Sept. 12th
So I’m sitting in Sihanoukville, wondering what to do next. I can’t volunteer in Thailand anymore, so my options seem like they are either to wrap up the trip in a week or two, or work in Sihanoukville. I sat on it for a day, talked about it with the friends I had made that worked at the hostel. I was warming to the idea of working at this place, but had serious reservations for hanging around for a couple months. I also wanted to stay in the region because Harley would be finishing his Peace Corps service in Cameroon in December and would be coming to Bangkok in early December. I had missed a chance to see him in Africa, and now our paths could possibly cross again.
Then the next day my plans started to be made for me. Back in May and June, I spent a lot of my free time in France applying for grants and a variety of photo competitions and galleries. I had mostly forgotten about them as I tended to be pretty unsuccessful. Then I got word that I had actually won a competition. It was definitely one of the most obscure ones that I had completely forgotten about. In fact, the reward was not even cash, but a trip to Bangalore, India to join a conference called “The Art and Joy of Wood”. Basically, it is a conference put on by the UN’s Forestry and Agriculture Organization, and various Indian government ministries to promote…well, wood. They had a competition for photo essays that were related to the theme “living with wood”. I submitted a collection of photos of the Bozo fishing tribe in Mali that showed how they use wood in their daily lives.
I felt that this could provide a problem and an opportunity. The conference was still more than a month away, and I wasn’t sure if I could afford to stay here for that long. I asked the folks in charge if I could arrange my ticket to fly me from Bangkok to Kolkata, and then back to Seattle, as that would be cheaper for me, and cheaper for them than a plain roundtrip from Seattle. And they agreed! This was huge for me. This meant, well, it meant my next three months were taken care of. I wouldn’t need to pay for a flight home, which was saving me close to $800 and I would spend most of the next three months in India, which would save me even more money. It was also an incredible opportunity to finally get back to Kolkata after visiting it exactly five years earlier. Ever since leaving India, it had been my plan to go back immediately after college. My plan was put on hold for a year because I just didn’t have the money. Then when I did have the money, Jonathan came and derailed my plans two months before leaving and changed the trip to West Africa. I had a lot of mixed emotions when I changed my plans, and I felt that I had let some people down. My mother has been saving for a long time to come to India with me, and I knew she was at least a little disappointed that it would be an even longer delay before she got to go to India with me. She also has a couple of friends that would give me money on occasion (usually part of yard sale earnings) knowing that I was saving money to go back to do volunteer in India. Now I was going to redeem myself for bailing on them a year earlier. And within days, Mama had said she would make time to come visit me in India while I was there. Furthermore, I would be set up to see Harley when he landed in Bangkok in December, making up for not making it to him for a visit in Cameroon.
Things were really coming together quickly, and I was no longer even thinking of volunteering in Thailand. Plus, I was celebrating my one-year anniversary with my trip. It had taken me to more places, adventures and experiences than I could have possibly imagined as I stepped onto the plane at Seatac a year before. Needless to say, this night would be a party.
But then it was back to business. I had to get out of Sihanoukville again. After just a few days of being back, I had to leave again to go apply for my Indian visa. Looks like my Thailand visa was a waste of $35 bucks, but I really didn’t care that much now. I took another bus back to Phnom Penh, and started work on my visa for India. Although the Thailand one was more complicated than expected, this one would inevitably be more difficult. Indian bureaucracy, wherever you are in the world, can be described as diabolical, and there is no reason why the embassy in Cambodia would be any exception. In most western countries, the embassies have outsourced their visa process, presumably to increase efficiency and customer service. Word on the traveler street, though, was that the Indian embassy in Phnom Penh was notoriously inquisitive, and had a history of simply not issuing visas if you had made any errors on the paperwork, or giving you a shorter visa than you had applied for simply because they didn’t feel you really needed six months. They also don’t seem to have a standard turnaround time, but you can count on at least four business days.
