Hump Day in Cambodia

Happy Wednesday from Siem Reap

I have been quite busy here, thus the lack of recent posts. Many of the Cambodian doctors are receiving their pediatric advance life support class taught by a bunch of Australian docs and so the foreigners are having to work double time. So I am in the outpatient department with my Australian counterpart Lee who speaks fluent Khmer (her parents escaped the Khmer Rouge in the 70's) and my buddy Marvin. Marvin is 70 and the son of Polish immigrants who grew up in NYC but has been for as a pediatrician for the Indian Health Service for the last 32 years and spent some time in Nam during the war as a doc. So he's kind of seen it all ("Were you in the shit?" "Yeah, I was in the shit"). When he says that he is floored by the craziness that walks into that clinic each day (malaria, dengue fever, undiagnosed congenital heart disease, crazy ass rashes) then I feel a little better each time my jaw hits the floor.

Our new entertainment in town is this British dentist, Paul. He's in his 50's and is a dead ringer for Terrence Stamp. If you were to look up dry English wit in the dictionary there would be picture of his face and he does that thing where he's talking at a normal volume and then starts yelling. I love it! He is semi-retired and lives in Phuket with his 19 year old girlfriend and comes to Cambodia every year to do volunteer work - last year he was here for 6 months! I cannot figure this dude out but we're going out for drinks (something tells me he can drink) tonight so I will do some recon.

I got a massage from a five foot tall blind dude over the weekend. It was great. Siem Reap has not one, not two, but three massage palors staffed soley by the blind. I have to say $4 for a hour is pretty good. The insane part of it was that the guy was so short that he just jumped up on the table and sat on my back and went to town.

On my first night in town, which was a Monday, Varun took me to this bar for a beer and I thought it was funny that they were playing "The Killing Fields" on the big screen TV. We went there again this Monday for a beer and there it was, "The Killing Fields" on TV. Dith Pran and Sam Waterston, John Malkevich and Julian Sands. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing movie, but do you need to show it weekly in a tourist bar? I don't expect to go to the Warsaw ghetto for a beer and see "The Pianist" playing on some big screen. Monday Night is "The Killing Fields" Night. See Pol Pot turn back Cambodia to Year Zero and systematically kill 4 million people. That's just depressing.

A lot of people have written me concerning any GI distress I have encountered. Thank you all for your concern, it seems genunine - I am quite confident that somewhere back in New England there is a Mike Spaeder dysentery pool. Well, knock on wood, I have done okay while managing to eat a lot of Khmer food. The one wise decision I made was to go vegetarian when Roy (who did not) and I ate at the little (dirt)roadside cafe on our tour of the temples. I correctly surmised that no electricity = no refrigeration = bad news. I was proved correct by Roy's subsequent illness, although you can all rest easy that he's okay now.

Well, wish me luck tonight at the bar with a bunch of Australians and one crazy Brit. I will try and make us proud. USA USA. mike