how much does it cost? i'll buy it.

This past weekend was a beautiful one.  It rained, sheets of rain, Friday night, clearing the way for a mostly humid-free weekend.  Now we're spending some days in the capital for training, as well as various other meetings and workshops and general busy times, which usually involves the wearing of professional clothes for at least eleven hours.  We're talking an ankle length skirt with a collared shirt, for the record. 

On Saturday, we'll hit seven months in Cambodia, which feels a bit surreal- even weirder than six months.  I'm finally reaching a place where I feel like all those observations I've jotted down about life in this little country are ready to be put into coherent words and stories and shared.  

One of the first observations I made, and still make nearly daily, are generally some amount of "in Cambodia" versus "in America."

In America, it was a given that my hair would be worn down.  In Cambodia, it's a miracle when I can leave my hair down for more than an hour.

In America, it could be a day tipping the thermometer at triple digits, but there was always the sweet respite of indoors.  Oh temperature control.  In Cambodia, every day throws the thermometer into highs and levels of humidity arrive that seemingly no one could live through day after day, and there is never the sanity of air conditioner or temperature control available.  Relief arrives via a cool breeze drifting through the leaves as you take a moment under the shade of a tree.

In America, safe and cold water is almost always free and available.  In Cambodia, safe can only be bought and cold is never guaranteed.

In America, you can run out of butter, toilet paper, and garlic and purchase all three in a one stop shop.  In Cambodia, you have to buy things at completely separate shops. Hell, in Cambodia, you don't buy toilet paper because you don't use it.  You only buy butter (real butter) in the capital.  Garlic, though, is used in everything.

And then, finally.  In America, the price is the price is the price.  In Cambodia, the price is the inflated number the seller says to see how much or little you understand about culture here.  It's the starting point.

Becuase, here, we bargain.  And it's all charming and fun at first.  And then it's stress inducing. And then it's annoying.  And then frustrating.  And then downright maddening.

Why, oh why, can't the price of my tuk tuk ride just be a fair price? Why do I have to convince you that me paying a dollar is far better than paying a dollar twenty five?  Actually, why do I have to convince you that I'm NOT going to pay five dollars, which was the first number you said?  Why do you have to comment on how far it is, or how much Khmer I know or don't know?  Why do your friends have to crowd around us while we're negotiating and laugh and tease and cajole and tell me that a dollar is not a good price and blah blah blah.

Now I understand, bargaining is what it is.  A fact of life.  It's inevitable and happening every moment, and if I greet it with a smile instead of a frown, it goes much better.

But I still wish there was just one damn price.