reverse culture shock in email

Email jokes reveal expected reverse culture shock

So in our pre-departure briefings we are warned that the day we return to Australia there will be reverse culture shock. I diligently spoke of this to family and friends and then not given it much thought since.

Recently received a well written email joke passed on by a wonderful person. It is copied below, called ‘Natural Highs’. Its all about the things that are special in life ranging from falling in love to things like hot baths.

As I read it, I was reminded of reverse culture shock.

Why?

The email could have been either incredibly depressing if in a pessimistic mood or annoying as it reminded of western excesses or confusing to think I had forgotten such stuff!!!

The majority of items mentioning treats are things I ain't had most of these things for 18 months and won't have them for ages. Plus I know that the locals around me will never have these things. Like hot chocolate for example.

hehehehe but i am not pessimistic.

I choose to be here and reading such lists reminded me that I am genuinely happy to forgo these items. And the list of free stuff like laughing lots and sunrises are all available here. Thank goodness.

Read the list and try to imagine how daunting it might be for me and others like me in developing nations, to try to return to the western world.

I admitted to the person who sent it to me, the only thing I probably really do miss is a bubble bath


At 01:04 PM 11/13/2006, you wrote:


Natural Highs

1. Falling in love.



2. Laughing so hard your face hurts.



3. A hot shower.



4. No lines at the supermarket



5. A special glance.



6. Getting mail



7. Taking a drive on a pretty road.



8. Hearing your favorite song on the radio.



9. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.



10. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.



11. Chocolate milkshake.. (or vanilla or strawberry!)



12. A bubble bath.



13. Giggling.



14 A good conversation.



15. The beach



16. Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last winter.



17. Laughing at yourself.



19. Midnight phone calls that last for hours.



20. Running through sprinklers.



21. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.



22. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.



23. Laughing at an inside joke.



24. Friends.



25. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.



26. Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep.



27. Your first kiss (either the very first or with a new partner).



28. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.



29. Playing with a new puppy.



30. Having someone play with your hair.



31. Sweet dreams.



32. Hot chocolate.



33. Road trips with friends.



34. Swinging on swings.



35. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.



36. Making chocolate chip cookies.



37. Having your friends send you homemade cookies.



38. Holding hands with someone you care about.



39. Running into an old friend and realizing
that some things (good or bad) never change..



40. Watching the __expression on someone's face
as they open a much desired present from you.



41. Watching the sunrise.



42. Getting out of bed every morning and
being grateful for another beautiful day.



43. Knowing that somebody misses you.



44. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.



45. Knowing you've done the right thing,
no matter what other people think.

Food and cooking – November 2006

Food and cooking – November 2006

So what is the food we eat really like? I have had more than a year to reflect and I still say that local food is fairly awful. I really would like to be more complimentary but everything is sweet, overcooked and full of oil. I mean even my tofu burger and the hamburgers have the sweetest bread rolls! The tomato sauces are swimming in sugar. This is a nation of eating sugar and msg with just about everything.

Sticky rice with yummy beans? Yummo for me. Truly its great and bought from the local markets and put in a small plastic bag. She adds black pepper, grated coconut and then wants to add sugar! To savoury rice ….

I still eat at the same restaurant every work day for lunch and I switch from fried noodles, fried rice, fried veges or a tofu burger. Meat eaters claim they have a wider range, as they have 3 meats to choose to add to their selection of fried noodles/rice/veges, hehehe. But its good food and Dave another vego has convinced them that adding chicken stock to the veg meals is not really in the spirit of things.

Also learnt how to say ‘vegetarian’ trying to again explain don’t just remove the actual meat but also no oyster sauces, chicken stock etc. Only problem is that the actual Khmer word is difficult to say and if I mispronounce I am actually saying “snake’s food”. Note mispronouncing is not asking for snake with a meal, but actually asking to be served the food that a snake would eat. Hmmmm, spiders and rats really could be delivered to my plate if I tried it at a café who don’t know me!!!

So eating at home is still bliss. The oven I bought is also still the gem of the kitchen. I share my kitchen now with Dave and he loves to cook. So homemade soups, pasta bakes, linguini pesto and Cajun spice roast spuds are all regulars. The old favourites of stir fries are also good.

