since work in the factories is typically not long-term,  SPG also tries to provide women with education and tools to set up their own small businesses in their post-industry stage.  Undraa is the head of SPG, and it is the SPG office that is in the Phnom Penh Center where I am working.  But I am working with both projects – SPG and BFC –  which means that I often have to shuttle back and forth between the two offices for meetings.  Apparently shuffle actually involves me being driven back and forth in a huge, air conditioned vehicle.  This is quite the change from how I usually get around town – on the back of a motorcycle taxi – and I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about it.  It’s really hard to feel part of your environment when everyone around you is sweating on motos and tuktuks, and you have a driver at your beck and call.  It’s also a luxury that I really did not associate with development work.

On the way it turned out that Undraa was from Mongolia, spoke Russian, and had a daughter my age.  She was really pleased that I spoke Russian as it would give her an opportunity to keep hers up, and she immediately took a real mentoring air towards me which was really nice.  She also told me, and this I didn’t really expect, that if I wanted to work in international bodies like the UN, Russian would be a real asset to me.  I actually didn’t realize this at all.  I figured English and French – yes.  But Russian? Why Russian?  Apparently though, in that whole region of former Soviet countries, work in bodies such as the ILO is still done in Russian because it is the one language that everyone probably has in common.  Being able to work in that whole area of the world would be a real advantage to me if I applied for these jobs.  Cool.  We chatted in Russian for a couple of minutes and then we were at our destination.

The meeting was held at Phnom Penh Hotel, which is an enormous, relatively new building that mainly caters to businessmen and generally wealthy travelers.   The interior is suitably ornate:  large chandeliers heavy with crystal; gleaming floors; soft couches; vases filled with fresh flowers.  A young woman in a smart  black and white uniform welcomed us to the cool, spacious lobby and directed us up the wide staircase to the second floor.   The meeting had already begun so the men at the table in front of the room hastily pushed a bunch of printed powerpoint documents into our hands as well as some notebooks and folders, and ushered us inside.

At the front of the room a gentleman was speaking in Khmer.  The audience was made up mostly of men in suits and women in ruffled blouses and pencil skirts.  Again the contrast struck me.  I just hadn’t seen people like this in Cambodia before.  It’s not like I didn’t know that there was an upper middle class.  It’s just that when you travel, you don’t see it.  I think, in fact, as a tourist you see some of the worst urban poverty in the city because typically beggars congregate around the large tourist attractions.  As well, when you’re backpacking, you’re usually eating in small cafes near the tourist sites or around street stalls, and the people who were in the room with me just don’t go there.  There were also a couple of foreigners but fewer than I would have expected in an NGO meeting.  Someone handed me a pair of headphones and I put them on though they weren’t connected to anything.   I heard the scratchy stumbling voice of a translator.  Looking around I saw him in the back of the room speaking into a microphone.

The speaker was from the national institute of statistics.  He was explaining where the institute gets its data. Apparently each ministry has a department that collects data and then feeds it to the NIS.  I wondered to myself how good that data actually is and how thoroughly it is collected.

The next presentation was by a woman named Monica and she talked about different indicators for measuring decent work (that’s what this was, by the way, a tripartite workshop organized by the ILO and the ministry of labour, on measuring the impact of the decent work program in Cambodia).    She talked a lot about disaggregation – by gender, disability, etc.  She also talked about the employment rate being a somewhat misrepresentative indicator of the labour situation in a country like Cambodia, and that underemployment had to be looked at as well.  I hadn’t really considered this, but it makes a lot of sense.  Unemployment is only really an option if you’re in a place with social security where people can choose to be unemployed.  In countries like Cambodia, unemployment is not an option.  People will do something – they’ll drive tourists around, or they’ll paint houses, or work in a factory – anything to put food on the table.  They might have an educational level that is far above what they’re doing but they can’t afford to stop doing it.  Thus, the fact that people are employed in a country like Cambodia does not give you the full picture and data needs to be collected about whether or not people are working in jobs that are appropriate to their level of education.

