Just Add Children II

So, I stayed at a guesthouse last night. First night away since I've been here. There was air conditioning. I slept late. I woke up about 4 hours after I was supposed to be at the children's home. I freaked out. So, I sat in my room for a while, not wanting to leave the a/c. I love Cambodia. Alot. However, it's even more alien than one might think at first because so many things are westernized, but only on the surface. There's a completely different culture here and sometimes it hits you like a hammer in the head. (And I know exactly what a hammer in the head feels like)
So, as I said, I freaked. I didn't go. I sent Sam an email about 5 minutes ago telling him I was sorry but I had an anxiety attack.
Some woman tried to sell me her granddaughter today at Wat Phnom. I freaked out even more. I thought I would go sit and recharge watching the mokeys. It was great for a while. I was sitting on the steps that lead up to the steps that lead up to the temple, watching a group of monkeys (I got photos and footage which I'll post later) and one young one jumped onto my back and started playing with my hair and pulling on my cheeks and my nose. So, I started pulling on his hand and scratching his head. Then he attacked my hand playfully like a cat does and chewed on my finger for a minute. I know, but he didn't break the skin. I'll be fine.
Then I walked around a little thinking "I feel a little better... maybe I should get a moto back to the school". Then the old woman came up to me and tried to sell me a girl who looked to be about 9. "Aa-dtay, aa-dtay" I said (no no) and walked off. Then I puked.
That was the second weird, fucked up thing to happen to me today. The first was sitting at the Riverside Cafe, eating lunch. The owner, who is South African and was apparently in the military during one of their darkest periods, kept trying to hire me to kill someone for him for $10,000. "I haf enemies" he says, over and over in barely understandable drunkspeak. He was so drunk I'm surprised he could see. It would take me, I calculated, 38 beers to get that drunk. He is about my size, so I imagine that he started early AND had many, many, many shots. Anyway, that was pretty weird. The whole conversation took about an hour. You can imagine. If you can't, go find a dive bar (which this place isn't) and then find the most odd looking character who's hunched over, thousand-yard-staring into oblivion trying to keep the terrible secrets from bursting out of him like Giger's alien. Then go talk to him. That was this guy. He wanted me to work for him. He had long hair, in a ponytail. I have long hair, in a ponytail. Both blonde. Both blue. That's why he started talking to me. He wanted me to kill his enemy. Then he wanted to kill me. Then he wanted me to kill him. Then he started his weird mantra about killing 35 people in a subway. I left shortly after that. He was asleep on the bar.
Words of wisdom: if you ever encounter someone who is that drunk and crazy, don't try to talk reason to them, and don't try to sober them up. Make them drink 800 more shots as fast as possible. They'll pass out soon. If you do otherwise, if you don't just leave, that is, then they will just freak out on you more. It usually gets ugly.
So, now I'm at the Frog and Parrot on the riverfront (with a beautiful view of the fence they've erected in front of the new pump system Hun Sen is having built) using their wifi and hanging out with the bartender. She's Khmer, but she said she was from Jamaica. She's funny... jokes around alot. The place is run by an English guy named Steve. He has a Sid & Nancy poster right next to an old picture of of a skinhead with 'SKINS' spraypainted on the wall. Turns out he's Welsh, not English. (I'm talking to Alech, the sparky bartendress while I write this post)
She says the Mekong is cleaner near her home village... in Jamaica. Heh.
So, it's a weird day. Welcome to Cambodia.
See you next time.