I miss toast but not too much. No where to buy a loaf of bread up here. I miss good quality junk food like nachos and smiths crisps. I miss yummy savoury biscuits. All plain biscuits are filled with sugar – even ones advertised as savoury. Ya good love the addiction to sugar …….

Pasta is now available in our little “7/11” as I like to call the shop with the savvy owner ordering in items from P Penh for us. But still lots to buy in PP. I am off to the capital in a few days from writing this and I have a long shopping list of spices to stock up on, cheese, Arborio rice, plain biscuits, lentils and look for wholemeal flour and get another vegemite. Yeah vegemite really is available in my capital city!

My homemade lime juice (lemons don’t exist here) is a favourite drink and I have to wait to buy some nice tea from PP as I am tired of the cheap Vietnamese green tea that I am down to. Pantry is running bare at moment.

So there you are, hope you enjoy the next meal you have, as you think of all the things no longer in my diet. But also don’t be too sympathetic. Feasts of good food happens as expats make more of an effort in the kitchen. Just last night I had the most amazing pumpkin pie desert with interesting spices like cloves in it. The pie base made from scratch in a basic kitchen and the filling was stunning. The hosts even managed to have some long-life cream to serve us. It was a desert to end all deserts and left everyone saying, who would have guessed pumpkin could be so transformed. Dinner parties with exotic deserts is what I want you to think of as you think of me in remote Cambodia

Anecdotes from Phnom Penh June

Anecdotes from trip to PP

I am 600 km from Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh but the roads are so bad that people are amazed that the trip is now ONLY 12 hours.

Ø I wanted to go to PP for personal things and my boss and I combined my trip with work stuff. I had choice of flights but decided to do the car trip one way and then fly home the next week

Ø On a Friday afternoon I went in a car driven by a Khmer consultant who had been training our staff on “ core values”

Ø We arrived 10pm at Katie. I saw plenty before the sun set and even drove for almost an hour – driving on wrong side of road

Ø I also remain haunted by how we came onto a moto rider who had crashed, clearly seriously hurt and the consultant continued driving. It is the way here to not offer assistance. Shocked? It comes from lots and lots of complicated reasons such as their own war trauma haunting them at sight of blood, the theft that happens at accidents, the blame apportioned to anyone around who has more money than the victim (we had 2 strikes against us so I was told, cos consultant in new car and my being white), death not odd as in the west and last but not least there being no medical services anyway. This last impossible to reconcile cos all I’d needed to do was at least stem the blood flow and phone into the nearest town cos they actually do have a concept of ambulances.

ØWhat else can I say about such an incident, other than that please don’t quickly judge the decision to drive past – the results from living through civil war, Khmer rouge and then the Vietnamese invasion are as complicated and as deep as we can even guess at

Ø Cheerier anecdotes?

At Katie I met the most amazing female moto driving. She is pretty, sassy and introduces herself with a bold handshake and says “hi, I am the only woman moto driver in Kratie”. Wow.

Ø I spent the day in Kratie being a tourist, which was always planned and the consultant continued on back to his home. I had a ball at a Buddhist nunnery, joking with women carrying building materials up the huge hill, where a new temple being built, got to see heaps of the rare freshwater dolphins that makes Kratie so renowned and even met some local expats. Ended up finding out that the guesthouse we’d checked in at 10pm was run by gay Khmer men and the expats I were with were gay. Thus I am now convinced that Kratie is the gay capital of Cambodia!!!

Ø Next day traveled into PP on a bus and one of the guys from the day before was traveling before me. Lots of reminders of the eccentric characters I’d meet in the Northern Territory, as I got to know Andrew

ØTreated as royalty at a guesthouse that Andrew always stays at – its not what ya know, but who you know! Andrew lived in tiny Cambodian towns so loved my stories of Ratanakiri, he returned to Australia that week for quick visit and now in touch so have contacts in the lovely town of Kratie

Ø First evening in PP, bought a beer in a lovely restaurant by the river, bought a newspaper from the street kids and settled into a place of no dust or mud. Was good treat.

Ø Kids come by with books to sell to tourists. Spoke in Khmer saying no thanks and explained I’ll be about all week and not to hassle me.

