When Culture Stress Erupts

We woke up early on Saturday morning to go on a group bike ride around the north part of the city. The sun had just risen, traffic was full tilt, and the air was smoggy and thick. Colin and I decided to stop on the bridge that crosses the Tonle Sap River to wait for our friend to catch up with us.  Colin took some photos of the river while I kept looking at oncoming traffic waiting to see if our friend was coming. Then bang. About 50m away from us, motos collided, people flew through the air, moto parts were scattered on the road, and a big dump trunk in the opposite lane slammed its brakes so it wouldn't run over a moto caught up in the crash. 

We stood there in shock, feeling sad and scared of how quickly traffic accidents can happen. Thankfully, there were many people there to help. All I could see is that they had pulled one guy off to the side of the bridge. He was awake and sitting. The motos were still crashed all over the road. It was only a few minutes before traffic resumed again and people just started driving around the accident. Then we could see our friend biking around the accident. When he got to us, he said "there's no blood, there's no blood! but there was a guy 'sleeping' on the road". As he biked by it, our friend overheard people saying they tried to 'wake him up' three times but he remained sleeping. Then the ambulance arrived. We decided to keep biking. 

Less than a kilometer later, Colin heard another bang. A minute later, I catch up with the rest of the group and we saw a big transport truck trailer on its side as it was going around a round-about, its load fallen all over the road. We hoped and prayed a moto wasn't driving next to the transport when this happened, it would have been crushed under the truck trailer. 

Thankfully, in the five years we've lived here, we haven't been in any traffic accidents. There have been some near misses but by God's protection, we've been spared. 

After the bike ride, Colin went to a men's breakfast while I made myself breakfast at home. Our landlady (who lives with her husband and two young kids in the back portion of our house) was yelling at her kids (again) while they were doing homework. The kids are age 8 and 9, they attend a decent private school, and are learning English, Chinese, and Khmer. Their English has improved significantly this past year and we've been able to have conversations at the kitchen window as we talk through the window bars. The mom complains to us that her kids aren't good at English because she can't understand them when they talk. I don't dare point out that she can't understand me (a native English speaker) when I speak English because... she doesn't know English herself! It's been an ongoing frustration listening to her yell at her kids while helping them study. I don't understand how the incessant yelling is helping and it's painful to overhear. 

Turning back to see the sunset (on our street).

In the afternoon, I went shopping because I needed some new clothes for work. Apparently crop tops are in fashion these days? Ugh! I went to four different stores and came home with nothing but sweat.  Why is shopping so hard here?! That would be a separate blog post to answer that question.

In the evening, we went to a friend's 50th birthday party that was a ton of fun! We had a blast celebrating with friends, eating, playing games, and dancing. It was a sweet end to a bit of a rough day. 

Sunday, we got in the car and drove into town. About a km from our house, we turned right on a green light and immediately had 5 police officers walk in front of our car and motioned us to pull over. The office leaned into our car and told us that we ran a red light. He told us if they checked the camera and we actually ran a red light, we'd be charged about $40. But we didn't run a red light. The light was green! The officer then said 'or you can just make things easy and pay me $25'. What the heck! The injustice frustrates us so much! We gave him $5 and drove off feeling sour and upset about the whole thing. 

We had another frustrating experience when we got into town and I lost it. I cried. We went to get bubble tea and I fought back tears. These experiences mentioned above along with other small things all piled up and exploded into a messy cry and pure frustration. 

Culture shock (or culture stress) is real. It's not a linear process where you can go through all the stages and then 'graduate' from it. Instead you get hit with it in all sorts of different ways and you just have to deal with it. Thankfully, this isn't the first (or second, third, fourth, etc) go around at dealing with culture stress/shock. It doesn't get any easier, but at least we can identify it and then coach ourselves to not write-off the whole country in the midst of our stress and frustration.