No problem!

The last few days I was in Svay Rieng province visiting some volunteer friends and watching the national tournament. To those unfamiliar with the geography of Cambodia, Svay Rieng is a province bordering Vietnam. So for me to get there, I take a 3 hour van ride to Phnom Pehn, then another 3 hour van ride over the Mekong to the Vietnamese border. On my way back to site (yesterday) I found myself in the most ghetto torri van of all time.

I hopped into a van and shared a seat with a motocycle...literally, they were transporting a broken motocycle and I sat there with my legs over the wheel. Then for some reason, we were getting stopped at every police checkpoint. Usually, you just slow down enough to pay the bribe and keep going, but for some reason, all the police officers took an interest in the licence plate of this moto bike. We would stop, the police officers would look all the passengers up and down, examine all the boxes we were transporting, them come across the moto bike. Then they would point to the plate and flick it up and down for a bit....then take some pliers and pretend to unscrew it. Once this proved to be too much work, they would settle on a bribe.

Once we got the the ferry dock, our car was too heavy/broken to make it up the ferry ramp. We got halfway up and then rolled backwards into the car behind. Lots of shouting ensued follow by everyone in my car shouting "No problem! No problem!". We then all got out of the van so it would be light enough to get up the ramp. We made it across the river alright, but once it was time to unload off the ferry, our van wouldn't start. All the other cars left the ferry and we were the only van left on the ferry...more shouting and claims of "no problem!" ensued and we all got out again and gave the van a running start off the ramp and then hoppped back into the moving van. I thought that would be the end of the troubles but the assistant driver spent the next twenty minutes hanging over me and the moto bike which i was sharing a seat with and playing with the wires under the front seat....i was a little nervous with this guy pretty much straddling me banging away with a wrench and pulling wires out from under the car. He caught my nervous glance and looked at me with a big smile and said "no problem!"

yea, no problem until we were stopped at our next police bribe station and the door fell off.

But i realized how Cambodian I have become after picking up my friends parents from the airport last week. It was about 11 at night and we were riding back in a pretty crusty tuk tuk. the moto bike overheated on the way back and we were stuck on the side of the road, conveniently next to a group of drunk men... and one was going "number two" on the side of the road. i saw the nervous look on my friends mothers face and with a smile said "no problem! no problem! this happens all the time"