Milwaukee 10, Pittsburgh 2
You'll forgive the title; precariously localed as I am in the Cambodian wilds, my one connection to the United States occurs upon the occasion of Pittsburgh Pirates losses. Please try to understand, friends and neighbors, when I tell you that it is heart rending - heart. rending. - to only truly feel American once, sometimes twice, and in the rare case of a bizarre triple header, thrice a day.
Pirates = sux, is what I'm trying to say. Incompetent in the baseball department, ugly in the wife department, in short: Bill Cowher's protuberant maw cry if you want, nobody's going to save you, you got drafted by the mo'fucking Pirates scary-sad.
Today Joel and I were walking around Angkor Thom - or, as we jokingly referred to it, Uncle Tom, but stopped when Joel got the cholera and was called up to heaven besides a heavenly host - and we were having a pretty good time. After only 45 minutes of recriminations and bad blood between ourselves and the two warring moto cartels vying for our time, we were climbing about amongst the 8000 faces of Bayon, eagerly trying to spot monkeys along the 1.5 km road up from the South Gates, so as to avoid them, as we've learned that monkeys are vicious, etc.
And then we wander over past the Elephant Terrace towards the Bophuon, which is this huge three tiered mountain temple with overlapping artistic influence from both the Hindu Angkor period (it was originally built in the 11th century as a shrine to Shiva) and the Buddhist period(last night someone graffitotagged "Buddha OWNZ!") of the 16th century. And this 15 or 16 year old who had been idling nearby gloms on to us and is all "the Bophuon is closed, go this way instead." Bear in mind that the "X is closed" scam was one of the first we ran into a week and a half ago upon arriving to Thailand, and that the best way to deal with that kind of con-artist is to just keep walking until he goes away. So Joel and I keep walking, keeping up a friendly conversation with the kid and occasionally grimacing Americanly at each other. Conversation is as follows.
Him: Where you come from?
Us: The States.
Him: ???
Us: U.S.A.
Him: Big country!
Us: Yes. (Joel: Yeah-h-h. Me: It sure is!)
Him: What state you from?
Joel: Massachusetts.
Him: What are your names?
Us: Fernando McGuy and Fernando McBalls, respectively.
Him: You fly in from Bangkok?
Us: No, we took the bus.
Him: Oh, bumpy! [ the road from Poipet to Siem Reap is indeed really bumpy. We indicate agreement.]
At about this point he starts launching into some trivia about the area, the Bophuon, and the nearby Royal Palace. This, again, is stock for the "X is closed" scam. Eventually we pick up, though, that this guy is trying to become a tour guide. We pick this up when he's all - okay, you go over there, I'll wait for you take you around and you give me some money for school. And we're all, no. And he's all, to pay my teacher! And we're all, suck it, teachers. And he's all, I told you about the things and you fucking owe me/ I will tell you about the things and it will be worth it! [ it's unclear whether he's saying one or the other, because English-speaking Cambodians only use the present tense. Non-verbal cues - he was waving an axe at Joel - indicate the former interpretation may be warranted. But we extricate ourselves by walking away and hiding for a while.
An hour or so and a couple of wicked-ass spiritual sites later, we're wandering about in a Kleang, which is the name given to each of a series of temples built by the Cambodian people in 1991 to honor the evil master-mind who gave Shredder his marching orders on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Animated Series, when a little kid comes up to us and mentions that there are 40 - not 39, 40 - Buddhas awaiting us just a few meters past the Kleang. Ruh roh, Shaggy, I say to Thomas Bechtold, vis a vis Joel. Then the kid asks us where we're from. We say USA. He says: "big country!"
If you're catching on to the fact that there are at least several hundred kids with exactly - question for question, response for response - the same spiel lurking about withing the confines of Angkor Thom, you're right. When we hit Urchin Numero The Third in the gap between the inner and outer walls of the Terrace of the Leper King, Joel was quick enough to answer " a big country" to the where are you from question. No hesitation from our new friend, Sen : "USA!"
Cambodia - so goods.
Pirates = sux, is what I'm trying to say. Incompetent in the baseball department, ugly in the wife department, in short: Bill Cowher's protuberant maw cry if you want, nobody's going to save you, you got drafted by the mo'fucking Pirates scary-sad.
Today Joel and I were walking around Angkor Thom - or, as we jokingly referred to it, Uncle Tom, but stopped when Joel got the cholera and was called up to heaven besides a heavenly host - and we were having a pretty good time. After only 45 minutes of recriminations and bad blood between ourselves and the two warring moto cartels vying for our time, we were climbing about amongst the 8000 faces of Bayon, eagerly trying to spot monkeys along the 1.5 km road up from the South Gates, so as to avoid them, as we've learned that monkeys are vicious, etc.
And then we wander over past the Elephant Terrace towards the Bophuon, which is this huge three tiered mountain temple with overlapping artistic influence from both the Hindu Angkor period (it was originally built in the 11th century as a shrine to Shiva) and the Buddhist period(last night someone graffitotagged "Buddha OWNZ!") of the 16th century. And this 15 or 16 year old who had been idling nearby gloms on to us and is all "the Bophuon is closed, go this way instead." Bear in mind that the "X is closed" scam was one of the first we ran into a week and a half ago upon arriving to Thailand, and that the best way to deal with that kind of con-artist is to just keep walking until he goes away. So Joel and I keep walking, keeping up a friendly conversation with the kid and occasionally grimacing Americanly at each other. Conversation is as follows.
Him: Where you come from?
Us: The States.
Him: ???
Us: U.S.A.
Him: Big country!
Us: Yes. (Joel: Yeah-h-h. Me: It sure is!)
Him: What state you from?
Joel: Massachusetts.
Him: What are your names?
Us: Fernando McGuy and Fernando McBalls, respectively.
Him: You fly in from Bangkok?
Us: No, we took the bus.
Him: Oh, bumpy! [ the road from Poipet to Siem Reap is indeed really bumpy. We indicate agreement.]
At about this point he starts launching into some trivia about the area, the Bophuon, and the nearby Royal Palace. This, again, is stock for the "X is closed" scam. Eventually we pick up, though, that this guy is trying to become a tour guide. We pick this up when he's all - okay, you go over there, I'll wait for you take you around and you give me some money for school. And we're all, no. And he's all, to pay my teacher! And we're all, suck it, teachers. And he's all, I told you about the things and you fucking owe me/ I will tell you about the things and it will be worth it! [ it's unclear whether he's saying one or the other, because English-speaking Cambodians only use the present tense. Non-verbal cues - he was waving an axe at Joel - indicate the former interpretation may be warranted. But we extricate ourselves by walking away and hiding for a while.
An hour or so and a couple of wicked-ass spiritual sites later, we're wandering about in a Kleang, which is the name given to each of a series of temples built by the Cambodian people in 1991 to honor the evil master-mind who gave Shredder his marching orders on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Animated Series, when a little kid comes up to us and mentions that there are 40 - not 39, 40 - Buddhas awaiting us just a few meters past the Kleang. Ruh roh, Shaggy, I say to Thomas Bechtold, vis a vis Joel. Then the kid asks us where we're from. We say USA. He says: "big country!"
If you're catching on to the fact that there are at least several hundred kids with exactly - question for question, response for response - the same spiel lurking about withing the confines of Angkor Thom, you're right. When we hit Urchin Numero The Third in the gap between the inner and outer walls of the Terrace of the Leper King, Joel was quick enough to answer " a big country" to the where are you from question. No hesitation from our new friend, Sen : "USA!"
Cambodia - so goods.
posted by Jeremy at 12:34 AM
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