Bamboo Banga.

Elephant Trekking, unexpected mudslides, eating spiders and scorpians, typhoons, monsoons, and janky ass bus rides on the borders of cambodia and thailand have been on my daily to-do list and routine's these past 2 weeks.

Hello, I am in CamBODIA, land and home of the unfamiliar smell of rotten dun, roached cockroaches and mopeds. Yes.

mm.

The only regret I have so far coming here is that I didn't blog everyday about all the crazy shit that I've done over the duration of 2 weeks, but thats where my moleskin comes in play.

Everytime I come back to Cambodia, the situations always get's worse and worse; in especially this year. What the fuck have I been doing? huh huh?? HUH? .. Well, wrapped in a banana leaf nutshell, I have been working with the UN with their Border's Relief Operation for Khmer Refugees with Nat (backpacking; in it's most literal sense).. and this shit has got me WRENCHED. (I help with mostly child trafficking protection and emergency relief needs) Also, on top of this, I have been working with 50x70 poster awareness pepods.


it says please give all weapons from here on.

I first started out in Kampot (very south of Cambodia) and worked my way up all the way to Siem Pang, just on the very tip of the border between Cambodia and Laos. All this were a combustling combination via row boat, power boat, water jets, bus, jet, and train. I basically didn't know what I got myself into until the 2nd day I was out here. Alan, our the head of our UN unit, told us to carry a revolver. He said, ".. just in case." We quietly carried these little tiny killer's in our backpack while we were all pissing/shitting our pants. Thankfully, we didn't use it; fucking crazy! I would't even take it out of my backpack because i was so frazzled the fact that I had one.

Bamboo Train


the restarant suggested that we pick which ever one we thought was the juiciest.. yummmmmmm


Kampong Chnanng


nearby dentist in Kampong


busy life in Prek Pak


kids from i to i!! (I know some of them from last summer)


monkssssss


yo wassup?!


tame water before the massive monsoon waves


before I almost died


beef, pork, lamb, goat, lamb, dog, cat, bear


typical grocery store


huts


Kambot hospital where we stayed for 2 days

Tonle Bet Girl



aftermath of typhoon in Pothisat

I wake up to new cities everyday and I am arranged different tasks everyday like distributing sandbags to the poorest villages in the Kampot to finding kids on the street selling themselves and taking them out of brothels and into educational orphanages.

Day by day, I have been doing this and its been one HELL of a fucking ride. I sleep everyday, completely jaded and exhausted emotionally (from what I do during the day) yet nostalgic because I miss everyone at hommmee. But then I feel good when I help so it's all it's worth, of course.

Realization# 34:
I realized that traveling alone makes you yearn for home. A lot.

During all of this, I had absolutely no internet connection nor a phone to call to western civilization. When I was in Siem Reap, thankfully, while looking for some delicious coconut juice, I found myself a broken down bodega with a small little window 97 cubicle with internet access. You have no idea, it was like a miracle or something. I cried and peed all over my panties. I needed to talk to my family at home so bad. So after checking, I found out that everyone thought I was dead; which was no surprise.

I mean, hell, of course they call this a "once in a lifetime" experience, but I've done this last year.. but still I feel like this trip was absolutely, without a doubt, no questions asked, craziest experience of my LIFE. I don't often ride on boats when there is a dangerous typhoon, eat fried pig brains and walk on old untouched landmines. There were moments where I find myself saying, "wow, i'm going to die." But then I realize that the people have to deal with this everyday.. and kudos to them living life as it is. God bless them. yeeeee.

Speaking of cheese,

Before I left for the jungle, I left CDG in Nippon, not permanetly but temporary. I told dumb drunk french tampon, or sophie, that my time at CDG ends here. (They gave me an option of leaving whenever) and tampon told me that she kinda wanted me to freelance for them until they find a new illustrator person expected in december, so of course, duhh I was like FUCK NO!! Why would I ever want to work under YOUR stank ass tampon ass?

jk.