I checked back into my now regular digs in Boeng Kak, where I watched as the lake became less of a lake, and the slum became more of a destruction site. The next morning, I rented a bike and rode to the embassy. It seemed that since my map had been printed, the Indian embassy had moved because it was nowhere to be found. I went to the nearby Vietnamese embassy and asked for directions, because, you know, embassy people must hang out and stuff, right? No? Well, they seemed to know, and they pointed me a couple blocks away and around the corner.
I went through a thorough search and pat-down before being admitted into the embassy. I had come prepared with all the proper documents, but somehow I had forgotten a pen to fill out the application with. Of course they wouldn’t give me one there, so I went back to the security officers, and they were nice enough to let me borrow one. The line was long, but overall the process was not unbearable. The official was far more friendly than I had anticipated. I had heard that they might ask endless amounts of suspicious questions, but he was very relaxed. He looked over the application, asked a couple of questions, and then asked if Wednesday would be ok to pick it up. I asked if it was possible to get it earlier, and said, “Yes, we can have it by Tuesday if you prefer.” Seriously? It was that easy, and I even was able to get it a day earlier than expected?
So I turned right back around and hopped on the next bus back to Sihanoukville to wait for a few days. I kept going back and forth between Phnom Penh and there because I felt that with only a couple of free days at a time, I wouldn’t be able to really get out and see the country. Plus it was actually a little cheaper than staying in Phnom Penh. I was also going to see about doing a few days of work. It seemed that the hostel, Utopia, was willing to take people on for pretty short stays, so maybe I could save some money.
I spent the weekend in Sihanoukville (as if anybody even knows what day it is) but went back to Phnom Penh on Monday night. I had to get to the embassy early in the morning, not to pick up my passport, but instead to drop it off. Usually you leave your passport at the embassy, then pick it up later, with the visa inside. This one, though, required your application to be approved before handing over your passport, and then you would have to come back later in the day to pick it up with the visa inside, making a total of three visits to the embassy.
In my time between the morning visit and the afternoon visit, I rode my bike around the city, had some street food and went to some book stores. Cambodia is actually a great country for books. There are tons of shops selling used books from travelers, as well as plenty of pirated photocopies of books for cheap. I was able to get the India Lonely Planet for about $8. Sure, it was printed on thicker paper, making it about twice as thick and heavy, and it was missing the index, but it was much better than buying a brand new one for four times the price. The funniest alteration to the book was the “edition” on the back cover. They were trying to make this 2009 book look as new as possible, so it said “11th edition September 2012”. It would have been impressive if I got a copy so new it wouldn’t come out for a year, but this wasn’t the case.
Back at the embassy, I waited in line, and when I went to inspect my brand new Indian visa, I was glad that I had been granted the full six months, but surprised to see that it read “single entry”. At most embassies for India, they automatically give you either a “multiple” or “double entry” visa. I asked why mine was single, and the official responded by saying I didn’t ask for double entry. I told him there was nowhere on the form to specify. He asked for the passport back, closed his window and walked away for a minute. He seemed annoyed by me, but when he gave my passport back, I saw he had crossed out, with pen, the word “single” and replaced it with “double”. It looked incredibly unofficial, but I accepted it, glad I could get anything. It seemed my chances of visiting another country while in India were slowly diminishing.
Now that I had my visa, I could safely buy my ticket to Kolkata. I bought the cheapest flight I could find (Air Asia of course) for as soon as possible. It was leaving in just a few days from Bangkok. Now I had to consider what I would do with my remaining days. I could go straight to Bangkok, which takes about a day, wait in Phnom Penh for a couple days, or book it down to Sihanoukville for one last Southeast Asian hurrah. I decided on the last option. A couple of the friends I had made there were having their birthday parties and some of their friends were coming to town. When I got back, everyone was surprised to see me, since I had already said my goodbyes, assuming that I would go straight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. I was in good spirits though, and felt like I had had a good time in Cambodia, was definitely gearing up for India.
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