Some things in Cambodia are just ploddingly slow while the world has passed them by just like this cyclo pedicab. The world's technology has passed Cambodia by like the cyclo driver has been passed by the speeding motodup taxi here.

I experienced a remarkable contradiction to that here that left my mouth hanging. Normally every tourist, visitor, ex-pat or simply foreigner is invited, expected, encouraged and even required to have evacuation insurance in case of an emergency. What that means is if you get in a cyclo vs. motodup accident and break a bone you should sooner trust one of the local spiritual healers over the "Western" physicians here to set it. Instead you buy insurance specifically to get you on the soonest jet to Bangkok where some of the world's best and least expensive meidcal care can be had with a personal escort from clinic to emergency room to in-hospital suite at the Bangkok Medical Hospital, a 12 acre campus sure to set every medical tourist's saliva glands to overwork on sight.

On Sunday after church I took my glasses off momentarily, and when I picked them up the earpiece came off in my hands. If you have ever seen me without my glasses (which I doubt anyone has) you will know that I walk into telephone poles without them. I was bereft. I hadn't brought a back up pair other than my darkest-dark-for-the-brightest-summer-day-on-the-North-Shore-sunglasses. So, a careful not-too-desperate call to Charlie Dittmeier, the director of the Deaf Development Program produced a volley of suggestions from other ex-pats. I followed what I thought was best and closest to me. At 8:30 a.m. promptly I was at the front door of Giant Optical (that's the name---pronouned in English.) The saleswomen were courteous to a tea, note the deliberate spelling since that's what they offered me when I walked in the door. I explained my dilemma, including my nausea while trying to wear my one earpiece high prescription lenses. They smiled, courteously and even allowed me to ask them questions about the Khmer language of them and put up with my multiple mispronunciations of "A nii th'lai bon maan?" (How much does that cost?) In that sentence there are five vowels that don't exist in English in addition to a breathless t sound followed by a breathed h and a glottal stop and another consonant in the word th'lai. More importantly they figured out a solution to my dilemma and offered to have my lenses back in new wireless frames in five hours!

So, I'm wearing my same lenses sans broken frame screwed onto a new pair of ear pieces and new bridge. All from a country that can't set broken bones or in the case of my heat rash..Can't diagnose it before it got infected.... but that's another story.