One More

Here's my second confession: vanity is one of my biggest sins. First off, I'm always worrying about how I look. That's a struggle that I think we all address. Not so much of a confession for a gay guy :-P.

Anywho, my vanity though is more than skin deep; it is an intellectual vanity that often causes negative thinking. For example, a recent trip to Cambodia found me at the Thai/Cambodian border town of PoiPet. For those of you that do not know it, many people have described the city as the armpit of the world :-P. It is teeming with dust and dirt, the heat is deadening and oppressive, and the people are extremely aggressive. Once you cross the border there, the casinos line the streets for the Thai to gamble, and the Cambodians latch on to western looking people trying their best to sell you anything at a greatly inflated price.

When I crossed, there were no less than 5 Cambodian people following me from one border stop to the next, calling at me in English, touching my clothes, and pulling at my backpack. One woman tried to sell me a $5.00 bottle of water. Another man tried to give me a $40.00 ride to Angkor Wat, but offered a Thai guy (in Thai) a ride for $15.00 (when asked he told me I would get a bigger and better car). One dude correctly pegged me, and wanted me to meet a 'boy' about ten minutes down the main street.

I didn't want any of it, and actually got quite upset by these people. I got so upset in fact that I yelled at each of them throwing out some expletives along the way, kind of making a scene outside of some Diamond casino. It was kind of embarassing now that I think about it.

That night, thinking to myself about that town, I started to wonder why I got so upset? What did these people do that got to me? The best thing I came up with was that they were so aggressively lying to me about the costs of the services they were offering. It offended me, I think, that they were insulting my intelligence in such a flagrant way. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered about that anger. If I was so upset about a lie, why didn't I get more riled up over Santa Claus or Bill Clinton. Answer, those lies weren't so insulting to my ability to analyze a situation (or were they :-P?) or understand a service or gimmick (Did I spell that write :-P?).

The lies in Cambodia were aggressive distortions meant to deceive me. That angered me greatly, but what did the anger get me? Did it help me solve any of the problems or actually get a bottle of water? I don't think so, it just made me look bad in front of a bunch of Thai hi-so gamblers ready to lose some money to whoever (Thaksin?) owns the casinos in a tiny border hamlet known as the armpit of the world. That says something about me, still not sure what it says about the town of Poi Pet.