Ø Except …… then remembered that there was a touristy type of book I wanted so began to look in the next kid’s basket. Not find. In good English the lad says what am I looking for? Asks me to write it down, so I do, on the corner of the newspaper I had already bought. With a mumbled word and “be right back” he has taken the scrap of paper and left his basket of books at my feet. 45 minutes later he arrives with the book I wanted. Awesome service hey? (had found the book at a bookstore somewhere but then more expensive than the money he had on him, so had to return to nearby and borrow the money and then go get the book and then back to me – such trust that I’d buy the book. Of course I never hesitated to buy it. And it was as good as I had been told. Its about Angkor Wat temples written in the 1300s by a Chinese envoy)

Ø Knew that moment my time in PP was going to be full of good people, good moments and good cheer

Ø Saw some AVI vols, went to work meetings and did lots of shopping

Ø So many shopping stories! Best two are:

1. Wanted to buy a small bench top oven and knew what to expect to pay. Was wondering through central markets and saw lovely baking dishes. Lovely but didn’t know size of oven to know if baking dish too large. So in my broken Khmer explain I will come back once I get oven. They nod and smile and then say, “sit, sit, we do” and sure enough the older man goes off to get oven. I answer all the usual questions about how old I am, married, kids, how long lived in their country etc. I not like first arrival from the man, actually just a grill. Off he scurries again. Only moments he is back with exactly what I want. We pull it out and yes my baking dish fits. They parcel it all up as I have explained it all travels up to Ratanakiri. $51 for my one stop shop. Just another good moment.
2. Last afternoon of shopping, I have all that was on my long shopping list; essentials like hair conditioner, cheese, medical stuff and 2^nd hand books. So I am “window shopping” for wine glasses, in the markets. I see wine glasses and they are all plain glass. I speak to a few market women pointing to their printed tumbler type of glasses asking if have really beautiful wine glasses with some colour. So unusual but one woman points to next stall and sure enough way up at the back (think of the photos you have seen of the stalls full of jumbled stuff all piled up high) there is a box of a jug and matching 6 glasses. There was assistance given to the stall holder for her to scramble to get the box down. We pull it open and I love the print. Blue base, clear stems and a pretty floral print on the glasses. Wow! The matching jug is real glass. Crowd of about 6 stall holders all “ohhhhh and ahhhhing” around me. Tentatively I ask for price expecting them to try to fleece me for about $30. Try $8.

And of course it was then all wrapped up carefully as by now they also knew my life story and knew it all had to travel long way up north.

Ø After each of my shopping excursions I’d get back to the guesthouse and in Khmer all the Khmer staff would crowd around. More inspections and laughs at how I was buying western food. But the wine glasses were so admired. And they too loved the price I got them for. Lots of jokes about them coming to visit and having wine with me while I baked for them. The backpackers at the guesthouse just ignored the crazy woman speaking a mix of Khmer and english with people acting like they were friends from years ago

Life is good is all I could think the entire week

Flew back home after only 5 nights in the capital and felt like I had so many good things with me and fab memories.

Don’t expect to need to go visit again for many months. Probably will head north into Laos on my next trip. It should be a real holiday of about 3 weeks with no work commitments at all.

Food - June 2006

Food – part three

Only had my own house 6 weeks so the kitchen is a novelty still. I have owned a little oven for a fortnight and it is still so incredibly exciting. A birthday present to myself is what I decided. It is the size of a microwave and very light. A few expats have all raved about life changes when owned an oven.

The taste of roast veges with some Cajun spice was amazing after 9 months of no baked food! I spent about $50 at 3 grocery stores on stuff like spices, sesame oil, sauces, curry pastes, dry biscuits, popcorn corn, rolled oats and cheese that are all not available in my little town. 5 packets of cheese in the fridge! The gourda eaten first and then the long life vintage bega brand at the back of the fridge. Pity that I never did find cinnamon for Sunday morning brunch pancakes.

As mentioned previously the quality of meals bought is so low. Everything is completely overcooked and full of oil and absolutely no spices. To have roast spud that actually tasted of spud. Wonderful! To have Cajun as well was incredible.

When in Ppenh I bought lasagna sheets so I intend to do a veg lasagna soon enough. Last week I did a risotto and had baked pumpkin with my risotto. Left over baked spud in a very spice Indian curries instead of more rice was also a treat!

