Same Same, But Different

Same Same, But Different is what EVERY merchant, bartender, and waitress says, all the time. Sometimes it is completely out of context, but sometimes it makes sense. If you are walking down in the night market and there are a couple hundred food stalls you are going to get all these stall owners coming up to you shoving menus in your face. The menus are basically exactly the same, so why their stall versus another stall? No reason. So I guess all they can really say is Same Same, but Different.

There are also street urchins who are as cute as a button and even at the age of 6 and 7 they can yuk it up with Americans. We surmise that if you put a Cambodian and an American 6 year old in the same room the Cambodia would run circles around the American in terms of sociability. But these urchins aren't rapping with us just to rap with us. They want dollar dollar bills. So this is how it goes.

Urchin: You buy my book. One Dollar.
Me: No thank you.
Urch: Whyyyy you no buy my book. One dollar.
Me: No, I'm not buying anything.
Urch: You no buy. Cost you three dollar to no buy.
Me: No.
Urch: You buy for your girlfriend.
Me: I don't have a girlfriend.
Urch: You know why you no have a girlfriend?
Me: No?
Urch: Because you no buy her my book.

It's also interesting because they all have the same tone and cadence when they speak to us. I guess that's just passed down from generation to generation. They'll try to pull all kinds of facts out hoping you will buy. ''Obama is President" "Joe Biden is Vice President", "You buy my book if I tell you capital of Burkina Faso?". It's kind of funny at first, less funny at 10am when it's hot and you are hung over, and exponentially less funny at around 4pm when you've sweat through every single article of clothing and you've had this conversation one hundred times already. At this point when I get hassled and they say where are you from my answer is ''I'm from Burkina Faso and I don't have a girlfriend because I don't buy your books" and they laugh because we know their game, and they know we know, and it's cute and funny.

Lastly before I sign out I just want to briefly mention the tuk-tuk drivers. The tuk tuks are motorbikes that have a little carriage hitched to the back. There are a million of these guys and they are yearning for business but almost always there is no reason to use them because everything is so close. We paid a tuk tuk driver to let us drive ourselves home in a tuk tuk last night which was actually quite amusing. But anyway, our standard response to "Sir, tuk tuk?" has been "No, walk walk", which inevitably leads to the follow up question, "You want massage boom boom". I'm very ticklish, so I'm not even so keen on massages, although I will get one at some point because they are brutally inexpensive, but I'm not trying to have some random Cambodian boom boom. If by "massage boom boom" they meant a massage followed up by an ice cream sundae, then yeah, let's talk about that, but sadly they are talking about strange Cambodian boom boom with chicks that may or may not be lady-boys. I don't know what their success rate is with this, but I imagine it's pretty low. What I did pay $3 for, surprisingly, was to put my feet in a little tub and have these mini-pirhanas nibble at my feet for 15 minutes. They were actually garra rufa fish and they did a phenomenal job of making my feet smooth and silky again. It tickled and it was weird and a little creepy and definitely gross, and suffice to say I'm not doing that again.

Heading to Laos in a few hours which I hope is in no way Same Same but Different than Cambodia.