The Dead zone

I feel like I’m living in some Stephen King novel.

Maybe more like Groundhog Day, the movie with Bill Murray. I wake up every day and realize it was just like the last. They all have started blurring together. I turned on the TV this morning and they wre showing the Pope's arrival in the USA. Just like they were showing it yesterday. Super freaky.

It’s New Years over hear, as you know if you’ve been reading my blog. And new year over hear is celebrated with family, not in the streets. So that means everyone goes home to their village or hangs around the house and visits.

That means no one goes to work.

That means everything is closed. And for the first three days, I mean everything. All that was open was the Blue Pumpkin, a little bakery with wifi, sorta the local Starbucks, and a couple of restaurants.

And if you know me, I don’t do ‘nothing’ very well.

I’ve done all the tourist things, seen all the temples, visited all the local wats, ridden through the floating village, been to the alligator form (it’s closed anyway) yada, yada,yada. And the scary thing is, I’m running short on books and the bookstore doesn’t open again until Sunday. I suppose if worse comes to worse I can always head to Raffles Hotel and see what they have in their gift store to read. But it’ll cost me what I pay for a night at the Green Town.

I’ve gotten all the paper work done that I came to file and am just waiting to hear back from the local authorities, and they won’t be back until probably Monday. So I’m going to do a little more paperwork today and then maybe head over to the swimming pool and spend some time there this afternoon. It’ll cost me a bit, but there really isn’t much else to do.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to Beng Malea, a recently opened temple ruin that is about 2 hours from here, still covered in jungle and was the prototype for Angkor Wat. Should be quite fun. It’s taken a week to put this little jaunt together. Nothing ever seems to go smoothly.

Well, more tomorrow or Saturday after I get outa town for a few hours.

Babu