After Monica’s presentation we headed to lunch, which was a whole new level of excess.   There were three long tables with stainless steel dishes full of steaming curries, soups, and meat dishes.  One of the tables was a sushi bar: plates and plates piled full of different kinds of sushi and sashimi.  On another table – heaps and heaps of fruit: watermelon, mango, durian, dragonfruit. On the edge of the fruit table there were cakes and pastries and truffles…

I was surprised at how much this bothered me.

When Paul and I were in Battambang last time our tour guide, upon learning that I was an English teacher, asked us to come with him to the orphanage he ran and speak English to the kids since they had very few opportunities to practice their English with native speakers.  They had practically no supplies.  Paul and I spent about $40 buying notebooks for the whole orphanage.  Now, looking at all these notebooks, folders, and tables full of food in one of the most expensive spaces in Phnom Penh – you could have refurbished the entire orphanage for the cost of this meeting, or bought a new bicycle for every child in there.  That would actually make a difference in the lives of many individuals.  What difference would this workshop on the latest scoop from the international labour statisticians make?  I’m pretty sure that the government officials there understood about as much as I did about statistics.  Some probably less.  The highlight of the day was when the gentleman from the NIS felt the need to clarify:  “does everyone here know median?”

Personally, I learned a lot.  I find it really interesting to think about where and how we get the data that we get, and how we can get and process the information that we need.  But my coworkers – Undraa, Pheary and Gloria – thought that the workshop was useless for our project’s purposes.  They also thought that the international labour statisticians were being unrealistic about the kind of information that could and would be collected here, and that almost certainly the suggestions made at this workshop would not be put into practice.  In fact, they decided on the spot that we wouldn’t be attending the rest of the workshop because our time could be better spent on other things.

My discomfort with the luxury around me would lessen over the coming weeks. I would go to other meetings with our NGO partners and realize that most of them are not like this at all.  This workshop was different because it was a ministry of labour workshop  and the government was heavily involved.  This made me think more of the ILO and less of the government.  I guess this really should not have surprised me at all.  This is a standard arrangement in lots of countries where the general population is incredibly poor.  But I was startled nonetheless in part because this was so different from the Cambodia I had experienced up to that day, and in part because I thought it was my organization that was responsible.  The ILO does in fact pay its employees pretty well, and we have a driver and an air conditioned office ( I know I keep mentioning air conditioning, but it is a pretty big luxury in Cambodia because electricity is so very expensive here, and many NGO’s can’t afford it in their offices), but it’s nothing like that display of wealth at the Phnom Penh Hotel workshop.

As well, as my coworker Maeve pointed out to me, if the ILO wants to draw competent individuals who had invested in their educations and would be capable of doing this work well, it needs to pay them at least decent middle class salaries.  I had made this same argument  in Korea when people complained about how much foreign English teachers were paid:  if you want to draw top workers, you need to pay them competitive salaries.  I had not transferred this type of thinking to this line of work and so it startled me at first.  

In any case, the workshop took us almost to the end of the day and I excused myself early to go check out the house I would be living at this summer and pay the rent and the safety deposit.

Day 2: I unsuccessfully try to figure out what phrases like “capacity building” mean.

On my second day I had my first briefings with Pheary and with Sophal.  Sophal was the main person I was in contact with about my internship, and he’s the person with whom I will be working the most this summer.  He’s also great.  He’s very soft-spoken and humorous, but as I would find out over the next couple of weeks, he gets things done with lightning speed.  Sophal told me in detail about BFC, and clarified some things that I didn’t understand about the project. For instance, although independent BFC monitors go into factories and collect information about compliance/non-compliance with labour laws and ILO standards, the information can’t be released to buyers like GAP unless the factory gives the ILO permission to do so.  Thus, if a buyer doesn’t insist that the factory release that information and does nothing about it, then the ILO has no real enforcement mechanism.  The government doesn’t do a good job of making sure factories follow the law, even when it knows about non-compliance.  So it turns out a lot of the momentum for this whole reasonably successful project comes from the pressure that big buyers like Nike and Gap feel from their customers to make sure that labour conditions in their factories are decent.  Without that pressure, it would be almost impossible for this project to operate.  Sophal’s briefing was also peppered with interesting anecdotes about the relationship between the ILO and the ministry of labour.  For instance, he told me that MoL factory monitors refuse to coordinate their visits with ILO monitors because the ILO pays more than the government and this frustrates the MoL monitors.  They don’t want to work with someone who gets paid more to do the same job that they do.

