Rainbow Lodge and other activities

So here's what's been going on:
I played hooky for a day from work and took a long weekend at a place called the Rainbow Lodge, a little cluster of rustic bungalows situated at the edge of the South Cardamom Mountains Protected Reserve, about 5 hours from Phnom Penh. The lodge itself doesn't offer much more than delicious home cooking and board games aplenty, but right down the hill there's a big wide river to swim in, and kayaks and innertubes to play with, and there are two really nice dogs and a kooky british lady running the whole thing so it's a generally good atmosphere. A few miles up the river there's also a really impressive waterfall, and to get there you can either take a
leisurely half hour boat trip or, if you're a moron, you can choose to trek two hours overland, uphill, through leech-infested pools of mucky water with no trail to speak of and nothing to look at except the low hanging branches that keep hitting you in the face. Both are fun options. Anyway so we spent our days playing in the river and our nights playing scrabble with the other guests, who were for the most part other young people living in Phnom Penh and escaping for the weekend, and had a lovely time. Also we won at Scrabble. Just for the record.

Then I came back to Phnom Penh, found out that the new cat had gone completely crazy and had to be returned, got a flat tire on my bike while returning said pyscho cat, came back home and dropped a dozen eggs on my foot and discovered that my computer wouldn't play DVDs anymore. Basically I should never have left Rainbow Lodge.

But this weekend has been a little calmer. Friday night I went to a free "networking party" where all the fancy young things in the city get dressed up and flock to the Intercontinental Hotel for free Indian food and booze and exchange business cards like grown ups, and then go drink more and sing karaoke into the wee hours of the morning, also just like grown ups. A real professional event. I don't have business cards, though, so there was an awkward moment when I arrived at the door and the check in guy asked me to drop my business card in the business card bowl, and I just looked at the bowl and looked at him and smiled like I didn't speak English and walked on in. Professional.

And today I came to visit my friend Charlsea at her place on the outskirts on Phnom Penh, which is a cool spot because it's right where the city melts into the country, so there are buildings and stores on one side of her house (by buildings and stores i mean brothels and karaoke joints) and then rice fields and lotus ponds on the other. And floodwaters all around, so it's like she has her own private moat. Which means, of course, that once you get all the way out there, over the moat and through the woods and all that, you are pretty much forced to order pizza and sit on the roof and watch grey's anatomy and not leave for any reason, which is fine by me.
And that's really all that's happened in the last few weeks. Oh, and the other day one of my fellow volunteers passed an 8 inch pink worm. Alive. So I think that's probably a good note to end on.