Kampot: Part Two

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Despite having misled Kamala and Samon's Village about my motorbike riding skills, everything went just fine. On Day #1 we drove up to Bokor National Park, home to the old French Bokor Hill Station. The trip was incredibly beautiful and it was my first look at some real greenery in Cambodia. Rainy ... Read More

When Koh Ta Kiev Koh Ta Kicked Me Out

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I'm going to follow up the bummer post about genocide with a nice story about sleeping in a tent! On a beach! The first part of this will be about the island, the end will be about how the island got rid of me. After a few days in Phnom Penh I hopped on a little van headed south to Sihanoukville. I ... Read More

Phnom Penh: Part One

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NOTE: This post is lengthy and will be boring if you prefer my stories about eating bugs. If you’re not interested, skip to the photos. BUT! I will say that the history of Cambodia and some of the things I learned during my first visit to Phnom Penh are so much of the reason that I’ve loved it! ... Read More

In the Mountains: Part Two

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In addition to eating the meat of "animal killed in forest," the best part of Mondulkiri has been spending two days with the Elephant Valley Project. The Elephant Valley Project (EVP) is an ecotourism project run by the Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment (ELIE) which is dedicated to ... Read More

In the Mountains: Part One

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For the past four days I've been in the mountains of Cambodia. Sen Monorom is the capital of Mondulkiri Province and home to all sorts of outdoor activities in the jungle. Mondulkiri is also home to the Bunong Hill Tribe who who are a minority in Cambodia, but actually make up the majority in this ... Read More

How to Spend a Night in Battambang

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I am SO behind here and I apologize to those of you that have been sitting at the screen WAITING for my next post. In the time you haven't heard from me I have been having BBQs with ex-pats, riding motorbikes over snakes, exploring rusty crashed Chinese ships and snuggling puppies with ... Read More