I said yes.


my gaylo's


peen's


rem (shaven) and his friend luke


cdg's cracked out rooftop

Will (maxi pads) Yamadadadada in Hiroshima


asakusa blessing with hikaru and hatsumii


we couldn't find our way out.


nevermind.


typical straight boy's room


oyeshee eyes creamuuuu


(Maxi) " will" yamada's soju exploded in his backpack


kids


prada exhibit in yokohama with will tsai and company


visited the other gayylo in taipei


we went to tamsui and did dumb things.. like take this picture.
Also, I was in Rome and Paris for a wee bit, basically attached to mr. filip pagowski, creator of the ugly deformed CDG heart and "cousin" the green, as fugh, heart. No, fo' real, he's a cool dude, I respect him. He's nice. I saw stratton for 3 seconds and saw DORETIO (circa last summer italian dreamboat). which was great, really. Too bad he turned gay...

jk.

no he has a girlfriend now. whatever dude. I wish I had more time with my boo in Europe but CDG gave me no free time. Sorry babyboo, no hard feelings kk?

I returned to Taipei to see my girlfriend Jason and went back to Tokyo for 1.5 seconds and went straight for the jungle.

I'm leaving Siem Pang tomorrow and Tokyo is calling me.

Peace, Love and Spider,
Tiffa

Whistle for will

this past week for me, closely and vaguely has been an emotional rollercoaster.. surprisingly, i had the resistency to hold it in myself to not blast anyone with one my horrible PMS tantrums and what not and just blab about it with my mother.

This weekend was cute though, quite pleasant actaully, didn't really go out to dance or anything but just held it in quietly with the best's. On saturday, me and jason went to the much anticipated Hot Chip concert and it was alright, the location itself (terminal 5) was amazing.. spacious, nicely air-conditioned, and a nice mix of crowd.. but the hot chip themselves, were.. as me and jason would put it, "mah mah-deh" which means.. "eh" in mandarin. it was OK.. i thought they were going to be better.. but eh. We stood up in the 3rd floor ring which was nice because a) we weren't moshing up against hot sweaty people b) there was some cuties near us and c) we were close to the empanadas (ha).

overall, i would give them 3 strawberries out of 5. mm hmm yes.


in terms of work load this week.. it has been ok. not too bad... no all nighters just yet.. but as stacey would say, it would be the "calm before the storm"... i think typhoon. because it just comes out of no where and it just knocks you out of the loop because you don't know when the HELL its coming.

so on sunday, after korean bbq, my stomach was feeling a little queezy but i had no idea what the hell it was because there was no way that i could have gotten food poisoning after 10 minutes of eating something bad.. usually it hits you the next day or like 5+ hours in the digestive system.. so the next day.. i still wasn't feeling so good.. and i decided to go eat yaffa and the morning after that..

(brace your little sour stomachs)

i puked basically my guts out. it got to the point where i had nothing left in my stomach to puke out that i was dry heaving the entire time.

it. was. horrible. it was food poisoning to the max. I don't think its korean bbq because everyone else was fine (with an exception of cat) but i think it was what i ate at Yaffa.. with a combination of something i hate before korean bbq..

never again will i eat the yaffa chicken white wine fetticini. never again.

macaroni.

so i was thinking other day about my final concept for my motion class.. and i've been really taking it all very seriously..I realized that CD students always have som kind of limitation to what their topic/subject is because there is no way to convey a design without being extremely blunt and obvious with it.. because everything is so graphic.. also.. CD teachers usually always give us subjects to design for (campaign, etc. etc.) in which in many cases, we can't even have a concept.. just the design layout of it.. BLAH! so..

.... i finally came out with the idea of doing a historical event video... but then i was thinking ok, since i know a fair amount of the nanjing massacre, why don't i do that? the hidden holocaust.. but then.. from that .. i drove into the idea of the Khmer Rouge Attack.. because i know so much more about it. I dont know how this will work out. but i hope it will.. its definately out of my comfort zone, doing something completely political and turn it into an animation. its going to be tough. but im excited.





..

also.
my friend allison showed me this flickr site with this amazing photographer who takes photos of homeless people in san francisco.. i thought it was really cool.. considering what their stories are.










ya

peace, love, and taco bell,
Tiffa