Adam's posterous

Closing Ceremony

The biggest dinner event I've ever seen - hundreds of tables on the field serving probably every national delegation member. Plus every person in the audience gets a free dinner box too, along with a fan and musical thingamajie! A grand ol' party to top off an incredible Deaflympics.

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Au Revoir, Kampuchea

My flight leaves in less than four hours. As a parting gift, the Kingdom of Cambodia has deemed it fit to bestow me with an gastrointestinal illness that has left me cletching at my stomach and rushing to the water closet every hour or so. As I suck down coconut juice and chomp on bananas, both purchased this morning from the Russian Market around the corner, I'm merely grateful that the Khmer version of Montezuma's Revenge is attacking today and not while I was spelunking through the temples of Angkor. I was planning visiting the Tuol Sleng genocide museum and possibly a quick breakfast at the Bodhi Tree before heading to the airport but that clearly isn't happening. As my insides protest whatever foreign pathogens have invaded it, I am just sitting (or lying) tight in Ronise's lovely apartment, the toilet a mere ten meters away. Jen has given me some Thai stomach medicine and by jove, it might be working already. Yesterday was mostly a long and somewhat uncomfortable bus ride back to Phnom Penh. Jen and I had the (mis?)fortune of sitting in the front row, with a clear view of every one of the thousand near-misses with oncoming trucks, motos, bicycles, and comrade Phnom Penh Sorya buses. After dinner at the Russian Market, Meng, Ronise's friend, took me for a nighttime ride around Phnom Penh on his motorbike. It was pouring rain, and the soaked two of us zipped around traffic circles adorned with monuments to independence and reconcilation and by royal pagodas and museums. I would never have the balls to drive a bus or a motorbike anywhere in Cambodia (or much of Asia for that matter) but for everyone else here, the chaotic roads are an integral part of the steady hum of Khmer life. Taipei grows near; I hope memories of vine-choked Angkorian temples and endless roasted chicken on baguettes are the only things I bring to Taiwan, and that my stomach antagonists stay behind.
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