Morning 1: Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I woke up this morning in a puddle of sweat. The fans in my room were horribly silent. There was thick, moist silence and the nauseating comprehension that the power had gone out in the night. My hangover was slamming into my body like dirty water on a dock piling. Relentless soft knocking on my cerebral cortex. I sat up in the oppressive darkness, realizing that thanks to the lack of window in my room, there was never going to be a way to tell if it was morning or midnight. I knew it wasn’t midnight, of course, because at midnight, I was at Nap Bar, drinking some god-awful fruity shot out of a shaker tin, poured from two inches above my tilted head by some British guy named Stu. Stu had only moments before written “the code” down my arm in Sharpie ink.

The code was on everyone’s arm in the bar. Sharpie ink was running in small rivulets in the heat, all of us laughing at each person’s admissions, now part of some bonkers tribe on a beach … just to the left of pretty much nowhere.

The code on my arm was marked “single” at the top. Apparently we all needed to get that tidbit out of the way up front. Then, various other things about me were announced down my bicep in stick figures and little symbols. Some of the things I admitted to I won’t divulge this blog, but let’s just say you could honestly tell a lot about the person next to you by reading the stick figures Stu had scribbled in response to a battery of truth-or-dare questions.

“Have you ever sent naked photos of yourself to someone,” for example, was signified by a tiny camera. The camera my arm was slashed through with an X. My mother – should she ever choose to read this blog – will no doubt breath a sigh of relief. I have two rules. One, I will never get a boyfriend or husband’s name tattoo’d on my body. Two, I will never send someone naked photographs. I have way too many botched past relationships (including one restraining order) to know better.

The town where I got this hangover is called Sihanoukville. Pronounced “See Ah Nook” it’s named for King Norodom Sihanouk, who was really loved by the people of Cambodia. Sadly, he passed away this past October.  One-hundred days ago yesterday, to be exact, and all across the country people honored him with cremation ceremonies, featuring giant processionals, thousands of strands of tiny gold lights on all the temples and fireworks exploding over the ocean for hours upon hours. There is also a city-wide ban on music. Which is one reason we were playing some dumb game with Sharpie’s in the bar. Last night was a strange mixture of celebration and mourning, reverence and music-less revelry.

I’m living in this town for the next 36 days, working for Letuscreate.org – a small school for Cambodian children in the region.

Everyone working for the school lives at “The House,” which much like “the code” is hilarious. There are five of us right now, and basically it’s like the Real World – if you picked five backpackers to live in a house … and if that was the total opposite of the Real World houses.

You enter by walking down a very narrow alleyway with corrugated metal walls and razor wire. A jumble of Cambodian homes face a back courtyard made from yellow concrete. Our back door leads into the kitchen, complete with a small fridge, smaller oven and one washing machine. Wet laundry hangs over the stairwell, dripping on your head as you go up. I live on the ground floor in my own room. The two British girls – Ellie and Jade – reside on the top floor, near the common room that looks out over Serendipity Beach Road (read: Main Street) and the sea in the distance. Oliver – whoever he is – arrives tonight. Autumn – the American expat who lives in Australia – is on the second floor and Mary, the Cambodian house mother, is approximately 23, and comes in and out when she’s not tending bar down the street. We get half off if we drink in her bar. She’s my kind of house mother.

My hangover and The House hate each other right now. I’ve moved out to the dive shop/restaurant/bar in front, where there’s a generator. And hot coffee. And, most importantly, a big ass pancake to soak up cheap tequila from last night. At some point, I’m going to have to figure out how to get “the code” off my arm. Maybe the ocean. Maybe scrubbing it with fingernail polish remover. Maybe I’ll just let it ride.