Playing in Cambodia

So a couple of weeks ago I didn’t feel well and decided to take the day-off and pay a visit to SOS International Clinic.  After having blood drawn for tests, fainting, and waking up to find two Cambodian doctors and one scared nurse looking at me, I was ushered off to the day-bed and told to rest while they cleared my test results. Great. I was dying in a foreign country far away from my Mami, but at least this bed was super comfortable and between hallucinations maybe I can think about the best way to present my case for staying on this bed and sleeping all day. As I drank water and slowly came back to life, the doctor said everything was fine. I just needed to drink more water, take vitamins, sleep, exercise under healthy conditions (i.e. not to much outside) and I quote the good doctor- “play.” That’s it? I’m not dying of some strange Cambodian disease, and all I have to do is be healthier and “play”? I had laughed when he told me to play. Was I five years old or did he mean something else?

Back in my flat I slept on our wicker couch and re-evaluated my life (again). Okay:

Step 1. Join a closer gym with air conditioning. Step 2. Take vitamins everyday and drink less coffee (I’m sorry to say the coffee thing only lasted about a week) Step 3. Play.

Step 1 I took care off the following weekend. After surveying several expat’s gym choices and visiting one amazing gym complex complete with a roof-top pool (though not Olympic sized swimming pool), and former Mr. Australia as a gym trainer, I opted for another choice. “The Place.” Here we go… The Place is highly controversial because, as Tim reminded me afterwards, it is a very socially unresponsible place to join because of its links to a Korean or Russian mafia or something of the sort. This is also “the place” where they have the fake Starbucks. Here’s the thing though, it has air-conditioned treadmills and is about a 5 minute bike ride from my flat. This comes in handy since I hate biking late at night after work. I figured if I wasn’t going to join, someone else was going to do it in my place and therefore the mafia was going to make money off of it anyways, and well, while I half broke my savings account again, invested in a healthier lifestyle. Mr. Australia and his white shorts weren’t convincing enough. Plus, at The Place they have free hair gel, cotton-swabs, shampoo and a clean locker room with sauna and a tall Cambodian girl that brings you water. In what world was I going to pass that up?  

Step 2 I took care off with a Multi-vitamin Centrum everyday after my breakfast of yogurt and granola. I already feel 100% physically healthier and this scares me in the sense that I had no idea how weak I really felt before. Soo kids, I highly recommend you all take your flinstone vitamin or a spoonful of vitametavegamin every day.

Step 3 was harder.  Playing. Well, what exactly did the doctor mean? He told me not to sit at home alone and think things over and over in my head because this would cause enormous amount of stress. Hmmm… Well, it’s not like I was doing that all the time, I mean I do have some friends and go out and talk to people. I’d have to work harder at playing then. 

When you live an almost first class life as a privileged foreigner (affordable cafes, massages, gyms) in a third class world you sort of question why it is you came to a developing country anyways. For some friends, it is to live more simply. I tried that- living on $1.50 chinese & dumplings – and it didn’t quite work out for me.   No- I came here to live simply, but in an entirely different sense. I came to do away with the complex interactions that we have in the States. To feel the heat on my arms, to smell the exhaust from the car in front of my bike, to smile again and again at the tuk-tuks that hastle me as I walk by. I came to feel life and witness it’s ironies and juxtapositions. 

Everything in Cambodia is fragilely held together in a delicate balance. If one thing falls apart- everything can break as easily as rice paper. Some expats say that life here is harder for women. That the lack of men, the lack of air conditioned spaces, the sun, the hastling by Cambodian men all get to you until you’ve driven yourself insane. It could be true. Somedays are definitely hard so I have to “play more.”  I decided the day I fainted I would change the way I was playing my life, my game in Cambodia. I would do things that make me happier. I joined a gym because I needed to run as hard as I was running before. I watch Nat Geo Adventure because it inspires me to explore more, to think on the edge. Some Saturdays I bike over to a small café the building I lived in temporarily because I can hang out with this young Cambodian waiter who corrects my Khmer and I can listen to him read in English and correct his pronounciation. He reads out of a book probably written in the 1980s on customer-service and probably rarely understand what he reads, but he is trying. He asked me to listen, so I did.

Yes, sometimes I have days when I turn things around in my head until the perfect migrane is formed as I worry about grad school or life after Cambodia, but I think about what a friend and a philosopher (Alan Watts) once said, if life were a symphony we wouldn’t rush to get to the end. Live life as a symphony. So when I go to work I don’t work anymore, I view it as play. I play.