Emergency in Cambodia

It is surprisingly easy to evacuate Cambodia in case of medical emergency, provided you have decent medical insurance and Skype.  What is not so easy is finding a tuk tuk on our street at 11pm on a Monday night.  Little did we know, 24 hours later we would be at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok.
My husband woke up with stomach pains on Monday night and I helped him get to Naga Clinic. The night guard called us a tuk tuk.  The driver just drove around and around (after assuring us he knew where he was going AND after the night guard at our apartment told him in Khmer where we were going.)   This is not unusual.  For a pretty small city, drivers get lost more often than not.  Poor Deva was in a lot of pain holding a grocery bag of his own vomit and shouting out "bot chveng" (turn left.)  It was too dark to read a map.  I was very scared.  We were on street 51 surrounded by drunk westerners and a friendly bi-lingual Cambodian told our driver where to go.  Phew, we made it.
The doctor at Naga (Deva has found it to be more reliable and cheaper than SOS Clinic) diagnosed him with food poisoning, gave him an injection for pain and 27 bucks worth of meds. We woke up our driver and he took us back to our apartment without getting lost (impressive!)
When I was getting ready for work, Deva was lying and moaning in bed feeling worse, not any better.  I left the business card for my doctor at SOS Clinic, just in case.
At 10 am on Tuesday I received a text message from him that he has appendicitis and would probably have to be medically evacuated to Bangkok, Thailand.  
My Principal let me call the insurance company using Skype on her laptop and substituted my  afternoon class.  My teaching assistant taught my Early Years class.  I arranged for our downstairs neighbor to take care of our cat.  Another teacher covered my Early Years playground duty while I quickly typed my emergency sub plans for the next three days (apologies to my poor substitute if they were not the best plans.)  They were all being really nice.  I didn't need more stress being four months pregnant.
I headed to SOS to see what the situation was at 1pm.  We were waiting to hear from the insurance company, which I did on my way home (driven by our reliable tuk tuk driver/ part time policeman, David.)  I packed our things not knowing how long we would be gone, ate some lunch, told the cat goodbye, and headed back to SOS Clinic around 5pm.  Meanwhile, Deva was driven to Calmette Hospital to have a CT scan to confirm the doctor's diagnosis.  I dropped off Deva's teaching materials and class roster at his work, ACE, and the office administrator offered me a job teaching English.  It's nice to have options, but what strange timing.
I asked the doctor why we couldn't just go to Royal Rattanak Hospital in Phnom Penh.  In case of complications, their blood supply is iffy at best and their nursing care is sub-par.  Eek.  It is sad that the government can't pull it together to have better health care.  Oh wait, if they or their families are in need of treatment, they can just fly to Thailand or more likely, Singapore.  But what about everyone else?  It is very unfair.  

Back at the clinic we waited and waited.  Deva was hooked up to an IV of sugar water, pain killers, and antibiotics.  We watched DVDs on the portable player I brought along.  At 9:30pm  "the team" (a doctor and a nurse) from Singapore arrived.  We were transported by ambulance through Phnom Penh traffic (not bad for a capital city) and drove right on to the tarmac where a private Learjet was waiting for us.  After a bumpy hour-long flight, we arrived in Bangkok where another ambulance loaded Deva in, while I got to go through immigration at the airport.  I also managed to change money.
At about 11:30 pm we were in the emergency room (the cleanest and calmest ER I have ever seen, even if it did small like nail polish.)  The hospital made Deva sign some forms and we met with the doctor.  By 1 am he was in the room outside surgery and at about 2:30am (I was pretty groggy, too) I received a call he was finished with surgery and in the post-op room for a few hours.  They made him take off his wedding ring which was the worst part and I took it upstairs with his clothes to room 904.  This hotel...err, hospital is swanky.  
He was wheeled into the room about 4:15 am, pretty groggy and threw up again due to the anesthesia.  We both slept all day being occasionally interrupted by doctors and nurses.
I scavenged some breakfast at Au Bon Pain... wait, there's a Mc Donalds (in a hospital? isn't that counter-productive) and a Starbucks and REAL Thai food (being Thailand.)  I ate really well, while Deva was prescribed broth and jell-o.
We stayed three days and on Saturday, the insurance company arranged for the flight back to Phnom Penh (one day I'll get paid back I hope.)  Deva got to lie in the lap of luxury eating canapes and sipping champagne in his first class seat (doctor's orders.)  I was in the cheap(er) seats in back eating my yummy sandwich and French dessert.  I would recommend Air France.  I would also recommend giving yourself an extra hour to check-in at the mega-crowded Bangkok airport.
We are back in Phnom Penh with the cat, some medicine and waterproof bandages, awaiting the doctor at SOS to take stitches in a week or so and also awaiting our next teaching placement in a country that has better health care than Cambodia.
In the mean time, we are thankful that our doorman and trusty driver can carry our heavy things since neither of us can for a few months and that Door-to-Door can deliver French food to our door in less than 30 minutes.   

Cambodia...enough already!?

Ok, so the excitement about Cambodia is waning.  On the chart of "culture shock," I should be getting past the "isolation" phase and into the "assimilation and acceptance" phase by now, right?  While not an exact science, I feel like it has been a pretty reliable chart.  Apologies in advance for the bit of whining.

