Stephen | Me and My Mirror – Stephen Sumner's Journey

But where are the bounds

By Stephen on Dec 15, 2011 in Outreach

If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it‘But where are the bounds of possible put down?’...

Poco a poco… .

By Stephen on Dec 15, 2011 in Life in Cambodia

If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itJust over a week now in Phnom Penh. First couple of days I sure wasn’t good for much as this place really drops a bomb on your senses. I’m settling now and seeing more charm in this city every day. The river accounts for a lot of the charm; it’s big and broad with a powerful current and actually two rivers cuz the Mekong is joined by a big tributary, the Tonle Sap, right smack in front of town. There’s a big and well-done promenade for miles down there and it seems every day most locals head down there at some point over the day. At 5 on the nose all 4 lanes of the road that runs parallel get jammed; some of it’s the after-work crowd but lots or most is just peeps getting out for a look-see. After dark a cool wind mercifully blows from upstream and hundreds of folks gather there to do a funky kind of low-impact jazzercise, to kick around a ball or to eat gawd knows whatall from a million carts. Actually I do know one thing they’re eatin’ and it’s bugs. Big ass bugs; and a variety of them too. I had me a little sample, I mean a teeny one. I had no choice whatsoever; it was a peer-pressure thing. I chose a cricket leg (a rear one, so I’m not totally feeble). It was tasty. They actually deep-fry mofo Tarantulas, if you can believe that. I was in a canteen when an ex-pat Kiwi took one out of a bag and ate it, bit by bit; the whole thang. There was no way he coulda eaten it, like, shooter-style – it was 5 inches long anyhow and all, of course, hairy. When he broke a leg off the thorax or whatever you call the giant round part that’s filled with venom and shit, well, you could see actual meat inside the leg, lots of it, and it was kind of creamy white. If you could get over the fact that it was hairy on the outside … and arachnoid … it would probably be both filling and succulent. I mean,...