They all seem like such trivial things to you all reading this from a home or work computer but remember the food here is so very basic!!!

The tofu burger is still very good that I buy and sometimes the fried rice with veg is particularly good but really the only meal I buy that I genuinely enjoy is the sticky rice that I occasionally buy for breky. I get it at the markets if I go early before work and it is served in a tiny plastic bag. The rice is green cos of the bamboo leaves put in the cauldron of rice and beans!

I eat out every lunch and that is a cooked meal. I still go to the hamburger place I mentioned in food part II. Anywhere from 2 to 6 other expats are there as well. So of an evening I often don’t cook but on a weekend I cook both days.

Tonight it’ll be tofu (bought from the open air veg markets and questions of how it was cooked or how old, should not even be thought!) n veg Penang curry with penne pasta. And maybe I might even pop out soon on my bicycle, so I can get some exercise in the mud and go buy a wine to go with my curry! Or maybe I’ll just make some lemonade and be healthy with a jug of lemonade in the fridge for the weekend. Which the vodka also goes well in – grinning! No I said healthy right?

$3 bottle of spirits like vodka or gin is the problem of trying to be healthy …..

So if you visit, quality veg food available from my own kitchen! And a choice of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks as well.

Food and no cooking

Food and no cooking II

April 06

I haven’t cooked a meal for myself since mid March in Siem Reap! Living in my temporary home on the hotel grounds I don’t have a kitchen.

After two weeks here, about a month of no cooking though, I began to get frustrated as I ate out for every meal but then I quickly settled into a routine of buying all. A bit too quickly! I know why there are a majority of locals and many expats who never ever cook, even if have a kitchen in their home. I can see why, as it does become so easy.

Having said that I will be getting back to cooking once I get my own home.

The food I can buy is very different from Siem Reap. I could go and find the street stalls and buy a 50c meal but I rarely did in Siem Reap. I was seduced by “pub street” and similar and found it easy to justify paying the $2 - $5 for a meal. Right towards the end of my stay I even found somewhere that made Sunday roasts! And the baked potatoes were mouth watering.

Here there are four main places open for lunch and the choices increase to about 8 places of a night. That’s it for sit down, served choice of food type of places. And some of those places have absolutely no english skills at all so its reliant on speaking the local language and occasionally some miming. Often at one place there is a staff member who can not understand my accent and yet the day before at the same place I will be understood perfectly. So it’s a bit of a gamble and takes lots of patience.

My favourite place to eat is the “hamburger place” as its called by all expats. Relatively new and run by a Phnom Penh Khmer who has great english. Since I have arrived a vego burger has been invented with fried tofu and egg and a yummy mayonnaise. But his egg noodles, fried rice and even his soups are all great.

But when I say great, its all still very oily food. Everything available here is oily. Really oily. Fried rice must have about half cup of oil used per serve. No exaggeration. Its really noticeable in all food. And almost always food is OVERCOOKED. I wonder what is left of nutritional value. I do find that I eat for hunger and not really for taste. Even simple meals like the egg noodles and spinach type of veg in the noodles leave me not hungry but I hardly am walking away thinking “wow”. The ‘fancy’ place to eat is the Terre Rouge hotel with a gorgeous modern Khmer decor restaurant set in wonderful art-filled gardens but the same oily food is just more expensive food.

As soon as I get my own kitchen I am going to make some simply stir fry veg and cook them so lightly! Eaten with freshly steamed rice instead of old rice that’s sat in a rice cooker for a hour. Can’t wait for such a meal.

I also have packed with me all my lentils and beans and some spices so my stir fly will be seasoned by something simply as oregano and the tiniest splash of good quality oil.

Hmmmmm my mouth is watering at the thought.

PS. Reading this later on, I feel I have been too harsh. There are times when I genuinely do enjoy a meal I buy. The coconut curry is good and I know where to get a great omelet. The fries are fab at the “hamburger place” and even one place does a fried rice that tastes like rice rather than oil. Really, I don’t complain but I do look forward to some home cooking.

Patience patience as I wait only two more weeks to move into the house I now have organised. For now I remind myself of the positives of no shopping for food and no washing up