So, I just don't like living in Cambodia that much.  Well, parts I like: most of the people, most of my colleagues, the restaurants, the spas, our cat.  However, the every day grind of fighting over a price and driver for my tuk tuk (because for me the traffic is too frenetic to walk or drive and there is no public transportation) and every other thing is really wearing me down.   It's especially annoying to have to call a driver, arrange a price, in order to be driven somewhere I can walk around.

In our apartment, I feel weird when the doorman carries my groceries and bows as I enter the elevator.  I guess it's something to get used to, but I wasn't really raised to accept a lot of help.  The class system is very much in place here.  In general, the rich do not even look the poor in the eye.

The view is pretty good, though, since I can see the sunrise and the sunset. 

There are Christmas decorations everywhere, so that's kind of nice.  (Cambodia has a lot of American style, over-the-top inflatable Santas and plastic trees, it's kind of funny.)

And the drumming. Argh the drumming!  We have a Chinese School nearby (called the Chong Cheng school... no joke) and every night, even weekends, the kids practice the drumming and dragon dance... for three hours.  That comes after the hours of aerobics (called Haat Praam!) from the stadium (I can count in Khmer up to 12, thanks to the instructors shouting the same numbers every sunrise and sunset.)  The ladies at my gym walk 1 mile an hour on the treadmill and talk at the same rate.  It's pretty funny. They might get more benefit from the aerobics classes, but they are the creme de la creme of Cambodia and it would be beneath them.

It's nearly time for the egg man to come around with his cart of eggs that not even our favorite driver, David, likes.  They are called "pregnant eggs" because there is a chicken embryo and some black powder on top.  He drives around on a moto. On his moto, there is a grill complete with wood burning kind of like a side car.

Around 10pm some guy comes around hitting a stick in a rhythm.  I have no idea what he is selling.
Then the dog barking starts. Then, the howling. Then the roosters.  Finally, our cat has an internal clock and starts meowing at 5am, even on Sunday. 


Well, I will try to focus on the things I like...and the hunt for a new apartment. We are halfway through our first year already.   I'll see how I like Vietnam.  My hopes of living in Asia are be quickly being replaced by a plan to move home...

Rain, Rain Go Away...

 This photo is a bit deceiving... it is on the river, so we don't know how much it is normally.

Tuk tuk driver workin' hard for the money. 

When I heard the words "rainy season" before moving abroad, I thought, "Oh, so it rains every day, that's ok."  Living in Mexico for 3 years gave me an introduction to what rainy season can be: streets becoming fast-moving river (especially dangerous if you are at a bottom of a hill,) soaked clothes in less than 2 seconds, the need to wear rubber shoes and a plastic coating of some kind, and that almost no umbrella can handle this kind of rain. Then, after late September, it hardly ever rains.  It usually rains once in January, so the farmers know when to plant the corn.  It is called Cabañuelas. 

I thought moving to Cambodia would be more like it was in Mexico... Rainy season in Cambodia lives up to the name "monsoon season" but there needs to be a more extreme term for it:  "river season?"  Within minutes, roads are flooded.  Somehow the moto-taxis (called tuk tuks) plow through.  One guy had a plastic covering for some innard of his motorcycle engine to prevent stalling.  It was pretty ironic driving by a kilometer of un-installed drainage pipes.

However, when the water is up to your knees  all you can do is walk (trying not to think about what's in the water,) or, if you're strong enough, bicycle, through it. 

The day before leaving for Siem Reap for the week-long holiday of Pchum Ben (a time to honor your ancestors according to the Buddhist calendar), I got a travel advisory about the flooding from the US Embassy.  We were taking a boat, and the warning would be a few days old by the time we got there... no worries. Well, I were kind of right.   I am pretty surprised the boat even let us leave Phnom Penh, as most of the flights that day were cancelled.

The tuk tuk driver earned every riel (the currency in Cambodia along with the US dollar) for his 15 kilometer drive to town.  The hotel we booked, thankfully, was on the non-flooded side of town. We saw the 3 major sites of Angkor (Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Ta Prohm) and a few of the smaller sites.  Many were inaccessible... they were not crowded, which was great.    We had a fun time despite most of the restaurants being closed either for the holiday or due to flooding.  

Well, it is still raining nearly everyday buckets and buckets.  Hope people are managing ok in the provinces (aka countryside.) Luckily, I am staying dry with my 2000 riel (50 cent) thin, plastic covering, 100% rubber shoes,  and hoping the "river season" will end soon... It will, and there is a holiday for it.  I will celebrate. 

Yam = Yum

Whenever I move to a new place, I am easily amused by trips to the market.  Here in Phnom Penh I sometimes feel like an alien on another planet.   Dragonfruit is a subtle tasting fruit with tiny black seeds.  Probably you can get this in the US, but here, it is very common.  It would be great with Tajin from Mexico...if only I brought some in my suitcase.  Also, there are millions of types of everything.  Uncle Barns' (instead of Uncle Ben's) is a type of panko bread crumbs.  Deva picked out Yam Flavored Ice Cream and I thought, um, eww. However, it's great!  I think it is taro root flavor.  The color is really yummy, too.  Sometimes this type of food-tasting/risk taking backfires such as in the moon cakes that Deva described as sawdust with fish paste filling. 

Remember kids, brush your teeth!

If this illustration doesn't make you more aware of your dental hygiene, I don't know what will.