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  • Last year I bought a planner and a bunch of cool pens and today I threw the freaking thing away. It was sitting there unused all this time except when I had something planned that I suspected would definitely, probably, mostly happen. For example, Thanksgiving and dentist appointments that had already occurred. I finally decided that using my Ocean State Job Lots (👋🏼 New Englanders) $2 lined notebook (which is probably overpriced) still makes me an alright human. It’s been the best part of my day aside from the video of the skeleton puppet dancing to Chubby Checker that @hdstarin sent me. Throw your planners away. Keep the pens. Use cheap notebooks. Eat chocolate chips. Don’t let anyone tell you not to “sass” them. Literally the only advice I feel qualified to give in this season of my life.
  • Five years ago today (give or take) I walked out out of my New York City corporate job for the last time. It was 70 percent incredibly exhilarating and 25 percent sad and about 5 percent surprising. I’d known for months that the day would come. . Within 30 minutes I was hanging with two pals, within 40 minutes @starktransformation had called to say she was pregnant and the next day @theretropolitan took the day off to show me my first Elvira movie. At that point I kinda knew it would be okay. . Four years ago today (give or take) I woke up in a tent in a forest in Colorado after having a terrible dream about that job. And then it all felt fine. Somehow that dream exactly a year later allowed me to process the whole thing and let it go. . In that time I’ve worked in San Francisco, Denver and most recently back in New York City. I taught English in Vietnam, fell in love with Cambodia, started photographing post offices with my dad’s old Nikon F, traveled through Guatemala and spent a collective four months in India on two separate occasions which included being a passenger for hours and hours and hours on the back of a Royal Enfield in the Himalayas. I applied and was selected to go to Israel with 49 women and I learned a whole lot of things that the program probably had no intention of teaching me. . I got a little healthier, ran a half marathon and was able to devote weeks at a time to being with my family in Florida. . But let’s be clear. I also spent more days than I can count sitting around not being able to start anything, crossing off things like “wake up” on my to-do list. I guess with all of that I became more clear about what I can do. I got quieter and louder. . Every October 3rd since then I’ve noted where I am and taken inventory. I was in a tent in Colorado (twice!), I was in India, I was in Portland en route to an amazing work project in Chicago and I was in England. Every single inventory tells me I’m better than I was five years ago even if the day-to-day doesn’t always say that.
  • In March I had a feeling I might need something to occupy my time (see past post) so I registered for a half-marathon in Bristol. It was the only race I could find that was a) more than a 10k, b) less than a marathon, c) involved a trip and d) wasn’t in Australia. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ And then I didn’t train for it. I did lots of track laps in Boulder for four days with big intentions to increase and get sweaty. Instead I found out I really like cycling in a dark room with sweaty people and I did that more than running. 👋🏼@jibecycling. Then my gym was doing construction and I complained about the hammering and couldn’t show my face after they refunded me for two months. Then I found out about the Lyme thing and took a whole bunch of antibiotics and worried instead of training. Then I camped in Italy and ate pasta instead of training. Then things got down to the wire and my hip started to hurt. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Then there was a month left and I went to Florida for a visit. Instead of running, I helped @hdstarin clean out a storage unit, looked through my old childhood school work and ate paella. I ran a 10k last weekend and my hip was healed but my knee hurt. I went to acupuncture twice and then one more cycling class. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ And here I am now with a bag full of Body Glide, those gels you eat during a race and a playlist for Sunday. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I considered bagging the whole thing, and while I don’t recommend running a long distance with inadequate training, I can wholeheartedly get behind hilariously ill advised endeavors undertaken with intention. In the end, maybe I’ll have flown across an ocean to walk 13 miles listening to Arianna Grande and Soulja Boy. If you know me, you know I’ve traveled further for dumber things. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Ask me about getting my ears cleaned by a blind man at the banks of the Ganges.
  • I have a bunch of fears, but the biggest one lately is that my fear of fear will keep me from doing the things that are the most me. So, one of my biggest fears is fear. . If we run into each other in twenty years and I haven’t driven a car carrying a bed over the border to another country, do me a favor and tell me I’m a dummy. . The bed can be a blanket on the back seat of my Jeep. That counts. But it doesn’t count if I don’t have a knife and a paper map. . #behindtheshot: we drove up the Mt. Washington auto road on a rainy cloudy day listening to the guided CD tell us how magnificent the views were. We ran into 5 lost hikers who didn’t have a way down and one of them jammed his sweaty butt into the backseat with me to get to the bottom of the mountain. He almost left his Powerade but I made him take it with him. We ended up not camping.
  • A few months ago I resigned from my job. It was a great job that I mostly loved. I loved who I spent my days with and I loved the idea of the whole thing. But at some point I started to lose the plot. My life got a lot weird and I had a feeling I was in the wrong place. Physically, emotionally and geographically. Things felt wrong. There were mornings where sun streamed inside (that’s my favorite) and the giant tree outside was leafy green and I still felt a little mismatched, misplaced and sad. Not enough to intensely feel it, but enough to find it after time. . The day of my resignation letter wasn’t planned. It just all fell into (or out of?) place and I hit send. As strange as it felt, it was clear that it wasn’t the right situation for me anymore and, because of that, it wasn’t the right situation for the little company. . It’s hard to accept the privilege of being able to leave a job in a world where having the benefits that come with one are also a privilege. It makes me feel a little gross. . But in addition to some other wonky things related to it, my job became who I was. My work failures felt like personal and human failures. My successes were how I measured all of my self worth. None of that was really true for who I wanted to be, though. I wanted to be a kind friend. A person who paid attention, listened and remembered important things for people. I wasn’t any of those things. . And so, here I am a little over three months later. I’ve visited friends I haven’t seen in five years, I’ve called friends in the middle of the day just to check in. I’ve sent birthday cards, postcards to say hello and I’ve brought ashwagandah into my life. I cut out gluten. I brought back meat. I got rid of half of all the sentimental shit I’ve been lugging around because living in the now is a thing. . I’m trying to be myself. Some nights I can’t sleep because I wonder if I should have tried harder to appreciate more. The answer to that is yes because the answer to that is always yes. But, I also know the decision was the right one that day for tons of reasons. Even if, on some rainy and dumb days, it doesn’t feel that way.
  • Last week I went to New York for a teensy amount of time. I’m still trying to figure out what that place means to me and how much of my feelings about the city are actually feelings about myself. But! This time I stayed in an Airbnb that used to be the “crash pad” (listing’s phrase, not mine) of the Blue Oyster Cult. It was filled with plants and tapestries and sound machines that let me go to bed listening to crickets and I felt more like myself than I have in a long while. . I found a yoga place, I had a nice long phone call with one of the best people while eating ramen at a table by myself. I got some time with the exact people I needed to be be around in the exact moments I needed to be around them and I actually felt a little sad to leave for a minute. . My footprint was small. I stayed local. I was reasonable and I stretched in the morning. . So, thanks New York. We can be occasional pals, but not keep-in-touch friends yet. There’s a cowbell joke somewhere, but it’ll ruin the vibe I’m shooting for here.
  • The day after I climbed to the top of Lion Rock in Hong Kong I packed my things for a long flight but didn’t have water to take my Fish Oil. So I stored the fishy pills in my bra for safe keeping, which is where I store everything for safe keeping. Except they were so safe that I forgot about them until the next day when I realized that the person next to me smelled like the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo. . Except it wasn’t the person next to me, it was me. With no access to a washing machine for a while, I tried everything to get rid of the smell, including half a bottle of lavender essential oil. But it was too late for us. Me and my clothes. The smell had permeated into everything around me, leaving me a half lavender, half cod mess. . So, pals and buds, take your fish oil when you think of it. Live in the now. Don’t delay Omega-3s. And hike up mountains. This one is cool if you don’t mind views of buildings on buildings on buildings.
  • At the end of Lost, Jack is talking to Kate near the airport and he kisses her and says they were never supposed to leave. She cries and says “yes we were” and gets into her car. Jack is left standing in the dark with his dirty beard saying, “we have to go back!” to nobody. His voice is tinged with a desperate, sad, horrified “what am I actually thinking and saying” tone. . Pretend I’m Jack and Kate is, let’s say, my toothbrush and all my dirty-still-smell-like-mud-and-gasoline-shirts. . That’s how I feel about India. At the end of the day my entire face was caked in mud and bug wings from trucks and their Taj Mahal sized wheels. But, whether I like it or not, I feel like Jack.

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