In my briefing with Pheary, I kept stopping her to ask questions because I didn’t really understand what she was talking about.  I don’t come from an NGO background so a lot of the language is somewhat new to me.  At one point she described several totally different projects as “capacity building” initiatives.   She was using the same words for both, but when I pried they were completely different in practice, which renders the language practically empty – by itself it doesn’t tell me anything. As it turns out, lots of NGO people also think this type of language is bullshit.  Maeve, the UNV was like, “good. Keep asking those questions.  You should be – this language is meaningless.”  In practice people use it because for some reason donors like it.

 I could tell Pheary was getting a bit frustrated with the amount of practical detail that I wanted about our projects because eventually she just gave me a whole folder full of our memos of understanding with our partners so that I could read through them and see how the projects are implemented. 

I didn’t really have a good grip on this when I came over, but I began to understand much more clearly that the ILO doesn’t actually do any of the things it says it does.  What they mean when they say, “we do X” is “we work with a partner organization who does X, and we give them money and support while they do X.”  Everything got a bit easier when I figured that out.  Really should have done my research a bit better on how my organization works before I came over here.

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by this point because I thought when I was coming over here that I would be doing a research project on maternal nutrition (and how to improve it).  But as part of my briefing Sophal had given me a report on maternal nutrition, which looked exactly like what I had imagined I would be doing.  Now I wasn’t really sure what to do.  Furthermore, Undraa kept saying things like, “you’re here for yourself, you’re not here for us, so you have to think really hard about what would help you in your career.”  That’s really nice on one hand, because it’s obvious that they are sensitive to the fact that I have a funder, and that I’m not there to be an odds-and-ends girl for 3 months.  But on the other hand it is also code for “we don’t know what to do with you.”  I was starting to feel a bit panicky about work.  What was I going to do for these 3 months?  And how likely was it that I could avoid being stuck in an office for the whole time (which is precisely what I wanted to avoid!)?  I had thought it was going to be maternity protection research – specifically maternal nutrition.  What now?

Day 3: I sort of figure out what phrases like “capacity building” mean

Friday was another workshop.  This time it was a meeting of SPG and many of its partners.  This was great.  This was going to be a chance for all of them to communicate with each other so that everyone would know what everyone else was doing.  It was good for me because it would give me chance to figure out in more detail what was happening with SPG.

Not all partners were there when we arrived but there were several (Marie Stopes International, RACH, Care) there so we began.  As I mentioned earlier, this meeting was a lot more modestly organized than the last one and I realized that it had just been my luck to arrive on the one day when there happened to be a tripartite workshop involving the government.  Those are actually quite rare.

Each of the partners did a 20 minute presentation on the details of their work.    It was actually pretty useful for me.  Marie Stopes,for example, goes into factory infirmaries and provides support.  They train the doctors and nurses in reproductive health services.  They provide condoms and other contraceptives at cost on the condition that the infirmary provide it to the workers at cost.  They basically try to build up the capacity of these internal infirmaries to provide care because very often these are the only healthcare facilities that the workers have access to due to their working hours.    As a result they have access to all the factories involved in the SPG project and detailed information about the workers there.  This could turn out to be helpful in terms of gaining access to the workers for the purposes of my research project.

On the other hand RHAC operates outside of the factories and because they have significant funding from USAID, they could create a system which encourages workers to come back for follow-up visits.  Under RHAC’s system, a worker can purchase a 3-visit card for a very small amount of money.  The first visit is free. The second visit is 50% off.  The third visit is also free.  The idea is that workers are a lot more likely to come in for that second visit if they have the incentive of a third free visit.

The workshop and discussion afterwards took us to the end of the day, and the end of my first week at the ILO.

Summary:

The good: I learned a bit about stats, and figured out how the two main projects I’m supposed to be involved in operate.  Also the team I’m working with is LOVELY.  All of my coworkers are really wonderful to be around.  

The bad: I was nowhere close to knowing what I was going to be doing this summer.  Definitely a problem.