* welcome to Cambodia.

The sun sets around 5:45 in Siem Riep. I should stay awake for at least three more hours. I arrived this morning and since I haven't managed to sleep in the plane or at the hotel in Singapore, I'm at war with my sleep and I'm clearly not winning.  I've tried to keep my self busy - I went to the town the whole afternoon. Two years ago when I first came here on vacation, our tuc-tuc driver, Michara, gave us his cellphone in case we would ever come back. I never thought I would actually see him again, but I gave him a call and 10m later there he was, at my hotel's door.  When he greeted me he said I haven't changed at all since we last met.
It made me smile. Yes I did Micha. Yes I did.

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It's 1.55 a.m.
In less than 5 hours I have to check out of my hotel room and catch my flight to Cambodia.
I can't sleep, so I walked out of my room, to go to the pool area. Its warm outside, and it's quiet. I ignore the sign saying the pool is closed and seat on the edge. There's palm trees and ambient lights and I open my laptop and start writing. Just a few hours ago I went into the city, to meet a friend. That's the perk of being Portuguese - you'll have an expat friend nearly everywhere you travel to in the world. We met for some food and drinks, at the Level 33 Skyline Bar.
Everything in this city is so clean that its hard to believe anyone actually lives here. Singapore is fancy, techy and expensive. I grab my 37 dollar glass of wine and I'm reminded that tomorrow I'm travelling to one of the most impoverished areas in the world, only one hour away from here.

No fancy hotel room with 'luxury bar soaps'.
No palm tree pool or clerks to call you 'madam'.
No overpriced drinks and light shows at the bay.

In life everything changes, and here, it changes even faster.

      Level 33 Bar & Lounge view
      Pool area where I'm sitting

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So, before I embrace my volunteering experience in Cambodia - in a selfless, kind gesture that should get me some extra positive Karma points and hopefully prevent me from forever burning in hell - I still had time during my flight to pull out some classic Vio and be mean to yet one last human being.
The guy sitting next to me, an older man with a few extra pounds too much, snored uninterruptedly for 5 hours, so loud that I believe no one in a 3m radius could have possibly slept 2 minutes the whole flight.

At one point, when he wakes up,  I ask him to stand up, and I go to the toilette. A few minutes after I come back I realise that while waiting for the bathroom line, I missed the distribution of the visa application papers. So after a bit, I kindly ask him again to stand up.
Guy's answer: " You asked me to stand up less than 20m ago. That's a bit of a discomfort."
So I look at him, and say in a really soft, paused voice: "You know what I find a discomfort? That you snored so loud for the past 5 hours that I could not get any sleep, and couldn't not listen to you, even with my earphones on. Also, that when you stood up before, you poured what was left of your glass of wine on my shoes, that by the way I'm using for the first time. Now this said, I think we both agree that you are just going to stand up, right?"
Awkward silence. Guys stands up.

For the sake of my soul, I better be good in Cambodia.

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